It's the holidays and many people are feeling cheerful, but if you're feeling Grinch-like instead this one's for you:
If you've been around for a while, the time will eventually come when a company you work for is in unfortunate shape and will need to "downsize." Having witnessed this at a client of mine this week, I've noticed a pattern and a few warning signs you may find useful...
Here are several warning signs you're about to be laid-off. If you've noticed more than perhaps one of these, your Spidey-Sense should be tingling—it's time to start polishing that resume/CV!
...
I. Backups
"Have you backed-up all your work to XYZ?"
...
II. Training
"Please train your co-worker on X, we need everyone up to speed on these components."
...
III. Important Project or Person MIA
Just like the old Christmas movie, It's a Wonderful Life, where the very existence of the main character is erased from history, a similar fate will happen to $BIG_PROJECT or important people.
...
IV. Mandatory Meeting
Subject: Moving Forward in $YEAR+1Content-free meeting invitations or email focused on date periods, especially late-in the year (a nod to tax purposes). "Let's discuss our plan for 2016." **gulp**
That's my list for now, please chime in with any others you can think of.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by rob_on_earth on Wednesday December 23 2015, @08:13AM
1st: big company no warning signs, entire department put on notice. My colleagues immediately tried to get legal support to fight it. I went to the head of department and asked what we could do to avoid this, work more hours, take a pay cut. The response was, another part of the company was being outsourced for big bucks and the web site (out department) was being replaced for free as part of the deal, so unless we were working for free we were all going. That talk got me an extra three months and then got my a next job(at twice the wage).
<snip>became a contractor did lots of different jobs then went back to permanent</snip>
2nd: small startup, just got to the point where the work was drying up and the web site could conceivably run unchanged for many years. We had made it to easy to administer. Took it as a compliment that the code was so good and moved on, the company folded just over 12 months later in very messy way, embellishment etc.
3rd: another startup this time everyone was called into a meeting and told everyone was fired including directors and managers. They had found a clever loophole that meant that by offering to rehire everyone with DIFFERENT job titles they could get around UK legislation. Of course none of the new roles paid as well. They offered me a job but I turned them down, with two kids I needed a more dependable job.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Wednesday December 23 2015, @04:50PM
Did you talk to a lawyer? Because I am reasonably sure it doesn't work like that in the UK.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jcross on Wednesday December 23 2015, @06:42PM
Even if it was illegal, would you really want to keep your job with such a jackass, along with any rancor they might feel after you exerted legal pressure to maintain your salary? Thinking pragmatically, it seems to me like the lawyer would be an almost total waste of money, unless you really enjoy bringing justice to petty tyrants.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Thursday December 24 2015, @03:03AM
Compensation for illegal firing?
(Score: 5, Informative) by Snospar on Wednesday December 23 2015, @09:10AM
I guess a lot depends on the size of the company or department but I've been through a few rounds of lay-offs in different parts of the industry and some common themes have crept in:
Keep an eye on management - If senior/middle management has several changes or sudden departures then this can often be a warning sign that the ship isn't going to make it to shore.
Missing in Action - If your manager is often away at meetings behind closed doors check if there are other managers also missing. If they're meeting regularly but never speaking about it then the end result is not going to be a good one.
Job Title Changes - Often referred to as a "Flattening of the Organisational Structure", suddenly everyone has the same generic job title (e.g. developer, analyst, engineer). This makes it easier to carve out large numbers of people when that entire "role" is outsourced or no longer required.
Rationalisation/Reorganisation - If you keep hearing these terms then the axe is probably swinging around you but hasn't reached you yet. Keep an eye out for staff from Human Resources or Personnel (often lurking with folders/clipboards) and if you see them speaking to your manager be prepared for the worst.
Huge thanks to all the Soylent volunteers without whom this community (and this post) would not be possible.
(Score: 1) by driverless on Wednesday December 23 2015, @11:16PM
V. Gardening
Here's a shovel, we'd like you to dig a hole about 6' deep, as long as you are high. Once you're done, go to a garden centre and bring back a bag of quicklime, then stand by for further instructions.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 23 2015, @09:44AM
I've been laid off many times, fired a few times, and quit jobs a few other times.
Of course, in construction, especially industrial construction, you expect to be laid off frequently. The biggest job I ever worked on lasted 2 1/2 years, but Subcontractor A finished it's part of the job, and I transferred to Subcontractor B, then to Subcontractor C. Oddly, the wages increased with each transfer.
