You've been fortunate. In your case you haven't needed the protection of a union. The point is, that can change at any time if your boss is in a poopy mood, and with a union, a poopy mood on the part of your boss isn't a justifiable reason for termination.
Don't forget how the ass-backwards health care paradigm in this country forces people to keep working for someone else in a big company because they can't afford the non-subsidized cost of health insurance.
Once we separate health care from employment, you'll see a wave of innovation and independent thinking that will revolutionize the economy. But we won't see that until we realize that the money our employers spend on health care (mine currently spends about $1000/month on mine) could be instead used to ensure every man woman and child in the country had access to high-quality health care.
But we can't do that, because then taxes would go up. So we have the current (broken) system and people effectively stuck in their jobs because their kids might get sick someday.
What's your point? Banking is a complicated industry, made more complicated every year by greedheads who want to separate the people who do actual work from their money as shadily as possible, so it can't come back to bite them. The current financial situation the country finds itself in is nearly directly attributable to a lack of oversight. I'm not in favor of regulation for its own sake, but for goodness' sake, let's not also have lack of regulation for its own sake.
Please stop perpetuating the lie that union workers are "unfireable". Unions do not protect workers from being fired for gross incompetence, theft, sabotage, and so forth. What they DO give you is the right to 'progressive discipline', where you can't be fired for wearing the wrong color shirt or being two minutes late for your shift, without a hearing with a union representative advocating for your interests.
Until American workers enjoy some of the protections of their European counterparts (even if limited to being required to provide a REASON for a termination - employers in 'at will' states can fire you and say to your face "we're not going to tell you why"), then unions will be necessary in this country.
Land of the free, home of the brave. (If you're an employer, that is.)
Employees have no rights in this country beyond the right to quit their job. They don't even need to give you a reason when they fire your ass and security frogmarches you to the door.
The computer (or phone, or tablet) you're using to type that comment is a direct result of the effort to put man into space. The space program gave us the integrated circuit.
After reading comments about how there are no Americans talented or qualified enough to fill this position, I have to point something out:
There are plenty of American software engineers that could do this job. There aren't plenty of American software engineers that could do this job for the crap pay they were most likely offering. It's not a matter of unwillingness, it's a matter of being able to support a family in the current environment. Corporations whine and whine about no talent being available, but what they really mean is 'there's no talent available that will work for the insulting wages we're offering, so let us hire H1Bs for pennies on the dollar who can't complain or they get deported.' Not only do they save money, they get an employee that they can more easily work into the ground than an American citizen.
The H1B system is a cruel joke perpetrated on the American worker. And before some capitalist-is-awesome-fuck-you moron says that it would kill jobs, no, it would just shrink corporate profits to the point where they make 7 kajillion dollars instead of 9.
Also, IMHO, any entity that hires contractors to do mission critical work instead of hiring full-time employees deserves everything they get.
No, it encapsulates what's wrong with project management in this industry. Failure to manage customer expectations and setting insane production deadlines isn't the developer's fault, it's the fault of the management layer that *should* be between the client and the developer.
Of course, in an ideal world, there would be someone there. There frequently isn't, or there's someone so ineffective there that it's *worse* than nobody being there. In those cases, the developer should be looking for a better job.
I hope to $deity you're not a manager. Your morale must be terrible if you do.
I have to echo other commenters: If you want well documented code, you need to allow sufficient time for said documentation to be written. Failure to do so isn't a failure in programming, it's a failure by management to build realistic timelines based on feedback from programmers.
If your programmers are constantly telling you they need more time, on project after project after project, and it's ALL of them, not just a few complainers, then you need to look in the mirror to find the source of the problem. Go to sales/marketing, read them the riot act about promising impossible deadlines, and get THEM fired if they continue to promise unicorns on a wombat budget.
If by "completely unreasonable" you mean "wants to solve the problem in the most efficient way", then yeah, I'm unreasonable. I could give a shit about sales. I leave that to the salesweasels. What I'm 'rallying' against is rejecting a legitimate solution because it doesn't make any money, in favor of a less efficient solution that happens to make you more money. If you solve the customer's problem, they'll continue to be your customer. Trying to squeeze as much money out of them as you can will drive them to the competition anyway.
Perhaps, but my experience is that for every 'legitimate' feature Sales wants to add, there's a feature that's just completely retarded.
It's all irrelevant most of the time anyway, as Sales only consults with Engineering after they've promised the customer the sun moon and stars and it's up to Engineering to make the impossible happen, lest the customer go somewhere else. Not sales' problem at that point, they've made their money.
