A culture of beer and overtime

I've worked for a start-up which definitely had a "beer culture." It sucked. Some people should not be allowed to mix beer with work. Especially if they're a VP.

In business, people will push for all they can get. That includes you, after all, I presume you negotiated a good salary and conditions?

Two examples from my past:

The law here in Victoria changed, and I (as a contractor) became a payroll tax liability to the company that hired me. So their CFO scheduled a meeting with me and informed me that he expected me to lower my rate to take into account the payroll tax.

I said, "no - the legislation clearly states that the liability is incumbent upon the employer."

He said, "yes, that's true" and dropped the matter. I continued there amicably for another year or so before my contract expired.

Another example: I joined a company as a permanent employee (not a contractor) with clearly specified business hours in my employment contract, and no mention whatsoever of on-call work.

Then a few weeks after joining, it was announced that there was a requirement for 24 hour support from the dev team, and we'd all be expected to participate. My response was: I'm happy to keep an eye out for problems if I'm at my computer and not busy, but on-call was never part of the deal, and I'm not doing it.

Nothing bad came from my refusal in either case; in fact, I suspect my dealings with the first company was smoother afterwards, once it became apparent that I was not a push-over.

Some caveats:

- in neither case were the people involved assholes; rather the contrary in fact

- I was in my thirties when both things happened; had I been in my early twenties I almost certainly would have caved to both requests (self-respect and confidence both lacking back then)

- I remained calm and polite at all times

Vince -- I don't want to piss on your parade, but I've worked for dishonest people and it's never worked out for me: every time I've done it I've come to regret it. You may want to start looking... Good luck.

I don't know what it is about people that are in our field. We seem to be too trusting and too honest.

I followed this along and there are so many signs that the person should have realized, "hey, I'm being screwed here or about to be screwed, do something about it". Instead, he kept going based on what he was told even though his own intuition told him otherwise.

One thing I have learned is that strong, aggressive and manipulative people size you up instantly by throwing something at you that puts your own strength on the line. This could be a request they make of you, a statement or something else.

If you at that moment don't show that you are just as strong and aggressive as they can be but choose not to be, then they know they have you and will step all over you all the time.

Standing up for yourself and calling out the project manager for making you looking like you were fired instead of quitting is not a question of being professional or not. The obvious question will be "Why didn't you speak up? You were already being let go?" The project manager would not dare to do such a thing if the right boundaries were setup initially.

At one of my first jobs, I resigned after about a year because I found a job that offered 2x as much in terms of salary.

Director: "How much is the new place offering? We can match."

I told him the number.

Immediately his tone changed, and said I should take the other offer.

I wanted to give a 2 week notice, which I thought was the norm, but he asked me to leave immediately and use up my remaining days as vacation days as my last few days at the company.

At that time I did not realize that I was entitled to my pay for the remaining vacation days, so I agreed to it without much thought. Part of it was because I could not imagine this guy doing anything shady in my previous interactions with him, as he always seemed like a stand up guy.

By forcing me to use my vacation hours, the company saved a few hundred dollars, which would have been a lot for me at the time as I only had a few hundred dollars in my bank account.

But looking back in retrospect and reading many similar stories, it seems common, almost expected, for younger kids to be screwed over like this in the workplace, especially when departing a company.