Some thoughts about jobs in general and employers for that matter...

[A-1 (imported)]

Yes, jane kane, that is so, but they DO ROLL along nicely...

[devi (imported)]

This all kind of reminds me of when my younger but bigger brother took Latin in high school and then tried to speak Spanish using some of it. I think some of those words he used did come out as cuss words, come to think of it and the grammar is very different too. So if someone went into a cantina and said, "Ego sum, ideo puto"... Ah never mind. Kind of funny. Chuckle. Chuckle. Okay so I went totally off of subject but it still would make for a good joke. Sorry everyone.

[fhunter]

First of all, I never expected, that this thread would get so many answers . So, thank you all.

Fhunter, efficiency does not depend much on how fast or efficiently employees work. It is mostly depending on how management is able to arrange bits and parts to work together so they can give their maximum. Also, it is as important to make that effort of a company as useful for a customer as possible, so he or she is able and willing to pay more, which in the end turns into profitability of your work and efficiency.

Such attitudes like you describe, sooner or later will have disastrous results. I've seen that. I would suggest you to start to seek for other job just in case your current company may suffer "setbacks". Or if you really have power and desire, you can fight from inside for the company you are working foe. It could earn you something one day. I can tell you that it is the same shit everywhere. only shit is located in different places.

I understand about efficiency and attitudes, it is just, that big company sinks longer... So, I do not know how much longer this would last.

As for fighting it, I have done that once and it was success. We switched university department to using Linux and open source software (mostly), after the Ponosov's case (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponosov%27s_case). But at that time I had support and resources. That was an "interesting" (and stressful) experience in itself, and a good one for learning.

As for this time - I do not think, I can fight this.

As far as IT is concerned it is no longer new, magical nor highly regarded. Employers no longer want creativity they want low cost and adherence to the "company philosophy" (whatever that may be). Now IT people are regarded in the same light as any other office employees, thus their opinions are not of any exceptional value. They are

just faceless extensions of management policy. --FLO--I understand this too. I am okay with the point that IT is not ne

w and magical, but it is still engineering, and not listening to engineers warnings usually does not end well.

There's a big clue when you say you work for a "big" company. Those are perfect breeding grounds for errors, covered by other errors heightened by mistakes and then it goes around again. It's very difficult to find who actually has some authority to get anything done. (I can think of one American company, quite large, in which these things don't hapen and that's Koch Industries. It's privately owned so whatever is needed is almost immediately produced if it exists.) Is there something in you that would find a smaller, more personal organization to your liking? No criticism, please understand, but when experessions such as "corporate culture" begine to be discussed I always see conformity coming down the pike.

As to SAD...it may distract you to learn that there are those of us to whom gloomy, overcast days, days that are dark, short of sunshine make us happy. At one point I worked at a lab in Murmansk and the sun went away for 34 days...It was terrific. At one point I considered living in the Southern Hemisphere from April to October and then retreating back across the equaltor for the balance of the year. My two ideal places would hav

e been San Carlos de Bariloche in the Andes and Fargo, North Dakota. If I want winter, I want guaranteed winter.I switched to current job from rather small company (it was about 40 people total), it built measurement devices for telecommunications. The job was interesting, and all was more or less ok. There were some bad things, but it was more or less ok.

Then company bought new office and moved across the city (my travel time increased from 35-40 minutes one way, to 1:15-1:30 one way). Then some employees recalculated the salaries and understood, that the "increase" was a restructuring, and total income had not changed in 2 years (that with 10%/year inflation). Then I asked directly, and got refused the salary increase. Add in the mix other idiocies, and that the company was 99% male (sorry, barracks style humor is not my cup of tea), and I felt like an alien there by the end. So I decided, that it was time to go.

Probably I should have seen warning signs in the current job, and searched for something better.

[Arab Nights (imported)]

Start looking.

I span the norms between where the ideal was to work for a big company until you quit, died or got fired and the current norm where nothing is forever and usually not all that long. As it has turned out, my personal strategic advantage is that I have a very wide level of experience kind of in everything everywhere. That was not thru planning. I just have been fired on more continents than most people have visited and I was just trying to keep my head above water. Still, the end result is a lot of really varied work which has value when you get older. It is the observation of a forty year career consisting of the same five years of experience repeated eight times or forty years of experience.

Embrace change. It can be a stomach churner but the most interesting lives are not linear.

[fhunter]

And the closure to all this... our team got downsized, as in totally.

The other two teams survived.

So, the IT outsourcing company I was working for is now searching for another project to fit my qualification... If in a month there would not be something, that would fit me... well, I'll be on my own in job search.

Somehow, I manage to look at this and smile.

[daifu-orchid (imported)]

Hope you're alive and well. Never expected to hear of Ponsonov on EA. Truly a site to amaze. Making the best of OSS and making it fit with corporate pre- and misconceptions is a thankless but occasionally fun exercise. (First thought Samba was just glue, and then saw something of what you can do with it in mixed networks.) It does seem that reliability in people and systems is still valued. Hope the world looks better now.

[nvrgag44 (imported)]

Reading all this adds to the continuous reinforcement of my belief that I made the right move in '83 when I decided to do my own thing. The company has 2 employees, my wife and me. I'm was fortunate enough to enjoy a good reputation among my peers that gave customers enough confidence in my ability to give me work. We didn't get rich but we are quite comfortable. We set the thermometer where we want it, play the music we like to listen to and set the volume where we want it. If it's a rainy weekend we may work and go for a motorcycle ride during the week. We start and end the work day when we want to. We vacation when we want to. No regrets.

[daifu-orchid (imported)]

Seems that old-style employment becomes less and less enjoyable, and doing your own thing with your own skills is increasingly attractive. Also it seems that the older unemployed in the current recession have done best with starting their own businesses. Maybe after the upheavals the world is changing for the better? A more appropriate balance of work and reward together with a happier life?

[nvrgag44 (imported)]

There is very little loyalty in today's business world. The ones I really feel for the most are retirees or those close to retirement who suddenly learn their pensions and/or health insurance or other things they worked for all their lives are in jeopardy. That's just not right.

[daifu-orchid (imported)]

Yes, I lost many retirement benefits a year or so from retirement. A quick sideways move mended some but not all. While the workforce is now incentivized towards "every man for himself", I wonder how things will work when the economic cycle turns to workforce shortage rather than the current glut where anything from the employer is unfortunately acceptable. The current setup is fine for a "get rick quick" model, but industrial giant companies spanning centuries didn't find prosperity this way? I would like to think that inter-human values are still worth a little even in times of fiscal dive for the bottom line. If not humanity, supply and demand will cause employers to behave better eventually?