Did my old job only exist because of fraud?

Post by N_Lens » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 5:16 AM UTC

idiotsecant wrote: post #150

comrade1234 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I decided to take the advice of my lawyers who specialized in the topic of government projects. Based on the budget someone could have easily gone to prison and it probably would have been me because it looked like I was billing 80-hours a week when it was just one of many projects and so I was actually billing ~20/wk. The $1M threshold wasn't an anecdote - at the time it really was the limit in project size for pris…

If you were salary and not benefitting from it, there's literally no chance you would have gone to jail. This was the equivalent of panicking about running a yellow light in terms of overreaction. The only thing you had to do was write an email, cc your personal email, and tell your boss you think the punches are messed up and that they reflect more than you worked. Your boss would tell you not to worry about it and…

Post by vintermann » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 5:21 AM UTC

jfengel wrote: post #110

shoo wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when i worked for an australian bank, one co-worker in a nearby team had been working on the the banks systems as a sysadmin for over a decade. the bank would go through cycles of "we need to reduce our headcount and outsource everything" and then 4 years later "we need to reduce spend on contractors and retain more knowledge and expertise in house". he'd survived multiple waves of it, switching back and forth betwee…

Managers love the idea that contractors can be fired more easily than employees. Except that this flexibility comes at a cost; people insist on being paid more to have an insecure job. The uncertainty never goes away. You can pay someone else to suffer it, but it will always cost more than dealing with it yourself. And that can be ok. Just don't fool yourself into thinking you're getting a bargain.

Post by kijin » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 5:24 AM UTC

jamesfinlayson wrote: post #133

cobbzilla wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The owner was the son of an old school magnate out of PA. If you have a lot of money it’s fun to LARP the startup life. The experience working for such a company is highly varied and completely depends on the personality of the founder. But even if it’s a healthy place, it’s usually a black hole from a career development POV.

I know someone who is an accountant for very wealthy people and quite a few seem to have useless children whose failing businesses they bankroll.

Post by charcircuit » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 5:36 AM UTC

idiotsecant wrote: post #148

charcircuit wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you can argue why you still need the budget. It May make sense to temporarily allocate a bigger budget immediately to do those things instead of delaying, trying to save.

Congratulations. Your budget is now permanently smaller because your appeals are completely irrelevant to the machine and you get to do less. Forever. Maybe you have to fire some people.

Post by pyuser583 » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 5:40 AM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #141

jfengel wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Managers love the idea that contractors can be fired more easily than employees. Except that this flexibility comes at a cost; people insist on being paid more to have an insecure job. The uncertainty never goes away. You can pay someone else to suffer it, but it will always cost more than dealing with it yourself. And that can be ok. Just don't fool yourself into thinking you're getting a bargain.

I've seen this happen because of accounting/corporate finance policy. Payroll is an ongoing commitment. Consultancy is a temporary service. Moving people from payroll to consultancy means they can reduce overhead in financial projections. Even though consultancy costs more, and employs the same people, it makes sense to do if it means you can convince shareholders and analysts that Opex will shrink in the future, and…