Fixing morale, according to management.



  • Things have been kind of rough here, morale wise, over the last year. We had some lay offs a little over a year ago, and some failed projects. No raises went through this year, and management seems to be scrambling for anything to work on.

    Last week we were told, "You guys have been doing great, you've increased the number of points closed per iteration from 8 to 14. That's awesome! Starting next week, it needs to be 24"

    Which kind of sucks. Especially since doing so will require working overtime, for which we are exempt from compensation and get none for.

    This week, the VP in charge of engineering got up at a meeting to address the problem of failing morale. He stated that the company was aware of it, and had a plan to deal with the problem.

    This was exciting!

    However, what followed was... well, it was something.

    What he said, and I kid you not, was: "So, here's what we need you to do. When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself, 'I'm going to be happy at work today.'"

    I'm going to go drink some beer now. Maybe all of them.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @nullptr It could be worse! I'm not sure how, exactly, but I trust you'll come back next week to tell us how.



  • @nullptr said in Fixing morale, according to management.:

    When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself, 'I'm going to be happy at work today.'"

    Yeah, it's totally your fault that you're unhappy with working unpaid overtime.

    @nullptr said in Fixing morale, according to management.:

    No raises went through this year, and management seems to be scrambling for anything to work on.

    Sounds like the company is dying and you're going to get laid off in a couple of months anyway so who cares if you're miserable?



  • @Bort Yeah, it's been on a spiral for a while now. I'm just trying to milk it long enough to get enough repairs done to the house that I can actually sell it and move at this point. Although I'm fairly certain I'm going to loose a bunch of money when I do.


  • Fake News

    How many Mandatory Fun Days to the mall have you had this quarter? If the answer is none, you haven't hit rock bottom just yet.

    I must admit that motivational mumbo-jumbo is getting close though.



  • @nullptr said in Fixing morale, according to management.:

    Last week we were told, "You guys have been doing great, you've increased the number of points closed per iteration from 8 to 14. That's awesome! Starting next week, it needs to be 24"

    Ah - you're so good you can obviously do 3x the work you're currently doing. Hey, there's 3 8hours shifts in a day, WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?


  • :belt_onion:

    @nullptr said in Fixing morale, according to management.:

    This week, the VP in charge of engineering got up at a meeting to address the problem of failing morale. He stated that the company was aware of it, and had a plan to deal with the problem.

    "The beatings will continue until morale improves."



  • Good luck. I hope things get better for you.

    If not, please continue sharing.



  • @nullptr said in Fixing morale, according to management.:

    What he said, and I kid you not, was: "So, here's what we need you to do. When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself, 'I'm going to be happy at work today.'"

    A good start.
    The next step is finding and removing any obstacles that might prevent that from happening, such as - for example - the expectation to work unpaid overtime.


  • FoxDev

    @CreatedToDislikeThis said in Fixing morale, according to management.:

    the expectation to work unpaid overtime.

    this is a bit of a sign.

    if your job is honestly expecting > 40 hours/wk out of you and is not compensating you financially for this excess. it's time to start looking for a new job. because that's just abusive relationship management on the part of your employer.

    if it's compensated for then it's more of a judgement call, but i'd personally lean on the side of getting out. after all, they were okay with mandating overtime, who says they're not willing to go further? i for one don't want to find out.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    Your company is a vomiting cesspile of poo-flavored shit. Treat it as such.

    They want you to work unpaid? Fuck 'em. Hard. With rebarb. You're in at 9, out at 5, m-f only, no working thru lunch or breaks. No exception. If they can't provide you with even the most basic intangible benefit of "not feeling like shit at work", then you don't owe even the most basic of giving a fucks beyond that absolute bare minimum.

    👨 but lorne they'll be unhappy with me and they

    Imma stop you right there and refer you back t' "fuck 'em". The company is going down in flames and they don't give a shit who goes down with them. In fact they prefer to land a pile of corpses to cushion their fall. Don't get caught in it. Of course they're going to bully and emotionally manipulate and threaten you to do free work in any way possible. They're assholes.

