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My best employee quit because I wouldn’t let her go to college graduation

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Re: My best employee quit because I wouldn’t let her go to college graduation

#43
post #23

My partner, a developer, got fired (well, the job offer was retracted after a very well performed internship) for kindly questioning two points of the contract: one about unlimited unpaid overtime, and second one about losing all intellectual rights to ANYTHING done/written/created ANYTIME and ANYWHERE (including things not related to company's business and/or technology in own spare time, holidays and so on). I told…

As an applicant you should try to ask your prospective employer as many questions as possible. It becomes a really good way to filter out bad companies and managers - Of course, it's easier to do if you're a senior employee and have highly sought-out skills.

A lot of times, you can spot a bad company/manager just from reading the job advert but sometimes you don't know until you actually come in and start asking questions. Good companies that have nothing to hide will generally gladly answer all your questions or at least explain to you the legal reasons about why they can't answer specific questions.

If a company kicks you out because you're asking too many questions, it's a REALLY good thing for you! (you saved yourself years of misery) This type of behaviour is actually a filter which employers use to weed out confident applicants - These kinds of employers want feeble, subservient employees who don't question the rules - They don't want the kinds of employees who will demand holidays or ask for raises.

Re: My best employee quit because I wouldn’t let her go to college graduation

#44
post #8
post #2

I don't understand how a manager wrote that letter and thought, "this is okay".

Me neither. I can't even believe it is true. It is too obvious that the manager is wrong, no one in his right mind could think to be in the right after such behaviour, especially not after the introspective necessary to writing it up. Add in the caveat of the switch for concert tickets, that's just ridiculous. I don't know the site this is on. Is it a reliable one? If not, I bet this is a marketing stunt.

As a semi-regular reader, I would say that the site author is absolutely reliable and writes pretty good columns both there and for other sites, but there have definitely been troll/joke letters in the past which have been gone up (a couple of borderline believable letters revealed by over-the-top follow-ups, etc).

I'm not 100% sure that this is one, though - there are some red flags but I've definitely had managers I could imagine doing this. And I can see the point in printing the letter even if you think it's not real but that someone out there might do the same thing for real.

Re: My best employee quit because I wouldn’t let her go to college graduation

#45
post #18

It's an obvious joke, isn't it, why is everybody falling for it? Plus it says she's the employee with the lowest seniority, but worked 6 years there, that's hardly believable, the whole thing is hardly believable.

Interestingly, this [fn:1] video just explained how emotion-triggering content, in particular anger, will spread the fastest. Clearly, clever marketing/propaganda people have used this technique well.

[fn:1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc

Re: My best employee quit because I wouldn’t let her go to college graduation

#46
post #18

It's an obvious joke, isn't it, why is everybody falling for it? Plus it says she's the employee with the lowest seniority, but worked 6 years there, that's hardly believable, the whole thing is hardly believable.

Maybe the people who think this is just some troll should read a bit of /r/raisedbynarcissists

Re: My best employee quit because I wouldn’t let her go to college graduation

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's posted on HN and getting upvoted to the front page, I think people tend to assume a certain level of credibility based on that alone. If you assume that about this story, it's pretty shocking and worthy of some discussion, so you might upvote it. I thought it was real for the first few paragraphs and my jaw was on the floor. It's a pretty obvious fake though.

>If it's posted on HN and getting upvoted to the front page, I think people tend to assume a certain level of credibility based on that alone. Yea that's my problem - this used to be true - but not recently - now it's like reddit without the memes.

Then do something about it. Submit some quality stories.

That said, I do struggle to understand how some stuff whooshes to the front page, and other equally interesting stuff just gets ignored...

Re: My best employee quit because I wouldn’t let her go to college graduation

#48
post #23

My partner, a developer, got fired (well, the job offer was retracted after a very well performed internship) for kindly questioning two points of the contract: one about unlimited unpaid overtime, and second one about losing all intellectual rights to ANYTHING done/written/created ANYTIME and ANYWHERE (including things not related to company's business and/or technology in own spare time, holidays and so on). I told…

She could have assumed it was just lazy contract writing but living by Hanlon's razor doesn't always cut your way. Some companies are evil and judging by the way they've acted to a reasonable-sounding query, this might be one of those.

I thin you were right. This is a dodged bullet.

Re: My best employee quit because I wouldn’t let her go to college graduation

#49
post #18

It's an obvious joke, isn't it, why is everybody falling for it? Plus it says she's the employee with the lowest seniority, but worked 6 years there, that's hardly believable, the whole thing is hardly believable.

I started my career on the phones, while six year seniority isn't actually that rare it would be very rare for that to be lowest seniority.

Additionally it felt like a twist, I was waiting for this to be a mid-manager issue, where the mid manager didn't have the power to give the permission, not that they just decided to deny the two hour gap themselves and wanted them to apologize and come back.

Re: My best employee quit because I wouldn’t let her go to college graduation

#50
That's nothing, when my dad died my boss complained vigorously when I wanted to take 3 days off as my dad lived a thousand miles from my workplace. I told him that I was going even if he fired me, he did'nt but I quit a couple of months later and never looked back. (Norway)
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