What a week, and its not about to get better.
The only manager in the building who had a clue, and was the only voice of reason between the shop floor and upper management, got fired this week. Now my supervisor, is planning on bugging out. Were going though some changes, and we know that the company is for sale.Theres about 100 people in the building. Its a machine shop, and all the jobs we have running, are losers.
There is so much politics, @ss kissing, backstabbing, incompetence, and outright stupidity going on. Morale cant get any lower, in fact if i get fired, it would be a blessing.
My problem is this...ive been here for 23 years now. Pay and benifits are good, plus im getting 5 weeks of vacation. I guess i want to know ...how it is else where? If i quit, am i just gonna find the same crap every where else? Is this just the way things are?
If its this bad every where else.....America ,we're in trouble.
Im not a whiner, usually im cheerful, but i think ive had enough.
I want to hear from both sides, (if there is any good stories out there).

 

Been working a bleeding-edge DoD intel system for the last couple of years and my patience has worn very thin. The whole intel community is split between a "clean sheet" approach vs. slowly migrating legacy systems to an enterprise architecture. Progress is hampered only by politics - huge defense contractors influencing Congress and 4-stars to lean one way or another. In existing DoD intel systems, information is shared after it's digested/interpreted by the individual collectors. In the new architecture, all information is shared before it's digested (internet model) and analysts have much more data at their fingertips when they perform interpretation. Our problem is a classic example of legacy systems trying to survive as technology forces them to decompose, nobody wants to see their system pulled apart and re-factored into a J2EE architecture. DoD developers make big bucks fielding systems (HW and SW), a J2EE environment forces them to concentrate on SW and leave the high-markup HW fielding to someone else. At a minimum, we're talking hundreds of millions of dollars that these big developers will lose as the new architecture matures. The same story was repeated in the banking industry but they had Y2K as a forcing function, they didn't have much time to debate. As a tax payer and a warfighter advocate, I'm pushing as hard as I can for the new intel environment. My big boss is also very foward leaning, she absolutely "gets it". One level below her though, bias and fear are keeping DoD's net-centric vision from being a reality. I can't stand the thought of giving up, I doubt I could walk away from it no matter how frustrated I get. My personal pressure valve is to tell my coworkers that if things don't change for the better, I'll quit and become a long haul truck driver:-)


hondabuster - If someone else ran your company into the ground and you are one of the better employees, get out while the getting is good. You may lose a week's vacation going to a new company but you shouldn't need to start at the bottom of a new ladder. 23 years is a lot of experience, you may find that you're really worth more than you think. If you do leave, look for a job with more responsibility and use that as your reason for leaving, not the fact that your old company has its head up its ****. I've interviewed a lot of people over my 20 years as a DoD consultant, figure out a "positive" reason for leaving and stick to it. Unless the interviewer has specific knowledge of how your company has been operating, bad mouthing your current management won't score any points in an interview. Good luck!

 

Hondabuster:

I retired earlier this year due, primarily, to politics and crybaby co-workers. I was President of our Union and active in several areas of employer/employee relations. My performance evaluations, health and job enjoyment were always good and their was no reason I could not have stayed working for several more years. Just got fed up.

If you are too young to just hang it up then I would suggest you really, and I mean REALLY, look around for other job opportunities proir to leaving what you have. I know a number of really talented people that have been laid off and are now working for minimum wage with no benifits due to the current job market. Sometime we just have to suck it up and hang in there till the time is right to change.

Many companies are doing a lot of underhanded things to get rid of senior people and replacing them with temps that do not get all the benifits. Makes the bottom line look a lot better for the short term but costs more in the long run. Management can control the moral of a company so easily and make it nearly intolerable to continue to work there. Don't let them run you off its not in your best intrests to leave.

Good luck, we all have been there at some time in our working life and it ain't easy to deal with.

