about switching jobs…

[Coronita]

[quote=deadzone][quote=Coronita][quote=XBoxBoy][quote=deadzone][quote=XBoxBoy]In a crazy twist relevant to this thread, I found out today that about 1/3 of our development staff is working on a “side-project” in their “spare time” while working from home. Something they hope will allow them to quit and create their own startup company. Of course upper management knows nothing about this.

It’s a fascinating idea to me that maybe companies suddenly start loosing work from home employees because they’ve had enough time to pursue their start up dreams… Suddenly your employees are your competitors![/quote]

Doesn’t surprise me at all. Like I keep saying, this work at home concept is clearly unproductive and ripe for abuse. Management not having any visibility into their employees whereabouts is not sustainable. Anyone who thinks this can continue forever is in fantasy land.[/quote]

If you only look at it from the employer’s point of view I agree with you, but I’m fascinated with the idea that in the next year or two we could be seeing an explosion of new startups. These are people who used to think they needed to go to the office every day and work a job. Now they have been working from home for the last year and found they like it. The boss is making noise about getting people back into the office and these folks are thinking about an alternative to what they used to do. It could be really interesting to see this unfold.[/quote]

As a boss, if your workers are finding a way to get what you thought would take 40hrs/week to get done what they are getting done in 20hrs/week and moonlighting the rest of the 20hrs/week. That’s not their fault. That’s your fault and your poor management for giving them 40 hours to get it done when it only would take 20 hours…or that’s the fault of your shitty company that makes their workers waste 20 hours/week in useless meetings, when it only takes about 20 hours/week to do the real work.

I’ll be honest. Working from home, there were times many times I was dialed into “status meetings” that lasted hours while I was changing my oil, picking up my kid from school, dropping them off, or washing my car…My contribution was the standard 10 minute status update from mobileland, and the rest was listening to every other bean counter bloviate. If you have more than 5 people in a meeting and it lasts longer than 20 minutes, it’s, it’s going to be a waste of time. People check out at the 20minute mark and if you can’t get to the point within that window, the rest people will just be mentally masturbating. It’s going to be a waste of time. At the end of the meeting, there was no decision made that was any better than before the meeting. The only thing that was accomplished was my car was clean, an oil change was done, and my kids got to go see their friends or attend a school event without the need of juggling a carpool.[/quote]

I generally agree with you about the meetings. But beyond that you are full of it. If you are working for me I’m paying you to contribute to my business, not take care of personal affairs. If you get done with your tasks in 20 hours then either 1. you did a half ass job, or 2. you need to ask your manager for more tasking or 3. preferably a motivated employee will take the initiative and find more things to do that contribute to the team such as taking lead on new projects, helping out teammates who are struggling, etc.[/quote]

Actually, no I’m speaking the truth of american run companies by incompetent people that magically survive getting laidoff and fired.. Take this example.

So at 9:30 AM Project Manager J decides to hold a meeting for 1.5 hours with every department head in my company. The purpose of the meeting is to talk about how we should organize our scrub teams. Department A has 15 people and currently wants to organize into two scrum teams of 7 and 8 respectively with each team dedicated to project A and project B.. Department B has 15 people and want to organize one big scrub team of 15 people where tasks of project A and project B feed into 1 scrum team, since Department is a platform/shared services team. Department C is a team of 8 people where management thinks it’s a great idea to have dedicated teams for each project, but since department C is understaffed and and has 4 different projects. That would be about 2 dedicated people per team. My department is 18 people and my engineers and I discussed how we want to tackle doing 24 apps on two platforms across 4 customers, and we figured the best way to do this is to do a hybrid approach in which we have 1 product backlog, 1 scrum team but two team leads handling 2 different verticals and interfaces with everyone else.

The purpose of this 1.5 hour meeting was to try to reach alignment with 1-size fit all across all department on how to organize the scrum teams so that everyone is the same, despite we all have all work different. I participated in this meeting for the first 10 minutes and gave them my opinion: every team is different, and every team should organize based on what they seem fit…And each team should appoint someone to attend 1 cross functional sync up status meeting twice a week so that we can make sure we have alignment….Then everyone else debated and got into a pissing match on which organizational structure was better.

