'Need you to work this weekend' advice
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My theory is to do with aggression being an expected yet overrated attribute.
Bullshit. Women seen as "aggressive" are considered LESS employable. Women act less aggressive because they are punished socially for being aggressive -- there's no "boys will be boys" attitude during childhood about a girl who kicks, spits, throws dirt, or any of the things I did as a child, and angry adult women are described as "hysterical" and "unreasonable" while angry adult men are seen in a more positive light.
It's amusing to see you guys acting like it's such a huge fucking mystery why women make less when it's well known that a) jobs that are traditionally considered "women's work" pay significantly less and b) women are perceived as more likely to abruptly quit to have babies so employers are less willing to take chances. Are there other factors? Sure. But there's two huge elephants standing around in the room while you look mystified as to where all the dung is coming from.
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angry adult women are described as "hysterical" and "unreasonable"
don't forget assertive women being called bossy
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jobs that are traditionally considered "women's work" pay significantly less
Isn't the whole point nowadays that there is no such thing as "women's work" though? In other words, would a man doing this kind of job be paid noticeably more? If not, it's irrelevant - apples and oranges.
women are perceived as more likely to abruptly quit to have babies so employers are less willing to take chances
Working in a heavily woman-dominated firm (and industry), I can attest that pregnancy - and maternity leave - are a constant consideration. This does make them less valuable employees (ceteris paribus) and I'd be surprised if anyone denied it (nah, not really).
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don't forget assertive women being called bossy
No, just being called my boss. (I don't mind though; she's good…)
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it's irrelevant
Not if your statistics are comparing national averages. If female-dominated industries pay less than male-dominated industries because the work is less valued, it skews the national averages. If you're looking at industry-specific averages, then yes, that point is irrelevant, but it's not clear to me that all parties involved are bothering.
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Not if your statistics are comparing national averages. If female-dominated industries pay less than male-dominated industries because the work is less valued, it skews the national averages. If you're looking at industry-specific averages, then yes, that point is irrelevant, but it's not clear to me that all parties involved are bothering.
If you're not comparing similar jobs then the comparison isn't terribly useful for considering whether one type of person is discriminated against.
If your goal is to prove that, say, women are discriminated against, you try to gather statistics from everywhere so as to hide more relevant factors than chromosomal differences. When you do this, and then someone else looks at something very specific to show that based on your own criteria you employ the sort of discrimination you decry, then you bring up all those other factors and hope no one considers how it damages your original arguments (e.g., Obama Whitehouse).
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I want my
emoji dammit!
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@Bort said:
kinda a pussy
test
While I agree he should move on, this seems a bit extreme.
But not inaccurate. I'll fully admit the reason I've not left sooner was mostly due to some amount of fear of change. I mean, sure, the fact that I bought a house at the absolute worst time had something to do with it, but if I wanted to leave badly enough I would have found a way. My inaction has lead to the predicament I find myself in, and I have no one to blame for this beside myself.
Edit: Seriously, Discourse? You can't handle multiple quotes at the same time?
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I have prepared a screed, but do not want to unleash it unnecessarily...
So, a question.
Is anyone out there defending the idea that IT-folk should strictly "work to rule". (E.g. "I worked 42 hours last week, where's my money?")
I worked a salary job that was 40 hours a week, and overtime started at 42.5 hours. So if you worked 42, you were paid your salary. If you worked 43 hours, you were paid your salary plus half an hour of overtime.
I had no problem with that.
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Women seen as "aggressive" are considered LESS employable.
I realise I forgot to mention this. My bad. Not only are men rewarded for aggression, women are punished for it.
I figured I could make half of this work in my favour: if people expected me to show aggression, I'd use my anger at their stupid, backward expectation and show them their requested aggression. Then I got hit by some double-standard finger-wagging, demonstrating that the kind of people who come up with the arbitrary bullshit are either too stupid to realise what they're saying, or disrespectful enough to think I'm too stupid to realise what they're saying.
So, to recap:
- Aggression is encouraged, even though it's not a tool for civilised people.
- Except in women, because we don't want women thinking they're our equals, or whatever.
- Not too much aggression, because of reasons.