    I get you are getting a paycheck. If you can emotionally detatch from the work and just do the bare minimum without killing yourself, great. But you also better be applying to jobs every single day. Got vacation days or PTO built up? No you don't-- you have job interview days. Use them. Because your company will fuck you out of them as soon as they can.

    As soon as you have some place to jump ship to, get the fuck out of there. You will be happy, and you will then be healthier, and that is worth more than anything else.

    👨 but srsly they might fire me an...

    So? Here's the secret. If there's been layoffs, then they've already fired all the people they feel they can afford to. Everyone left over are the ones who they know are too scared, complacent or pushovers to do anything about the abuse that's going to be laid down. Also, it might mean you're being criminally underpaid for what you do, and they know that and are sucking every ounce of you they can until you burn out.

    If you were going to be fired, you would have been. If you are going to be fired, then you already are slated and no amount of groveling or unpaid overtime will fix that. Fuck 'em.

    Right now you are just an expendable resource they can use in the short term, because they know there is no long term. If they offer you a 300% pay raise, great, they value you. Otherwise...

    uuuuuuuuuuuuck them.



  • @nullptr said in Fixing morale, according to management.:

    Last week we were told, "You guys have been doing great, you've increased the number of points closed per iteration from 8 to 14. That's awesome! Starting next week, it needs to be 24"

    Things inside the tent did not seem quite normal. The place was too neat. Dobbs was watching him curiously, smoking a fat cigar. Now that Yossarian had made up his mind to be brave, he was deathly afraid.

    "All right," he said. "Let's kill Colonel Cathcart. We'll do it together."

    Dobbs sprang forward off his cot with a look of wildest terror. "Shush!" he roared. "Kill Colonel Cathcart? What are you talking about?"

    "Be quiet, damn it," Yossarian snarled. "The whole island will hear. Have you still got that gun?"

    "Are you crazy or something?" shouted Dobbs. "Why should I want to kill Colonel Cathcart?"

    "Why?" Yossarian stared at Dobbs with an incredulous scowl. "Why? It was your idea, wasn't it? Didn't you come to the hospital and ask me to do it?"

    Dobbs smiled slowly. "But that was when I only had fifty-eight missions," he explained, puffing on his cigar luxuriously. "I'm all packed now and I'm waiting to go home. I've finished my sixty missions."

    "So what?" Yossarian replied. "He's only going to raise them again."

    "Maybe this time he won't."

    "He always raises them. What the hell's the matter with you, Dobbs? Ask Hungry Joe how many times he's packed his bags."

    "I've got to wait and see what happens," Dobbs maintained stubbornly. "I'd have to be crazy to get mixed up in something like this now that I'm out of combat." He flicked the ash from his cigar. "No, my advice to you," he remarked, "is that you fly your sixty missions like the rest of us and then see what happens."

    Yossarian resisted the impulse to spit squarely in his eye. "I may not live through sixty," he wheedled in a flat, pessimistic voice. "There's a rumor around that he volunteered the group for Bologna again."

    "It's only a rumor," Dobbs pointed out with a self-important air. "You mustn't believe every rumor you hear."



  • @Lorne-Kates said in Fixing morale, according to management.:

    you don't owe even the most basic of giving a fucks beyond that absolute bare minimum

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNqQL-1gZF8#t=5m39s


  • area_pol

    @El_Heffe

    "The beatings will continue until morale improves."

    Glory to Arstotzka.



  • @nullptr said in Fixing morale, according to management.:

    Last week we were told, "You guys have been doing great, you've increased the number of points closed per iteration from 8 to 14. That's awesome! Starting next week, it needs to be 24

    As in, story points? Those are meaningless anyway, just estimate twice the number.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Maciejasjmj said in Fixing morale, according to management.:

    As in, story points? Those are meaningless anyway, just estimate twice the number.

    Yeah, this is the obvious response. Whether it's just an estimate or it means breaking things down more, the "points" gotta get inflated.



