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Admin
Yay from Tales from the interview!
Admin
Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket. Then hitting them with a brick. I believe the professional term for Bob is "pillock".
Admin
Well, maybe I just don't really get the WTF here.
Only WTF I see is the phone terror afterwards...
Admin
I was about to bash the VP over making decisions that affects the little people... but common sense kicked in.
It was their place to make the decision to freeze the budgets. Had they frozen the budgets which resulted the withdrawal of the job offer it would have been a different story. But they never made the formal offer in the first place.
No way around it; Bob jumped the gun and Paul was just in the splash zone.
Admin
Never ever fucking resign before you've signed the new contract... how dense can one be
Admin
Erm, Bob had a job but then quit when he thought he'd get the offer... before actually receiving the offer.
I don't really see where your points 1 and 2 fit in.
Admin
I was expecting management to decide that the best way to save costs in the long run is to improve IT, which needs Paul's skills, but the hiring freeze continues.
Admin
It's not clear there ... did Bob hastily resign, or was it that he'd been fired and was spinning a bit of a yarn to get a new job quick without letting on?
Either way, maybe the agent mis-spoke, but if Bob trusts anything an agent says he's only himself to blame.
Admin
By doing this it doesn't look professional at all. Even if Paul had a call afterwards from his boss saying he can hire this guy, Paul shouldn't. And not because the mobile calls, but for not being formal enough to wait until he receives an offer. Without the formal offer, quitting his currrent job was silly; asking HR for the starting date and his benefits was stupid. What this guy will do if Microsoft says they detected a potential and unproven problem? Shut down all the systems as preventive action? Fire the missiles before the commies can do it??? Paul was lucky, and at the end of the day the bad news for Bob and the recruitment agency became good news for him.
Admin
I read it as Bob gave his two weeks, and the company turned around and told him "No, you can leave now" i.e. they shitcanned him for giving notice. So Bob was screwed as his old job had fired him, and the job he thought he was getting had a freeze at the 11th hour.
Feel bad for Bob but this is why you never give notice until you have an offer in writing. Of course, I've heard horror stories where you DO have an offer and a start date, and then Sunday night you're told not to come in Monday because of something that happened, so it's not like waiting really matters.
Admin
Yeah, or that.
And yes. In fact the place I'm at keeps hiring people and then telling them we're having an office move 100 miles away in a few months. We're getting to meet lots of new faces, briefly, before they sheepishly go outside and ring their old employer up.
Admin
Admin
I really don't get this: "one of the VPs was spooked by an auditor in the parking lot yesterday and they've dropped an emergency budget freeze."
A budget freeze because of a "spooked" VP? No, there has to be some other meaning to this sentence which escapes me right now. :(
Admin
I think it's just the writing. VPs do stupid things, so the explanation given is that he was "spooked" (like an animal) by an auditor.
Admin
WTF??
Admin
I did it the right way. Accepted the written offer, resigned and turned up on Monday at the new gig only be be booted out by the security guard.
Sod it.
Admin
I don't quite understand how you can resign when you haven't even signed a contract for the new job. In other words
How do you resign from a job you haven't even got first.
The true WTF seems to be this article.
Admin
wat? He resigned from his OLD job, BEFORE the new job made him an offer. The new job subsequently had a hiring freeze so didn't hire him.
Admin
Friend of mine recently made the same mistake as Bob (more or less). He was interviewed for a similar job to his current one, was promised pretty decent bump in salary, resigned his current job. Now I should point out that he had already received a written offer from the new company outlining his job, hours, start date, etc BUT importantly no salary details. I guess in his mind, "we already discussed it, so we're good".
So his first day was last Monday, popped into HR for briefing... "by the way, here's your salary details". Hmm. I can only imagine his face: it was about a quarter of what he was promised, and significantly less than what he was currently earning. To top it out, his old job was already filled at the prior employer (and he'd trained his replacement), never mind getting another job in his line of work could take quite a while (not a lot of openings in his field).
Can't stress it enough. Get it in writing, not just the job specifics, but everything you are under the impression you're getting. Don't assume it's legit, don't assume you're safe because it was said and you think verbal is as good as written.
Admin
Admin
Admin
The point of this story is that Bob screwed up and HS gave away Paul's number.