What they want here, as far as I can tell, is to charge money to solve a problem that is already solved elsewhere. The engineer's response is correct, IF you actually want to solve the problem. If you want to give the customer another problem that you can then heroically step in and fix (also known as 'fuck them over') then his response was inappropriate.
we have engineers frighting them on it large because they'd rather focus on stuff that interests them more
No, you have engineers fighting them on it because the sales person's solution is stupid. The engineer identified the problem and provided a solution. If you don't want your engineers doing that, don't invite them to the meeting. Also, don't invite them if you don't give two fucks about your engineers' morale.
They are, in fact including engineering in the discussion, and they're not, in fact asking for anything impossible
They're involving engineering in the discussion but they don't want engineering to do their jobs (ie fixing problems). If your salesweasels weren't morons, they'd realize that they can charge time to install the systems in question, then make more money supporting it. Several problems solved, money made, customer not ripped off. Win-win-win.
So he's pushing back on a perfectly reasonable feature request, mostly because it doesn't interest him.
No, he's pushing back on the request because it's fucking stupid. IT'S A SOLVED PROBLEM. Why re-invent the wheel?
Both sides are made up mostly of reasonable people trying to do their best by the product and make sure we all get paid.
Sales people reasonable? I haven't met a reasonable one yet, and I've worked in a bunch of places in several industries. The common factor is that sales over-promises solutions, and the people who do actual work are left holding the bag while the salesweasel cashes his bonus check.
Making nice things involves communicating. If it's clear that your boss is not interested in communicating, only ordering you around, then give him enough rope, and dust off your resume.
"You're fired." - C-level executive who just flexed his ego at you, to which you responded by saying "that's against the rules".
C-levels don't get to C-level by following rules. They get there by screwing over the other guy, rules be damned. When I used to work in corporate desktop support, almost on a daily basis I would answer a question with "I'm sorry, I can't do that, it's against policy," only to have said C-level call my boss and demand that I be fired for refusing. Nevermind that the rule was based on logic or reason (or in some cases, legality), when The Vice President Of Things That Start With H On Alternate Tuesdays decides that the password policy doesn't apply to them, they expect you to ask 'how high' when they say 'jump'. Forget that you don't have the power to override the policy, forget that the policy exists for a damn good reason, forget everything except the fact that said VP or C-level can fire you on the spot.
Engineering is in the business of solving problems. Sales/Marketing are in the business of bullshitting people until they can rip them off; when the shit hits the fan, they blame Engineering for not delivering on the promises Sales/Marketing made (despite those promises not being rooted in reality.)
If you want problems solved, involve Engineering. If you don't, don't invite Engineering to the meeting. (That is, if you want to destroy morale and put your entire enterprise at risk.) Realize, of course, that you're diluting the quality of the product you're selling an.. wait, this is Sales/Marketing we're talking about, they don't CARE that they're selling a crap product, so long as they can tick off an arbitrary list of features (and the check clears.) The fact that half the features don't work right because they promised something to the customer that is, in fact, physically impossible, is totally alien to them.
My point is, that you really need two people to get the job done: a developer, and a designer. People don't understand that you're taking time away from programming when you make the coder do layout or other design tasks; all they know is that they don't have to hire a second person. After all, they can just make the programmer do all his/her work IN ADDITION to the design stuff. It's a weak labor market.
This, minus the horrendous punctuation and grammar. I spend a good deal of my time explaining what the difference is between a web designer (which I am not) and web developer (which I am). One deals with the front end, the other deals with the back end. Unfortunately the people with money are generally clueless as to how a web site actually works, and just want pretty pictures with as little money paid as possible - which precludes hiring two people (expensive) or one person with both skill sets (unicorn expensive). You get either crappy code with pretty pictures, or good code with crappy pictures. Bad code doesn't show up in Firefox, so is it any wonder there's so much horrible code out there?
"Fire-able offense"? Employers need no reason to fire you in most states. (Actually, I'm pretty sure it's every state, but feel free to correct me.) You can be fired for no stated reason whatsoever. (Or, if pressed, and they feel like it, they can tell you it's for a 'dress code violation' or other minor infraction.) Your employer can just come to your work area, tell you "you're done" and get security to march you off the property. If you're lucky you'll get a chance to remove any personal items from your work area before you leave, or they'll remove them for you and put them in a box for you to take with you; if you're not, they'll just throw your shit out. Proving wrongful dismissal is pretty much impossible in this country, unless you have months/years of documented evidence of gross discrimination or whistle-blower retaliation.