As for non-construction layoffs - take it as a warning when the personnel manager or HR starts talking nice. There have been a couple personnel managers who really were nice people, and were pleasant to be around, but in general, personnel managers aren't motivated to be nice people. If they suddenly start acting like nice people, take warning. As for HR, I'm suspicious of them no matter how they talk. They don't even speak a language that I understand. I do understand that when HR says something nice, they are trying to manipulate you.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2015, @09:58AM
It always pays to remember that HR is paid to talk nice but act evil. Their reason for existence is to make firing people easier (and to hire people, and maybe they interact with payroll, but that is so much easier).
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 23 2015, @06:57PM
What is ignored here that any sort of organization, not just businesses, needs to be able to fire people for legitimate reasons. And in the developed world, firing people is legally the most dangerous thing you can do organizationally short of maiming or killing people.
(Score: 2) by Geezer on Wednesday December 23 2015, @10:20AM
depending on what business you're in. In my field, manufacturing, the key indicators are usually pretty obvious, like factory utilization, trends in sales, capital projects (or lack of) and so forth.
The MBA dullards have a habit of letting go the best-paid specialists first, so in industrial automation and process controls, we have a time-honored bit of dark wisdom:
Q: What do you call a recently-fired controls engineer?
A: A highly-paid consultant.
Worst case, a decent severance package buys a lot of bottled holiday cheer.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2015, @12:09PM
An awesome thing to say if you're presently being fired by an MBA type and you're the only one keeping something working: "If you strike me down I shall become more overpaid than you can possibly imagine."
And I haven't even seen the new movie yet! Ahhhh!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Common Joe on Wednesday December 23 2015, @10:22AM
Seen on the Internet: When your company loses a big contact, downsizes sometimes happen. Depends on how big the contract was.
Experienced in person: when the little perks go away. When it's hard to find coffee, pencils, paper, or when cheap software or cheap hardware suddenly becomes a major fight to get.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2015, @11:43AM
Seen in real life. When I was starting out, I had the glorious responsibility for keeping the printers fed. Go to the cupboard, get paper/toner, feed printer. Then it became go to boss, get authorization for paper/toner. Even that young, I got suspicious when the boss started needing to get authorization for toner.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday December 23 2015, @01:34PM
This is the key to early observation. Random flailing and no one wants to take or delegate responsibility, such that it suddenly requires VP level intervention to fix a printer, because thats throwing good money after bad and the office will be closed before 10% of the toner is used up. Likewise physical plant maintenance, that leaky radiator won't be fixed, those bad ethernet ports won't be fixed, leaky roof/window won't be fixed, why bother?
Also random flailing around from above, if operating the business sanely means we're closing in a year, randomly trying resume stuffers means we'll close in six months but we'll have better resumes. Sales literally never says no, no matter how weird the request.
(Score: 1) by redneckmother on Wednesday December 23 2015, @04:08PM
The purchasing department starts poking their noses into computer specs, supposedly trying to "standardize", but limits the hardware requirements for desktop systems. Purchasing starts questioning server specs. Purchasing negotiates a sole-source deal with a reseller you've never used and / or is pricier than the established one, and the new one has longer lead times. You have to fight to update and renew software for enterprise backups. Coworkers start referring to purchasing department as "The PO Nazis".
One of the best IT bosses I ever had fell on his sword rather than have any of his people RIFfed. Manufacturing then absorbed IT, and kept squeezing our budget (and denying support to other departments), so I finally left (for a LOT more money).
Mas cerveza por favor.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Wednesday December 23 2015, @12:00PM
A company hardly needs to be "in unfortunate shape" to start purging workers. Look at Disney (hey, IT guys, did you give them money this month to see their new film and help them fire more workers?) purging workers when they're basically printing their own money. The company that fired me recently was having record years for revenue.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday December 23 2015, @05:08PM
"Unfortunate shape" doesn't just happen either. There are reasons for it. An alert, perceptive employee or job candidate can see some of it well before the desperation becomes overt. In a small company, if they can't even properly describe their product (it does everything for everyone!), if top management returns from a convention to announce that everyone thought the product or service was fantastic, but there were no sales, these are signs things are far from rosy. Are they lying? Being way too optimistic, throwing out fantasies about how sales are really going to take off soon, and then we'll all be millionaires? Dwelling on the part about how thrilling it will be to have lots of money rolling in? I've seen people lose their good sense dreaming about that. Trivializing or ignoring serious problems, indulging in hand waving. Did they predict some big contract would be signed, and for the next 3 months you hear that it's still being negotiated, just a few more issues to resolve, and then you never hear about it again? They can brush off problems while the cash reserve lasts, but when it runs out, it gets ugly. It's not an easy call. It may be a good idea to hang around so you can eventually collect unemployment, if you are an employee and not a contractor. And there's always the chance that the elusive corner will finally be turned, but don't count on that! But usually it's better to get out. One of the last moves they will make is to announce that they can't meet payroll anymore, and everyone just worked a month for them for free, thank you! Then, they may have the brazenness to ask you to please keep working for them for free, just a little more work and we can turn things around. I told the boss I'd be happy to work for him for free, if only he could persuade my landlord to let me live in an apartment for free, and the grocery to let me have free food, etc.
