Octopus Overlords

Thanks Jeff.

This is a similar situation. It's a brand new role for this company that we've never had before. I had a quick 10 minute "coffee chat" with the Director prior to applying and he pretty much said that he has an overall idea of what he wants to the role to be but he will also be relying on the successful candidate to help him shape it and determine what will make it "successful". So that's why I think this proactive presentation is going to go over well as it basically outlines my vision for the role from beginning to end, and why I believe I'm the right person to take on this challenge. Whether or not he agrees with my vision is a different story, but even if it turns out that I was way off base and he wants to go in a completely different direction I still have the satisfaction of knowing I put it all out there and it just wasn't a fit due to philosophical differences rather than me just not being prepared enough for the interview.

J.D. wrote:[E]ven if it turns out that I was way off base and he wants to go in a completely different direction I still have the satisfaction of knowing I put it all out there and it just wasn't a fit due to philosophical differences rather than me just not being prepared enough for the interview.

That's the spirit.

Zaxxon wrote:

J.D. wrote:[E]ven if it turns out that I was way off base and he wants to go in a completely different direction I still have the satisfaction of knowing I put it all out there and it just wasn't a fit due to philosophical differences rather than me just not being prepared enough for the interview.

That's the spirit.

+1

Lost out on the job to someone external with 12+ years of experience (I have three). I was told it wasn't my skillset but just the intangible experience that I couldn't compete with. They offered a job shadow opportunity where I take 15% of my time and shadow the person in the new role so I'm ready when another similar role comes up in a year or two. Something to think about.

But for now it's disappointing. Gonna take a longer run at lunch to shake it off.

Well got a call on my interview, and they said that I was over qualified for the position I interviewed with. However, they have some management spots that they need to fill, and are considering me for them. But I need to wait at least two more weeks to hear anything from them.

I thanked the HR person for calling me and told them I would welcome the opportunity to talk about any future needs that they felt I could fill.

So I am guessing this is the brush off, and that they will not contact me again in the future. If they do, well that is awesome. But with the extra 2 weeks, that puts me at 5 weeks after my second interview. And if they are interviewing people over the next two weeks, I can't imagine I made a good enough impression 5 weeks ago that they will choose me over the more recent interviewees. <sigh>

I did get a call from a Director at a different hospital system and she did an impromptu phone interview with me, and wants to bring me in for an interview. But that was over a week ago and HR has still not contacted me. And the Director mentioned that her department should be safe for at least 5 years, but they were recently bought out by a larger system. So I am really not even considering the position, but I guess if it gets worse here, then I will go to the interview.

On the getting worse front. This is a great story. So on Wednesday I am told I am responsible for facilitating a meeting on Thursday, and I have to get everything together. So I have to send an email out to all of leadership asking for topics. Then get it into the proper agenda format. I grab the email that went out the last meeting and copy it and put my own spin on it. I get responses back almost instantly telling me that what I sent was wrong, and it was only last meeting that what I sent was happening. I apologize and joke about being caught copying from the last meeting.

Get all my topics, and then switch meetings around so I can make the hour drive to corporate to 'facilitate' the meeting. Once I get there, the meeting room, which I found thank god, is still occupied by much higher ups. So they eventually get out of the room, even though they ignore the 20+ of us standing in the hallway. I get into the room, and discover that they don't have a projector in the room, like I was told. One of the other managers who I work with on a regular basis runs out to get one, as I was supposed to 'check' it out. I don't work at the corporate building how the hell am I supposed to know that I was told it would be set-up for me. But I am not going to raise a stink about it. I get my laptop set-up to get the call in number, and discover I need a special number from Corporate to call out. One of the VP's in the room takes pity on me and announces to the whole room that she will 'hep' me out. Gee..Thanks..

So I finally get set-up, get called in and start the meeting. Run through everything, make a few jokes get a few laughs and all around make the best out of an asinine situation. So then when I am packing up, the VP looks over at me and says that while it is nice to see me, that someone would have set it up for me and I could have facilitated the meeting from my office an hour away. Yeah, sure...Everyone told me that...Not. And no one else has ever done it remotely. I swear, they just set me up to fail with all this BS. But I still get a pay check, and I am getting my name out there at corporate as someone that can get stuff done at my hospital. But man I just hate the culture of the new corporation, and most of the people I like and respect are retiring or leaving. So soon I am just going to be dealing with the knuckleheads that make my life difficult.