I made a bet with my engineers on my team that 1.5 hours later, we would end up going off and each department would do the same thing. Meanwhile, I told everyone else to go get some beer/boba/ice cream, and just stay dialed in… I did my oil change on my X5, ND miata, NA miata, and my audi dialed into Zoom on mute.

At the conclusion of the meeting….Every department left and continued to do with what they were doing, the project manager decided to hold another meeting 1 week later, 1.5 hours, to see if we can get alignment….

Now this is roughly a 300 person company…It’s way worse at a 600-1000+ company that I’ve worked at… Similar thing happens at at a large defense company and especially in the public sector. The public sector is especially known for its inefficiencies. That’s why when private sector employees take on a public sector job for the first time, the first month, they probably want to slit their wrists…

This is also why at some of these companies, people end up wanting to work at a small startup. Because a small startup cannot be this moronic, or if they are, they won’t be around much longer, in which case if that’s the case (like a pets.com), you don’t even need to show up to work most of the time and be worried about being fired because all the executives won’t be around when the startup goes under anyway….back to the point of what this guy in the beginning was doing.

There’s a lot of dumb startups with dumb ideas with dumb management and dumb employees. And if you recognize that, it’s entirely possible to be on their payroll getting paid well for doing very little work with very little consequences of showing up. And theoretically if you scale this approach to multiple companies at the same time, you could in theory make a good deal of money in a short period of time what it would take a normal worker 7-8 years to do, maybe longer….

My boss almost made me do this recently by dropping all technical phone screen and interview requirements to fill mobile engineers in the interest of getting the headcount filled. I refused and got reprimanded for it, but I didn’t want to end up with someone that didnt know how to code.

But in all seriousness, if I attended every single meeting on my outlook calendar that I’m scheduled for. I could fill up my work day every single day M-F just attending useless meetings after meetings and not get anything done….Some hours, I’m doublebooked for useless meetings. more than half are useless sync up meetings, or status meetings….

The 3 biggest time wasters in a company are
1. Endless meetings and powerpoints (Elon was right)
2. Sales make a sales on a product we don’t have.
3. Incomplete product requirements, and back and forth between product management and engineering to figure out exactly what to build.

[Coronita]

[quote=an][quote=deadzone]I generally agree with you about the meetings. But beyond that you are full of it. If you are working for me I’m paying you to contribute to my business, not take care of personal affairs. If you get done with your tasks in 20 hours then either 1. you did a half ass job, or 2. you need to ask your manager for more tasking or 3. preferably a motivated employee will take the initiative and find more things to do that contribute to the team such as taking lead on new projects, helping out teammates who are struggling, etc.[/quote]
Not everyone wants to overachieve. Some people are fine w/ meeting expectation. If you can meet expectation, that’s all that matters.[/quote]

theres no point in overachieving if the best you get out of it is a 3.0% cola adjustment versus the “meet expectation guy” that gets 2% cola adjustment. That 1% difference might afford you an extra starbucks frappie every 2 weeks…but thats about it…sorry, Starbucks recently raised prices. its probably closer to an extra starbucks frappie every 3 weeks…

The meet expectation guy that spends the rest of his time doing something else is a lot more likely to achieve financial independence and san diego housing affordability because the se time spent to achieve that extra 1% raise could probably generate a lot more earning potential elsewhere. thats why its really hard to ask people work overtime these days… people know this…

[scaredyclassic]

What are the ethical duties an employee has to her employer today?

Is it to work as hard as possible during work hours? Is it to accomplish as much as possible for the employer? Or is it just to not actively try to harm the employer while meeting minimum standards?

Given the extraordinary lack of any hint of any loyalty toward workers nowadays, it feels like the duty to work as diligently as possible is not an ethical imperative.

It is an interesting sociological question.

[Coronita]

[quote=scaredyclassic]What are the ethical duties an employee has to her employer today?

Is it to work as hard as possible during work hours? Is it to accomplish as much as possible for the employer? Or is it just to not actively try to harm the employer while meeting minimum standards?

Given the extraordinary lack of any hint of any loyalty toward workers nowadays, it feels like the duty to work as diligently as possible is not an ethical imperative.