It's possible I glossed over this misogynistic savagery to the point of neglect for my own sanity. Apologies for the annoyance.
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Aggression is encouraged
Is it, though? Seriously?
Let's not mistake assertiveness for aggression. One is what we're talking about in the kind of situation @CodeNinja's in, where the boss tells you to come in to work weekends without extra pay or any other reward and you tell him "blow that" (in more diplomatic terms), the other is when you get emotional at work.
Neither should focus - a determination to excel at your job - be mistaken for aggression. We might call someone an "aggressive" salesman (and praise them if this attitude leads to better results), but we don't mean they are literally assaulting prospective customers (which is unlikely to be effective anyway). Similarly, someone who single-mindedly pursues their career might be labelled aggressive, but we realise this doesn't mean they've got a bad temper.
Real aggression, meaning poor anger management or general lack of emotional balance, is - I'd expect - an undesirable trait in an employee, whatever their gender.
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Is it, though? Seriously?
A history of environments where somebody with influence fucks up and tries to blame me or my colleagues/friends, thus constituting an attack, has encouraged me to believe that it is.
I suppose this is not a conscious encouragement though, which it sounds as though you're talking about. Such blamegaming individuals don't seem to have the brains to think through such actions.
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It may be dickweedery, but it's relevant in the context of this discussion: not discouraging certain behaviours is not the same as encouraging them. Moreover, in the particular situation you describe I believe "influence" is the key word.
Compare and contrast. I think "butting heads" would generally fall under the broad umbrella of the kind of "aggression" that is supposedly encouraged.
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... not discouraging certain behaviours is not the same as encouraging them.
My interpretation comes under the principle that something has to give way.
I'd agree that @blakeyrat's dystopia seems to include this kind of savage, careless thinking. Or lack of thinking
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I won't deny that there are occupations where "being aggressive" - abusive, even - will be considered an advantage. Any job where being competitive matters, for a start. Drill sergeants may be expected to be abusive to recruits in training to prepare them for heightened stress during combat etc. I don't think it particularly unfitting that candidates for such jobs be required to demonstrate such traits.
In most cases, however, an aggressive employee will be seen as a troublemaker - regardless of gender. Acceptance of such traits is more likely to be dictated by the employee's personal power and/or influence, than a social norm that gives points for these traits.
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In most cases, however, an aggressive employee will be seen as a troublemaker - regardless of gender.
I would hope so. I would also hope that companies encouraging aggression fail, since this would be modern (relatively civilised) evolution.
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My understanding is that "aggression" as a positive trait is talking about a much lesser amount of aggression than a drill sergeant: things like dominating the conversation, refusing to back down when challenged on an idea, going out of your way to punish people who don't play by your rules, et cetera. It seems like that's valued in leaders somehow, despite being annoying and making the leader look stupid.
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Do bear in mind that a drill sergeant has but thing to teach: following orders without question. Whether those orders are sensible is out of their purview, being a matter for the officers.
Arguably, the same can be said of a leader - at least in the sense that it's hard to lead if people don't do what you tell them to. Underling abuse is possibly the worst way to secure obedience, but it's much better than fostering disobedience.
Whether the plan is sensible or not is irrelevant unless it gets executed as planned.
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it's hard to lead if people don't do what you tell them to.
Not everyone needs to be told exactly what to do, though. Sometimes, it's better to give someone a goal and then step out of their way than it is to micromanage.
There are also times when you want a technically-underling to disobey you; this is seen when the alternative is blind obedience into a smoldering crater. Furthermore, there are external grants of authority (i.e. outside the normal hierarchy) in some fields that you must respect.
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Sure. And if all you want from your employees is mindless obedience, that'd be a great way to go about it. But if you want people to contribute new ideas and solve problems with some degree of autonomy, punishing them for trying to solve problems because they didn't cross every t is counter-productive.
Case in point: We set up a monthly meeting to solve some issues around communication and training, and while we attempted to ask permission from one of the higher-ups who was in charge of a lot of the people attending, he didn't get back to us before taking vacation time, so we went for it. The meeting was a hit, but we were told to cancel all future meetings because he was upset.
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Of course a middle-manager's feelings are more important than the functioning of the company. I'm sure the business stakeholders and investors would agree.
