201–210 of 457 posts
Most common people throughout history made their living working in the systems owned by aristocrats whose wealth was usually built on both corruption and theft. Guess that hasn't changed much.
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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…
> if it means you can convince shareholders and analysts that Opex will shrink in the future Isn't that just fraud?
As a junior software engineer, I worked at a large UK bank. Senior management routinely seem baffled that they could announce redundancies or hiring freezes, yet technology costs would continue to rise. One pattern I saw repeatedly was a contractor being let go, only to return via a large outsourcing provider. The provider must have added a substantial markup despite supplying the same engineer back to the same team,…
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…
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> Even with the best documentation people will build up knowledge that no one has I think that's the part management teams are missing. They assume that employees are just human resources and they can replace a senior engineer with a 100% equivalent one when needed.
I worked for a large US bank that has a 10% biannual attrition target at all levels across the company. Twice a year they PIP 10-15% of staff, most of whom take a substantial buyout. Institutional knowledge is constantly being lost and experienced staff are being replaced with fresh cohorts of new grads, who then get replaced themselves right as they start becoming useful. I knew multiple people there who made more i…
If we called it by the literal term, decimation, you would get a good sense of the effect. "I have a new policy, I'm going to decimate my own company"
Also, who hasn't worked at a company that produced a product and then abandoned it? I feel like that has happened often to me - many years of effort for nothing. It's not fraud exactly but it represents almost the same thing other than the intention.
As a junior software engineer, I worked at a large UK bank. Senior management routinely seem baffled that they could announce redundancies or hiring freezes, yet technology costs would continue to rise. One pattern I saw repeatedly was a contractor being let go, only to return via a large outsourcing provider. The provider must have added a substantial markup despite supplying the same engineer back to the same team,…
I have a friend who left BigCo and then rejoined it as a contractor, plus some additional employees that he manages now. He cynically says "My job is to convert OpEx to CapEx when the finance department tells some director they can't have more headcount."
>the finance department tells some director...
Don't shoot the messenger. The finance department is implementing the board's policy.
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They're dismissed due to a reduction in force.
That’s pretty rare in the USAF. Most servicemembers will be sent to be retrained on a different airframe or even into a different career field unless their date of separation doesn’t make it worth it. Voluntary separation programs do sometimes pop up but they’re not that common. It is common to have people separating and coming back immediately as contractors into basically the same job, but that’s usually because th…
I don't think this changes how I feel about it.
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> Past that I don't see a way for C suite to wake up. Didn't you mean to temporarily realign? I mean give it 2 years and another manager to show up, ready to get their bonus for the next attempt at it. That's our reality and how we've structured our markets
I honestly don’t get why anyone would give up their mental health like that and work for such places. In my reality there are plenty of honest and decent places to work at. I’m seen dark places yes but only as visitor - why would I want to be in hell for more than a day or two.
You look at your monthly outgoings and think about how long you have to look before your cash runs out.
I stuck it out too long several times. The most recent one left me unemployed for quite a long time and I was lucky to be in a position for it not to matter.
Now I'm in a job that's a step down - in a sense it's humiliating. On the other hand it more than pays the bills, it's low stress, I've lost 13 kg and I don't wake up in the middle of the night and instantly start thinking of the terrible things that happened in the week so that I can't sleep again.
Now I spend my spare time working in the garden instead of desperately trying to build the new feature on time. I'm digging a driveway. Perhaps this won't last but I realise how much I was killing myself by trying to stay in something bad.
Places are bad essentially because of bad people - it only takes a couple of idiots and it's impossible to fully judge that from an interview. You always get bad vibes from someone or other but you're trying to convince yourself it's ok because you need a job.
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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…
That system however is no law of nature. It's just broken nonsense no one bothers to fix because we haven't yet run out of money.