- Feature Articles
- CodeSOD
- Error'd
-
Forums
-
Other Articles
- Random Article
- Alex's Soapbox
- Announcements
- Best of…
- Best of Email
- Best of the Sidebar
- Bring Your Own Code
- Coded Smorgasbord
- Mandatory Fun Day
- Off Topic
- Representative Line
- News Roundup
- Editor's Soapbox
- Software on the Rocks
- Souvenir Potpourri
- Sponsor Post
- Tales from the Interview
- The Daily WTF: Live
- Virtudyne
Admin
Nancy, dear:
I'm not attacking anyone. I was merely pointing out that it's not smart or praiseworthy to tear down an organization you're inside of, and dependent upon for food and rent monies... even if it feels good or makes you an Internet hero for a few hours, for such popular and stick-it-to-the-man outbursts.
I say "wage slaves" because that's what the posters sound like.
Nice use of the word officious, btw.
w/r/t to your other question... I've not even commented on the comments about the manger (CEOs would be managers also, no?) being a fool for perpetrating such an inappropriate public outburst other than to agree that he screwed up bigtime.
Keep in mind that just because the CEO/manager/bossdude was very wrong, that doesn't preclude certain of the reactions from ALSO being totally wrong, ass-backwards, confused, unwise and otherwise self- and peer-crushing. In this case, those remarks discussing how wonderful and grand it is to retaliate against an employer when the employee feels oh so morally and intellectually superior, absolutely fit that case.
To summarize for those with short attention spans: The manager blew it. Those posters who encourage tearing down their own companies from within because it's somehow "justified" are also blowing it
Admin
Are you refering to the USA? Taking a look at the history books and newspapers, you'll find things like genocide, civil war, invasions, using 25% of some of world's resource's and as the final solution: preemptive strikes to put imbalance to a whole world region. Of course you'll also find some positive things, but you weren't asking for those, right?
l.
Admin
Geez, look at us dumb backwards Americans who take our jobs seriously and have the most productive economy in the world. When are we going to get our act together?
Admin
Heh, this WTF has morphed into another WTF :)
But I enjoy it, especially that wage-slave-fake, must've been generated...
Admin
Admin
I recently came upon this article:
http://www.jtse.com/blog/2006/04/19/be-a-toxic-employee
which I've really taken to heart.
I've been that employee a number of times as I tend to be one of the few employees without family+mortgage holding me to a crappy job.
I once even wrote a satirical rant about our company processes:
http://www.taryneast.org/about/rants-mudpile.shtml
Needless to say I don't get a lot of job promotions in sucky companies - I don't have the patience to kiss butt.
Admin
Complaining about a company does not imply that you are trying to tear it down. I've complained twice about the way comanies seemed headed and both times I didn't want to tear it down - I just wanted to improve the working environment.
Of the two dud companies that I have worked for - the first seemed beyond repair - the VC were running it and they had very different ideas to the founders. It ended up with one third of the company being axed in several rolling layoff rounds. I went in the third round but I heard there were several more after I left.
The second was in pretty good standing and just had a few IT issues that needed clearing up. The issues were only present because the manager of the IT division was... less experienced with IT than I would expect from an IT development manager. For one thing he doesn't seem to grok the working-preferences of "though workers" and how they differ from his own preferences - and I haven't yet been able to convince him to read "Peopleware".
My complaints came after having tried to discuss with him each individual issue and to explain why they were issues and what the business imperative was to get said issue cleared up. Each time I was met with "ah yes, that's very interesting, I'll take that on board" followed by a month of silence or equivocation when questioned.
My attempts were not aimed at bringing down the company (in fact, I am still employed here) but at improving it - and its productivity and its profit margin. I'm not just a "quality for quality's sake" IT geek that doesn't understand that the business world has different objectives - I researched and spent personal time figuring out why these things are actually important from a business perspective.
