• Phil (unregistered)

    Insurance tied to a job? WTF? Wouldn't it make more sense to have insurance tie to the person who is insured?

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Phil
    Phil:
    Insurance tied to a job? WTF? Wouldn't it make more sense to have insurance tie to the person who is insured?
    I take it you're not from the US, where most health insurance is employer-based.

    Yes, it's as much of a nightmare as it sounds.

  • (cs)

    .

  • (cs) in reply to skotl
    skotl:
    .
    Agreed!
  • Dominic (unregistered)

    The real WTF is commenters who don't see the WTF.

  • Dominic (unregistered) in reply to drake
    drake:
    A manager with a seven year vision? I'm going to have nightmares about that one...
    Nightmares in which seven thin clients devour seven fat clients, perhaps?
  • C-Derb (unregistered) in reply to Lorne Kates
    Lorne Kates:
    From the manager's eHarmony profile: "Looking for someone who can commit long term. Must be in a long term relationship to prove that you aren't the sort of person who would just leave someone. I want you to leave them for me."
    This.

    Like when someone has an affair, leaves his/her current spouse and marries the "homewrecker", then the "homewrecker" states, "Oh, he/she will never cheat on me. He/She loves me."

  • C-Derb (unregistered) in reply to Calli Arcale
    Calli Arcale:
    Calli Arcale:
    A Scot, obviously. ;-)

    Um, this was in reply to the user asking WTF a Donnla was. Someday I will remember the difference between "Submit" and "Preview".

    FTFY

  • Bobson (unregistered) in reply to Terrla

    You should go post it here.

  • Bobson (unregistered) in reply to Terrla
    Terrla:
    I've got a witty post, but I'm going to hold off with it until I perfect it, probably about seven years. I'm looking for readers who are truly committed to TDWTF.

    You should go post it here.

  • F (unregistered) in reply to Zylon
    Zylon:
    chubertdev:
    WTF is a "Donnla"?
    It's a kind of keblab.

    FTFY

  • (cs) in reply to PiisAWheeL
    PiisAWheeL:
    skotl:
    .
    Agreed!
    He does make a good point there.
  • Norman Diamond (unregistered) in reply to Foo Bar
    Foo Bar:
    Two WTFs here:

    1: The Seven Year Plan®

    2: The Groucho Marx Paradox: "I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member". Anyone who has stuck with a single job that long will keep on sticking right where they are, and thus would not be applying for a new job in Inverness.

    I wonder why seven year plans are acceptable in physics, medicine, economics, and astronomy but not in the computer industry.

    I quit one job after 10 years. That turned out to be a mistake economically but mostly not technically.

  • Gary Olson (unregistered) in reply to drake
    drake:
    A manager with a seven year vision? I'm going to have nightmares about that one...
    Antibiotics will cure the seven year vision; Prozac will take care of the nightmares.
  • (cs) in reply to Norman Diamond
    Norman Diamond:
    I wonder why seven year plans are acceptable in physics, medicine, economics, and astronomy but not in the computer industry.
    Because the wrong people are leading. They lead by listening to the salesman and his paid shill the industry magazine journalist, and their preferred planning horizon is however long it takes to get a bonus and push another edition of the rag. The people who know this is stupid tend to not want to take the lead though, as that would stop them from doing what they love: actually working with computers.

    Expect no change.

  • Jonathan Levy (unregistered)

    Also, after seven years he gets to marry the CEO's youngest daughter, unless someone pulls a fast one on the wedding night when he's drunk and slips in her older sister.

  • faoileag (unregistered) in reply to Morry
    Morry:
    Reminds me of my time at one company. A Senior manager came in and told us straight up that preference would be given to "family" oriented employees, as they tend to stay at the company longer.

    The logic is sound, but I was a little shocked they told us.

    I agree with you - that frankness is indeed shocking. And I would probably not take up a job at that company, because of the underlying, untold reason for prefering family oriented employees:

    If you have a family. i.e. spouse, kids, house, it's far more hassle to switch jobs (unless you live in a big town) than for a single young person in a rented bedsit.