Shouldn't wait for problems to become obvious before thinking over what you will do about it. One thing to do, always, is build up some savings. When you are being paid more than, say, $50K/year, that's the time to set aside a little. More pay = save more. Save when times are good. So even if you miss the signs, you won't be completely unprepared. When I was single, and had a job that paid $80K/year, I spent $10K/year on rent (California, sigh), and another $10K on food, gas, an Internet connection, small necessities, and a bit of entertainment. I have always been careful not to spend lots of money, so I did not have credit cards to pay down or student loans. And so I was able to save the rest of my earnings. Fortunately, my used car did not break down on me, didn't cost me a bundle to keep repaired. I didn't bother buying a bed, I slept on the floor with the help of an air mattress. Less furniture to dispose of when the job ends and you must move on, as it did after only 15 months. And, being young, was no problem at all to get down to and up from the floor. I could have done better yet. Lugged around a fold-up bookshelf and a bunch of old textbooks that I looked at maybe once or twice. Better to have e-books. The desktop computer, especially the old CRT monitor, was another space killer. So glad CRTs are museum pieces now, just wish it had happened a little sooner.
But I understand how hard saving a little can be to do. What do you do when the family wants to spend more than every last penny you make? When you have student loans, a house payment or rent, and a car note? Your credit cards are maxed out? That's late to be thinking about such problems. The thing is not to get deep in debt in the first place. Always amazes me that people who can't have the reality of wealth can't stand it and still spend all the discretionary income on frivolity, to look wealthy. Won't live in a perfectly adequate but humble house, don't want to be seen in the little econobox car, no they want the mansion and the luxury car.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Wednesday December 23 2015, @12:03PM
V. Change in Ownership
New ownership is often leveraged and will need to cut costs. If you aren't directly bringing in cash, as in being a Salesdroid, you are a potential target. This is doubly true if your group is already partially outsourced.
VI. Tightening the Screws
Perks disappearing? 401k match percent dropping? Holiday parties cut back or ended altogether? Unless you're in a growing-up start-up, these are a sign they don't care who they lose, as long as they don't have to pay severance.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2015, @12:13PM
She plays with her hair excessively, seems flustered and keeps making eye contact while pouting her lips...
(Score: 5, Funny) by Hyperturtle on Wednesday December 23 2015, @03:34PM
dude!
This brings new meaning to getting a pink slip!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 24 2015, @03:41AM
Goodness! Is that what that means? I thought she had some sort of mental disorder and went back to my basement home.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2015, @12:29PM
I had accepted a "permanent" position with a start-up that was developing a Futures trading application. The team had been working ridiculous hours for months to get the system up and running.
Finally, one Sunday afternoon, the software successfully completed the entire regression test suite. I went home feeling good about the accomplishment.
Arriving at work the next morning, I found the CFO standing in the lobby, handing out "pink slips" to every developer as they arrived. There was a stack of banker boxes containing the personal belongings of each developer. I was given my box and a one-week severance package and sent away.
The only warning sign was that they had gone from a very frugal operation (folding tables and mish-mash of used chairs in a windowless room) to a very spendthrift one (most expensive office in one of the most expensive buildings in Chicago) shortly after I started. One of the major reasons I took the job was because of their "frugal" operation. Since they were months away from generating their first dollar, I thought this indicated that the bosses knew what they were doing. I was wrong.
The amazing part is that they issued a press release boasting of the fact that they (a software company) had shrewdly gotten rid of their development team and replaced them with sales people (sitting in our old cubes), ready to take orders.
They went bankrupt a couple of months later.
The one consequence was years later when I got a call from a recruiter who was trying to fill a position with another company run by one of the same people who ran the old company. He was hunting down anyone who used to work at the original company. I told him that I would rather work as a clerk at a convenience store than to trust my former boss. The recruiter sighed and admitted that everyone he had found said the same thing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2015, @12:38PM
I & II are good practice year round.
I ask this for all my team, I hope none of them leave, and I sure don't have a reason to fire them.
That doesn't mean they won't leave, fall ill for an extended time, or even worse, get hit by a bus, ...
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 23 2015, @01:37PM
Please - route the bus around our plant, and frequently. Regular rounds for a couple months would be great. After the first couple weeks, I'll start luring the right people out into the path of the bus.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2015, @12:41PM
Boss comes around to your cubicle regularly, asking about those TPS reports.
