Careerchat III

[Iskaral Pust]

16 hours ago, Triskele said:

Dang, that makes me very appreciative that this annual 3% has been more or less a given for me.  They do have some kind of disclaimer that if you're below satisfactory on your reviews you won't get it, but I think most people at my place do get it and not that I'm in any kind of special status.  

So even if inflation is low if there's inflation at all and folks don't get any increase they are effectively having their salary lowered over time are they not?  ETA:  Mine is definitely a university environment, one of the examples you listed.  

Yes, lots of people have seen their real wages (wages adjusted for inflation) decline in recent years.  And not just low paid, low skill people.  Annual wage inflation was very low until 2017, when it finally moved slightly higher than consumer price inflation.

This pretty typical after recessions when the rebound is slow/gradual.  Employees are extremely resistant to reductions in absolute/nominal wages so when a business suffers in recession they cannot reduce wages for anyone.  Instead the business reduces headcount immediately (employees are more accepting that 10% of them lose their job than 100% take a 10% pay cut) and then as things start to rebound and the business needs to hire people back, they give raises below inflation for several years to offset the expanding payroll.  This gives a similar overall progression in terms of total labor cost as a % of revenue during the recession and slow rebound without ever cutting nominal/absolute pay for anyone.  Most employees will accept a cut in real wages if it is happening slowly over a long period.  They don’t like it but it’s less of a drop-tools-and-walk-off trigger than a cut to absolute/nominal wages.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

On 3/27/2019 at 10:17 PM, Triskele said:

I have a question related to this.  Did you get a 3% raise on top of an annual cost-of-living or keep-up-with-inflation increase or do people are your place quite possibly go years without any increase whatsoever?  

I've felt somewhat fortunate that for years now my institution has given 3% or 3.5% annually to anyone who isn't getting bad reviews, so as long as you're just OK it's a given that you're getting that small bump.  So much so that it feels like people don't really talk about it as a "raise" per se at all.  

Reading your post made me realize that since I've been at one institution for the bulk of my career that I'm fairly clueless about how common or uncommon this situation is.  

Sorry I forgot to get back to you. You get an annual raise ranging from 2-4%. The first 2% is for what you articulated and the remaining 0-2% is based on performance. Most people get 2.5-3%. I hit 4% one time in the 3.5 years I've been here and everyone said that's totally unheard of. It happened because I reformed an entire department and saved the company a crap ton of money. And enter in new terrible boss and she strips the department from me for reasons I can't fathom other than I torn one of her policy changes to pieces in a meeting in front of the entire office. She basically wanted to triple part of the offices workload and had no understanding why that would fail. I walked everyone step by step why it would, including drawing a math equation on the whiteboard for them.

Everything I said would go wrong did go wrong and now everyone in the office hates one another. I hope to be gone soon and am bummed my chance to move to D.C. to be a lobbyist for science in education and policy making feel through.

F*****g nepotism.....

[Isis]

On 3/28/2019 at 3:17 AM, Triskele said:

I have a question related to this.  Did you get a 3% raise on top of an annual cost-of-living or keep-up-with-inflation increase or do people are your place quite possibly go years without any increase whatsoever?  

I've felt somewhat fortunate that for years now my institution has given 3% or 3.5% annually to anyone who isn't getting bad reviews, so as long as you're just OK it's a given that you're getting that small bump.  So much so that it feels like people don't really talk about it as a "raise" per se at all.  

Reading your post made me realize that since I've been at one institution for the bulk of my career that I'm fairly clueless about how common or uncommon this situation is.  

Getting a 3% pay rise for just showing up would be mind-blowing to anyone in the UK public sector in the past 10+ years. Plenty of civil servants have been on pay freezes. 

Cost of living pay rise is not automatic in my field (HE). If it wasn't for union negotiations everyone would get nothing or close to that. One year our employer offered 0.5%. Without unions that would have been that. It was negotiated up to close to 2%. As always union members pay their subs, go on strike (lose wages) etc... And then everyone gets the benefit, union member or no. 

Also cost of living pay increase offer isn't annual. Ours is every two or three years. 

I got a pay rise for doing an exceptional job last year. But my HoD and I had to fill out pages of paperwork first. Not automatic. And a review panel can refuse it. 

There is no pay rise linked to review in the public sector here. IF ONLY. I'd be raking it in! 

So yeah, anyone with an annual increase for doing nothing special should count themselves lucky. 

[MercenaryChef]

i did something I have never done in my career. our hotel sold and I was courted by a hotel with two restaurants in Baltimore that I helped open a year ago when we were in the same company. in January I went and had a good two weeks running the place after their chefs had quit. 

they offered me more money to live somewhere with a cost of living 40% less.

so, for the first time in my career I asked for more money. I told them pay me or I will have to go. and believe me i really didn't truly want to. i love my restaurant and crew. they came back with more than i asked for and i got a sizable raise for my exec sous chef too. 

hurray.

