How To Demoralize Employees: A DIY Guide for Terrible Companies
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If you're not on the production side of things, why would you care about those specific 2850 records?
Because it's supporting a product we don't own. The bug is scheduled to be fixed in the next version, but it's about 3 months out.
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You need a hobby project. Doesn't even have to be programming. Just something to make you feel productive.
I got one, I actually was working on it quite a bit this morning until my doorbell rang and kind of ruined it.
Also I'm to the point where I need to do a bunch of CSS work before I can continue and oh man there's nothing I hate more than that.
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I got one, I actually was working on it quite a bit this morning until my doorbell rang and kind of ruined it.
Also I'm to the point where I need to do a bunch of CSS work before I can continue and oh man there's nothing I hate more than that.
Hmmm, that's fine, but you need something you can actually do at work. So you don't go insane.
My suggestion: write a book.
###"100 software SHITS", by Blakeyrat.
Every day open up a new word doc or mail message and pretend to type some important proposal, while actually writing a new chapter for your book. Every chapter should be a short rant about a particular peeve you have. And they should all be titled "XXX is shit". "Novel is shit" "Linux is shit" "Go is shit"...By the time your contract expires (end of the year IIRC), you'll have a complete book you can self-publish or share for fun.
And you won't even have to deal with CSS at all to do this.
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+g
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I nominate @blakeyrat and @Arantor to create new forum software.
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I nominate @Arantor to do my taxes and @blakeyrat to mow my lawn!
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I am not creating new forum software. It would not be healthy for me to do so at this time.
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I'd be willing to if they meet my salary requirements.
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Blakey, you and I could start something for product development in c# in the evenings, I tolerate bullshit pretty well and am looking to progress my career in another direction.
As long as work gets done I can ignore your rants :p
But no, I couldn't pay you. It would be one of those poor hobo garage startup kind of gigs where day jobs are a reality.
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As long as work gets done I can ignore your rants
I also have a high "bullshit" tolerance that's entirely proportional to performance. I'll put up with RMS eating foot scabs provided extreme quality performance occurs. If the
bullshit / performance
ratio inverts, well, I've a nail gun for that...That
bullshit / performance
ratio is the reason I'm still employed at my job ( 15 yrs ) given how… umm… vocal I am about dealing with bullshit from non-performers, often directly to their faces. I produce prodigiously therefore I'm still employed ( gotta keep on the right side of the ratio :) ).
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Yeah, I've often said I'm only employed because I'm useful. People generally don't like me for being friendly.
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But with your wit and sparkling personality as seen here? I find that slightly hard to believe.
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Pretend the vps of technology and reporting are Jeff.
I call things out exactly the same way.
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I see precisely zero problems with this. Next?
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I just wanted to see @blakeyrat and @Arantor talk about FOSS.
I did have a conversation with someone this morning about quitting my job and going full time for the running club site, since it's something that tons of people would use, even around the world.
Sometimes, it feels that I'm at my current job only for health insurance and money, not because I have a remote interest in the work that I do.
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You know the universe is tilting when I sort of agree with @blakeyrat on the subject.
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Where the hell do you find some of this stuff?? →
--likes;
'cause that was just creepy.Anyhoo… At the time of that post, I was out of "real" likes ( because of that thread, gotta catch up! ).
So I used Better Likes.
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Where the hell do you find some of this stuff??
Umm... That was a rhetorical question... I can find sufficiently disturbing corners of the web all on my lonesome...
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And you can keep the sufficiently disturbing corners to yourself. Some of us are trying not to have our brains mangled and warped over here.
Well, not too much.
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If you find Homestar Runner disturbing, I'm not sure what corners of the internet you've been to, but they're probably more near the middle. Or rounded or something.
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I'm sorry, but I think your boat sailed quite some time ago... :)
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Isn't Homestar Runner mainstream?
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Mostly... I just found the first one @ben_lubar linked to, to be not funny and kinda creepy, in a clown sort of way. Yes I suffer from coulrophobia. 'Tho I've not yet shot one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A4TGv12lfQ
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in the United States alone, someone checks their email every 3 seconds
(posted without clicking link)
And boy is his index finger tired!
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yay! someone's using my script!
+7 internetz for you!
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People who think the correct way to upload a clip to youtube involves pointing a camera at a TV need to be shot.
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Yeah, don't blame me 'tho. I just linked the first result I found. That's "good enough for Discourse".
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Never working for a big company. No. No no no no. Not worth it. For all the money in the world.
I work for a big company. I like it, because we have people to deal with stupid bureaucracies. I mean, I still have to deal with some internal WTFs, but there are people whose salaries are paid based on my work to deal with much larger WTFs. My actual team / project is pretty small.