So yesterday, my boss presented me with an envelope containing a "congratulations on 5 years" certificate and a catalog where I can order some trinket not especially commemorative to the occasion. This is the first time in my professional career I actually hit the 5 year mark (I did 6 years at a restaurant before embarking on my actual career). The closest I came before was 4.5 years at the hospital.

Tomorrow my boss is taking me out for lunch. Along with his boss. And his boss's boss. Yay. And he's planning on Rock Bottom Brewery -- where all I can do is look at but not drink anything.

Got plenty of platitudes during a manager's meeting this afternoon, so maybe I'll stick around awhile yet. With the company splitting into 3 next year, who knows what havoc the fates have in store. I didn't really appreciate my boss highlighting that I came from an acquisition that is part of the Financial Services Group -- the smallest of the three splinters and the one widely considered to be the least desirable destination after the split. I hope nobody particularly remembers that when they start divvying up staff.

If it's any consolation, I am wearing the headphones I got as part of a Job Well Done reward from back in mid 2000's.

I just got my "5 Year anniversary gift booklet" as well. Except I left here and came back, so I have hit this milestone twice at this company.

Going through a merger(Well this is year 2), and while they keep giving me more money(I just got one more 5% raise, as I flagged as needing more money because of wage equity) I really hate my job. But I am still in the same hospital and they have not forced me to move to corporate, so I will stay here until I find something better or they can me.

My dotted line boss is in line to get the president position at the hospital I work at, and she has hinted that if she get's the president job, that we can talk about succession planning for me. So I have my fingers crossed that she get's the pres job, and then makes a new one for me to do. Or hooks me up with someone else that can give me a better job.

13.5 years... hey, as long as they keep paying me and I work less hours than Mortis.

Sum total of prior big boy job experience: 5 jobs, 8 years.

Coming up on 7 years with my current employer -- not bad for temp work. It's also the longest I've ever been at the same job. Previous record was 3 years.

Jun 23 '15 wrote:I was given an actual office on Friday as part of the personnel shuffling that occurred near year's end. They're still stringing me along with regard to the actual manager title promotion.

Given that my inbound commute took me 95 minutes, and there's a credit union that's actually located within my county that has my exact position posted, I'll be applying for that when I get home. The Chief doesn't like people working from home, but my blood pressure can't take too many days where I spend 2+ hours on the road every day without some additional consideration.

Still comfy in my office. The interview didn't go great. Dept head was kind of an ass, and I got an e-mail telling me that I didn't get it well after I'd come to that conclusion on my own.

I'd say I'm falling into a groove on my commute, but given the need to seek alternate routes on a regular basis and my complete lack of a regular timing on my daily schedule mean that it's more of a psychological acceptance rather than any actual changes. My arrival time is usually between 7:30-9:00, depending on how the morning wake-up goes.

Starting on 10/5, I will officially get my first minion since leaving the world of call centers at the end of 2007. The pay/promotion issue is progressing with tidbits that are pleasing to the ear being dropped prior to official paperwork being generated.

Jeff V wrote:So yesterday, my boss presented me with an envelope containing a "congratulations on 5 years" certificate and a catalog where I can order some trinket not especially commemorative to the occasion. This is the first time in my professional career I actually hit the 5 year mark (I did 6 years at a restaurant before embarking on my actual career). The closest I came before was 4.5 years at the hospital.

I get them every 5 years. So for I've received a DVD player, then a Vacuum, then a TV. I'm pretty happy with the arrangement. Their gifts to myself for things I should get never want to be bothered getting. It's as if when others buy you gifts they actually know what you'd use instead of getting you nick nack for display.

17 years this coming June for me...yikes! We were bought last year, and boy howdy have things changed. Which in a way was good, and needed, but in another way, I see how far behind I got (and complacent) working for a tiny company, in terms of general modern business practices.