It is an interesting sociological question.[/quote]

The worker employer relationship these days is more like mercenary and an armed group , hired to achieve a goal. Once that goal is accomplished and paid for, its time to move on to the next thing, even if that next thing is to be on the opposing team….Reducing and eliminating some of those non+compete clauses by the Biden administration will help with that too, and give workers a leg up over employers…

…a for profit company that cant meet its quarter.often times will layoff people to keep its EPS… or a CEO/board will decide to sell the company to a say a SPAC or private equity firm, who in turn just want to cut cost by replacing US worker with cheaper overseas worker (or by moving jobs from CA to cheaper areas like FL or TX) irrespective of how loyal and dedicated they were…

…how “loyal” could you reasonably expect workers to be once the cards tilt in their favor?

The days of an employee and employer loyalty pledge has long past once employers stopped offering a long term pension commitment and made most average run-of+mill workerbe adopt an at-will employment agreement and an arbitration agreement as condition of employment, which an average worker not in senior management is in no position to negotiate prior to joining..those are there for a reason, to protect the company…not you…

If in doubt, ask all the Broadcom employees that lost their jobs when Avago took over and chopped and sold the company into pieces. it was great for people like me negotiated a heavy RSU stock grant, but for those engineers who worked 10+years at the same company collecting COLA raises who were suddenly terminated due to no fault of their own, many couldnt find jobs for several years thereafter or had to move from development to QA role or had to relocate out of SD because that’s all people were willing to give them, since (1 )they had no other work experience beside 1 company that narrowly pigeonholed their skills, and (2) their age set in and were compared to their 20something peers….poof…terminated due to M&A business transaction…. and trying to find a job along with hundreds of your other peers at the same time…

…or ask some of my good mobile engineers that use to work at Angie’s but left.. given how poorly the private equity firm treated them after they bought the company, theh had a boatload of stories to tell…Or ask the folks at Websense, who for some time when they were acquired by a PE firm, were either forced to relocate to TX and take a pay cut or get laid off..(uts better now they were bought by Northrop Grunman I think and now have presence again in SD as Centerpoint)

The old expectation of employee loyalty would be naive at best, since an employer has no loyalty to taking care of its employees. Your job safety is only guaranteed to the point that your immediate manager likes you AND he/she is still employed. New boss because old boss was laidoff? all bets are off.

[Coronita]

What people who are anti-remote dont see, is that even if you dont want to be a remote worker, it is still benefiting you because it is certainly equalizing wages across the US. Companies can longer as easily pull the “lets hire cheaper workers in FL or TX or other parts of the US” card out out as often… because good people in FL TX etc are no longer cheap, given that they no longer have to accept a shitty local job with a shitty local pay that local companies in those cheaper areas use to get away with. Suddenly paying someone SD wages doesnt look so bad and moving engineers to cheaper cost FL or TX is no longer really a viable option…. in fact, unless you are in an defense or public sector, tech wages are finally starting to normalize across the US, because of remote opportunities. Silly Valley and Silly Alley are starting to plateau, everywhere else is starting to move up…Long term,.the economy will contract, and remote work abuse will be reigned in. But remote opportunity wont go away. Because the upside is you can get good remote workers and not be stuck hiring less than ideal local workers and paying them SD wages for subpar work

But if local companies dont start moving their wages up, (a) they are going to have a really tough time attracting new talent, and (b) have trouble keeping top talent unless you offer something else that they cant find elsewhere… Take my most senior IOS engineer. He and I know that he could easily find a job that pays $25k more at least, in the $180-190k range probably more. Why hasnt he left? Well because he likes team and Im pretty flexible. A few months ago, he decided he wants to go travel and live out if his RV, so for the past few months hes working out of his RV as he travels around the US and uses a satellite link to dial into meetings and upload code to github, code reviews with others people work over zoom and slack , mentors some of my junior engineers over zoom, interviews people over Hackerrank, And does sprint/scrum planning snd defect triaging over Jira…no different than my other engineers that work out of UK, Australia, San Diego, Mexico City, Utah, Texas, Indiana, Tennessee, Florida, and South Dakota. He just has to share a bunch of pictures of his journey along the way….something that all of us with families with kids that (hopefully) will return back to in person school cant do… serious envy….