    To hold the latter, you need incentives (money, training, treats...), to hold the former... well, a hint a the state of the real estate market will more often than not work as a nice incentive not to quit :-)

    I've had my fair share of colleagues telling me they would love to quit as well, were it not for <insert_any_of_the_above>.

  • carlo cappelletti (unregistered) in reply to Terrla

    I will stare at this for seven years and then post a clever, bright comment.

  • Arancaytar (unregistered)

    ... so he's looking for someone who has years of experience, is not currently working for anyone, and has never left a job?

    Hm.

  • Moss the TeXie (unregistered) in reply to Zemm

    ∞ = Opt-, on German Mac OS X.

  • Bert or Ernie (unregistered) in reply to chubertdev

    Might have meant Donncha, and Irish name for men.

  • (cs) in reply to anony123
    anony123:
    There is no real WTF here. It is expensive to find and hire people, and then pay them for several months as they get up to speed. It is completely reasonable to search for people who plan to stay around. Yes, there is a place for people who job hop or contract - short-term, one-off projects are made for them. But many large projects would simply fail with a work-force that didn't stick around to finish the job. The interviewee had absolutely no intention of seeing the project through, and the interviewer spotted that. Great - disaster averted. So what is the WTF?

    Granted, 7 years is a very long commitment, and it is unrealistic to expect to find someone who can honestly make that commitment, but to weed out people with a very short term mindset is completely realistic.

    That given it's so expensive, companies pay contractors so much more than permies. If you want to encourage people to stay long-term, offer them a competitive rate.

    I could stay in a company for 7 years but could not commit at an interview. The same way that I couldn't commit to still be with my current partner for 13 years when we first started dating.

    I would insist on fair terms, but these are never offered. Fair terms means that if they want me there short-term, pay me a contract rate. So sever a permie job and you have to compensate me what I would have made as a contractor. Permanent jobs are not secure, they are just contracts for lower pay.

    Of course the main reason I can't commit is that until I start working there, I have no idea if they are a WTF company.

    It's good he has long-term plans, although in reality, market conditions dictate how things will progress business-wise which perhaps is why the agile model exists. You need to develop what you clients need now, with an eye to the future but being ready to change. And when I say market conditions, I don't mean recessions, I mean selling what people need.

  • (cs) in reply to ubersoldat
    ubersoldat:
    Harry:
    we're currently looking for someone with 8 years experience supporting Windows 8.

    Good luck with that.

    And I don't see a WTF in this. Both guys were sincere and apart of the uncommon location, what's wrong with working in the same place, in the same position after 7 or more years? In public positions it's very normal to spend this amount of years without any movement.

    It's not as common as it used to be. You used to be able to progress your way through a company, often nowadays the only way to advance in your career is to leave the company and move to another.

    It does still happen where I work, but I can see it becoming less common; the business used to put people through university - the last person they did that for is the current MD, so that would have been nearly 30 years ago.

    The company one of my friends works for does still do that; he joined at the lowest level, but because he's actually quite intelligent he got promoted fairly quickly. It quickly got to the point where they said "we can't actually give you any more promotions unless you have a degree in chemistry. So we're going to sponsor you to do a degree in chemistry."

  • Nick (unregistered) in reply to Sociopath
    Sociopath:
    Jessica:
    Shouldn't the fact that a candidate has a job and wants to ensure they give their current employer proper notice be a better sign than someone who will cut-and-run with no notice or hasn't kept their job for whatever reason?
    Can your employer terminate your job with no notice to you? If so, why feel obligated when your positions are reversed?
    You both can, but both are considered jackass moves that tend to just burn bridges.
  • Jeff Grigg (unregistered)

    I can only remember working with one person with seven years of experience in the same job doing the same thing. (...in the 30+ years I've been doing this.) He seemed almost ideal for the job: 7 years in business basic, and we needed to convert a business basic application to data basic.

    It didn't take us very long to fire him. He simply could not learn to do anything new.