[Mexal]

4 minutes ago, MercurialCannibal said:

i did something I have never done in my career. our hotel sold and I was courted by a hotel with two restaurants in Baltimore that I helped open a year ago when we were in the same company. in January I went and had a good two weeks running the place after their chefs had quit. 

they offered me more money to live somewhere with a cost of living 40% less.

so, for the first time in my career I asked for more money. I told them pay me or I will have to go. and believe me i really didn't truly want to. i love my restaurant and crew. they came back with more than i asked for and i got a sizable raise for my exec sous chef too. 

hurray.

Well played MC. I'm in the process of doing something similar. Pay me what I think I'm worth or fuck off. It works.

[S John]

2 hours ago, MercurialCannibal said:

i did something I have never done in my career. our hotel sold and I was courted by a hotel with two restaurants in Baltimore that I helped open a year ago when we were in the same company. in January I went and had a good two weeks running the place after their chefs had quit. 

they offered me more money to live somewhere with a cost of living 40% less.

so, for the first time in my career I asked for more money. I told them pay me or I will have to go. and believe me i really didn't truly want to. i love my restaurant and crew. they came back with more than i asked for and i got a sizable raise for my exec sous chef too. 

hurray.

Nice man, congrats

[Lizard Queen]

Not happy with my current point in career. One of the reasons being that I have to do overtime to make ends meet. My rent is about as cheap as it gets in my metro area (and I do split bills with a roommate). I live pretty frugally... 

I had a better job with my organization, but it was nixed when the state did a budget cut to human services (or perhaps specifically disability services, I don't recall), and I transferred to a different job in the org. The better job had mild relevance to what I'm getting an MS in. Between the gentle amount of overtime per month and slightly higher pay rate, I would have had a lot more time for my senior project paper and the pro bono work I'm doing for required experience. I had a stomach disease that flared from stress, so I didn't work on my project at that time. One of the reasons why I went to my current job and the previous one was because of the illness, and they were low-stress and easy... But now I've more or less recovered, and I don't think I'll revert back too easily, so I could take a job with more stress.

Oh, I also decided that I don't want to pursue a career in what I'm getting the MS in lol. Mental health work honestly always interested me greatly, but at the time I was afraid of it being too dark and I also didn't realize the variety of jobs within. I also wanted more dough, so I pursued I/O psychology. But I didn't like it in the end... Sooo, my current objective is to find a job that pays more (so I can work less and finish my MS sooner) also will lend to more experience in mental health work. I fear getting a graduate degree for jobs I don't want, so exploration is desirable, ha~

[Datepalm]

I think I'm about to make a hot mess of my summer, with too many things on the table none of which I am saying no to and all or most of which may be extremely problematic...

1. In talks to take on a data-gathering project for a large organization in a small country. This would be a few weeks of fieldwork and some analysis, but they want it started mid-May, which is squeaking right up against my teaching commitments at home (I would be grading exams like all night for a week while trying to run around and get this fieldwork done during the day...). It is a very cool project that is 100% in the middle of my research agenda, but its not per se research and I'm not sure how much influence I can have to nudge it into being a good research program as well - it may be it can fit perfectly, it may be not. The again, it is also an actual paying job and building up the practitioner side of my CV.

This may also all be absolutely moot because I realized at some point small country does not have diplomatic ties with my country - this could be anything from a minor inconvenience for Large Organization to hire me, to a complete undoable. The people I'm talking to there either don't realize I'm from where I'm from, or don't realize this could be an issue. It's been primarily mailing back and forth on technical questions so far (and no actual offer - there were, I think, other people in the running...maybe there still are) but supposed to do a call next week, where I'm going to have to bring this up. Hopefully they don't think I've been terribly duplicitous up to this point...

2. I've also gotten a simultaneously vague and serious invite to go to a different country for a short trip to do some preliminary seeing/thinking about a different project which I would join in on long term. This would be, if project 1 above works out, again squeaking up right against it.

Well, it could go a few weeks later, except then I would not overlap as much or possibly at all with the inviting person's own time there...this might not be a professional problem, but project 2 is mixing the professional and the personal like goddamned cookie dough (see, oh, many many iterations of my whining in the dating thread between roughly 2 and 4 years ago.) Lots of mixing. Terrible idea. I desperately want to do it.

(a. I may try go to a conference and a wedding right after this. They are close to each other, but otherwise very far away from anything else - Brazil's northern coast. Everywhere else in this post is in East Africa.)