When he approached me a few months ago, he was ready resign thinking he had no options. I gave him the option to work remotely via a satellite link.
He stayed on , still a productive engineer. (The main issue is the satellite tech is still a little premature , hopefully something Starlink from SpaceX can solve when they are finally operational…) I get him for less that other companies would pay for him, and he wont be going anywhere else as long as he still reports to me. I get to test out this extreme version of remote work with a trusted colleague and learn what works and doesnt work so that for the next gig, i have a lot more ways to build and manage a team. And when i finally leave my current company, he isnt going to stay at the company if they dont allow him to continue this way, especially if i offer the same work conditions wherever i end up.

Loyalty no longer lies with the company… it now lies with the people who can put a team together and create a work environment better than what normally they can get from a traditional “job”

[scaredyclassic]

Part I: Duties of Employees to Their Employers
Current employment law evolved from the feudal relationship between the lords and the peasants. In many legal indexes this is still termed the law of the master-servant relationship.

[scaredyclassic]

If a remote employee in an RV gets in a wreck while on the clock, is the company liable for those damages?

[scaredyclassic]

Frolic and Detour
Primary tabs
Frolic and Detour is a phrase describing actions taken by an employee that fall in varying degrees outside of the scope of employment. Generally, a “detour” constitutes a minor departure from an employee’s duties but is still considered acting within the scope of employment, whereas a “frolic” would be a major departure from the scope of employment undertaken for that employee’s own benefit.

The phrase originated in Joel v. Morison, an English case from the 1800s, which clarified that a master is liable for actions a servant takes stemming from a master-servant relationship (now known as an employment relationship) where a servant takes a “detour” while acting in the scope of employment, but is not liable where a servant goes on “a frolic of his own” that exceeds the scope of employment. The Frolic and Detour language is still cited in cases such as O’Connor v. McDonald’s Restaurants which invoke the doctrine of respondeat superior to assess the extent of an employer’s liability for an employee’s actions under tort law.

Additionally, an employment relationship is considered suspended during commutes to and from a place of employment as there is no service rendered during this time, so Frolic and Detour is not typically implicated in these circumstances.

[Coronita]

[quote=scaredyclassic]If a remote employee in an RV gets in a wreck while on the clock, is the company liable for those damages?[/quote]

No because, technically i dont know about it officially and dont officially recognize it. its like giving someone under the table comp time. i make them fill out the timecard with a PTO request and they take the comp day off. if something happens to them , I approve and process the pto request, and then its on them… if nothing happens, when they get back, i reject and delete the pto request so it doesnt count against their balance.

Same deal, i have them fill out a month worth of PTO at a time, and if nothing happens i reject it at the end of the month. and open a new one for the next month. while the pto request is pending, no one else. sees it except me. And if anyone asks, ill just say hes planning to take an extended pto, but we are working out the details….
1 month doesnt raise eyebrows, because thats usually how long someone overseas like from china or india take their pto…longer than 1 month gets sketchy, because technically with the exception of CA employees other state employees cant rollover their vacation balances and there is a maximum of 6 weeks vacation per year for the employees with the most seniority.

This isnt rocket science.

[Anonymous]

[quote=Coronita][quote=scaredyclassic]If a remote employee in an RV gets in a wreck while on the clock, is the company liable for those damages?[/quote]

No because, technically i dont know about it officially and dont officially recognize it. its like giving someone under the table comp time. i make them fill out the timecard with a PTO request and they take the comp day off. if something happens to them , I approve and process the pto request, and then its on them… if nothing happens, when they get back, i reject and delete the pto request so it doesnt count against their balance. Same deal, i habe them fill out s month worth of PTO at a time, and if nothing happens i reject it at the end of the month. and open a new one for the next month. while the pto request is pending, no one else. sees it except me. And if anyone asks, ill just say hes planning to take an extended pto, but we are working out the details….