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Don't worry. The middle manager will do their best to adjust any attempt to communicate with the owners/stakeholders by the plebs under him. Oiks like us should be neither seen nor heard (unless, just occasionally, we damage some other manager's tinpot empire; that's A-OK!)
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The fact that we need a military could be argued as a WTF in itself.
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Hey how about an update from CodeNinja? Still employed?
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Hey how about an update from CodeNinja? Still employed?
so... many... temptations... must be good... can Blakey self-ban?.. must control vitriol...How about you? Things looking OK?
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A place that I used to work at got royally screwed by this - they classified almost everyone as exempt, and when the lawsuit came across they had to reimburse unpaid OT plus interest for years of this.
Good rule of thumb - do you have people working under you or are you making business critical decisions?
The FLSA standards for exemption are here.
Job titles or position descriptions are of limited usefulness in this determination. (A secretary is still a secretary even if s/he is called an "administrative assistant," and the chief executive officer is still the CEO even if s/he is called a janitor.) It is the actual job tasks that must be evaluated, along with how the particular job tasks "fit" into the employer's overall operations.
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A place that I used to work at got royally screwed by this - they classified almost everyone as exempt, and when the lawsuit came across they had to reimburse unpaid OT plus interest for years of this.
Which is the primary reason why all employees should fill out time sheets. You have to be able to prove compliance and limit your liability if you are found to be out of compliance. If you are wrongly classified exempt and you file your time as 40 hours every week because you are a lazy bastard, then tough shit when the lawsuit happens. Everyone should fill one out though, because otherwise if there are compliance issues found there is no way to conclusively prove one way or another whether or not overtime should be paid and how much should be paid. "I have been working 80 hour weeks for the past 3 years" without proof does not usually cut it in a court of law.
I briefly got to know one of the primary attorneys on that particular case. It has been a messy one, because billions are at stake.
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<small>
so... many... temptations... must be good... can Blakey self-ban?.. must control vitriol... </small>How about you? Things looking OK?
Hmmm. No answer....
Phone interview?... or... Kerbel?
Not a troll. Are you hanging in/on?
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Hey how about an update from CodeNinja? Still employed?
Yep.
Had a walk around the building with the new guy in charge of the software teams and discussed some of my concerns. Sadly, the entire team is on mandatory 50hr weeks at this point, and it looks like we'll be working Friday too. That's one nice thing about here, we get every other Friday off, and this was supposed to be an off one. Oh well.
Still, working on updating my resume. Figure by the first of the year I'll be able to seriously start looking for employment elsewhere. First I want to get some cash built up in savings, some bills paid off, and some work done on the house to make it marketable.
How about you, any luck?
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Not so far. 3 phone interviews last week, one of which I did pretty bad at but the other two I thought I did very well at, and no callbacks yet.
One of them I know is a firm no, since it was through the contracting agency and they gave me the interview feedback. One was a, "we really like your skills, but our job position isn't structured in such a way to match what you do, but maybe we can change that since it's a new team". (That was the job I really wanted.) The third is just no callback, no nothing.
So anyway. I didn't do jack yesterday, but I got a chat with a recruiter today.
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The third is just no callback, no nothing.
If they don't call back by next Monday or so, give them a ring. Sadly, HR departments are WTFy enough to drop job applications on the proverbial floor.
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I don't know if his "we might rejigger the job description" was a brush-off or not is really the problem. But yeah, I have their HR guy's email, I'll pop one off thurs or so.
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@CodeNinja said:
Figure by the first of the year I'll be able to seriously start looking for employment elsewhere.
Why wait? Sometimes these things take a while. Look now, at least a little.
What if a really cool job comes along and you miss out on the window of opportunity?
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Why wait? Sometimes these things take a while. Look now, at least a little.
What if a really cool job comes along and you miss out on the window of opportunity?
Oh, I'm looking, I'm just not devoting a ton of resources to it.
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@CodeNinja said:
Oh, I'm looking, I'm just not devoting a ton of resources to it.
Sounds like a mistake.
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Sounds like a mistake.