Sadly my manager seemed to think I was just "causing trouble" (after all, I was just junior developer, what would I know?) and this attitude eventually put me in a position where I went looking for alternative employment... I also wrote a long rant on the issues we had after I'd basically gotten sick of it all - much to the enjoyment of my fellow developers... though I am aware of how much of a CLM this was.
He's moved up to CTO and we now have a new development manager who actually agrees with a lot of what I was trying to say... the company is now fun to work for (hey, I get to learn Ruby :) )... but I'm still hampered professionally by the opinion the now-CTO has of me as a "trouble-maker". He still considers me to be only a junior developer even though that opinion is not shared by the other manager or the other developers (I've asked).
Admin
In Australia we have a lot of unions - but I don't know if there's one that specifically caters to IT workers. I've looked about (though not in great depth). Does anyone here know of one? I have this vague feeling that we fall in some generic category of "office workers and secretaries" or something equally non-specific.
Do you think there'd be a benefit to having an IT union? Protecting rights not to be fired indiscriminately is generally covered by more generic laws. From what I gather, the union system seems to have degraded into something a lot more childish than what it was originally intended for - mainly catering to raises in the minimum award-level wage... but I don't know if IT wages would work easily with award-style normalisation. There's such a variation in skill (and it's so hard to gauge that skill) that market pay-rates tend to be the way it's done. IMO the market often assign wages unfairly, but it's better than the nothing the we otherwise would have.
In any case - would unions actually be effective? I mean my thought is that: "give us a pay raise or we'll go on strike!" will probably gain a reaction of "oh, so our software is going to be week late? so tell me something new!" Of course if we also have the sysadmins on our side then maybe... :)
Admin
Exactly
Where I was working (little company in Montreal, ville st-laurent), the boss never ever take into consideration any proposition, suggestion that would benefit the company. Making things change for a company, feeling being the company, is more than a paycheck. Without that, all it remains is the paycheck.
So I simply move to another company, that had better conditions at the same time. Too bad he loose a good guy, from my point of view...
Admin
APESMA may be the closest thing to a union for techy stuff like this. (That is Association of Professional Engineers , Scientists and Managers , Australia). Unfortunately I've found them to be almost mute regarding issues effecting engineers these days , and I let my membership lapse a while ago.
Admin
Here in Austria, the union (i.e. the unions' federation ÖGB) is currently self-destructing. Interesting times...
Admin
"The rest of us are trying to accomplish something here."
This is my favorite CEO line.
"Ummmm... Sir...what is the SOMETHING actually...you know...in the real world like?" [:|]
Admin
"I wouldn't be surprised if TEN of Jim's best people up and quit spontaneously.
I would - if I were working there in the first place!"
I wouldn't be surprised if the then best people stood up and said "Yeah, I told him to go somewhere better. So what are you going to do...".
"Wow... more than 50 posts, and not a single "the real WTF is..." post."
The real WTF is the guy who was given a very good advice that was obviously confidential, yet starts screaming bloody murder to the boss about it.
"In Australia we have a lot of unions - but I don't know if there's one that specifically caters to IT workers. I've looked about (though not in great depth). Does anyone here know of one? I have this vague feeling that we fall in some generic category of "office workers and secretaries" or something equally non-specific.
(snip) From what I gather, the union system seems to have degraded into something a lot more childish than what it was originally intended for (snip)"
The solution, if you can't find one that works the way you like, is always the same: start one. This is how they started in the beginning and it has not changed. It's also much more effective than complaining about what's wrong with the current unions.
Admin
Synergizing our collaborative customer focused strategies.
Duh
Admin
The same economy, that allows for the term "working poor"? The same economy, that _wastes_ 25% of the daily world ressourcs of oil? The same economy that allows for the biggest deficit a country in this world can have? Yes, it's time you got your act together, or it's going to be another black Friday pretty soon.
l.