Quite the shock, I must say. Going from the owner's implied "sooo, you can make sales goals for yourself, or not...whatever, just you know, keep selling per normal" to "OMG we are THREE WEEKS before the END OF THE QUARTER. A OOO GAH A OOO GAH!!! RUNNNNNNNNN!!! MADNESS!!
QUOTAS! WEBEX! ALIGNMENT! BEST PRACTICES! COMPLIANCE! STUPID BUSINESS JARGON!

For 1 year, I got a keychain. Next one will be at 5 years. At 30, they give the peeps a week's vacation and funds to assist with it.

At 5, I went up on the PTO chart, so I get around 9.5 hours a pay(I am management, so have a higher PTO number). Also, I am in the bonus plan, so get ~ 10% of my salary as long as we make some arbitrary target that I swear is set by the people who also will get the bonus if we make it, so guess what, we always make it.

I also got an Ipod mini, or whatever it is called, for a gift. I figure it can replace my old Zune that I liked, but is getting long in the tooth.

When I worked for a hospital, I was at 11.5 hours PTO/pay period. At service milestones they would grant you a one time 8 hours to take a day off. We got no bonuses (I've never worked for a company that had such a word in their corporate dictionary), but we could sell back 40 hours of PTO twice a year (holidays and mid-summer).

The trinkets in the catalog I have to choose from are so useless I'll likely not bother. The steel men's ring (IIRC, sells for about $5 at Amazon) looks somewhat like my gold wedding shackle -- I wonder if my wife would notice if I replaced it?

I've been at my current job 9 years come January. Previous record was 3.5 - this is my fourth job out of grad school (had a ton before that). At 10 years I get another week vacation (4 weeks total). Woo-hoo!

Isgrimnur wrote:For 1 year, I got a keychain. Next one will be at 5 years. At 30, they give the peeps a week's vacation and funds to assist with it.

I pray I don't get fired, can take the workload they give me, and retire well before 30 years rolls around... well, not well before... like at around 25 years, I hope... We'll see how this whole investment and IRA and 401k things goes.

At lunch today, our senior director said that as of last year, the average tenure for an employee at this company was 17 years. My counterpart for the other half of our region is at 17 years. My boss hit 35 years last summer. One of my employees calls him a newb...he passed 45 years last year. I did a contract job for this company about 18 years ago, and two of the people (out of 4) that I worked with are still here, one of them reports to me.

The senior director (who seems to be in his 60's and ought to be nearing retirement age) was lamenting that the breakup of the company was going to split up the best IT organization he'd ever been a part of. Considering the size of this behemoth, it runs pretty smoothly, in part because there is so much experience here. That guy with 45 years here is like McGuyver when it comes to various hardware and infrastructure challenges.

I'm in week 4 of my move to a major financial institute here as CISO. It's been great so far, shitloads of work to come and I've already been answering questions for news agencies doing research. It's nice to be in the peak of my career with a company that actually wants security, and is actively collaborating with my team.

Sure beats the asshats in infrastructure I had to deal with at the last place!

Oh and my commute is now 1 hour each way vs 2 hours, the pay is better, more vacation time, a pension plan.. yeah, I can't complain.

I'm fairly certain I just passed the five year mark. I'm hoping that in a couple of weeks I can come back into this thread with an exciting update, but things are currently in flux and it's hard to read the tea leaves.

I'm coming up on 18 years with my employer in some form or another (mergers). I'm just over 2 months into my new position, which was a promotion, and am still feeling my way a bit. I'm definitely going in the direction I want to be headed, even if I'd like to move a bit faster at times.

For my 15th anniversary, I picked a big Calphalon pot with a pasta basket (worthless) and a steamer basket (frequently used). I probably also got a logo pin or something.

I got laid off in May. After 7 years my companies contract with a major bank was given to a global supplier. I was given the option to work in London, a 3 hour commute each way or be made redundant.

I got paid for May and a reasonable redunudancy package meaning finacially I am fine until after Xmas.