(Score: 3, Funny) by SrLnclt on Wednesday December 23 2015, @02:45PM
Actually that is a sure-fire way to get promoted.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2015, @12:58PM
I had a crazy boss once go around the office, almost in a panic, demanding everyone's updated resume right now! I didn't have a copy of my resume handy (either machine readable or hard-copy, and this was long before things like "the cloud" or thumb drives made it easy to carry around a digital copy), and I wasn't about to try to rewrite the entire thing from memory, so I ignored him.
Apparently, he had received a request from H/R, and he badly misinterpreted the urgency. (It's worth noting that it was a common belief among my coworkers that he was a major-league coke head, which might have been a factor).
My feeling, and the feeling of most of my coworkers, was that if we had to update our resumes anyway, we might as well send them out and see what else was available. Ultimately, several of the best employees found jobs with less-crazy bosses. I don't know if that had much impact on the company failing, but it certainly caused the loss of the "cream of the crop" among the developers.
(Score: 1) by pinchy on Wednesday December 23 2015, @02:59PM
Ive worked some blue collar jobs in a past life and a couple of times rumors would start on the shop floor that there is going to be a layoff.
Eventually management would call a company meeting and lie to your face "dont listen to what you've heard you'll all have still have your job" yadda yadda.
Then few weeks later boom laid off. The last place just completely closed up for good.
I always take managements word with a grain of salt.
Even in white collar places I see them send people out the door that have been working there 20 years but keep or hire more contractors with names I cant pronounce.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2015, @08:35PM
Soylentils, you're smarter than this.
If you want to NOT sound racist, but the detail that sticks with you is not knowing how to pronounce such new team-mates, instead of
"with names I cant pronounce"
try
"with names I haven't yet learned to pronounce"
otherwise it comes across as "welcome to america, speak american now please, your name is now smith, too"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by iamjacksusername on Wednesday December 23 2015, @03:54PM
This applies more to large scale layoffs in large companies; when routine CapEx starts getting delayed without explanation, that's invariably a sign that somebody in the central office knows something is up. E.g., if your creaky PBX running Warp 4 was scheduled for replacement in the current FY and, suddenly, you cannot get an answer on when you will get final signoff on the previously approved replacement budget, it is definitely time to look for a new job. You can replace "PBX" with any business critical customer facing CapEx item for the same result.
When a company is willing to let a customer facing system fail and negatively affect the business, then you know management does not care about the business; in a large company, it has been my experience that this occurrence generally means the business unit has now become a sunk cost to be tied off with a balance sheet charge in the next quarter.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2015, @08:43PM
G'day
Sounds like the DHS
(Score: 1) by jlv2 on Wednesday December 23 2015, @05:11PM
If you ever notice HR folks working nights, suspect layoffs soon.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2015, @09:35PM
Or if your bosses are attending meetings off-site and you aren't informed what they are for. Basically, if you notice your company or organisation has a two-layer management structure (meetings in the office building and separate meetings outside it) then get the hell out of there, slave - they aren't worth your skills even for a moment.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2015, @06:19PM
With an added requirement, "No prima donnas".
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Wednesday December 23 2015, @06:21PM
This isn't funny. If an employer wants to work employees hard before purging them, they'll put a false job ad on the job boards. This gives workers hope that if they stick with the company a little while longer, things will get better as hard work will be rewarded with growth. Well, what happens is the company gets what it wants and purges them. Also, watch out for that when you look at job boards. There are many reasons for posting jobs on them, and hiring people isn't always the reason. This is all psychological warfare, really.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2015, @10:33PM
I was tricked by one company that had a whole bunch of similar positions with slightly different requirements.
What they really wanted to know was what your strengths and weaknesses are based on the position you applied for.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2015, @06:38PM
The number one cause of being laid off: someone is in a position to lay you off.
If you work for yourself, you might give up, you might go bust, you might get hit by a bus but the only person who can lay yourself off is you.
"But Uncle Coward," I hear you cry "we have no capital nor any means of starting our own business, we will always be laid off when the company should be keeping us on forever so that we can be rich at retirement!"