You've missed the point. He's been terminated FOR "job hunting". The act of even implying that you might be looking is enough to get you tossed out to the curb with the trash at some workplaces. Hell, people have been fired for taking (cold) recruiter calls on company time, or on company equipment. (I've had several recruiters call me on my work extension. They got an earful before I hung up on them.)
In general, it's in your best interests to report that to the employment commission and continue to work.
If you think that "getting tossed out to the curb with all your crap in a box" is in your self-interest, then you've got a worldview that most would consider 'deranged'. Continue to work, line up a new job, then quit. It's really the only way to improve the situation.
Ticking a box on Linkedin is not the same as announcing your intention to leave. My resume is on the internet at all times. I'm not looking for a new gig. The two are not mutually exclusive.
Employers have far too much power in this country (USA). (I know this is a UK case, but I'm seeing discussion about the differences here.) True, you can quit at any time for any reason or no reason with no notice, just like your employer can fire you at any time for any reason or no reason with no notice and no severance (past paying out any accrued paid time off), but the difference is that your employer likely will fare much better without you than you will without a job. "Wage slavery" is not just a clever sound bite; it's a way of life. Your employer can make you do pretty much anything under the threat of being terminated, including things that are illegal/unethical, and then will immediately hang you out to dry if they get called on it. You've likely got obligations to meet, and the consequences of not meeting them are far greater than the consequences to the company for a capricious termination. This is not an equitable arrangement. A simple requirement that the circumstances of one's termination be documented in writing would curb a great deal of employer abuse in my opinion.
One thing I'm thankful for after working w a few is there's BIGGER things in life than money, and these people only care about that one small thing.
I hate to sound like a broken record, but it applies here, too: What color is the sky on your planet?
Money is *everything* in this society. Job satisfaction/high self-esteem doesn't put food on the table, and all hard work gets you is more hard work for the same pay. The only way to get ahead is to make more than the next guy, and if you have to screw him over to do it, so be it. Do you honestly think your co-workers/managers/C-levels actually give a flying shit about you? They're co-workers, not friends. If it's their job or yours, guess what? You're screwed out of a job.
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You've been fortunate. In your case you haven't needed the protection of a union. The point is, that can change at any time if your boss is in a poopy mood, and with a union, a poopy mood on the part of your boss isn't a justifiable reason for termination.
Don't forget how the ass-backwards health care paradigm in this country forces people to keep working for someone else in a big company because they can't afford the non-subsidized cost of health insurance.
Once we separate health care from employment, you'll see a wave of innovation and independent thinking that will revolutionize the economy. But we won't see that until we realize that the money our employers spend on health care (mine currently spends about $1000/month on mine) could be instead used to ensure every man woman and child in the country had access to high-quality health care.
But we can't do that, because then taxes would go up. So we have the current (broken) system and people effectively stuck in their jobs because their kids might get sick someday.
I'm curious, are you physically unable to use a period?
What's your point? Banking is a complicated industry, made more complicated every year by greedheads who want to separate the people who do actual work from their money as shadily as possible, so it can't come back to bite them. The current financial situation the country finds itself in is nearly directly attributable to a lack of oversight. I'm not in favor of regulation for its own sake, but for goodness' sake, let's not also have lack of regulation for its own sake.
Please stop perpetuating the lie that union workers are "unfireable". Unions do not protect workers from being fired for gross incompetence, theft, sabotage, and so forth. What they DO give you is the right to 'progressive discipline', where you can't be fired for wearing the wrong color shirt or being two minutes late for your shift, without a hearing with a union representative advocating for your interests.
Until American workers enjoy some of the protections of their European counterparts (even if limited to being required to provide a REASON for a termination - employers in 'at will' states can fire you and say to your face "we're not going to tell you why"), then unions will be necessary in this country.
"Conservatism."
Land of the free, home of the brave. (If you're an employer, that is.)
Employees have no rights in this country beyond the right to quit their job. They don't even need to give you a reason when they fire your ass and security frogmarches you to the door.
The computer (or phone, or tablet) you're using to type that comment is a direct result of the effort to put man into space. The space program gave us the integrated circuit.