  • @nullptr Get out while you can. No one deserves such abuse.




  • FoxDev


  • 🚽 Regular

    @Lorne-Kates said in Fixing morale, according to management.:

    In fact they prefer to land a pile of corpses to cushion their fall.

    After having been made redundant and staying on to the bitter end (I really liked the company) that is exactly how it goes. Statutory redundancy payments are nearly worthless, you work for free for most of the end and it's as depressing as hell.


  • FoxDev

    @Cursorkeys I guess it varies company to company, but in my experience, those made redundant are put on 'gardening leave'. After all, they're not going to be focussed on a job they know is almost over, so why force them to come into the office? Their time would be better spent finding a new job.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @RaceProUK said in Fixing morale, according to management.:

    After all, they're not going to be focussed on a job they know is almost over, so why force them to come into the office?

    ITYM "they can't do any damage to our business or reputation if they're not here"


  • FoxDev

    @loopback0 That too



  • @nullptr said in Fixing morale, according to management.:

    I'm going to loose a bunch of money when I do.

    Well, that's one way to lose a bunch of money...


  • 🚽 Regular

    @RaceProUK said in Fixing morale, according to management.:

    @Cursorkeys I guess it varies company to company, but in my experience, those made redundant are put on 'gardening leave'. After all, they're not going to be focussed on a job they know is almost over, so why force them to come into the office? Their time would be better spent finding a new job.

    That seems to be what happens if a company is still legally trading and they want to restructure to save it.
    If the administrators are in and you get deemed 'critical personnel' you stay on right to the point where you're helping load assets onto vans. The best thing to do is quit if that happens, you won't get anything anyway and will save some sanity.



  • @accalia said in Fixing morale, according to management.:

    if your job is honestly expecting > 40 hours/wk out of you

    then you are living in the wrong country.

    My job expects 37 hours per week, with an extra day off (called "RTT") each month(1)(2) because it's 37 and not 35.

    (1) Except August because that's when people normally take two weeks of PTO.

    (2) And except one other month because of a (censored) thing called the "journée de solidarité".(3)(4)

    (3) Well, technically, you have to do one day's work unpaid, but most people follow the optional method of sacrificing a day off by putting an "RTT" day on the same day as a public holiday.

    (4) It's one of the relatively few things I don't like about France.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @Steve_The_Cynic said in Fixing morale, according to management.:

    journée de solidarité

    Wikipedia:

    The French Journée de solidarité (or Journée de solidarité envers les personnes âgées / Day of solidarity with the elderly) is a french law from the Code Du Travail. It was established on June 30, 2004[1] under the government of Jean-Pierre Raffarin. This law states that each year an employee must work seven hours for free for one of his or her employers, and that each year the employer has to pay a specific contribution. The contribution is defined by another law[2] at a rate of 0.3 percent to be paid to the ad hoc Caisse nationale de solidarité pour l'autonomie by the employers (0.3 percent is considered to be the approximate value of this seven hours' work). Its effect is the removal of a day's holiday.

    :wtf: They couldn't just say "hey, we're going to raise taxes by a very small amount for the purpose of helping the elderly"?


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @JBert said in Fixing morale, according to management.:

    How many Mandatory Fun Days to the mall have you had this quarter?

    Ouch!

    At a previous job, we would have trips to the mall (specifically, the local cinema, which was located at the mall) about twice a year, pretty consistently for the whole time I was there. They weren't mandatory, but pretty much everyone attended because they were genuinely fun! The boss was a huge comics geek (the name of his desktop was IronMan, for starters) so we saw all the MCU films and a bunch of other cool stuff.

    @accalia said in Fixing morale, according to management.:

    if your job is honestly expecting > 40 hours/wk out of you and is not compensating you financially for this excess. it's time to start looking for a new job. because that's just abusive relationship management on the part of your employer.

    I've been at the current job about 2 years now. In that time, I've been asked to stay for overtime 3 times IIRC. I've been OK with that each time, because they were special circumstances each time.