Admin
Is this the first case of total unanimity on thedailywtf? We are all agreed
a) That there are three assholes in this story
b) That the CEO is the biggest
and
c) That none of this would have happened if they'd used javascript from the start.
Admin
Money doesn't work for everyone. Or the reciprocal, everyone doesn't work for money.
Admin
Dancing bears. I want dancing bears!
Admin
Which is why they are CEOs? The rest of us schills might accidentally hand you our first-born for less money.
Admin
That's "endemic to"... :)
Admin
Don't you read the title of the post?
It's not about the employee's attitude but about the way the CEO handles it.
I do not know what you think of that, but in my experience only the 'lets suck up to the management folk' aka 'spineless people' don't reject the way the CEO 'handles' this.
I used to work for a company with executive board members, who used to play the good cop bad cop routine. Somehow it didn't make the company any more trustworthy in the eyes of the employees.
Admin
Remarkable that is the motionpicture No way out. The only decent movie with Kevin at least IMHO.
I came up with another theory maybe the job-applicant made it up to check the company out.
Something similar is recommended in the book 'The Career Programmer', about checking about structural overtime at a company.
Admin
At one company I interviewed at, they offered me the job, I accepted, and then quit before I actually started work - but only after that did one of the other employees tell me that that was the right choice! Of course I would have quit even faster if I had had that information earlier.
Admin
Getting rid of problem employees needs to be done. But it should be a normal winnowing process NOT requiring a round of layoffs.
Admin
Now I have to clean the coffee off the keyboard...
Admin
This distinction was made because the government has much more power than an individual,
and therefore this power should be limited by appropriate rules. I would think it's pretty straightforward that the power of a business over individuals needs to be limited by the same rules (of respecting human rights) as the power of the government, for exactly the same reason. Otherwise, the argument for having the govenment respect human rights is pretty void.
If it's ok for you to be eaten by a shark, why would you bother limiting a lions right to do the same?
Admin
Depends, depends... keep your honor or unemployement? Guts or hunger? Respect or starving children?
Admin
Can the name of the company be initialized as "P.G"? If so, I have worked there for two years.
Watch the forum software break my post now.
Admin
Reminds me of the time I came back to work after a particularly nasty migraine attack (something my dear father passed on to me) to have my Boss call me into his office and ask me:
"I pay you well, how come you were ill?"
Admin
Alright, but... what's the toothbrush for?
Admin
<font style="font-family: verdana;" size="1">
<font size="2">I thought the cheese was supposed to be green...
</font></font>
Admin
<font style="font-family: verdana;" size="1">
<font size="2">BINGO!
</font></font>
Admin
I didn't say a firing, did I? Moron.
Admin
This is an excellent point: not everyone that complains is trying to cause trouble. Complaining to your auto-repair shop about your brakes not working correctly does not imply that you are trying to blow-up your car - you just want to be safe and get it fixed. Telling you friend about it keeps them from getting into an accident if they borrow your car.
Likewise, mentioning problems at a company in the hopes of trying to get them resolved is not sabotage (and assuming it is demonstrates gross incompetence). Warning someone of possible trouble/problems is not sabotage, either.
Yes, you may be hired to represent the company, but that does not automatically mean that you have to lie about things... Save that part for the bigwigs...! :)
Admin
Here in the US, we believe in "employment at will" - its not just a philosophy, it's the law. You can quit your job any time for any reason, and can similarly be fired any time for any reason. Not always humand, but thats the way American style capitalism works.
Admin
Unions exist to prop up the incompetent... why do you need one?
Admin
I have been in the work force almost 10 years.
Gomer? Is this some dumbass Mayberry reference I'm missing?
If I gave a shit about the company, of course I would "rat" on a spineless scumbag who was sabatoging the company that signs our paychecks. I would also "rat" on someone stealing staplers. As an employee of the company, I have a vested interest in seeing it succeed, and someone pulling this crap is stabbing me and my career in the back.