This isnt rocket science.[/quote]

Good luck explaining that to the lawyers

[Coronita]

[quote=deadzone][quote=Coronita][quote=scaredyclassic]If a remote employee in an RV gets in a wreck while on the clock, is the company liable for those damages?[/quote]

No because, technically i dont know about it officially and dont officially recognize it. its like giving someone under the table comp time. i make them fill out the timecard with a PTO request and they take the comp day off. if something happens to them , I approve and process the pto request, and then its on them… if nothing happens, when they get back, i reject and delete the pto request so it doesnt count against their balance. Same deal, i habe them fill out s month worth of PTO at a time, and if nothing happens i reject it at the end of the month. and open a new one for the next month. while the pto request is pending, no one else. sees it except me. And if anyone asks, ill just say hes planning to take an extended pto, but we are working out the details….

This isnt rocket science.[/quote]

Good luck explaining that to the lawyers[/quote]

why would this be any different from you driving a car on a lunch break and get into an at fault accident becaise you were dumb enough to check your email while driving? Is your employer legally liable?

I think you are just pissed that the world is changing , and others are able to take advantage of the new opportunities that for whatever reasons either you arent available to you or for some reason you are hell bent on sticking with whst you are currently doing and cant get over the fact theres better ways to doing things than just to camp out on the same thing unappreciated getting that COLA adjustment each year and then complaining about it not keeping up with rising cost of everything.

the bigger threat to remote workers is employers are no longer suck with locale mediocre talent and paying them higher socal wages to do the work. so that. money goes a lot further in ehat you can get.

[Coronita]

[quote=scaredyclassic]Part I: Duties of Employees to Their Employers
Current employment law evolved from the feudal relationship between the lords and the peasants. In many legal indexes this is still termed the law of the master-servant relationship.[/quote]

Ah yes, the W2 salaried serfdom…When you get a salary (taxed up to 30% if you include federal/state/social security), that is 2-3% COLA adjusted, which you can use to rent a piece of property, that allows you to sleep in, so that you can wake up every day and go back to work to do the same thing, so you can pay for the cost of that place you eat and sleep…over and over again…while rent and home prices adjust by, how much again??? Serfdom??? I think it’s borderline indentured servitude more like it.

Maybe that’s why so many people are doing side hustles…

Rise up, workerbees!

[Anonymous]

[quote=Coronita][quote=deadzone][quote=Coronita][quote=scaredyclassic]If a remote employee in an RV gets in a wreck while on the clock, is the company liable for those damages?[/quote]

No because, technically i dont know about it officially and dont officially recognize it. its like giving someone under the table comp time. i make them fill out the timecard with a PTO request and they take the comp day off. if something happens to them , I approve and process the pto request, and then its on them… if nothing happens, when they get back, i reject and delete the pto request so it doesnt count against their balance. Same deal, i habe them fill out s month worth of PTO at a time, and if nothing happens i reject it at the end of the month. and open a new one for the next month. while the pto request is pending, no one else. sees it except me. And if anyone asks, ill just say hes planning to take an extended pto, but we are working out the details….

This isnt rocket science.[/quote]

Good luck explaining that to the lawyers[/quote]

why would this be any different from you driving a car on a lunch break and get into an at fault accident becaise you were dumb enough to check your email while driving? Is your employer legally liable?

I think you are just pissed that the world is changing , and others are able to take advantage of the new opportunities that for whatever reasons either you arent available to you or for some reason you are hell bent on sticking with whst you are currently doing and cant get over the fact theres better ways to doing things than just to camp out on the same thing unappreciated getting that COLA adjustment each year and then complaining about it not keeping up with rising cost of everything.

the bigger threat to remote workers is employers are no longer suck with locale mediocre talent and paying them higher socal wages to do the work. so that. money goes a lot further in ehat you can get.[/quote]

All of this talk of entitled workers attitudes is so reminiscent of the .com bubble. Late 90s engineers had their pick of jobs, all chasing the next startup. And it didn’t matter how good they were since VC money was flowing like the Niagara Falls. The only difference now is the money is slowing even more thanks to the Fed. So sure the world is changing at least temporarily since there is so much easy money companies don’t have to worry about being productive. But at some point, when the music stops, these lazy remote working, entitled workers are going to be in for a rude awakening.

And by the way, outside of my Pandemic related boredom I actually like my job, my work and the people I work with. I feel sorry for folks like you that have a very bad attitude towards your work. As much time as you spend posting on this web site constantly complaining about your work and financial situation demonstrates that regardless of how much money you are making you are unhappy even though you are likely a 1 percenter.