After reading comments about how there are no Americans talented or qualified enough to fill this position, I have to point something out:
There are plenty of American software engineers that could do this job. There aren't plenty of American software engineers that could do this job for the crap pay they were most likely offering. It's not a matter of unwillingness, it's a matter of being able to support a family in the current environment. Corporations whine and whine about no talent being available, but what they really mean is 'there's no talent available that will work for the insulting wages we're offering, so let us hire H1Bs for pennies on the dollar who can't complain or they get deported.' Not only do they save money, they get an employee that they can more easily work into the ground than an American citizen.
The H1B system is a cruel joke perpetrated on the American worker. And before some capitalist-is-awesome-fuck-you moron says that it would kill jobs, no, it would just shrink corporate profits to the point where they make 7 kajillion dollars instead of 9.
Also, IMHO, any entity that hires contractors to do mission critical work instead of hiring full-time employees deserves everything they get.
No, it encapsulates what's wrong with project management in this industry. Failure to manage customer expectations and setting insane production deadlines isn't the developer's fault, it's the fault of the management layer that *should* be between the client and the developer.
Of course, in an ideal world, there would be someone there. There frequently isn't, or there's someone so ineffective there that it's *worse* than nobody being there. In those cases, the developer should be looking for a better job.
I hope to $deity you're not a manager. Your morale must be terrible if you do.
I have to echo other commenters: If you want well documented code, you need to allow sufficient time for said documentation to be written. Failure to do so isn't a failure in programming, it's a failure by management to build realistic timelines based on feedback from programmers.
If your programmers are constantly telling you they need more time, on project after project after project, and it's ALL of them, not just a few complainers, then you need to look in the mirror to find the source of the problem. Go to sales/marketing, read them the riot act about promising impossible deadlines, and get THEM fired if they continue to promise unicorns on a wombat budget.
If by "completely unreasonable" you mean "wants to solve the problem in the most efficient way", then yeah, I'm unreasonable. I could give a shit about sales. I leave that to the salesweasels. What I'm 'rallying' against is rejecting a legitimate solution because it doesn't make any money, in favor of a less efficient solution that happens to make you more money. If you solve the customer's problem, they'll continue to be your customer. Trying to squeeze as much money out of them as you can will drive them to the competition anyway.
Perhaps, but my experience is that for every 'legitimate' feature Sales wants to add, there's a feature that's just completely retarded.
It's all irrelevant most of the time anyway, as Sales only consults with Engineering after they've promised the customer the sun moon and stars and it's up to Engineering to make the impossible happen, lest the customer go somewhere else. Not sales' problem at that point, they've made their money.
But it's clear you didn't want Engineering's input at that meeting, so why were they there?
In my comment sales wants a reasonable thing
What they want here, as far as I can tell, is to charge money to solve a problem that is already solved elsewhere. The engineer's response is correct, IF you actually want to solve the problem. If you want to give the customer another problem that you can then heroically step in and fix (also known as 'fuck them over') then his response was inappropriate.
we have engineers frighting them on it large because they'd rather focus on stuff that interests them more
No, you have engineers fighting them on it because the sales person's solution is stupid. The engineer identified the problem and provided a solution. If you don't want your engineers doing that, don't invite them to the meeting. Also, don't invite them if you don't give two fucks about your engineers' morale.
They are, in fact including engineering in the discussion, and they're not, in fact asking for anything impossible
They're involving engineering in the discussion but they don't want engineering to do their jobs (ie fixing problems). If your salesweasels weren't morons, they'd realize that they can charge time to install the systems in question, then make more money supporting it. Several problems solved, money made, customer not ripped off. Win-win-win.
So he's pushing back on a perfectly reasonable feature request, mostly because it doesn't interest him.
No, he's pushing back on the request because it's fucking stupid. IT'S A SOLVED PROBLEM. Why re-invent the wheel?
Both sides are made up mostly of reasonable people trying to do their best by the product and make sure we all get paid.
Sales people reasonable? I haven't met a reasonable one yet, and I've worked in a bunch of places in several industries. The common factor is that sales over-promises solutions, and the people who do actual work are left holding the bag while the salesweasel cashes his bonus check.
Making nice things involves communicating. If it's clear that your boss is not interested in communicating, only ordering you around, then give him enough rope, and dust off your resume.
"You're fired." - C-level executive who just flexed his ego at you, to which you responded by saying "that's against the rules".