 

Work around here is pointless.
Since I was 14 I have drown myself in the pool of Internet and Network security, learning every inch there is to know
about Public Key Cryptography, Enterprise+ level security architecture under Unix, Linux(GNU) environments and all of
the BSD environments. I am currently learning the concepts of AI programming in the C language for intelligence gathering
algorithms as well as attack algorithms that are known and unknown for a managed switch I am building. I am also a Linux Kernel hacker, inwhich I redesign system kernels for in-depth standard permission based access control lists as well as roll based access controls. Right now however, I work at an ISP doing ungodly simple and boring over the phone technical
support which requires none of my skills. Plus, I make less than $10.00 an hour after two years of employment there
in a job that will carry me no where except into a life where I can only afford bills and that's it. Since my job is so
worthless, I usually spend my time teaching the higher up guys (the network administrators) corrections for everything
they do wrong. I usually get a slap on the hand for doing it, but sometimes you cannot help noticing if an important
unix server is running a vulnerable version of sendmail when they should be running q-mail. It is also not hard
to see that every switch is vulnerable to switch poisoning or some other major problem. They think their servers are
great because they use root jails on their network daemons. I laugh at them. So basically I get paid a crappy wage
to do boring work that doesn't require even the smallest ammount of thought, and I get to sit in meetings and listen
to these guys who think they know what they're doing make company wide changes that are stupid.
Thanks for reading.

 

I work for a small wholesale lumber brokerage. There're about fifteen employees. My bosses consist of the owner who's about 54 and his son who's 34. They ride Harleys and have hot rods and are the coolest people you could imagine. They have a sales goal for their brokers and when you hit that profit goal within a month's sales they buy you a leather chair for your office. Except for me what they said is they'd pay $1000 of the cost towards a blower for my Mustang Cobra. Cool huh?

I've seen all sides of this. Many bigger companies are mired in politics, and have beancounters running the show making horrid decisions. But many smaller companies just hope and pray for somebody worth a crap to come along that they can hire. If you have experience, knowledge, and work ethic, believe me there are places for you out there where you will be treated like you should. It's just a pain to find those places. Small and mid size businesses are your best bet in my opinion.

The beauty of the free market is that big ponderous companies with poorly treated disgruntled employees have a product that reflects that. Small, agile and creative companies with happy and productive people then grow and take market share. It all sorts itself out. Hang in there.

 

my job sux [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-sad.gif[/img]

 

Shady you got that right.
Hondabuster I'm sorry that is happening. Pretty much the same thing happened to the company I work for.
Before the 'buy out' - the business was cool even though we didn't make barely any money. But everyone's opinion counted
and we would hold meetings a few times a week to discuss pretty much everything, even if it wasn't something related to
our job specifically, we'd all get to toss an opinion in there that way in the end the end result might be a bit better
than previously thought and easier on everyone. It was like I was working with family. I knew everyone at a personal level instead of at a co-worker level and everyone hung out and had a blast. We were even invited to the bosses house to party
once which was sweet. The company that bought us out is big and corporate. After some guy there assumed that 5 of his
employee's could do the same ammount of work as us in the same ammount of time or less, they laid off every single person
in our office except 2 or 3 sales people. Everyone in technical support and in the network operations center were laid
off or quit first because of our ballsy GM who told us what was up way prior to the 'cut off' date for us. If it
wasn't for him, the company buyers simply wanted to walk in our office one Friday night and simply say we don't need
you anymore, go home and don't come back. The problem around here is probably the same it is everywhere, no one wants
to pay you what you're worth. There are CCNAs, A+, MSCE etc and guy's with bachelors in computer science I work with
and they don't make more than $10.50 an hour here after 4 years or so of employment.
I'm sorta rebel against these companies around here. Ever since I was little I was taught the fact that
you only work to make someone else richer. You get paid the minimum ammount just enough so you don't quit.

 

I can honestly say I would not want any of your jobs. To me, the average American Worker works their tail off. They work more than they play, work more than they are with their families. Is there a 40 hour week anymore? Not very often, most work more than that.

You get up in the morning, go to work all day, come home late, eat, do whatever you can, go to bed, and start over the next morning. Then have two day, usually, to recover and do what you can tl make up for the week.