This is of course, if I gave a shit about the company. If I didn't give a shit, I wouldn't be there. I would moved on to another one of the assloads of jobs available to qualified technology professionals.
I don't dispute that this place is a crappy place to work, and I don't think that complaining to management will get you anywhere. So, act like a goddamned adult and find another damn job.
Admin
That CEO is an idiot!
Instead of finding out why the employee fealt that way he went the opposite way....
Good job!
Admin
It's not that not clear. This was single email about a seriously screwed up action by the employee. Even if the CEO is nuts, which he does appear to be, this does not justify the employees actions.
I remember very well what it's like to work in a hellish workplace, I've been in several. I also took the necessary steps to remove myself from the situation.
I'm user it occured to the employee. But he/she/it apparently didn't have the spine or motivation to follow through on it.
- You have a family to feed, and can't afford to spend even a few weeks without a job.
So find another job first.
- You work such long hours that there's no time to look for another job.
Oh come on. If you really want another job, you'll find the damn time.
- You have hundreds or thousands of dollars (or pounds, pesos, etc.) in stock options coming to you. Quitting means you lose them.
- Yes, it does. This is a reason to stay, but this does not require you to stay.
- Quitting would mean losing your medical insurance. (COBRA helps, but you still have to pay for the insurance, and in my experience, you pay more than was originally withheld from your regular paycheck.)
Again, find another job first.
- You feel loyalty to your work and don't like to abandon what you've started.
I would say that when a person has reached the point of sabatoging the company behind their back, they no longer feel this loyalty.
- You feel loyalty to the people with whom you work (aside from the CEO).
Again, the employee is sabatoging the employer of these people. The friends gave nothing from teh employee's shit-talking.
- There are other jobs available but they would represent a much longer commute.
OK, life sucks. The commute is a factor to consider, but it does not prevent you from finding another job.
- No other available jobs are accessible via public transit, and you cannot afford an automobile and/or gas.
There is not a single other job available that you have any the ability to get to? You seriously can't afford a car or gasoline? Or a cab? Where do you work, WalMart?
- The CEO (or another manager) has promised, or directly implied, that he'll hand out dreadfully negative feedback about you to the next employer.
Are you planning to use the CEO/manager as a reference? Where would this feedback come in? Explain the situation to your next employer. HR departments are masters of sniffing out BS (at least at any job you would want to work at).
- The CEO (or another manager) has convinced you that you're incapable and worthless and have no hope of finding other employment. Don't underestimate the power of this; it's a nasty situation that's actually pretty common.
Oh please. I will indeed understimate it. Why are you listening to this person? Why is your self-esteem so damn fragile?
- The CEO (or another manager) regularly assures you that a significant raise is just around the corner (even though at every performance review he finds a convenient reason to deny you said raise).
Then you stop believing him.
You have listed several reasons to stay, but none of the are insurmountable. It may not be easy, but that's life.
Admin
I'm curious if a retaliatory firing, such as threatened, wouldn't be legally actionably.
You know, it's unfortunate, but this sounds sooooo much like more than one place I've worked before...
Admin
Not true. I'm lucky enuf to work under an amazingly awesome CEO.
Admin
I would guess they are working on it. It can take time.
What would be funny is if the person he was hunting was the COO or a senior VP :-)
Admin
Why would anyone be starving or unemployed?
Admin
The Real WTF[tm] is that the majority of posters seem to think that EITHER (a) the elevator employee was wrong, or (b) the CEO was wrong. Few seem to understand that both the employee and the CEO are 100% in the wrong.
That said, what the employee did -- though 100% wrong -- would not have made the WTF front-page because it lacks the necessary "wow that was spectacularly stupid" flavor. Hence, the CEO's rant is the WTF. Had the CEO behaved with discretion and professionalism -- even if the end result was to somehow discover and punish the elevator employee -- then there woudl be no WTF.