Paul should threaten to fire HS because suddenly these calls are coming in from an unrecognised number and they have no right to make Paul the scapegoat for Bob's incompetence. They might push back with "you don't know that without picking up the phone" or just plead ignorance, but it will be irrelevant because if they did give away Paul's number they will know that Paul's worked that out.
If it has happened more than once, HS should be fired.
As for HR "what should we tell him", as mentioned, that's their job, but at a guess they were just looking for Paul's opinion on the matter, and Bob was probably right there and able to hear half the conversation.
It's likely to worry Paul because when somebody elsewhere with no authority screws up, they manage to get two other entities to turn to Paul with very little effort, and he starts to feel threatened.
In a situation where Paul is concerned about delivering more bad news, he needs to take stock of his backing within the company. If he can tell his manager this has happened, and he trusts his manager, his manager can probably help to sway the situation against HS. If Paul can't trust anybody, he needs to get out soon before this kind of thing happens again, in case things get worse.
This is not a problem with bureaucracy, this is a problem with a lack protocol or following it. HS should have turned Bob away and explained not to prematurely quit a job. Bob should not have prematurely quit his job. HR sound like they could have worded their question better: "Ok, I'll let him know. Is there anything further I should add to that?" I don't really think HR is much of a factor in this.
Admin
I read "A VP froze the budget because he spilled his coffee". I'm cynical enough that I can believe a VP did something crazy because of something trivial, and I didn't fully understand the reasoning (the company doing something dodgy in the books, maybe?). As such I labelled (correctly as it turned out) the reason for said spookery as irrelevant.
Admin
TL;DR
A guy might be getting an offer from another company so he quit. The offer didn't come through. The guy is a donkey.
This deserved re-scribing, being put on the front page, and being commented on? We must all be becoming far better programmers if there is genuinely not a single coding WTF each day.
Admin
I guess that makes sense. Thanks!
Admin
I hadn't even thought of that. As a side-note I frequently find myself telling agents I won't negotiate down my notice period (it's two months) because my company will know I want to leave.
I shouldn't be negotiating down my notice period, right?
Admin
Bob sends a big "Screw you" to his current employer then harasses the new employer when he isn't picked up. Sounds like Paul's team (bar Paul) dodged a bullet
Admin
However, what if the company chooses the well-trodden path of "incentive pay"? You agree on a base salary, to be topped up by up to 25% depending on how your head of department evaluates you in the yearly evaluation round.
This somehow has become rather widespread in the last few years, especially in companies with a strong workers council. And the evaluation checklist usually is not part of the contract, not even as an informal attachment.
If push comes to shove, your guaranteed income is just the base salary, so all your planning has to be based on that (house, car etc).
So far I have made a point of declining all job offers where the baseline salary was too low and telling the companies why I did so (which at least once resulted in an augmented offer).
But who knows how much longer I'll be able to afford the luxury of doing so... :-)
Admin
Possibly no new ones. Maybe they're all falling into the same categories now. Perhaps you would like to catalogue the different types of coding WTF?
Personally I'm more interested to see management WTFs. Coding WTFs always look like they were done in a rush, or by a graduate, or a monkey with a degree in media studies.
Admin
I wouldn't. Try going home to a wife and a baby and explain.
Admin
I have never had a long enough notice period that negotiating might be required, however my understanding would be that it is the kind of thing that you start doing after receiving and accepting an offer, and in the run up to giving your company formal notice.
it should be something where the company wants you in 2 months, 3 months, whatever your notice period. But would love to have you earlier. Anything else is an unnecessary risk and you do right to refuse.
Admin
I am not clear, either. I don't think Bob was fired though, I got the impression once he /thought/ he had another job; he wrote of resignation letter that said something to the effect of "You can take this job and shove it."
Admin
Yeah, back in the DotCom days, we expanded some, and I tapped a guy I knew out in TX to submit his resume. We flew him out, wined and dined him, showed him SF, FedEx'd him an offer on Friday morning. He gave his two weeks notice that afternoon. We expected him in 4 weeks.
Next Monday, all hands meeting. We'd been playing with Microsoft and Real engineers all summer to integrate our tech with their players. Turns out Microsoft had bailed out. Real was bailing out too. So, the money people had decided to bail along with them. So... We were all out of a job in a week.
