"Give us your Facebook account credentials or you are fired / won't get the job."
I think most people would give them what they wanted if it was framed like that. It's probably not legal, but since when have employers given a shit about laws that tend to curtail their ability to monitor their employees' activities at all times?
Oh he's definitely not worth working for, and I'm looking for a new gig. It's hard because I'm relatively near a major urban center, so everyone assumes I want a job in the city. The trouble is that I'd spend 20 hours a week commuting were I to do that (2 hour one way if I take the train in, more like 1.5 should I drive, but parking spots are at a premium and therefore expensive). So, by turning down even considering jobs that would require that commute, I look lazy and not worth pursuing for my skill set. Remote jobs do exist, but competition for those jobs is high, and I'm not that good.
Of course it is. It's a product of the fact that American workers are not guaranteed ANY paid time off by law. No vacation, no sick time, nothing. If you have a baby, you can take 12 weeks... unpaid. And it took an act of Congress to get that.
American employers resent the fact that in order to attract good talent, you have to offer paid time off. So, while you DO get paid time off, remember, taking it means your employer resents you that much more. Some employers are worse than others, but as someone who just got called on the carpet for working remotely too much (not even time off, just out of the office), despite a previous arrangement that allowed it, I can speak from experience that if your butt isn't in the seat 40+ hours a week, 52 weeks a year, your performance is sub-par.
That's like saying "well if they're jerks to you at that car dealership go somewhere else." The problem there is that they're ALL jerks. Same goes for employers. A for-profit company has a financial incentive to make their people work long hours for no extra pay. If exempt employees were eligible for overtime, you'd see that stop right quick. You'd mysteriously see workloads reduced to less-insane levels, because then they'd have to pay more.
Most employees working extra hours without extra pay will lose their job if they don't.
FTFY. If you are an exempt employee, and you continually refuse to work beyond 40 hours when asked (or even not asked), they WILL replace you with someone more compliant. You're "not a team player", since others in your group are most likely already doing the extra work.
What exactly is actionable? It's not like there's going to be an entry in the employee's file saying "this person used vacation time and he sucks". There will be a general resentment from his/her managers which will tend to portray them as "not a team player" and possibly affect their reviews and thus their compensation. Incredibly hard to prove, much less litigate, since there's nothing in writing except for a shitty performance review which could be completely legitimately bad.
But I find it is a MUCH better way to do things than the usual W2 set up...where you have to "earn vacation hours" (God I hated this), you work when you want to and are off when you want to..
I don't see this as all that different. Either way you get punished for taking vacation time. If you're a W-2 employee and earn vacation time, your employer will punish you for using it. If you're an independent contractor, you don't get paid for the time you take off.
So after the C students in HR get done filtering the pile, removing anyone who doesn't have a degree, the right keywords, or any easily understandable "certifications" that they treat as actual skills and not a skill at test taking, you throw out all the resumes that are left?
Remember, the C students in HR have control over who you hire, despite the fact that none of them have the slightest clue what any of the skills mean. They tick off the list and send you the ones that have enough checkmarks.
Exactly, so it's consistent with the way that job candidates get treated. Make them scared enough that they won't get the job and they'll make all kinds of concessions when it comes time to negotiate an offer. That is, if there's any negotiation; it's much easier for the company to make an offer and tell the candidate they can take it or leave it.
Nonsense. I know of dozens of teams that have successfully implemented Agile/Scrum in a distributed environment. It's harder to implement and manage, but it can and does work.
I have fun with those shitbags. I play the dumb grandpa who only knows "The Internet" and "The Google" and couldn't find the start menu if his life depended on it. Endless fun. They ask for something, you deliberately give them the wrong information. I've kept some of those twits on the line for an hour before I finally let them know that I know they're a scammer, that the "ID" number that they're giving me is the same on every windows PC, and that I've been deliberately wasting their time so they don't have that time to go rip someone else off.
If I don't feel like playing that day, I just tell them I don't own a computer. That *really* confuses them.
They're American? It's another sign of the "you're not allowed to be human" treatment that lots of American workers get. Even people who get sick time are discouraged from taking it, lest it reflect badly on their performance. If they'd also not get paid for that day, hell yeah they're going to drag their sorry asses to work and give everyone in the office the plague, because, you know, it's much better for 5 people to work at half capacity than give 1 person the day off to recover. Lazy shiftless assholes, they should work harder, not be sick.
I'm surprised it got this far, considering the unlimited resources available to the other side. Eventually they'll bury him in so much paper that his legal fees will exceed the GDP of a small country and he'll have to give up.