No, kiddies. First off, the business of any company is not to make you rich. It's to make money. Making you rich was never in there. If you want to be rich, you have to work for yourself. Now granted, working for yourself might take the form of consulting, or living like a pauper to accumulate capital so that you can go independent, but even if you take conventional jobs for conventional wages, your mindset is wrong if you think of yourself as theirs, to be laid off or rewarded at their pleasure. It's a gig. It might last a year; it might last five years. But it's just a gig and you should be open to the next thing that will pay better, or you will forever be the puppy whimpering at the master's table for a bone, and hoping that you don't get a kick instead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2015, @08:45PM
You will forever be that puppy anyways; only the master changes. Some puppies rove from table to table, piecemeal, but vanishingly few go into the woods alone; more survive off detriutus, open like all garbage-castes to kicks from all quarters. Even those few puppies who self-master are at the capricious whims of a puppy.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Wednesday December 23 2015, @09:11PM
No, kiddies. First off, the business of any company is not to make you rich. It's to make money. Making you rich was never in there. If you want to be rich, you have to work for yourself.
Almost 100% true but not quite. There are still some partnerships around, like John Lewis [johnlewis.com], that are effectively owned by their staff. All staff share in the profits. The staff to very well.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 24 2015, @02:55AM
Having just been terminated after a mere four weeks as a contract employee, I question your explanation of events.
My read is that Roche - or, more precisely, Arick - needed someone to fill in for their IT manager, Jason, while he was on a two-week vacation, in Hawaii.
So, as I reconstruct events, Roche brought someone onboard a week before the IT manager - Jason - went on vacation ... gave them a week to get up to speed ... ONLY THEN, did they tell this contractor - me - that the other guy - Jason - was going on vacation for two weeks ... THEN, after the guy - Jason - returned from his two-week vacation in Hawaii, Roche waited a few days for things to settle down, and terminated their contractor - me ... as, with the IT manager, Jason, returned, they no longer needed their contractor's - my - services.
My read is that Roche withheld the fact that their IT guy, Jason, was going on vacation from me, the candidate, during the interview phase, because Roche was concealing Roche's true short-term motives for employing me, from me, the candidate, and misrepresenting the situation to me, as a long-term relationship, when, in fact, a six-month employment contract was never Roche's true intention.
Based on information and belief, that would be fraud.
My read is that Arick never bothered to interview me, because he never intended to retain me for longer than the time required for me to cover for Jason, while Jason was in Hawaii, on vacation.
My read is that Jason never bothered to complete the paperwork that had been submitted to him, electronically, three weeks ago, so that I could get the second, "pseudo" administrative account required to complete the administrative responsibilities that I had been assigned - because he knew, three weeks ago, that I was not going to be retained, after he returned from his vacation.
Also, because his inactions gave Jason a convenient - albeit, some might say, crooked - excuse to terminate the contract.
It's a fact, that the Monday morning of my last week at Roche ... as soon as Jason had returned from his vacation - within ten minutes of coming onsite - Jason cornered me, took me into an empty office, closed the door, and yelled at me.
Jason was angry that I had helped Siemens personnel - onsite to secure the Sequencing Unit computer room - log in to Roche's "Guest" wireless network, after an administrative assistant had asked me to help, at 7:30 AM, well before the usual IT staff were onsite.
He thought I should have opened a ticket and waited until 9 AM, maybe 9:30 AM, for the regular IT guys to get on site.
WTF?
Jason was also angry at me for replying to an email - from a researcher, by the name of Amrita - asking why, if a computer had 24 CPUs, only one of the CPUs was active. I gave her a quick, four-paragraph briefing on parallel programming paradigms, along with helpful URLs.
Jason said that he did not want to confuse the researchers about the level of service being provided - apparently, I had been TOO HELPFUL, and, I now surmise, I made the level of service that Jason was providing to his customers, look ... well, shoddy.
Jason ordered me to NOT provide any desktop support, and also ordered me to NOT communicate with any customers. This was affirmed in a follow-up email - so it's in writing.
Interpreted literally, Jason was instructing me to not respond to any of the tickets I was being assigned!
There is a name for such a situation - it is referred to as a double-bind ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_bind, [wikipedia.org] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Bateson [wikipedia.org] ) and it is considered an indicator of schizophrenia.
Double-bind scenarios are not an indicator of good management, in my opinion. Just the opposite. It's abuse - or worse.
I haven't even touched on the conflict that already existed, between Jason, and Amrita, before I even arrived.
From what I overheard, Amrita and her krewe were constantly trying to measure the computing resources available to them ... and Jason was constantly trying to thwart her, and her krewe's, efforts.
Why, on my last day there at Roche, I asked if I could install an open source utility called htop(1) ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Htop [wikipedia.org] ) on some of the Linux servers, so that resource utilization could be better measured. Jason refused me permission, without explanation.
Why would a system manager deliberately go out of his way to deny his customers - even his own L3 support engineers - access to the very open source tools that professionals use, everywhere, to measure capacity and performance?
I wondered if Jason and Amrita had both come from 454 ... and if there had been a grudge between them, even before the company had been absorbed, by Roche.