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You need a hobby project. Doesn't even have to be programming. Just something to make you feel productive.
Totally. I had kids.
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For bonus WTF points, add in policies that change by the minute and/or are not accessible to you (what do you mean, I can't read the policy!?).
The counter to this is: "show me the policy." And then read it. If they "can't" show you the policy, then it effectively doesn't exist.
Run it through your Supervisor via email just to be safe, and print out the response thread for your records, if you're in that kind of environment (while looking for another gig).
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cartman82 said:
You need a hobby project. Doesn't even have to be programming. Just something to make you feel productive.Totally. I had kids.
"Oh, good. His dick works."
-- Gallagher
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Famous last words:
<during a discussion with a VP about moving 10 folks out of our overcrowded space>
VP: ... even if we have to rent a 10000sqft office block.
Weng: Dibs on a 1000sqft office
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Hot-desking is the worst - especially when HR have read some research that finds that on average only 80% of staff need a workstation at a time - so they provide only 80% as many workstations as staff, showing their failure to understand what average means. There was even a suggestion that staff struggling to find a desk bring in a laptop - and presumably sit on the floor. Commuting into work only to find there isn't a desk = no morale.
We don't even get cubes - just rows of open plan desks uncomfortably close together.
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Hr research. .. 80-20 rule. It will be fine.
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Get in early (or pull an all-nighter) and set up in the HR offices. Say you're hot desking and that they should be fine down the hall. You probably have to take a little care to make sure you're not in one of the places that actually has paper records of employment or something like that (they probably could get you to move on there without much kerfuffle, which would miss the point of the demonstration).
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It just means working from home one day a week, to help with the averages.
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I work for a big company. I like it, because we have people to deal with stupid bureaucracies.
Heck, one of the two times I worked for a big company, one of the best things about it was my boss kept everyone else off our backs.
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It just means working from home one day a week, to help with the averages.
Why do programmers need to come in to the office at all? With all of the great technology to enable remote work, the best policy is to just leave people the fuck alone and let them work when, where and how is most effective for them.
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@Intercourse said:
Why do programmers need to come in to the office at all?
"Synergy," to hear the guy who runs my company. Which generally means "I don't know how to deal with programmers, but I know how to treat call center employees and the like, so I'll just treat them that way, i.e., watch them all the time."
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"Synergy," to hear the guy who runs my company.
He is a man who does not know what it is like to be in a groove writing code and have some dick weed stop by your office, ask a stupid question, require explanation for your explanation, short circuit some of your neurons with their banality and then after they leave you think to yourself, "Now WTF was I doing?"
Then you take an early 2 beer lunch, that turns in to 4.
Or, if you are like me my peak productivity times are in the evening. I am worth fuckall in the morning.
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@Intercourse said:
He is a man who does not know what it is like to be in a groove writing code and have some dick weed stop by your office, ask a stupid question, require explanation for your explanation, short circuit some of your neurons with their banality and then after they leave you think to yourself, "Now WTF was I doing?"
Absolutely not. He got his start in, I don't remember, sales or something.
Course he's a multimillionaire and I'm not so....
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As I said, averages.
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"Synergy," to hear the guy who runs my company. Which generally means "I don't know how to deal with programmers, but I know how to treat call center employees and the like, so I'll just treat them that way, i.e., watch them all the time."
TRWTF is a technical skill set boss taking "how to manage employees" advice from a call center (or equivalent around minimum wage type job) boss.
An owner of a call center advised my previous company's boss (owner) that all employees are expendable/replaceable. Although he protested, "what if I have a high producer that doesn't like the new plan?" he was told, "doesn't matter, find another". When my pay was cut 25%, although I saw potential to make more money long term with the new bonus plan, my wife had just given birth to our first son several months after losing her job. Timing could not have been worse.
So I quit. 16 months later, when we next had contact, he admitted to me that the technical department just wasn't the same since I had left. Although I've worked my current job more than 10 years now, I noted that acknowledgement - if I ever left the current job, I'd be willing to check the old company out again, as such acknowledgement is almost unheard of. Most people have to insist they were right after making a move like that.
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So I quit. 16 months later, when we next had contact, he admitted to me that the technical department just wasn't the same since I had left. Although I've worked my current job more than 10 years now, I noted that acknowledgement - if I ever left the current job, I'd be willing to check the old company out again, as such acknowledgement is almost unheard of. Most people have to insist they were right after making a move like that.
That's always tough. Knowing that you were a star at a past job is one thing. But you know that you left for a reason. Why go back?