Being a "coding wage slave" is much more attractive to me than being a sleazeball big money "if I don't understand it it can't be important" douchebag. Those folks have to fuck over half the country to get to that early retirement. I would rather not be that guy, even if it means I can't retire early.
Getting employee buy-in is important. An employee that is engaged, that believes he has a higher purpose than just working for this company will put more effort and pride into his work.
While that is definitely important, I find that management buy-in is more important. More specifically, director/VP/C-level management. Managing remote workers or teams is more difficult than helicopter micromanagement. Bad, insecure managers need to see you working; good managers look at your productivity. Measuring productivity is hard, it's difficult to put numbers on. Seeing that you're warming your chair is much easier.
I recently was working from home 40% of the time or so. Every Friday, other days as required (two small children, do the math) with just a notification to my manager. Then I switched managers and the new guy put together a spreadsheet showing all the days I'd worked from home in the previous couple of months. After pointing out that four of the days he was talking about were actually sick days (which I reported as such, and had the time taken out) and showing how all the non-Fridays I'd taken from home were for legitimate reasons (my son having surgery, etc), he took away the privilege anyway. By his own admission, I'd done nothing wrong. (He then went on to tell me, in the same breath, that 1) I should collaborate more with my co-workers, and 2) I should figure things out on my own. Then he told me that my 2.5% raise could have been 3% had I performed better. Gosh, I feel so motivated now.)
The problem is not that I was working from home too often. The problem is that he's a shit manager. All of his reports hate him. If his boss (or his boss' boss, the CEO) was fully on-board with remote work, then he'd have a harder time being such a dick about it.
You do know that the only difference between firing a non-union worker and a union worker is that the union worker has to be fired for a reason that management can document, right? A non-union worker can be fired on the spot for no reason whatsoever. A union worker has the right to progressive discipline up to and including termination.
Stop spreading the lie that union workers can't be fired. They can, it's just harder for management to do so, because they have to have an actual valid REASON (shock horror why do they hate America).
Except for unexpected downtime a GM (does that mean 'general manager'?) has no influence at all on power production or sales and hence his salary is in no way related to the power production of 'his' plant.
Yes, nobody ever has their bonus determined by things that they have no control over. No company ever deliberately structures their bonus program in a way that minimizes them by making the conditions for a full bonus impossible to achieve. They can still say "up to 10% bonus", because 1% is a valid value of "up to 10%".
Slashdot Mirror
"Give us your Facebook account credentials or you are fired / won't get the job."
I think most people would give them what they wanted if it was framed like that. It's probably not legal, but since when have employers given a shit about laws that tend to curtail their ability to monitor their employees' activities at all times?
Perl still exists.
Oh he's definitely not worth working for, and I'm looking for a new gig. It's hard because I'm relatively near a major urban center, so everyone assumes I want a job in the city. The trouble is that I'd spend 20 hours a week commuting were I to do that (2 hour one way if I take the train in, more like 1.5 should I drive, but parking spots are at a premium and therefore expensive). So, by turning down even considering jobs that would require that commute, I look lazy and not worth pursuing for my skill set. Remote jobs do exist, but competition for those jobs is high, and I'm not that good.
Of course it is. It's a product of the fact that American workers are not guaranteed ANY paid time off by law. No vacation, no sick time, nothing. If you have a baby, you can take 12 weeks... unpaid. And it took an act of Congress to get that.
American employers resent the fact that in order to attract good talent, you have to offer paid time off. So, while you DO get paid time off, remember, taking it means your employer resents you that much more. Some employers are worse than others, but as someone who just got called on the carpet for working remotely too much (not even time off, just out of the office), despite a previous arrangement that allowed it, I can speak from experience that if your butt isn't in the seat 40+ hours a week, 52 weeks a year, your performance is sub-par.
That's like saying "well if they're jerks to you at that car dealership go somewhere else." The problem there is that they're ALL jerks. Same goes for employers. A for-profit company has a financial incentive to make their people work long hours for no extra pay. If exempt employees were eligible for overtime, you'd see that stop right quick. You'd mysteriously see workloads reduced to less-insane levels, because then they'd have to pay more.
I was with you until your last sentence. Now you just look like an asshole.
FTFY. If you are an exempt employee, and you continually refuse to work beyond 40 hours when asked (or even not asked), they WILL replace you with someone more compliant. You're "not a team player", since others in your group are most likely already doing the extra work.
What exactly is actionable? It's not like there's going to be an entry in the employee's file saying "this person used vacation time and he sucks". There will be a general resentment from his/her managers which will tend to portray them as "not a team player" and possibly affect their reviews and thus their compensation. Incredibly hard to prove, much less litigate, since there's nothing in writing except for a shitty performance review which could be completely legitimately bad.