    My overtime policy is "you be reasonable about it and I'll be reasonable about it," and so far it's worked out really well. When it starts becoming an expectation, though, that's the point where I'd start pushing back.


  • FoxDev

    @masonwheeler said in Fixing morale, according to management.:

    My overtime policy is "you be reasonable about it and I'll be reasonable about it," and so far it's worked out really well. When it starts becoming an expectation, though, that's the point where I'd start pushing back.

    that's basically mine too.

    40+ hours in A week is okay if there's a good reason for it. 40+ most weeks or even regularly is not on. nope nope.



  • @accalia said in Fixing morale, according to management.:

    40+ most weeks or even regularly is not on.

    Should be reserved for people that get paid for it. Like VPs and CEOs and 7/12s guys.



  • @Dreikin said in Fixing morale, according to management.:

    :wtf: They couldn't just say "hey, we're going to raise taxes by a very small amount for the purpose of helping the elderly"?

    You have no idea how things work in France, don't you? :-D ;-( :-/

    As far as I remember, this went more or less like this:
    🎩 (governement): We need more money. Let's raise taxes.
    👶 : No more taxes! Nononono I won't listen to any reason, you've used the "t" word! Plus you're a right-wing governement, so you can't do anything for the good of the people, you must have a hidden motive to make your pals richer. Let's protest! Watch out, we've got signs and we're ready to use them!
    🎩 : OK then, no more taxes, but instead, we'll remove one paid holiday because we already have so many.
    👶 : No, still bad.
    🎩 : (puppy eyes) but it's for the elderly... 🎻 think of your grandma dying in the cold winterhot summer (there was a scandal about too many elderly dying during a heat wave in 2003, so just before that)
    👶 : But it's still bad, you can't force people like that (keep in mind that 👶 being the opposition, it's the left-wing parties at this time...).
    🎩 : Um, yeah, we're the governement, we can pass laws.Sure, let's make it voluntary but mandatory, and managed by the employer instead of the governement. So everyone is free to do as he wants, as long as at the end we still get moar moneyzzz.
    👶 : ❓ ❓ ❓ aaaah, too complicated! (head 'splode)
    🎩 : Good, problem solved then.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @remi said in Fixing morale, according to management.:

    You have no idea how things work in France, don't you?

    If there was a world championship for going on strike, France would certainly win it every year.



  • @asdf said in Fixing morale, according to management.:

    If there was a world championship for going on strike, France would certainly win it every year.

    They would probably be disqualified for not being "amateurs" (is that still a thing for the Olympic Games?)...


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    @asdf You have certainly never lived in South Africa, have you? At any given point in time (except possibly the December holidays) some or other union is on strike.



  • @Steve_The_Cynic said in Fixing morale, according to management.:

    (4) It's one of the relatively few things I don't like about France.

    Don't forget that, unlike in most countries, holidays that fall during a weekend are lost (instead of being postponed to the next working day). And we have a lot of fixed-date holidays (May 1st, May 8th, July 14th, August 15th, November 1st, November 11th, Christmas and New Year's day - which I count in the previous year, to avoid leap days and because it's exactly 1 week after Christmas), half of which (May 1st, May 8th, Christmas and New Year's day) fall on the same day of the week in a given year.


  • Java Dev

    @Khudzlin Same in The Netherlands, though I think we've got less days. The only one that moves is King's Day; if that falls on a Sunday it's celebrated on the preceding Saturday instead.

    We do get 2nd Easter and Pentecost days.



  • @PleegWat We had only 3 variable-date holidays (Easter Monday, Ascension and Whit Monday - which is apparently what the monday after Pentecost is called) before one of them was removed for "solidarity with the elderly" (employers can choose which holiday to remove, and of course they remove one with a variable date, usually the last one).



  • Except it's still a holiday on the books, which means public transit says "fuck you, we're working with holiday hours". Hence people just taking the day off, rather than having to make extra effort to arrive on time to work for free.