I think a bigger mistake would be trying to move with my finances in their current order. I need to get some cash saved up and get some repairs done to the house to make it salable. Still, if something shows up that looks awesome, I'll apply for it. Once the new year comes around, I'll devote a lot more time and resources into it. I just don't have the spare time and money at the moment.
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@CodeNinja said:
I think a bigger mistake would be trying to move with my finances in their current order
Do you live in a place where there aren't any other jobs? If you find a good job now that's not a multi-hour commute you can fix the house later in all your extra free time.
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Do you live in a place where there aren't any other jobs? If you find a good job now that's not a multi-hour commute you can fix the house later in all your extra free time.
With traffic? Everything is probably a 2-2.5 hour commute one-way, yeah.
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Are you convinced it's impossible to get a new job without moving?
EDT: oh 2.5 hours from a city? Yikes. No wonder your company can treat developers like slaves, you basically are slaves, hahaha.
There's a new "remote worker" movement starting up, I'm seeing more and more job sites have remote worker categories, and there are some sites like https://weworkremotely.com/ that specialize in remote worker listings. Give those a go.
That said, it's kind of a new thing, so the listings are a bit scanty at the moment.
That said, you might also be surprised at how many seemingly small and non-IT companies need IT workers. Hospitals, for example, unless they're microscopic have an IT staff of at least 5-10, possibly more, and one of those is local to everybody. And Director of IT at a hospital pays as much as a Director-level job anywhere else.
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@CodeNinja said:
With traffic? Everything is probably a 2-2.5 hour commute one-way, yeah.
Just to be clear, that's including your current job? Then you don't really have a good reason to not start now. Every week you let them abuse you is another week of your life you lose.
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Just to be clear, that's including your current job? Then you don't really have a good reason to not start now. Every week you let them abuse you is another week of your life you lose.
Including a whole day in traffic.
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Including a whole day in traffic.
Yeah, but that doesn't change if he switches jobs and doesn't move.
Unless you were talking the weekends he's also driving in on that he wouldn't with another job.
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Well, Google claims an hour to the closest major city. One of our software leads lives about halfway there, though, and it takes him a 45 minutes to an hour, depending on traffic, to get into work in the morning. I've never had it take less than an hour and a half.
Right now I have a 5 minute commute.
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@CodeNinja said:
Right now I have a 5 minute commute.
One of the nice things about not having a house is that, or rather, that you have the freedom to be able to move so you can arrange that.
I got tired of a 20-mile 1-hour commute each way, so I moved to where I was just over a mile from work. It had the benefit that I moved from a place where everything but the nearest convenience store was a 20-minute drive.
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Yeah, I consider my commute long enough as it is. About 25 miles, 25 mins in, 45-60 mins back, depending on traffic.
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@Intercourse said:
Which is the primary reason why all employees should fill out time sheets.
Ove my time with my current company, the Official Timesheets™ have gone through various permutations, some of which I was duly informed should be 'normalized to 37.5 hours.'
Yeah. Ok. I knew there was a reason why I use Project Hamster (it's a time tracker, don't get distracted by the OT stuff there.)
It's old, but IT WORKS. Has done for the past 6 years and has survived all incarnations of the timesheets at work. I record what I'm doing during the day on it and at the end of the week normalise/generalize/round or whatever the timesheet(s){1} du jour requires.
{1} I currently have two timesheets to fill out:
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A monstrosity of an Excel spreadsheet that some wannabe programmer in accounts devised. It's abysmal. And instructions were to round to the nearest half hour. I round to the nearest 6 minutes just to be annoying. And I re-order the rows since it appears that row order is important to whoever (I suspect/think it's wannabe programmer) processes them
One sheet per month. Per person. Each month's spreadsheet is in a different directory. Guess what the filename of the spreadsheet is. Every month? -
JIRA. Until I found the right plugin this too was very hard work. Less so now, but still requires a (slow) refresh-wait after entering some work.
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Yeah. Ok. I knew there was a reason why I use Project Hamster
I use this too. The interface is a little annoying, but it does what I need.
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can your employer do that? probably -- but you can still discuss it
I get a lot of letters like this -- letters that ask, essentially, can my employer really do this? I work in a industry where I sometimes work in the
Possibly useful.
