Reply to: I learned a very important lesson about employment recently

[SueEllen]

Some great posts.

I suppose to balance out, there are some large good companies that do try to look after their employees. I read on BBC news a few weeks ago about how Aviva helped their employees with mental issues.

I guess it's business, nothing personal as the saying goes.

What is said in the news is just advertising and not completely true as the problem in large companies is your feeling of the company depends on how good your own managers are. So if you get good managers they tend to cushion you from the sh*t in the company, there as poor ones add to it.

I have known plenty of different people work in work in different sectors of the same large companies. One sector is treated well while the rest are treated like sh*t. The ones in the sector that is treated well then don't understand why some of those in the other sectors moan, want to go on strike etc. and cannot believe their company is actually a bad employer for a large percentage of their workforce.

[Lost It]

I'm not in IT, I build things. I'm still a contractor. Company I'm with now, well as a contractor, when I was diagnosed with cancer 4 years ago they could have just said "Tata, come back when you are fit. Or not".

Instead of which they "invented" work that I could do at home for two or three days a week, tidy this document up, sort out the stuff saved on the server, write the package for this job that isn't starting for 3 months, that kind of thing. Couple of hours a day or "whatever I could manage".
And paid me my rate for three days a week until I got myself fit post op and ready to work full time again. 8 weeks of that, much better than Sick benefit.

Yes there are still companies out there that look after you. Even as a subbie. Few and far between, but I've been a subbie for so long now I wouldn't known how to be permie. I'd have to pretend to like people who I think are wazzoks.

Biggest problem it causes me is when I get other companies head hunting me and offering more when I'm in the middle of a project and my conscience says "Yes but".

Which is where I am right now...

[HealthyProtein]

Some great posts.

I suppose to balance out, there are some large good companies that do try to look after their employees. I read on BBC news a few weeks ago about how Aviva helped their employees with mental issues.

I guess it's business, nothing personal as the saying goes.

[BR14]

The words 'wedgie' and 'dinner money' spring to mind.

cruel, you are, - cruel !

[northernladyuk]

Ultimately a company can kick employees to the curb when things are going tough.

In a company I am working at redundancies are happening and I am seeing loyal employees go, and even those who returned back to the company only less than a year ago. The experienced ones left as soon as the company was bought out by a private equity firm.

Listening to a colleague at a canteen table over coffee one of them revealed they turned down £13,000 less from another company to join this one so he could learn more meant nothing when they gave him the redundancy notice.

How can there be such double standards? In interviews the companies question your loyalty and tenures in the past yet totally screw down employees when times are tough. I suppose they are the ones with cash and control.

But it's just horrible to see what is happening at the moment. In the last 12 months more than ever I have experienced office politics and seeing redundancies and it's taught me that ultimately your career is a business and you have to separate work from personal things and not look at companies through rose tinted glasses as some entities that will have your back when times are tough.

The words 'wedgie' and 'dinner money' spring to mind.

[bluetoaster]

Have seen this so many times, so yes the OP is a little naïve or just still learning.

Employers have no empathy with their minions.

I stepped into contracting for 2 reasons:

1. to control my own destiny, i.e. where and when I work, rather than be shunted around the globe on projects where I didn't want to be.
2. to make myself immune to employment (or unemployment depending on how you see it).

So point 1 was covered soon as I quit my job. The company wanted me to go work 4 hours away on a 1 year project and I had just moved house and got married -- so that was my trigger to control my own path.

Point 2 - It's taken a few years of contracting, some big losses/lessons but I am mostly immune to the whims of clients or employers.

+1

[fullyautomatix]

Brillo was a permie once?! :O

Yes permie slave of his Ex wife. She still has him on a dog leash.

[mattfx]

Brillo was a permie once?! :O

[SueEllen]

I think this "lightbulb" moment happens to us all at some time in our career.

Being near retirement now, I look back at the first 25/30 years of my career where it was certainly thought of as a job for life. People starting out more recently have a totally different mindset to careers as do employers in the way they treat employees.

My "moment" came after my 3rd redundancy in 7 years and being particularly badly treated by my last employer. This pointed me towards contracting and I'd never go back.

The thing is if you are under 45 you should have been aware of it from the time you started working.

[Hertsseasider]

I think this "lightbulb" moment happens to us all at some time in our career.

Being near retirement now, I look back at the first 25/30 years of my career where it was certainly thought of as a job for life. People starting out more recently have a totally different mindset to careers as do employers in the way they treat employees.

My "moment" came after my 3rd redundancy in 7 years and being particularly badly treated by my last employer. This pointed me towards contracting and I'd never go back.

[SueEllen]

Feck me, - 4 pages of stating the obvious.

40 odd years obvious.

To be fair some people are sheltered from it until their 40s.

At one employer I had when someone moaned to me they didn't like something I always said to them "Well you can go get another job" If they were over 30 they would then be horrified. Those under 30 all had plans to use the job as a spring board to something else.

[BR14]

Feck me, - 4 pages of stating the obvious.

40 odd years obvious.

[BrilloPad]

That's the olde 'getting used as a cheap contractor' IT project manager trick in investment banking, in all fairness the IT manager has little control over the amount of budget he receives.

In investment banking I often noticed patterns whereby IT managers who got wind of budget cuts and redundancies would often go on a recruitment drive just BEFORE the redundancies came about so as to protect themselves and their main core of essential project workers who could then be shielded by the more recent project recruits who would be promptly be let go when the redundancies finally came about; I saw this occur countless times.

I was a permanent.

I remember a manager at UBS in 1996. Took over in June. Doubled the staff. Blamed the previous manager. In 1997 sacked all the new staff and got a huge bonus.

Used that to take over as head of IT at Barcap. Then head of IT at Bridge Systems. Then head of IT at Disney Internet. At that point on $40m a year.....

[sbakoola]

2013 I was begged by an IB to rejoin. I had skills they could not get.

18 months later redundancy.

Whoever said life was fair was a liar.

That's the olde 'getting used as a cheap contractor' IT project manager trick in investment banking, in all fairness the IT manager has little control over the amount of budget he receives.

In investment banking I often noticed patterns whereby IT managers who got wind of budget cuts and redundancies would often go on a recruitment drive just BEFORE the redundancies came about so as to protect themselves and their main core of essential project workers who could then be shielded by the more recent project recruits who would be promptly be let go when the redundancies finally came about; I saw this occur countless times.

[BrilloPad]

If you work in the city and your client/employer says "my word is my bond" take their bond.