    PS: TIL that Pentecost is actually a Sunday. Since people always say "Pentecost Monday" in here, I just assumed...



  • @Cursorkeys said in Fixing morale, according to management.:

    @Lorne-Kates said in Fixing morale, according to management.:

    In fact they prefer to land a pile of corpses to cushion their fall.

    After having been made redundant and staying on to the bitter end (I really liked the company) that is exactly how it goes. Statutory redundancy payments are nearly worthless, you work for free for most of the end and it's as depressing as hell.

    Over here, as soon as you can't pay your employees anymore (or when your company's debts are higher than your capital or when you can't make other mandatory payments) the CEO (or equivalent) has to declare insolvency. This means (among other things) that the company will get an insolvency manager who tries to save the company (completely or partially). It also means that the workers will get their salary for 3 more months (up to a certain limit).

    If you don't declare insolvency then two things will happen:
    a) The C-level executives will be facing criminal charges, including up to 3 years of jail time.
    b) The C-level executives will be facing civil suits which will make him pay a lot of money. That's completely independent of the type of company they are running - that means, even if you chose a "Limited" or something, they'll still be liable with their personal wealth.


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    @accalia Today a coworker mentioned there was an 8-week period in which the least they worked was 71 hours in a week.


  • FoxDev

    @Yamikuronue That should be made a violation of the laws of physics.



  • @remi said in Fixing morale, according to management.:

    They would probably be disqualified for not being "amateurs" (is that still a thing for the Olympic Games?)...

    No.



  • @Rhywden said in Fixing morale, according to management.:

    a) The C-level executives will be facing criminal charges, including up to 3 years of jail time.
    b) The C-level executives will be facing civil suits which will make him pay a lot of money. That's completely independent of the type of company they are running - that means, even if you chose a "Limited" or something, they'll still be liable with their personal wealth.

    Over here, C-level executives, like "made" men, are exempt from jail time. It's in the company's articles of incorporation.


  • Java Dev

    @Yamikuronue That sounds like it's probably illegal here. checks

    Yup. 12 hours per shift, 60 hours per week, 55 hours average over 4 weeks, 48 hours average over 16 weeks. Weekends of at least 36 hours. Though there are exceptions for certain professions.


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    @PleegWat IT is considered "exempt" in the US, so a lot of the state-specific sanity checks around overtime don't apply.



  • @Medinoc said in Fixing morale, according to management.:

    PS: TIL that Pentecost is actually a Sunday. Since people always say "Pentecost Monday" in here, I just assumed...

    Yes, that is actually "the Monday that follows Pentecost" (or Whit, at least in the UK -- what's the wrong-pondian most accepted word for it?). Same goes for Easter Monday, btw (and I don't know what's "good" about Good Friday, since it's supposed to be the day Jesus died... the "good" part is when he comes back on Easter!). But the Ascension is the Thursday, so the "Thursday of the Ascension" is the day of the feast, not the next one...


  • Garbage Person

    @Yamikuronue said in Fixing morale, according to management.:

    @PleegWat IT is considered "exempt" in the US, so a lot of the state-specific sanity checks around overtime don't apply.

    IT in general is not exempt. Your duties must consist directly of systems design analysis, design, development, documentation, implementation, testing of software, systems or operating systems.

    You will note that ops staff are not included. I have met many HR departments who don't grok that (WtfCorp included)


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    @Weng That is true. If you do the sort of creative work that leads to burnout, you're exempt, but if you do general systems monitoring and maintenance that is mostly routine work, you are not exempt from overtime.


  • Garbage Person

    @Yamikuronue Just us creative IT suckers, managers, truck drivers, commissioned salesgoons, and farmers get special overtime screwing.


  • FoxDev

    @Yamikuronue said in Fixing morale, according to management.:

    @accalia Today a coworker mentioned there was an 8-week period in which the least they worked was 71 hours in a week.

    0_1484244375151_Do Not Want (1).jpg


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