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A culture of beer and overtime

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Re: A culture of beer and overtime

#201

Post by reginaldjcooper »

3pt14159 wrote: post #181
reginaldjcooper wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It always blows my mind when countries get things right, and by that I mean providing adequate health, housing, and legal services to all residents. Paying legal fees for employed persons sounds like a great way to provide them access to fair(er) representation. Otherwise if they have to pay out of pocket they can't afford it, and if it's loser pays the risk requires a large reward before it's rational to pursue. Wel…

When you have a smaller population the ratio of constituents to elected member goes down, making lobbying more expensive. We have just as many MPs as the US has senators and a tenth of the population.

I am reminded that the USA was designed to have a much greater congressperson to person ratio than it currently has.

Re: A culture of beer and overtime

#202

Post by reginaldjcooper »

refurb wrote: post #166
reginaldjcooper wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It always blows my mind when countries get things right, and by that I mean providing adequate health, housing, and legal services to all residents. Paying legal fees for employed persons sounds like a great way to provide them access to fair(er) representation. Otherwise if they have to pay out of pocket they can't afford it, and if it's loser pays the risk requires a large reward before it's rational to pursue. Wel…

Canada doesn't provide free legal services to employed people. In this particular case, you can get assistance with legal fees for an employment-related dispute, but that by no means extends to other legal matters.

I worded it poorly, I didn't really think Canadian employees get free legal services for all matters.

Re: A culture of beer and overtime

#203

Post by Choronzon »

dfrey wrote: post #4

The project manager sounds like a dick, but the author also sounds like a push-over. The author had a chance to out the manager as a huge asshole, but based on the post, it seems like he just left silently.

Better things to out given the security practices Out the company

to quote.. """, it allowed the transactions of users to be skewed, allowing malicious users to cause other users to essentially lose money, or worse yet, put them in a potential dispute, and ultimately, cause our product to lose customers."""

report to the regional financial services authority. Create anonymous story about how company x is causing massive user vulnerabilities etc.Send this information to the companies clients.You could cause massive damage and come out looking like the good guy if you spun it right.

Re: A culture of beer and overtime

#204

Post by Bahamut »

vinceguidry wrote: post #75
rfnslyr wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to be your friend/coworker so badly. I hate management praying on the modest and kind. At my old job we had a really shy intern and he took all the shit that came his way and it was really sad to see.

It's ugly out there. I think my secret is that I didn't really get into the office world until my late twenties. By then I'd bounced around dozens of different jobs, been in and out of the military, college, sales, construction. I've been fired at as many jobs as I've quit. Now I see this stuff going on and I'm wise to it. Four months ago I started working for this company, the understanding was I'd work for three mo…

This is pretty crappy - if I encountered that, I would seriously think about walking out on that company and let everyone know exactly why. My brother is experiencing something similar with regards to getting screwed out of his rightful market value (although different circumstances), but at a major corporation which I'll refrain from naming. The company pays him well, but he got stiffed pretty hardcore compared to some of the others, to the tune of $30k+/year less & no signing bonus, so my brother has let everyone know how discontent he is with HR, even to the degree of enlisting the director of HR for his company to look into his case (via our uncle, who was a former VP for this company in their top division - my brother got his job by 100% merit though, without letting anyone know about this relation).

My brother's contract ends in about an year - due to this screwjob, he is requiring a massive salary increase + rectification of the missing signing bonus + extra vacation benefits or he walks. He said if the company did right by him in the beginning, he would have accepted much more modest increases, but he is furious over HR & HR's refusal to fix their mistake once he found out that other nearly identical hires got paid significantly more than him (with the only real difference being that he was the younger hotshot hire than the others).

It's pretty sad that some of these supposed top class companies are making what I would term as rookie mistakes. If they want to attract & retain top talent, they need to be treating them like top talent because the top talent don't want to stay at a company that doesn't treat its employees right.

Re: A culture of beer and overtime

#205

Post by 3pt14159 »

tingletech wrote: post #189
3pt14159 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you have a smaller population the ratio of constituents to elected member goes down, making lobbying more expensive. We have just as many MPs as the US has senators and a tenth of the population.

"We have just as many MPs as the US has senators and a tenth of the population." wikipedia says Canada has 308 MPs and 108 senators; and the US has 2 senators per state and 50 states so 100 senators. US House has 435 reps. Still a good point re: population per representative

Meant to say congresspersons.

Re: A culture of beer and overtime

#206

Post by zobzu »

jacques_chester wrote: post #59
zobzu wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't stay there more than a day. And I'd also expose the company name.

> I'd also expose the company name. Defamation lawsuits are expensive to launch or defend; but a vengeful founder usually has more money that an individual.

nothing about revenge, its about letting others know before they get in the same troubles.

if you're a scared american, anonymity still works on the internet. for now.

Re: A culture of beer and overtime

#207

Post by zobzu »

jmspring wrote: post #79
zobzu wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't stay there more than a day. And I'd also expose the company name.

Things happen and you learn/move on. No need to expose the company. One of the main focal individuals (not a founder, but not reigned in) has had his own trials, based on reputation, since. That is enough for me. It was a learning experience for me -- specifically, not to get lost in the interest of solving problems at the expense of personal work/life balance. We all have our faults, professionally, you hopefully le…

If nobody's aware of it, nobody is going to "learn not to repeat" them don't you think?

Re: A culture of beer and overtime

#208

Post by gaius »

ryan-allen wrote: post #192
yummyfajitas wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every study done on it has proven that diversity increases team productivity. There is a major file drawer effect here. Writing a study proving the opposite is a career limiting move.

Good old political correctness. I'd say the need to be PC is part of the reason why companies use the excuse of cultural fit as a reason to axe someone. "We have these other prejudices but we can't tell you what those are because if we do, you have grounds to sue us, so instead, we're going to simply chalk it up to a poor cultural fit."

It goes the other way too. Good luck if all your COBOL programmers happen to be women, say. One of HR's main jobs in any layoff situation is to make sure it's racially and sexually plausible.

Re: A culture of beer and overtime

#209

Post by gaius »

brianpgordon wrote: post #44
will_work4tears wrote: post #16

Having no experience with startups, I gotta say that I have some sympathy and it sounds horrible, however, what does this have to do with beer? I read the whole story and you had one friday night, after hours, with beer, and you didn't partake as you are a teetotaler. That's fine. I didn't see any other references to that fact, so I'm confused how it has anything to do with the story. It doesn't sound like they have…

It's well-known in startup circles that companies provide food/soda/beer to their developers in the hope that they'll work harder.

It's a bargain, from the company's POV. For $5 worth of pizza per person, you can easily get $200 worth of overtime. That is why it is so hilarious when CFOs cut perks like that to save money. Actually that is an alarm bell: it means the management of your company do not get it.

Re: A culture of beer and overtime

#210

Post by mdpopescu »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #146
mdpopescu wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah... yes. I have no idea why it's still so hard to find remote jobs in 2013. I really, really don't want to move my whole family yet again because you really like my smell or something.

This isn't a full answer to that question, but I'm pretty sure it's related... I remember seeing a post by someone asking for advice, his problem being "what can I do to counter people's assumption that ?" ( s mark my paraphrasing). This problem is, in fact, a source of great aggravation to almost everyone I know. And the best response, which stuck with me, was "nothing; it's an assumption by someone you don't know "…

Very good point, thank you.
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