I took my crew drinking for the day, then had to call my buddy and tell him the news. I don't know what caused the bridge to burn, but his job was gone, and they weren't going to let him take back his two weeks.
I'll give him this, just for the hell of it, he went ahead and signed and sent back the offer letter, knowing the offer wasn't valid anymore. Apparently HR saw the humor and had a good laugh over it.
Admin
Admin
Reading the story again, this could well be a case of unlucky coincidence.
Bob looks for a new job with the aid of a recruiter and finds a prospective new employer in Paul's company. The interview goes well. When he doesn't hear from Paul's company he queries the recruiter who creates the impression that Bob will indeed be receiving a job offer by friday.
For some completely unrelated reason, Bob is made redundant. Perhaps his company has defaulted or some auditor at Bob's company spooked a VP at Bob's company.
Bob is without a job and, more important, benefits, which, at least in the US, more often than not translate into "health insurance".
Assuming that his recruiter already knows that he will receive a job offer but that said job offer is still in the mail, he calls HR of Pauls company to get some information on the contract so that he doesn't have to wait for the mail to arrive. Perhaps so as arrange for health insurance if there is a gap between benefits of his former employer ending and benefits of his new employer starting.
So the only WTF is the recruiter; first for making Bob think that he will receive a job offer but also for trying to unload his error on Paul.
Admin
There are really only 3 possibilities:
Bob wasn't currently employed, but pretending he was because that significantly ups your chances of getting the job right now. (HR is routinely screening out people for being unemployed, right at a time when perfectly good employees have been unemployed for years.)
Bob doesn't know how to handle job changes professionally. Which means Bob is likely the kind of fellow who would eventually be a personality problem, and would be let go for that, and cause a minor crapstorm when he did.
The previous employer really really wanted to get rid of Bob, but couldn't for some legal reason (e.g. it would risk a discrimination lawsuit). So when he resigned, their reaction was "Finally got rid of him". Again, bullet dodged.
In any event, always have the offer in hand before resigning. And don't burn bridges after resigning, because chances are you will eventually need a reference or potentially a job from someone at the place you're leaving, or somebody who knows that someone, and professional reputation matters.
Admin
Because you know you'll be scapegoated.
Admin
Admin
Admin
Depending on jurisdiction, firing an employee without cause AFTER they have given a fixed term notice of resignation can have complications [even in at-will-employment states].
Most of the time, if the company wants the person to leave immediately, they will simply pay out the notification period and escort the person out of the building. Eliminates the risk of complications.
Admin
I think the real WTF here is the comments. Why are so many people confused by the events in the story? It's very clear what happened.
This is why IT is hard, and software runs over time and budget. Some people can't read a story, and then pull out the important facts.
Admin
Bob discovers he gets unemployment pay for 3 years. Gets a free cell phone. Obamacare gives him a big "discount", so Paul's paying for Bob's food, house, sick-care, and family for the next 3 years.
It's in Paul's best interest to get Bob a job somewhere.
Admin
And he isn't a mechanic so he can't fix the train wreck Obamacare is.
Admin
TRWTF is PHP, amirite?
Admin
In no other industrialized country does losing your job mean that you might die of a treatable disease. The ACA has made this better, but hasn't really fixed it.
Of course, we wouldn't want a socialist healthcare system. Have you seen the Mad Max movies? That's what happened to Australia after they instituted a national healthcare coverage system. Germany's health care system has left it looking like it did after WWII. And Sweden? A nightmarish hell on earth.
Thanks God the USA has not succumbed to such madness.
CAPTCHA: appellatio (n) What you call it when an Apple fan boi sucks on an iPhone.
Admin
CAPTCHA: aptent Camping gear that you buy on iTunes.
Admin
A crappy subsidized apartment and $40/week in groceries sure beats the living conditions in oh I don't know India--I mean, Elbonia.
Admin
"This is why we can’t have nice things!" said Gertrude after realizing that Obamacare wouldn't help the presidents sick daughter.
Admin
TRWTF is the commenters failing to putting a rather obvious two and two together and realising that the recruiter bullshat Bob into believing the offer was already made. Most likely because Bob was close to accepting an offer from another company via another recruiter and they don't want their placement fee to slip away.
Admin
Ah, firstworldproblems...