The bottom line for the elevator employee is that his (or her) behavior is unethical. Any number of problems may have led him (or her) to this point, but in the end ethics proscribe this behavior. Sometimes it's hard to be ethical -- and yet, ethics exist exactly for those situations where it's hard to be ethical. It is absolutely correct for the employee to be disciplined. Possibly fired, but even in a case like this that is rarely in the company's best interests.
I'm not saying that the employee is (or was) ethically bound to quit. I've remained at jobs that had serious problems. That's a choice you make; but if you choose to keep the good that comes with the job, you also choose to keep the bad. Complain around the water cooler, complain through formal channels, even complain to friend who have no relationship to the company -- all of this can be justified. But act against the company's interests by warning off a potential hire on company time and premises? Clearly an abuse.
So what about the CEO? Was the email just an understandable indiscretion? No. Sure, he's human and he gets angry. Guess what? CEO's are compensated (usually very, very well) to deal with all manner of business problem -- including situations like this -- and to deal with them in a manner consistent with the company's best interests. Assuming he's not the sole owner of the business, his behavior in handling the situation was every bit as unethical as the elevator employee's behavior in the first place. He probably did more damage, in fact.
CAPTCHA: paycheck
Admin
<FONT size=2>Gotta say that I'm on the CEO's side with this one. Cuts in pay and benefits and mandatory overtime suck badly but they aren't done to improve morale. They're done to stave off disclosure (as in "dis here bizness is closed for sure"). Dissatisfaction with the employer is to be expected in such circumstances but any employee who collects a paycheck from their employer and actively works against their best interests by discouraging qualified applicants is a treacherous bastard who should be fired. If your job sucks, pick up and go to another one --- don't continue to draw down limited payroll funds while doing a crappy job and running off qualified candidates who desire to make a positive contribution.</FONT>
Admin
cool
Admin
So you're with the CEO on threatening to fire an employee on at best single source 3rd hand information without even giving that employee a chance to defend himself? The "old they're guilty until proven innocent, and don't give them a chance to prove anything" ploy. I pray I never work for someone like you or the jackass of a CEO again. But it would be an ideal place for some backstabbing bastard who can get rid of his competition by telling a "little" lie, knowing full well that the competition will be fired without further investigation. The mere suspision of guilt means that you are therefore guilty. Right out of the fascist "how to win friends and behead everyone else" handbook.
Is an employee justified on seeking out an potential job candidate at the employee's work and offering unsolicted over the top negative comments on the company? I would say know. But with the evidence that we have been given it's hard to tell much if anything about what may or may not have happened. 4th hand recital of verbal hearsay (employee to candidate to recruiter to CEO) leaves enough roome for gross misenterpretation that the Exon Valdez could do donuts at full speed without fear of hitting anything.
The WTF IMHO is the CEO who insists on managing his company by assuming much and verifying little. Wouldn't want to let the facts get in the way or to appear fair in any way.
Admin
Very well done. I sympathize with your frustration. Since you used mud for the metaphor, I assume you've read "The Big Ball of Mud"?
http://www.laputan.org/mud/
Admin
Don't get me started.
I was hired by a restaurant management company to complete a "mission critical" sales reporting project.
The project had been in the works for 5 years. I had only worked on the project for a year, but it had been through 5 people before I was hired to finish it. So it was almost done, right? Except nothing was actually working.
They asked me to prepare a task list, and an estimate for each of the tasks, which came out to the system being done in about a year.
While I was reviewing the work that had been done(which was essentially a database, nothing else except for the system's menu would actually run), I found that at the very least, the current database implementation was flawed. I pointed this out in a status meetin, but I was told not to make any database changes, that the database was perfectly fine, I just needed to debug all the code(that had been written against another two previous databases, by 5 different people) and get it working.
Oh, and none of the 30 reports had been created.