During May and June I spent all my time doing up the house and catching up with all those jobs that needed doing over the past 7 years since my kids started appearing. It was all pretty good.

My wife is a teacher so taking July and August off with her and the kids was a no brainer however a local company showed some interest.

I was an Operations / Supplier / Account Manager for a Document Management Company and there are not many of those companies local, in fact just one. I had 4 interviews lasting over 12 hours with the MD and other directors and they pretty much said they really wanted me and were just making a position for me. At the start of September I pushed for a resolution and they just said get lost, which was nice.

So my wife and kids went back to school and for the last 3 weeks things are a bit of a nightmare at times.

First I do not drive, but have started lessons and am now in a position to take my test, however there is a 14 week wait for that. Having no transport is tough.

Secondly I have joined the gym, 17 days so far, lost 6lb's and already can feel the effects of it.


But I am finding it damn lonely at times. Mon - Weds I spend upto 12 hours on my own. Thurs and Fri are not too bad as the wife doesn't work but she just wants things to go on like I am at work and see her friends and Mother in Law and Sister regardless.

One of the problems is you spend all day at home and you can watch movies, shows and play games but after a while it loses it's excitement, you need the work as well as the down time.

Jobwise I have a meeting tomorrow with 2 or 3 good opportunities just need to keep my fingers crossed as it's doing my head in being at home all the time.

I spent 27 years working 6 month contracts as staff in a university research lab with the same principal investigator. He told me his estimated date of retirement (this summer) and back in January with his blessing I arranged to have the university contract me out to a pair of clients at a federal lab on a short term contract that ended on Sep 1. Both clients wanted me to stay but had not been able to secure further funding. I had another project cooking and thought I was safe till the program manager told us in early AUGUST that it was not going to get funded either.

Ouch.

Scramble time. Called everybody I knew at the university and at the lab. We're not out of September and I have a different client list and am over funded by %50.

Not so ouch.

I need 2 more years before I can start thinking about retirement, but I need those years as a university employee. I've got the next year funded......cross my fingers and keep people happy.

It's been a very satisfying month.

I just passed 26 years here. Am I lazy, or just really needed at my company? I've survived numerous rounds of layoffs, and a 3 year wage freeze during some of the bad times here.

I just applied for an open position that was left on my team by the other lead engineer. It's basically doing exactly what I have been doing, but at a higher pay grade. The job description was pretty much written for me. My team lead and Senior Manager are both supporting the move, so I'm hoping this just turns into a rubber stamp so that I can finally be moved to that position. It's all politics, I kept being told that the only reason I wasn't being promoted was that the other lead engineer was already an E band, and they couldn't have to E band employees on the same team.

So if I don't get the position I'll be applying elsewhere, probably in the company. I have a good reputation here, and I'm sure I can find something someplace here. Hope it doesn't come to that, I like what I'm doing, I just need another me now that I've lost the other me. As far as outside, I have a pretty good skill set, but I don't know that I could match pay/benefits/PTO time I get here. Golden handcuffs indeed.

So today I opted out. I started making plans to have my various interests be taken over by the partners or employees, and my wife an I have decided to take a step back and reduce our commitments, travel more, stop "acquiring" and dedicate more time to the creative pursuits that we love - for her writing and speaking, for me, art and photography and travel.

It's a scary change of pace, and I'm not sure how long it will take me to wake up each morning and not immediately feel like I have to check in at 5 different (literally) work email accounts, get to my desk by 7am and keep checking those emails until I go to bet at midnight. There will be some of that of course, because I need a few more years of some income to meet our goals, but the basic plan is to cut down to only the most profitable short-term ventures, pay off the house and have a good chance of residual income in hand in the next 3-5 years.

There's a downside of course - some of the "stuff" that I enjoy will need to go, but in the end a car is a car, and our home is very very close to being paid off and beyond that, debts are very very manageable. I'm 43 now. I'm hoping to get a good 20-30 years of living a calmer, more directed life in the near future.

Congrats, geezer. If you ever get bored, you can always shift your start-up talents to helping a charity. They have a constant need for talent and the terrible pay might not matter so much if you have those residuals.