My sympathies were with Amrita - whose efforts to install a Nagios server were undone when Jason discovered it, and destroyed the installation.
Why would Jason do such a thing? The Sequencing Unit does not lack for computing and networking capacity.
(Those problems the Sequencing Unit experienced with the NetApp server, while Jason was on vacation were, I think, a consequence of Sequencing Unit's IT staff using default NFS mount options - leading to a network lockup - precisely as I had warned, on my very first day at Roche Molecular Systems.)
I was so upset by the event, with Jason - in the office, with the door closed - that I looked up Jason's manager - Arick - and Arick's manager - Aleksandra, in the employee database, RUD4ALL.
My analysis is that this action of Roche's is a violation of my employment contract, insofar as the termination decision was based upon fraud and deceit.
My read is that the agency that placed me was probably a willing party to the deception.
My analysis is that because Roche, and the agency, deliberately engineered a situation where I was manipulated into leaving the premises with equipment that I no longer needed - as I was no longer employed - that the burden and cost of recovering that equipment is the recruiting agency's, and Roche's - not mine.
So I'll be happy to ship it back to those bunglers who placed me Roche ... or directly to Roche, via FedEx - as soon as you all give me a FedEx account number to use.
Not a moment earlier.
I'm not spending any of my own money returning equipment that could have been recovered by either:
(a) Arick, or
(b) Jason, or
(c) Farhan, or
(d) one of the other two IT guys in the building, or
(e) one of Roche's security people onsite, or
(f) one of half a dozen people working at the agency.
In vernacular Olde English: Fuck you!
Where is the excellence? What have you done with it?
I've worked with excellent people.
I've worked FOR excellent people.
I know excellence when I see it.
I also know how to identify incompetence and knavery.
I say to you, that none of you are excellent at anything - other than, perhaps, misrepresenting the truth.
It's hard to feel sympathetic for you or your organizations - you all set out to find the smartest, most-experienced, fastest-learning computer person you could find, on short notice ... and then, you tried to lie to your contracted employee, to trick him, to fool him, and to abuse his trust.
You even tried to trick your contract employee into returning, at his own expense, the very equipment that you, yourselves, had manipulated him into removing from the premises!
You are some very sick people.
In closing, I also want to ask: what does Roche Molecular Systems intend to do about that hepatitis B vaccine sequence they requested me to initiate?
As part of working at Roche Molecular Systems, I was encouraged to get a hepatitis B vaccine.
After receiving the first shot, I was THEN informed that it was a three-shot sequence, spread out across slightly more than six months - that is, it would take longer to finish the hepatitis B vaccine sequence than my contract was intended to last. I felt the first stirrings of concern. That didn't seem very diligent on the part of Roche Molecular Systems.
Now, it's two weeks later. The contract has been terminated.
Does Roche intend to complete the vaccine sequence that it requested me to initiate?
Or are they just going to apply the first shot, and walk away from it, as a bad investment, and let me deal with the medical fallout?
Inquiring minds want to know.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday December 24 2015, @03:37AM
Inquiring lawyers should ask.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 24 2015, @05:41AM
Hepatitis B isn't usually an occupational hazard for IT staff. If I were in your shoes, and it wasn't obvious how hepatitis could be a risk in that job, I would have asked. If you plan to have sex with lots of Asian people, it may be in your interest to get the rest of the shots—ask your doctor?
About your offer to return the equipment that was issued to you if the company pays the shipping cost: how about writing a letter to them, informing them of that offer? If you send such a letter by certified mail with a return receipt, that receipt could prove useful, should the company sue you over keeping the equipment. If you do give it back, it would be wise to get a receipt.
Regarding the agency, with the suspicion you have about them it would be best to find another agency or apply directly to employers. If you were working in Pleasanton, California and you signed a non-compete agreement, it's nothing to worry about because non-compete agreements are illegal in California. If your paychecks came from the agency, well, you're the employee of that agency, not of the company to which they farmed you out. The agency hasn't fired you, has it? So when speaking to future employers, you might be able to put a more appealing face on this. If this keeps you from getting other jobs, that will be very damaging.
This could easily have turned out worse, for instance if they hadn't paid you or if you moved and leased an apartment. Anyway, best wishes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 24 2015, @06:31PM
Part of me is really sorry for you, and part of me can't help but stick my foot in the crazy by wondering if your take is right...
Dear Roche Molecular Systems,
Having just been terminated after a mere four weeks as a contract employee, I question your explanation of events.
Terminated from what contract position? What was your job title and responsibility set?
My read is that Roche - or, more precisely, Arick - needed someone to fill in for their IT manager, Jason, while he was on a two-week vacation, in Hawaii.