They said that my total time estimate was unacceptable, cut every task estimate in half, and told me to have it done in 6 months. I had to work the extra time for free(they had promised 40 hour work weeks in the interview, one of several lies, but I did expect I would work some unpaid overtime). I clocked a mininum of 80 hours a week, and since they still gave me side tasks(like applying patches to the database servers, troubleshooting network problems, and upgrading stuff not related to the project), I might work 90 or more hours, sometimes 120 or more.
Awesome.
But I had made the decision to work here, and I was getting things working, day after day, so I gutted it out.
Then they put the project on hold for awhile, while I rewrote the data import system to deal with the upgrade to the POS system they scheduled midway through the project, and wrote a new application to deal with sales contests.
Then they fired Gene, the VP in charge of data processing, over the fact that the company President couldn't understand why when he dialed directly into the communications server from out of town to get his email, sometimes all the lines would be busy. He was also upset by the fact that when he had a bunch of emails, or large attachments, he had to wait for them to download, but he didn't want to hear about any solution that involved spending any money.
Gene was a generally OK guy, although he did lie to me occassionally(like how many hours would make up my work week, etc.) I had been working in IT for long enough to expect some of this, though, so it didn't bother me that much.
They hired Frank to replace Gene, and Frank had a serious personality problem. Frank knew everything about everything. Except he didn't, really. Oh, he had more technical knowledge than the usual IT managers I had worked for, but he didn't really know as much as he though he did. I didn't care, I didn't expect my managers to be technical experts.
I'm now 5 months into the project(I've worked there for about 8 months at this point), the new boss comes in, immediately asks me to brief him on the project, and provide all project documentation. I did.
When Frank meets with me, he wants to know every minute detail of how the application works, then freaks out when he discovers the database doesn't have any foreign key constraints defined(that wasn't what he called them, but I knew what he was talking about). At some point in his commentary, he called me stupid and inept, and told me without mincing words that I had to be the most incompetent IT person he had ever met and what reason could they have for hiring someone so ignorant, yada, yada.
I explained that it wasn't that I didn't understand database design, I knew that this was a problem, and had pointed it out to the previous management, but was told I would be fired if I started making changed to the database.
His response:
"That's even worse! If you knew about the problem and understood why it was a problem and you still didn't do anything about it, you're irresponsible, and that's worse than being incompetent!"
I asked him what he expected me to do if he ordered me to do something I objected to, and he said that if I didn't do something he told me to, I would be fired for insubordination, and that he might fire me anyway since I was willfully negligent, and he was going to discuss it with the Executive VP of Accounting(the IT group was sited under Accounting in the org chart).
I guess I got somewhat of a reprieve when he talked to his boss, since the system was about one report short of being complete and ready to parallel test, and I was responsible for the work done up to that point.
I asked him what he wanted me to do then. He wanted me to build foreign key constraints into the database. I said okay, but we might need to push the deadline to start the parallel test back, since we were making changes that we hadn't planned on making. He said no, if I didn't have the system ready on the parellel test date, I would be fired. And he wanted Admin access to all the servers. He got it.
I started looking for another job.
I got lucky, and found a job quicker than I expected, but at this point, I didn't have very high standards.
Then one night, I wrote my resignation letter to the executive board and Frank, and I made all the foreign key constraint changes he wanted done, without regard for any effect they might have on the existing code.
I sent Frank and his boss an email explaining that the changes he had ordered me to make to the database were complete.
Then I left my resignation letter and my security badge on my desk, and walked out.
I don't know if the system broke, but I'm pretty sure it did.
I saw Frank not too long ago at the grocery store. He didn't seem to remember me, I guess since we only had that one face to face meeting, but my wife had to hold me back from jumping him right there and shoving a frozen turkey up his ass.
And if you want to tell me that my problems here were all my fault and that I'm a whiny complainer, fine. But until you've worked a job like this, I doubt you really understand.
Admin
Holy WTF... Are these stories REALLY true? I can't even imagine jobs half as bad as this... If it's true, then I have to say you were unearthly loyal... Kudos to you!