    But I'm sure that the boss in Inverness won't have that problem, because they're looking for someone who's been doing what the boss dreamed up for the next seven years -- and has been doing exactly that for the past seven years. I'm sure that if they could find that person, they'd be glad to live and work in Inverness. ;->

  • Elizabeth (unregistered) in reply to Gizz
    Gizz:
    I quite like Inverness.

    The comparison to Boise, Idaho doesn't take into account how small the UK is. Inverness is a mere three hours' drive from Edinburgh! You could practically take a day trip there.

  • JimTheJam (unregistered) in reply to Nick
    Nick:
    Sociopath:
    Jessica:
    Shouldn't the fact that a candidate has a job and wants to ensure they give their current employer proper notice be a better sign than someone who will cut-and-run with no notice or hasn't kept their job for whatever reason?
    Can your employer terminate your job with no notice to you? If so, why feel obligated when your positions are reversed?
    You both can, but both are considered jackass moves that tend to just burn bridges.
    +5
  • Cherokee (unregistered) in reply to skotl
    skotl:
    .
    Okay I see your point :-)
  • ccj (unregistered)

    Grr... sell-sources have no honor!

  • TZ (unregistered) in reply to Terrla

    I can hardly wait.

    starts clock

  • nasch (unregistered) in reply to Morry
    Morry:
    A Senior manager came in and told us straight up that preference would be given to "family" oriented employees, as they tend to stay at the company longer.

    If that was in the US, that's probably illegal. You can't discriminate based on things that don't affect job performance, such as marital status and having children.

  • nasch (unregistered) in reply to anony123
    anony123:
    There is no real WTF here... Granted, 7 years is a very long commitment, and it is unrealistic to expect to find someone who can honestly make that commitment,

    Oh, so you do see the WTF.

  • Chris (unregistered)

    I'm not sure why hiring people want to continue talking after they've made a statement that completely disqualifies the candidate.

    You don't need to explain your problems locating the perfect person when you've just decided that this person in front of you isn't ... perfect.

    Just end the conversation, say thank you and move on. Maybe people who have interviewed with me think I'm a dick. But guess what, I'm a dick that won't waste your time. "Well, I think that's it. I'll call you if I have any further questions." is a pretty easy statement to end things quickly. Anyone with a bit of self awareness can read between those lines.

    Dear god, I remember a time years long past where I was being terminated. It was obvious what was going on and I started to just walk out several times over the course of the "discussion"; but after a painful 30 minutes the manager still wasn't done. No, see, he wouldn't directly tell me why I was out of a job. Instead, he wanted me to go home and think about it.

    Just to screw with him, I asked if he wanted me to report back in the morning in case I managed to read his mind to know why I was being fired. He said that would be a good idea. I then asked if I managed to figure it out if I would still have my job. He said no. I asked him W.T.F'ing point of the exercise was supposed to be then. He said, it was a growth experience. It wasn't until I started laughing at him that he decided it was time to end the exit speech.

    Thing is, I knew exactly why I was fired; I knew it was coming before dickwad did. I even knew roughly when he was going to be canned (3 weeks after me). I also knew that it had never been in my control. It had been caused by a very stupid decision the CEO made. But boy wonder liked to talk and I think he really wanted me to explain it all to him.

    Having reread my little story, I'm not entirely sure how it relates. Other than the fact that statements to the contrary, I'm actually the guy that just wanted another 30 seconds of your life with a bit of stupidity you'll forget in an hour, unless your a slow reader, in which case your screwed anyway. Have a nice day.

  • Axel (unregistered)

    'S been nearly 5 years, Terrla. Tick-tock!

  • Stefan (unregistered)

    Just about to post the same, Axel :)

  • McKay (unregistered) in reply to Terrla

    It's been seven years. I hope I've proven my dedication Terrla. I'm so excited to hear your witty post.

  • Robinson (unregistered) in reply to Terrla

    Well, what is it?

Leave a comment on “The Seven Year Itch”

Log In or post as a guest

Replying to comment #:

Log Out

« Return to Article