I don't see this as all that different. Either way you get punished for taking vacation time. If you're a W-2 employee and earn vacation time, your employer will punish you for using it. If you're an independent contractor, you don't get paid for the time you take off.
So after the C students in HR get done filtering the pile, removing anyone who doesn't have a degree, the right keywords, or any easily understandable "certifications" that they treat as actual skills and not a skill at test taking, you throw out all the resumes that are left?
Remember, the C students in HR have control over who you hire, despite the fact that none of them have the slightest clue what any of the skills mean. They tick off the list and send you the ones that have enough checkmarks.
Exactly, so it's consistent with the way that job candidates get treated. Make them scared enough that they won't get the job and they'll make all kinds of concessions when it comes time to negotiate an offer. That is, if there's any negotiation; it's much easier for the company to make an offer and tell the candidate they can take it or leave it.
No, I think you gain 20% efficiency.
See, I can pull numbers out of my ass, too!
Nonsense. I know of dozens of teams that have successfully implemented Agile/Scrum in a distributed environment. It's harder to implement and manage, but it can and does work.
I have fun with those shitbags. I play the dumb grandpa who only knows "The Internet" and "The Google" and couldn't find the start menu if his life depended on it. Endless fun. They ask for something, you deliberately give them the wrong information. I've kept some of those twits on the line for an hour before I finally let them know that I know they're a scammer, that the "ID" number that they're giving me is the same on every windows PC, and that I've been deliberately wasting their time so they don't have that time to go rip someone else off.
If I don't feel like playing that day, I just tell them I don't own a computer. That *really* confuses them.
Why do you hate America?
They're American? It's another sign of the "you're not allowed to be human" treatment that lots of American workers get. Even people who get sick time are discouraged from taking it, lest it reflect badly on their performance. If they'd also not get paid for that day, hell yeah they're going to drag their sorry asses to work and give everyone in the office the plague, because, you know, it's much better for 5 people to work at half capacity than give 1 person the day off to recover. Lazy shiftless assholes, they should work harder, not be sick.
I'm surprised it got this far, considering the unlimited resources available to the other side. Eventually they'll bury him in so much paper that his legal fees will exceed the GDP of a small country and he'll have to give up.
Being a "coding wage slave" is much more attractive to me than being a sleazeball big money "if I don't understand it it can't be important" douchebag. Those folks have to fuck over half the country to get to that early retirement. I would rather not be that guy, even if it means I can't retire early.
Found the shitty manager.
I'd challenge this guy to find a company with a significant web presence that serves on Windows.
While that is definitely important, I find that management buy-in is more important. More specifically, director/VP/C-level management. Managing remote workers or teams is more difficult than helicopter micromanagement. Bad, insecure managers need to see you working; good managers look at your productivity. Measuring productivity is hard, it's difficult to put numbers on. Seeing that you're warming your chair is much easier.
I recently was working from home 40% of the time or so. Every Friday, other days as required (two small children, do the math) with just a notification to my manager. Then I switched managers and the new guy put together a spreadsheet showing all the days I'd worked from home in the previous couple of months. After pointing out that four of the days he was talking about were actually sick days (which I reported as such, and had the time taken out) and showing how all the non-Fridays I'd taken from home were for legitimate reasons (my son having surgery, etc), he took away the privilege anyway. By his own admission, I'd done nothing wrong. (He then went on to tell me, in the same breath, that 1) I should collaborate more with my co-workers, and 2) I should figure things out on my own. Then he told me that my 2.5% raise could have been 3% had I performed better. Gosh, I feel so motivated now.)
The problem is not that I was working from home too often. The problem is that he's a shit manager. All of his reports hate him. If his boss (or his boss' boss, the CEO) was fully on-board with remote work, then he'd have a harder time being such a dick about it.
Getting fired for being in treatment is inane?
You do know that the only difference between firing a non-union worker and a union worker is that the union worker has to be fired for a reason that management can document, right? A non-union worker can be fired on the spot for no reason whatsoever. A union worker has the right to progressive discipline up to and including termination.
Stop spreading the lie that union workers can't be fired. They can, it's just harder for management to do so, because they have to have an actual valid REASON (shock horror why do they hate America).
Yes, nobody ever has their bonus determined by things that they have no control over. No company ever deliberately structures their bonus program in a way that minimizes them by making the conditions for a full bonus impossible to achieve. They can still say "up to 10% bonus", because 1% is a valid value of "up to 10%".
Oh wait, no, lots of them do that.
Do you want to work on an operating nuclear reactor? Me neither.