C-levels don't get to C-level by following rules. They get there by screwing over the other guy, rules be damned. When I used to work in corporate desktop support, almost on a daily basis I would answer a question with "I'm sorry, I can't do that, it's against policy," only to have said C-level call my boss and demand that I be fired for refusing. Nevermind that the rule was based on logic or reason (or in some cases, legality), when The Vice President Of Things That Start With H On Alternate Tuesdays decides that the password policy doesn't apply to them, they expect you to ask 'how high' when they say 'jump'. Forget that you don't have the power to override the policy, forget that the policy exists for a damn good reason, forget everything except the fact that said VP or C-level can fire you on the spot.
Engineering is in the business of solving problems. Sales/Marketing are in the business of bullshitting people until they can rip them off; when the shit hits the fan, they blame Engineering for not delivering on the promises Sales/Marketing made (despite those promises not being rooted in reality.)
If you want problems solved, involve Engineering. If you don't, don't invite Engineering to the meeting. (That is, if you want to destroy morale and put your entire enterprise at risk.) Realize, of course, that you're diluting the quality of the product you're selling an.. wait, this is Sales/Marketing we're talking about, they don't CARE that they're selling a crap product, so long as they can tick off an arbitrary list of features (and the check clears.) The fact that half the features don't work right because they promised something to the customer that is, in fact, physically impossible, is totally alien to them.
My point is, that you really need two people to get the job done: a developer, and a designer. People don't understand that you're taking time away from programming when you make the coder do layout or other design tasks; all they know is that they don't have to hire a second person. After all, they can just make the programmer do all his/her work IN ADDITION to the design stuff. It's a weak labor market.
This, minus the horrendous punctuation and grammar. I spend a good deal of my time explaining what the difference is between a web designer (which I am not) and web developer (which I am). One deals with the front end, the other deals with the back end. Unfortunately the people with money are generally clueless as to how a web site actually works, and just want pretty pictures with as little money paid as possible - which precludes hiring two people (expensive) or one person with both skill sets (unicorn expensive). You get either crappy code with pretty pictures, or good code with crappy pictures. Bad code doesn't show up in Firefox, so is it any wonder there's so much horrible code out there?
"Fire-able offense"? Employers need no reason to fire you in most states. (Actually, I'm pretty sure it's every state, but feel free to correct me.) You can be fired for no stated reason whatsoever. (Or, if pressed, and they feel like it, they can tell you it's for a 'dress code violation' or other minor infraction.) Your employer can just come to your work area, tell you "you're done" and get security to march you off the property. If you're lucky you'll get a chance to remove any personal items from your work area before you leave, or they'll remove them for you and put them in a box for you to take with you; if you're not, they'll just throw your shit out. Proving wrongful dismissal is pretty much impossible in this country, unless you have months/years of documented evidence of gross discrimination or whistle-blower retaliation.
You've missed the point. He's been terminated FOR "job hunting". The act of even implying that you might be looking is enough to get you tossed out to the curb with the trash at some workplaces. Hell, people have been fired for taking (cold) recruiter calls on company time, or on company equipment. (I've had several recruiters call me on my work extension. They got an earful before I hung up on them.)
If you think that "getting tossed out to the curb with all your crap in a box" is in your self-interest, then you've got a worldview that most would consider 'deranged'. Continue to work, line up a new job, then quit. It's really the only way to improve the situation.
Ticking a box on Linkedin is not the same as announcing your intention to leave. My resume is on the internet at all times. I'm not looking for a new gig. The two are not mutually exclusive.
Employers have far too much power in this country (USA). (I know this is a UK case, but I'm seeing discussion about the differences here.) True, you can quit at any time for any reason or no reason with no notice, just like your employer can fire you at any time for any reason or no reason with no notice and no severance (past paying out any accrued paid time off), but the difference is that your employer likely will fare much better without you than you will without a job. "Wage slavery" is not just a clever sound bite; it's a way of life. Your employer can make you do pretty much anything under the threat of being terminated, including things that are illegal/unethical, and then will immediately hang you out to dry if they get called on it. You've likely got obligations to meet, and the consequences of not meeting them are far greater than the consequences to the company for a capricious termination. This is not an equitable arrangement. A simple requirement that the circumstances of one's termination be documented in writing would curb a great deal of employer abuse in my opinion.
I hate to sound like a broken record, but it applies here, too: What color is the sky on your planet?
Money is *everything* in this society. Job satisfaction/high self-esteem doesn't put food on the table, and all hard work gets you is more hard work for the same pay. The only way to get ahead is to make more than the next guy, and if you have to screw him over to do it, so be it. Do you honestly think your co-workers/managers/C-levels actually give a flying shit about you? They're co-workers, not friends. If it's their job or yours, guess what? You're screwed out of a job.