A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
Our Philosophies:
Our Goals
(Business people) speaking a language familiar and dear to them. Its portentous nouns and verbs invest ordinary events with high adventure; executives walk among toner cartridges, caparisoned like knights. We should tolerate them - every person of spirit wants to ride a white horse. -William Strunk Jr. (The Elements of Style)
The fast-paced unpredictable high-energy part refers to HR hiring and layoff practices.
I thought it was unpaid overtime and abusive management.
Even low cube walls would be great compared to all the "open floorplans" I've been in the last few years.
It's not like everyone is having virtual meetings all day in an open floor plan office with terrible reverb on their day pass desks...right?
Nah bro we'll fix it software. Like virtual backgrounds but for sound bro!
Panopticon
Unpredictable: "Our requirements are constantly changing due to bad planning."
High energy: "There will be a lot of yelling."
Fast-paced: "Your deadlines will always be due last week/month/year".
The last place I worked, my role, by necessity, had to be the last step before any submission deadline. We received all of these deadlines months in advance.
Without fucking fail, the engineers on the team would wait until 0-6 work days before the deadline before sending me any markups with which to even start my work. Typically, these markups would contain anywhere from 2 to 6 weeks of work on my part.
Invariably, when I took this chronological conundrum to the project managers, their reply was some variation of, "I understand the difficulty but this deadline is set in stone. If you need to work overtime to get it done, I'm okay with that."
For my first year and a half, I would then proceed to work insane hours to get as much done as I possibly could.
Finally on one project, this got so bad that the engineers sent me markups literally the night before the shit was due. In the meeting the next day where we were supposed to review the submission (but for which I was preparing to explain to them why we wouldn't have any submission), instead, the project lead opens with, "Hey all, some of you have communicated to me that you're pressed for time on this, so we're going to push this deadline out by six weeks."
After that I never worked one more minute of overtime to meet a deadline for them.
At least it’s a private cubicle and not an open layout where devs are crammed in cheek-to-jowl in a cacophony of chaos.
It's not even the noise that's the worst part. It's that you know you can't scratch your ass without everyone noticing.
Translation, "we want someone who's ok with us harassing them to do stuff outside work hours"
"No."
"You were hired here on the basis of being a team player."
"And I put in exactly the hours required of me by the job description. You're the manager; if slack needs to be picked up, it's your responsibility to do so, not mine."
My bosses all hate me, and I'm happier than ever.
Damn they gave you two monitors? The break room must have a pinball machine.
Yeah but they're both 1080 Acers
Meh, for basic tasking it's better than a single one
Tbh, two monitors don't help me at all. I set up a cool home office during covid with all upgrades I could think of. Hardly ever used the second monitor. I even had difficulties filling my laptop screen with meaningful additional content. Also, neck pain of constantly working with a turned head is real.
The most important upgrade IMHO is a good chair, followed by a USB-C docking station and maybe a robotic arm for the display to adjust height and free some space on the desk
Depends heavily on what exactly you're doing.
The chair, absolutely. But I'll take the second monitor over a docking station any day (what are you even using it for? Connecting a laptop?).
2 monitors, full size keyboard with the numpad, comfortable mouse, and no interruptions.
100% on the chair, I'm waiting for work to pick back up and that'll probably be my first good purchase cause my old piece of crap makes sitting at my computer for the minimal hours I do terrible.
But I live by my multiple monitors. When I'm sorting through receipts, doing payroll, data entry, anything, not having to alt-tab is a godsend. I grabbed 2 28" monitors, a keyboard/mouse, and a laptop dock, and it completely changed my workflow from my 14" laptop screen that I just plug my laptop in and close the lid. I need the laptop for portability, but having my landing setup makes all of my mundane office work so much easier.
LOL, those are reserved for important people when they come in. They're not for the people that work in the building.
Last place I worked had a ping pong table that never got used by the people that worked there, as well as an Xbox I never saw on
Wait they got monitors? I always had to salvage what I could for my own private junk pile or steal it from somebody when they left the company. And a desktop PC? Never in my life it's always fucking laptops because they want to make sure I can work from anywhere
Corporate accounts payable, Nina speaking. Just a moment...
Yeah... it's just we're putting cover letters on all TPS reports now.
Did you get that memo?
also, every single job listing says this, and i'm NOT willing nor able to work in such an environment
god i love capitalism
Yeah and I fucking hate it because I don't just assume everyone is lying so I never apply to those places.
I don't think these idiots realize how hard they're shooting themselves in the foot with these kinds of ridiculous descriptions...
Also the "college degree required, starting salary: 2 peanuts and a dead cat, bimonthly pay periods."
Absolute insanity.
It's actually a fast-paced and unpredictable environment. The job is about how fast you switch from playing games/browsing lemmy to look like you are working when the "management" passing by
I'd love a cubical, at work we only had open spaces the last 15 years or so. It's so loud and distracting, I hate it. But the upper management always has their own individual office where they can just close the door.
Answering the phone:
"Yes, this is Glenn from very important global company, how may I help you? Okay, thank you for calling. I will need to check that with our local team in Barcelona. Oh, you know Anthony? Terrific guy. I'll get right back to you on that. If you have any more specific enquiries for our Barcelona team, you can contact them by logging into the web portal. Remember to check your email for the verification of your user registration which you will need to logon to our excellent online support service. Can I help you with anything else today, sir? Have a pleasant day."
Turning to manager.
"We need to fire Anthony. Yes some dude called Anthony in Barcelona is causing customer contact. How am I supposed to make the daily EBITDA reports on time when my phone is ringing constantly?!"
Heh
It's freaking me out that it looks so damn similar to where I used to work. The only thing this lacks is shelving cabinets above the desk.
Like Mr. Anderson’s cubicle in The Matrix?
TWO MONITORS!
why get a reasonably sized monitor when you can get these babies for $20 each in bulk orders
Yea, but that picture doesn't convey the thumping techno your cubeighbor has running constantly because I've got ADHD and that shit is serenity for me.
My first full-time job, I had the Creative Zen MP3 player, boasting 14 hours of playback and a gigabytes of storage. Looking back, the only way I made it through successfully was that device. And Napster et al. I'm sure. Long live thumping beats! (Thank you for listening to my talk).
Is that a page-feed scanner? Anyone that hands me a sheet of paper had better realize it's going to sit on my desk until the end of the day, and then get dumped in the recycling.
When I worked on the accounting system at my last job they had scanners just to scan invoices. They were scary fast.
I got myself a Brother scanner to digitise my paperwork. Double-sided color scans converted to PDF in just over one second per sheet. Impressive!
I WFH now (thank you covid), but my jobs have been in similarly drab cubes and offices.
The work is dynamic and fast-paced. Having crazy lights and crap on the walls would not improve the work.