After all the shit my company put some of us through, it’s not the monetary amount that matters. It’s just the feeling that I got something more from them that they normally didn’t offer.
Finally, I indirectly reimbursed for all the new smartphones I bought my staff out of my own pocket because my company at some time was so damn cheap that they didn’t want mobile engineers to have the latest phones to do their work, and after months of jumping through red tape and trying to justify roughly a drop in the bucket $6000 for a company so that people could do their work, I got hit with a bunch of paperwork about a “cell phone policy” and how part of the phone would be reimbursed but part of it was on the employee, and there was stipend for the cell phone plan, but we didn’t need a plan just a unlocked phone to run software. The amount of the cell phone plan stipend + half the reimbursement cost of the phone was more than just a phone without a plan, but oh no, they didn’t understand that so I had to fill out a bunch of other justification for this and that…And months later still no movement.
Finally I got fed up with it and just bought everyone a phone. My staff was happy, because they got a new shiny new phone. It wasn’t attached to the company, and it was attached to me on a honor system “loan”. And the honor system deal was, if you leave this company and I’m still here, you need to return the phone back to me. But if I leave the company before you do, you can keep the phone and there’s no strings attached to the company and this phone and it’s not considered company property, since I will never seek reimbursement from the company….You know, small things that builds staff loyalty, so that if you do end up leaving a company and need to build a new team, you’ll have a much better success poaching people from your old team…
Of course, when my boss found out about it, instead of say thanks for taking care of this that was frustrating the entire mobile team for months and keeping up work morale, the conversation went like:
Boss: “You’re making the company look bad..”
Me: “Ooh really???? And how am I doing that?”
Boss: “You’re making the company look like it’s cheap…”
Me: “Ooh really??? Ya think?”
Boss: “We don’t have an equipment policy to allow mobile engineers have a company provided phone beyond the standard cell phone plan based on a usage/need basis”…
Me: “Ooh really? The company doesn’t ask server engineers to bring their own servers to do their job, why is the company asking my mobile engineers to bring their own phones so they can do their job???”
Never had an equipment plan purchase problem afterwards, including all the MacBook Pro M1 Max we’re getting now, minus one fun discussion around that too.
IT department wanted to get us a MacBook Pro M1Max with a 16″ display with 32GB…
My engineers didn’t want to lug around a 16″ display and since it was going to be connected to a monitor most of the time, it’s useless and they opted for a 14″ display but wanted 64 GB of ram instead so that they could run virtualize better and do multi-compiles easier….
I got into another argument over that…..
Because although 16″ display + 32GB costs exactly the same as 14′ display + 64GB….
64Gb was considered “wasting money”…
But 16″ display instead of 14” was not…..
Had to jump through hoops with that too by finally put that on my p-card and said “oops, I made a mistake with the order of 12 machines….too bad I can’t cancel all the orders now because they are being built….”
Frustrating most of the senior management telling me what to do, have no clue about mobile…except one boss’s boss, who gets it and fortunately I get along with him so far, otherwise I probably would have been pipped an fired a long time ago, lol. The CEO knows more about mobile this his staff, and ideally working with him directly probably would be 10x easier…He actually gets it. And I haven’t had a problem recently with funding directly asking him for it with boss’s boss. It was interesting most everyone else is afraid to talk to him. But perhaps they are afraid he’ll call them out on their bullshit, which is exactly what happened in the last meeting. lol. It was the funniest thing. These people put this like 32 page powerpoint presentation that would have lasted 2 hours, and 15 minutes into it, he basically said he has ADHD and can’t stand meetings that last longer than 45 minutes and told told them redo it. I took 15 minutes, and unofficial cleared for funding. Go figure.
Thanks Piggs for being my shrink…I need one to deal with this shit, but it’s much cheaper this way….