[Coronita]

[quote=deadzone][quote=Coronita][quote=deadzone][quote=Coronita][quote=scaredyclassic]If a remote employee in an RV gets in a wreck while on the clock, is the company liable for those damages?[/quote]

No because, technically i dont know about it officially and dont officially recognize it. its like giving someone under the table comp time. i make them fill out the timecard with a PTO request and they take the comp day off. if something happens to them , I approve and process the pto request, and then its on them… if nothing happens, when they get back, i reject and delete the pto request so it doesnt count against their balance. Same deal, i habe them fill out s month worth of PTO at a time, and if nothing happens i reject it at the end of the month. and open a new one for the next month. while the pto request is pending, no one else. sees it except me. And if anyone asks, ill just say hes planning to take an extended pto, but we are working out the details….

This isnt rocket science.[/quote]

Good luck explaining that to the lawyers[/quote]

why would this be any different from you driving a car on a lunch break and get into an at fault accident becaise you were dumb enough to check your email while driving? Is your employer legally liable?

I think you are just pissed that the world is changing , and others are able to take advantage of the new opportunities that for whatever reasons either you arent available to you or for some reason you are hell bent on sticking with whst you are currently doing and cant get over the fact theres better ways to doing things than just to camp out on the same thing unappreciated getting that COLA adjustment each year and then complaining about it not keeping up with rising cost of everything.

the bigger threat to remote workers is employers are no longer suck with locale mediocre talent and paying them higher socal wages to do the work. so that. money goes a lot further in ehat you can get.[/quote]

All of this talk of entitled workers attitudes is so reminiscent of the .com bubble. Late 90s engineers had their pick of jobs, all chasing the next startup. And it didn’t matter how good they were since VC money was flowing like the Niagara Falls. The only difference now is the money is slowing even more thanks to the Fed. So sure the world is changing at least temporarily since there is so much easy money companies don’t have to worry about being productive. But at some point, when the music stops, these lazy remote working, entitled workers are going to be in for a rude awakening.

And by the way, outside of my Pandemic related boredom I actually like my job, my work and the people I work with. I feel sorry for folks like you that have a very bad attitude towards your work. As much time as you spend posting on this web site constantly complaining about your work and financial situation demonstrates that regardless of how much money you are making you are unhappy even though you are likely a 1 percenter.[/quote]

Dude. It’s 10am PST. You should be working at your job. You shouldn’t be moonlighting on the internet on a real estate blog on company time, especially if your company is so inflexible and requires you to account every work hour between 8am-5pm and expects you to have your butt in your workseat during this time even if you don’t have enough work to do because your boss totally underestimated your workload and didn’t give you enough work to occupy your 8 hour/day workshift with 1 hour lunch break.

Only people like me and my team members can do this because I trust they will get their work done if even they decide to take a short 1 hour break and do nothing, as long as they meet their deadlines. And if they get it done earlier, I don’t care what they do for the rest of their time.

Get back to work and complete your work hours and timecard accurately deadzone!

[Anonymous]

[quote=Coronita]

Dude. It’s 10am PST. You should be working at your job. You shouldn’t be moonlighting on the internet on a real estate blog on company time, especially if your company is so inflexible and requires you to account every work hour between 8am-5pm and expects you to have your butt in your workseat during this time even if you don’t have enough work to do because your boss totally underestimated your workload and didn’t give you enough work to occupy your 8 hour/day workshift with 1 hour lunch break.

Only people like me and my team members can do this because I trust they will get their work done if even they decide to take a short 1 hour break and do nothing, as long as they meet their deadlines. And if they get it done earlier, I don’t care what they do for the rest of their time.

Get back to work and complete your work hours and timecard accurately deadzone![/quote]

I’ve already established the fact that most of the white collar work force, myself included, have been mostly jerking off during the Pandemic. That’s the problem. Can’t go on forever. But sure for now it is great, I make good money, do maybe 25% of the work I used to do for the same pay. Get to go surfing or ride my bike at random times during the “work” day. What’s not to like?

Also I am a manager, nobody is keeping track of my work hours. I just have to make sure the folks that work for me get their shit done.

[Author]

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