Was your contract position to replace the IT manager, somehow?
So, as I reconstruct events, Roche brought someone onboard a week before the IT manager - Jason - went on vacation ... gave them a week to get up to speed ... ONLY THEN, did they tell this contractor - me - that the other guy - Jason - was going on vacation for two weeks ... THEN, after the guy - Jason - returned from his two-week vacation in Hawaii, Roche waited a few days for things to settle down, and terminated their contractor - me ... as, with the IT manager, Jason, returned, they no longer needed their contractor's - my - services.
My read is that Roche withheld the fact that their IT guy, Jason, was going on vacation from me, the candidate, during the interview phase, because Roche was concealing Roche's true short-term motives for employing me, from me, the candidate, and misrepresenting the situation to me, as a long-term relationship, when, in fact, a six-month employment contract was never Roche's true intention.
Based on information and belief, that would be fraud.
Depends on the contract. It only takes one paragraph to allow the employer to terminate your contract early. You *did* have a lawyer review your contract, right?
My read is that Arick never bothered to interview me, because he never intended to retain me for longer than the time required for me to cover for Jason, while Jason was in Hawaii, on vacation.
My read is that Jason never bothered to complete the paperwork that had been submitted to him, electronically, three weeks ago, so that I could get the second, "pseudo" administrative account required to complete the administrative responsibilities that I had been assigned - because he knew, three weeks ago, that I was not going to be retained, after he returned from his vacation.
Also, because his inactions gave Jason a convenient - albeit, some might say, crooked - excuse to terminate the contract.
It's a fact, that the Monday morning of my last week at Roche ... as soon as Jason had returned from his vacation - within ten minutes of coming onsite - Jason cornered me, took me into an empty office, closed the door, and yelled at me.
Jason was angry that I had helped Siemens personnel - onsite to secure the Sequencing Unit computer room - log in to Roche's "Guest" wireless network, after an administrative assistant had asked me to help, at 7:30 AM, well before the usual IT staff were onsite.
He thought I should have opened a ticket and waited until 9 AM, maybe 9:30 AM, for the regular IT guys to get on site.
WTF?
Was it your job to allow the offsite personnel access to the guest network? Or was that the job of the regular IT guys to do so? The way you tell it, it could be equally construed that you went beyond the scope of your employment in a bid to "be helpful." Were there good and valid reasons to wait to allow the regular personnel who provide such access to do so? I can tell you that if you did that in my department, your ass would probably be canned that day.
Jason was also angry at me for replying to an email - from a researcher, by the name of Amrita - asking why, if a computer had 24 CPUs, only one of the CPUs was active. I gave her a quick, four-paragraph briefing on parallel programming paradigms, along with helpful URLs.
Jason said that he did not want to confuse the researchers about the level of service being provided - apparently, I had been TOO HELPFUL, and, I now surmise, I made the level of service that Jason was providing to his customers, look ... well, shoddy.
Yeah, you see, the problem is that you're part of a team there. And you're the FNG on the team. It sounds like Jason was communicating to you that you're providing a level of support that the rest of the department is not prepared to. And yeah, that is a problem, even though you had the best of intentions.
Jason ordered me to NOT provide any desktop support, and also ordered me to NOT communicate with any customers. This was affirmed in a follow-up email - so it's in writing.
Interpreted literally, Jason was instructing me to not respond to any of the tickets I was being assigned!
There is a name for such a situation - it is referred to as a double-bind ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_bind, [wikipedia.org] [wikipedia.org] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Bateson [wikipedia.org] [wikipedia.org] ) and it is considered an indicator of schizophrenia.
Double-bind scenarios are not an indicator of good management, in my opinion. Just the opposite. It's abuse - or worse.
Again, it depends entirely on WHAT your job was supposed to be, which you never told us what it was. Were you supposed to be providing support and communicating with customers? Or was your job to administer the systems internally?
I haven't even touched on the conflict that already existed, between Jason, and Amrita, before I even arrived.
From what I overheard, Amrita and her krewe were constantly trying to measure the computing resources available to them ... and Jason was constantly trying to thwart her, and her krewe's, efforts.
So you already knew there was a problem between your boss and this other person, and you just stuck your salami right in the middle of the situation. Not smart. Maybe the better move would have been to communicate with Jason before replying in the first place.
Why, on my last day there at Roche, I asked if I could install an open source utility called htop(1) ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Htop [wikipedia.org] [wikipedia.org] ) on some of the Linux servers, so that resource utilization could be better measured. Jason refused me permission, without explanation.
Why would a system manager deliberately go out of his way to deny his customers - even his own L3 support engineers - access to the very open source tools that professionals use, everywhere, to measure capacity and performance?