Now throw in a family:
You get up in the morning, get the kids up, make breakfast and lunch, get kids off to school, go to work, come home, take kids to sports, do homework with kids, various other things with the kids sometimes, diiner when you can, go to bed, get up next day and start over. Then usually busy on the weekends.

Granted, most people have to do this and they make the most of it. Lots are happy, some are not. Life is what you make it though.
It is to bad though that people spend more time at work than they spend with there familes. Most make the best of it though.

I would never want to go back to that.

When I go to work, I work for 24 hours. Sure I get to go to bed, most of the time not until late. Often get woke up 3 or 4 times a night for about an hour at a time, some times not at all. I would say on average, when I go to work, I work 2 -3 work days straight. Granted not every single day is that way, but on average. We are also away from our families for 24 hours. We may only work about 9 days a month, but that is at 24 hours a day. 216 hours a month. if you work 45 hours a week, that 180 hours a month. Our pay and benefits are good.
I only describe this much about my job because we do work as much as everybody else, but some people fail to realize that just because we only work 9 days, doesn't mean we work less hours.
Our schedule is great, you can't beat it. We get to spend more time with our families, and have time to accomplish things during the week that others cannot. We do miss some family stuff, holidays, etc. But the advantages outweigh those things.
We may have labor/management issues sometimes, but usually not near as bad as some of you have describes and not as bad as many others out there have it.

My point is
I have the best job in the world and would not change it for anything. We are not better than any of the other workers out there that work for a living. I feel very fortunate and appreciate the job I have, period.

I am a Firefighter

 

Good luck to everybody

 

Quad4Fun, I am very glad to hear you have a job that suits your life situations...thats very cool.
It really sucks that people have to work endlessly for so many years just to live. Things shouldn't be that difficult..
IMHO it causes way too much stress on peoples lives which can lead to very bad things.
Granted, I can complain all I want but not get anywhere, but seriously, things could be easier.
I'm not saying I have it the worst or anything, or even pretty bad....

It's just the fact that I talk alot with my elders and they fill me in on how things are.
I don't think people should get out of high school, go get a full time job, and work full time until they are 60 years old and retire.
That is so dumb it isn't even funny. To me if I did that, I would say I completely wasted my young and the healthiest part of my life
by working more than anything else. So there I would be, 60+ years old and retired, yeah now I might not have to work anymore,
but now after 40+ years of full time work...I have no stamina, i get my grandkids names wrong all the time, I forget stuff, if I were to
go out and run I'd probably break something....or whatever. And I'd think, I worked my entire life to get to this point and not have to work?
Not for me!

I think people need to be rebels and not surrender to the way things are. But not be stressed out about it.
I think everyone should be able to go for anything they want to in life and actually have it within reach.
In my life I WILL own a 1970 GTO Judge and I WILL own a full MX 250R like I've always wanted since I was 13.
Thing is, I don't wanna be 50 years old and get them either...so it's gonna be tough.
Right now they aren't within good reach though, I made $9.50 an hour putting in 40 hours a week and after I get paid almost
all of my money goes to bills and I'm left with $20 for the next two weeks.

Everything that happens like crime are an obvious statements that things are happening the wrong way.
If things were affordable or atleast within reach and reasonable, people wouldn't have to steal cars, rob banks, gas stations, mug people
and so on and so forth. I remember when I told my grandpa and grandma how much I was gonna be making when I started my new job
at an ISP. I told him $9.00 an hour. And he said that wasnt bad. I said not bad, that's crap! Sure, $9.00 is ok if I intended to live with daddy
the rest of my life and drive the same POS truck with a busted windshield and 205,000 miles on it that leaks oil and has bald tires and gets 14 miles
to the gallon and couldn't pay to get rid of. No one can survive on no $9.00 an hour, sure, you could work two jobs, one fulltime and one part
time and you could do it, but then whats the point of payin $400 in rent in some crappy apartment when you're never there anyways. You're basiicaly
paying $400 a month to 'put your crap somewhere' and sleep. i used to live in some crappy town with a population of $1200, THE cheapest place
for rest in that town was $425 a month...wow, and it was a dump. I guess the apartments that don't leak water from the ceiling were $600 a month.

whew
ok im done now
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