31–40 of 157 posts
>Average turn-over for the newcomers: 3 months, the legal time to leave your job in France. Can someone explain the meaning of this? I think something got lost in translation.
That would be the notice period. Germany is similar, it tends to be 6 weeks to the end of the quarter, and it generally applies to both employee and employer. Though it often isn't quite as applicable to the employee...what are they going to do if you don't show up, fire you?
> what are they going to do if you don't show up
They will simply not pay you.
What you do when you're deep into a project like the OP describes is to quit your job by telling your manager that he's the worst you have ever worked for. Then one of three things happen:
1. He/she asks me to stick around for two months. I do and get paid regular salary during. 2. He says "hey, if you want to leave today, that's fine with me". I do but I wont get any more pay checks. 3. They are offended by my critique and says "walk away from you computer right now and never come back". I get paid for two months without having to work.
When #3 happens it's excellent because you will have two months of pay and enough time to find a new job if your resignation was in the spur of the moment. And no need to worry about bad references. When my up and coming boss calls my last horrible boss, someone who I happily divorced, things will work out fine.
Even though (middle?) managers are usually full of prestige and are quite easily offended, #3 has happened to me only once.
Although most don't, I try to utilize or take advantage of the system to the max in my quest to find a decent work place/project. I job hop a lot.
> It is forbidden to come to work after 9am. One day, the site manager stayed behind the main gates and fired on the spot every person who came in after 9.01am, including a number of managers and sales. This surprised me. I thought it was extremely difficult to fire people in France.
From another post in the blog: "Among the many comments, some surprised me. Seems lots of people cannot believe you can be fired in France for being 1 minute late at work. Sorry to burst your bubble, mates, but this is what SSIIs (contractor companies) were invented for. You don’t lose your job, you immediately lose the contract you are working on (no justification needed, this is what contractors are for)" So they w…
On places where it's hard to fire people, mostly everybody works as consultants and people tend see those positions as normal job positions.
I love how the first thing complained about was the use of C++ for the project. Compared to the lack of sane source control and release management, inexperience of the team, dozens of layers of abstraction, management bureaucracy, toxic culture, basic facilities like toilets being inoperative... I think using C++ was literally the least of their concerns.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
From another post in the blog: "Among the many comments, some surprised me. Seems lots of people cannot believe you can be fired in France for being 1 minute late at work. Sorry to burst your bubble, mates, but this is what SSIIs (contractor companies) were invented for. You don’t lose your job, you immediately lose the contract you are working on (no justification needed, this is what contractors are for)" So they w…
> So they were not really employees, but consultants. On places where it's hard to fire people, mostly everybody works as consultants and people tend see those positions as normal job positions.
I would guess the project was (is?) running pretty much just as the people in charge wanted it to run. 10 years in and they were still billing -- more than ever -- for a project that would have completed 7-8 years previously if things had been done according to plan. All the seemingly massively stupid and counter productive decisions made make sense if the goal is to confuse matters to make it seem like progress has…
i suspect the french gov will have put something similar in place, but i do agree with the final paragraph of the piece - it's probably a corrupt practise not top management stupidity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So they were not really employees, but consultants. On places where it's hard to fire people, mostly everybody works as consultants and people tend see those positions as normal job positions.
In Germany it is hard to fire somebody. Almost nobody works as consultant, and consultants are not normal job positions.
>Average turn-over for the newcomers: 3 months, the legal time to leave your job in France. Can someone explain the meaning of this? I think something got lost in translation.
That would be the notice period. Germany is similar, it tends to be 6 weeks to the end of the quarter, and it generally applies to both employee and employer. Though it often isn't quite as applicable to the employee...what are they going to do if you don't show up, fire you?
>Average turn-over for the newcomers: 3 months, the legal time to leave your job in France. Can someone explain the meaning of this? I think something got lost in translation.
You have to work for 3 months before you can quit an employer in France. It's not "at-will". At least that's how I interpreted it, and given France's stronger labor laws I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case.
Closest I've been is when an agency sold my time to another agency which sold my time to the end client, who paid me with "profit" from insurance money ( the end client was an insurance agent ).
And as I'm not in my 20s anymore and I look at how government related IT services work, I'm so much afraid about everything else happening around me. Questions like "What about the tram I use every day? There should be a company maintaining these things. Probably is hell there as well."
1 : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_and_spirit_of_the_law