So you were hired as an L3 support engineer and you're answering helpdesk questions about parallel core processing? Yeah, that does sound like you were operating out of your scope a little bit. And again, as the FNG, it sounds like it is a little early to be suggesting installs of any kind without clearly building your case to the manager as to why you need the tool when others apparently have not - even something as simple as HTOP.
I wondered if Jason and Amrita had both come from 454 ... and if there had been a grudge between them, even before the company had been absorbed, by Roche.
My sympathies were with Amrita - whose efforts to install a Nagios server were undone when Jason discovered it, and destroyed the installation.
Why would Jason do such a thing? The Sequencing Unit does not lack for computing and networking capacity.
(Those problems the Sequencing Unit experienced with the NetApp server, while Jason was on vacation were, I think, a consequence of Sequencing Unit's IT staff using default NFS mount options - leading to a network lockup - precisely as I had warned, on my very first day at Roche Molecular Systems.)
Well, if your sympathies are with those outside your department rather than with those inside your department, yes you have a problem. Again, if someone decides to bypass my department and just install a server, damn straight my first move is going to be to kill that, since installation of servers into my network is my direct responsibility, along with network security.
I was so upset by the event, with Jason - in the office, with the door closed - that I looked up Jason's manager - Arick - and Arick's manager - Aleksandra, in the employee database, RUD4ALL.
My analysis is that this action of Roche's is a violation of my employment contract, insofar as the termination decision was based upon fraud and deceit.
My read is that the agency that placed me was probably a willing party to the deception.
Well, if you're there less than a month and already jumping not one but two levels above your boss, yes a very serious problem exists. Either you are being railroaded, or you're shoving your interpretation of your job and responsibilities above what your boss wants. Or both.
My analysis is that because Roche, and the agency, deliberately engineered a situation where I was manipulated into leaving the premises with equipment that I no longer needed - as I was no longer employed - that the burden and cost of recovering that equipment is the recruiting agency's, and Roche's - not mine.
So I'll be happy to ship it back to those bunglers who placed me Roche ... or directly to Roche, via FedEx - as soon as you all give me a FedEx account number to use.
Not a moment earlier.
I'm not spending any of my own money returning equipment that could have been recovered by either:
(a) Arick, or
(b) Jason, or
(c) Farhan, or
(d) one of the other two IT guys in the building, or
(e) one of Roche's security people onsite, or
(f) one of half a dozen people working at the agency.
In vernacular Olde English: Fuck you!
Yes, you should return the equipment at their expense if they ask for it. And you have a responsibility to notify them, at least once, that you have their equipment.
Where is the excellence? What have you done with it?
I've worked with excellent people.
I've worked FOR excellent people.
I know excellence when I see it.
I also know how to identify incompetence and knavery.
I say to you, that none of you are excellent at anything - other than, perhaps, misrepresenting the truth.
It's hard to feel sympathetic for you or your organizations - you all set out to find the smartest, most-experienced, fastest-learning computer person you could find, on short notice ... and then, you tried to lie to your contracted employee, to trick him, to fool him, and to abuse his trust.
You even tried to trick your contract employee into returning, at his own expense, the very equipment that you, yourselves, had manipulated him into removing from the premises!
You are some very sick people.
And you just completely torpedoed any possible goodwill or credibility you might have had. You are demonstrating that you let emotion get in the way of relating information, and just made Jason's case for your termination plain.
In closing, I also want to ask: what does Roche Molecular Systems intend to do about that hepatitis B vaccine sequence they requested me to initiate?
As part of working at Roche Molecular Systems, I was encouraged to get a hepatitis B vaccine.
After receiving the first shot, I was THEN informed that it was a three-shot sequence, spread out across slightly more than six months - that is, it would take longer to finish the hepatitis B vaccine sequence than my contract was intended to last. I felt the first stirrings of concern. That didn't seem very diligent on the part of Roche Molecular Systems.
Now, it's two weeks later. The contract has been terminated.
Does Roche intend to complete the vaccine sequence that it requested me to initiate?
Or are they just going to apply the first shot, and walk away from it, as a bad investment, and let me deal with the medical fallout?
Inquiring minds want to know.
It's up to you if you want to continue on with the vaccinations. Probably a good idea, but do expect to be exposed to Hep B in your current position?
I really am sorry to hear you were terminated - being laid off or fired at a holiday period (especially Christmas) really sucks. But you really need to suck it up and see what you can learn from this experience. Especially about how ANY tech job is only secondarily about the technology, and primarily about pleasing your boss and those responsible for evaluating your performance.
I really wish you the best of luck!