Zarathud wrote:Congrats, geezer. If you ever get bored, you can always shift your start-up talents to helping a charity. They have a constant need for talent and the terrible pay might not matter so much if you have those residuals.

Both of us already do that, and we will definitely continue

Great for you! Congrats. :envy:

Isgrimnur wrote:The pay/promotion issue is progressing with tidbits that are pleasing to the ear being dropped prior to official paperwork being generated.

A request for update received a reply that it should be finalized for pay on the 9th, backdated 7 months. Specifics on numbers still pending.

geezer wrote:So today I opted out.

Congratulations! Lots of good photo ops (and hopefully wife-intriguing vacations) available in the Colorado Rockies.

Apparently some of my contract work has now been officially handed off to tenure track staff and I'm finding myself with a significant reduction in hours. It started last month, but I figured it was a fluke. Well, in looking forward to January, I've officially been cut back. Incidentally, a student group that advocates against sweatshop labor has taken up supporting the collective group of people with my job title (part time lecturer) as they feel we are consistently and repeatedly taken advantage of. I guess I can't really be surprised but it kind of sucks to put so much effort into creating a quality product only to have it completely yanked out from under you. I wanted to believe things would be different based on the amount of time I have put in, but I guess that's not enough.

I guess it was a good six year run and I still have some work to keep me busy, but now I'm thinking I need to diversify the hell out of my current situation and look for other employers that are interested in my skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. I will look for you, I will find you and I will kill you. Wondering if maybe I should remove that from the top of my resume?

I wound up getting the max raise I could get last week, which came as a total shock since I didn't feel I had performed as well as I did the previous year when I just got the average. However, my boss went to bat for me - he felt that the company was putting so much work on my plate that performing well under unusually high stress and responsibility needed to count for something. I had a couple of minor areas to improve in, but he felt that they were a direct result of unrealistic demands.

It's been crazy around here, but it helps immensely when you feel like your boss understands the pressure you're under (undoubtedly because he's under the same kind of pressure from his boss).

We all always get max raise here. But our max raise is 1%.

Pay hike finally came through. Title still hasn't been updated to Mgr in the system quite yet, but I'll take the 18% raise and 7 months of back pay. Should factor nicely into the tax refund in February as well, since it's taxed to the max.

Smoove_B wrote:Apparently some of my contract work has now been officially handed off to tenure track staff and I'm finding myself with a significant reduction in hours. It started last month, but I figured it was a fluke. Well, in looking forward to January, I've officially been cut back. Incidentally, a student group that advocates against sweatshop labor has taken up supporting the collective group of people with my job title (part time lecturer) as they feel we are consistently and repeatedly taken advantage of. I guess I can't really be surprised but it kind of sucks to put so much effort into creating a quality product only to have it completely yanked out from under you. I wanted to believe things would be different based on the amount of time I have put in, but I guess that's not enough.

I guess it was a good six year run and I still have some work to keep me busy, but now I'm thinking I need to diversify the hell out of my current situation and look for other employers that are interested in my skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. I will look for you, I will find you and I will kill you. Wondering if maybe I should remove that from the top of my resume?

Luck to you. I didn't know you were teaching at the university level. It seems like all universities around here have been moving to part time teachers, specifically so they can pay them a smaller wage, no benefits, and cut them and rehire with the needs of a specific semester. There is never a shortage of applicants.

Isgrimnur wrote:Pay hike finally came through. Title still hasn't been updated to Mgr in the system quite yet, but I'll take the 18% raise and 7 months of back pay. Should factor nicely into the tax refund in February as well, since it's taxed to the max.

Nice.

Meanwhile, I just hope I'm employed after the company fails a customer imposed ISO based audit that has my name attached to it at the end of this month. I've been given little support and no feedback so my progress has been non existent. Someone's head will roll for this and even though I was not project lead, had not authority to implement change, and had no budget, my name was on the paperwork.

I suppose there is still an outside chance we are compliant and can prove it in the next 12 days, but I really really don't see it.

Currently doing subtle battle with our sister organization. It's far to complicated to lay out here but we are bigger and do more work, with fewer employees, but they have 10x the budget because they have far fewer regulatory/anti-trust restrictions. Part of that budget is in marketing. We aren't allowed to have marketing. Part of theirs is in IT. We can't have our own IT. They have "idea people." Our ideas have to go to 10 committees. They're like a hot tech startup and we're like a blue chip industrial.

But since our mothership acquired their mothership, they are in attack mode. We've been obligated to cooperate by our shared overlords but since we're more robust it's been us giving them all our P&Ps with nothing in return. I'm cool with however it shakes out, we both have market leading strengths, and I'm in good shape within the organization (knock knock) but it's way too stressful right now. And I refuse to commute to them. It took me 1.5 hours to get back from a meeting out there last week.

Seriously, their annual report has Venn diagrams and pie charts. They took two pages to say how many physicians they have. We took one sentence.

LawBeefaroni wrote:Seriously, their annual report has Venn diagrams and pie charts. They took two pages to say how many physicians they have. We took one sentence.

Ugh. Say no more. Say no more. A nudge is as good as a wink to a blind man.

LawBeefaroni wrote:Currently doing subtle battle with our sister organization. It's far to complicated to lay out here but we are bigger and do more work, with fewer employees, but they have 10x the budget because they have far fewer regulatory/anti-trust restrictions. Part of that budget is in marketing. We aren't allowed to have marketing. Part of theirs is in IT. We can't have our own IT. They have "idea people." Our ideas have to go to 10 committees. They're like a hot tech startup and we're like a blue chip industrial.

But since our mothership acquired their mothership, they are in attack mode. We've been obligated to cooperate by our shared overlords but since we're more robust it's been us giving them all our P&Ps with nothing in return. I'm cool with however it shakes out, we both have market leading strengths, and I'm in good shape within the organization (knock knock) but it's way too stressful right now. And I refuse to commute to them. It took me 1.5 hours to get back from a meeting out there last week.

Seriously, their annual report has Venn diagrams and pie charts. They took two pages to say how many physicians they have. We took one sentence.

I feel for ya. I had to beg a vendor that we have had a relationship with for over 10 years to still support us even though we have not paid them or signed the support contract that expired 3 months ago. Why? Because the person at corporate who said he was going to take care of it retired, and then his replacement threw me under the bus and said it was my fault it wasn't done. Send out the email, showing where I asked about it multiple times, and offered to take care of it. Corporate still blames me. So I do all the paperwork, send it to the CIO. A month later, still nothing, so I ask about it. I get told that the CIO wants an enterprise contract and not to renew this contract. Makes sense, except corporate does not have this same product, so they don't have an enterprise contract for us to join with. Oh, this product is going away next year, so this is for a one year renewal to give us support while we switch to the new product. Ummm... Okay...

Still not signed, but I have been promised when the CIO get's back he will sign it. I really hope so, as I told the vendor he will sign it and we will pay it. <sigh> I am guessing that will be my fault as well. <sigh>

LordMortis wrote:Luck to you. I didn't know you were teaching at the university level. It seems like all universities around here have been moving to part time teachers, specifically so they can pay them a smaller wage, no benefits, and cut them and rehire with the needs of a specific semester.

I do have some protection there, but all they really need to do is cut me back and give my old time slots to someone else. What's hilarious is that as part-time lecturers we teach over a 1/3 of all the credit hours at the school. I think part of the problem is that students have no idea of our status (or lack thereof) and they just assume we're all fat and happy tenured staff (like Captain Caveman). But in terms of benefits? Nope. Straight contract salary for 15 weeks of work with no guarantee of future employment. As I said, it's been a good six year run and I am grateful for what I've been able to do so far. I don't believe I should be offered the same salary and benefits as a tenured staff member but the temporary nature of the work has been a source of stress as I never know exactly what I can expect until a month or so before the work begins.

There is never a shortage of applicants.

That's definitely true - the other interesting problem is an overwhelming majority of them are PhD-level individuals that cannot find tenure. I'm beginning to think I need to go back for my substitute teacher certificate and learn how to deal with more more mature individuals, i.e. middle school kids.