3. After that, I will finally get to a third country in which I am actually supposed to be spending my summer. I would still have a respectable 2 months for research there, but I might just be exhausted and swamped with everything by then and trying to juggle various follow up and analysis for now 3 ongoing projects + keeping up with a couple other side-gigs (some data analysis, some translation) plus working on my actual exams...On the other hand, I'm still waiting to hear back about whether I've got any funding for project 3, so if that doesn't come through, pursuing other paid opportunities and avenues becomes much more reasonable (to myself and, more importantly, to my advisor.)

I kind of rationally recognize something will have to give here...but also really want to try and pull it all off.

Who am I kidding, project 2 is going to be a catastrophe.

 

[Tears of Lys]

On ‎4‎/‎2‎/‎2019 at 9:52 PM, Triskele said:

Nice, MC, that sounds glorious.

 

So I was whining upthread about how I've been surprised how little my degree has seemed to get in bites when I've been applying around at my larger organization.  Well I just got an invite for a phone interview later this week for a thing that would easily be an increase in pay and is not at all based off of my current experience.  It's hard to conclude anything other than that someone saw the degree and was like "let's put this on the list."  And since I've only been applying in earnest since last Fall this is encouraging in that it suggests to me that this blind applying is not hopeless after all.  So no idea what the odds are on this one but excited to get the invite just the same.  

One the current position I've been posting about the last few threads I'm debating tonight telling them no thank you, and I was feeling that way before this call above came.  I just can't see how it's going to result in a significant pay increase, and I'm certain now that I don't want to jump from my current situation for this one unless it was for an increase I can't pass up.  

Then what've you got to lose by finding out if there is a pay increase involved?  No sense in scratching it off your list until your suspicions have at least been verified.     Wouldn't you feel like a REAL monkey if it turned out they WERE willing to pay a lot more? 

[Tears of Lys]

19 hours ago, Triskele said:

SNIP

Thanks, Trisk  I just love closure.    

[HexMachina]

Training contract rejections starting to trickle in. Disappointing, but not unexpected

[Datepalm]

Updates! The project in the country I'm not sure if I am able to enter seems to be going forward. Large Organization's response to what I, from my parochial corner of the planet, perceive as a major, major thing was, eh, shrug, we'll figure it out. Contracts are being issued and plane tickets are being booked. We shall see. Meanwhile, the funding for the project I am supposed to be working on came through, so I will do that too. Conflicting slightly with both of them is that other project with that guy I should not be working with but can't quite talk myself out of because of reasons, which has gone silent but also does not require anything happening with at the moment because I still haven't the foggiest why he wants to work with me and I have now thought about it way too much and have. no. time. for. that. Partially, because, also, the whole workplace bullying thing from earlier has now gone into proper formal dumpster-fire mode with complaints being filed and meetings being called and their maybe now lawyers involved. I'm on the sidelines as this is now being handled on the institutional level, so, uh, lets see how that goes. But my students are adorable so there is that!

[Lizard Queen]

I was offered a new job today, which I'm happy about. I don't like my current job. I cried in a bathroom today, and then later had a pounding heart. Some of the clients are jerks and some of them have fits of rage. It's hard for me to deal with.

The new job starts June 11th, which feels a little far away xP 

[Iskaral Pust]

23 hours ago, Lizard Queen said:

I was offered a new job today, which I'm happy about. I don't like my current job. I cried in a bathroom today, and then later had a pounding heart. Some of the clients are jerks and some of them have fits of rage. It's hard for me to deal with.

The new job starts June 11th, which feels a little far away xP 

Congratulations.  When your job is a source of toxic stress in your life then it's time to go.

My firm is about to undergo get another re-org, the third in five years.  I already know that my current role & title will no longer exist because the realignment of functions creates a fissure right down the middle of my current responsibilities.  I'm trying not to be too stressed about it.  The president of the firm has called me a couple of times to reassure me about my bright future and make sure I'm not ready to jump ship.  I was quite stressed a week ago but now just tired.

Conversations are ongoing about how the leadership roles will be divvied up.  Once that's all decided, including where I land, then it will get announced to the rank and file.  They don't even know yet that another re-org is in the offing.

I feel very bad that at least some of my current people will end up reporting to the second biggest jerk in the firm.  There's not much I can do to protect them from it.

[Lizard Queen]

22 hours ago, Iskaral Pust said:

Congratulations.  When your job is a source of toxic stress in your life then it's time to go.

My firm is about to undergo get another re-org, the third in five years.  I already know that my current role & title will no longer exist because the realignment of functions creates a fissure right down the middle of my current responsibilities.  I'm trying not to be too stressed about it.  The president of the firm has called me a couple of times to reassure me about my bright future and make sure I'm not ready to jump ship.  I was quite stressed a week ago but now just tired.

Conversations are ongoing about how the leadership roles will be divvied up.  Once that's all decided, including where I land, then it will get announced to the rank and file.  They don't even know yet that another re-org is in the offing.

I feel very bad that at least some of my current people will end up reporting to the second biggest jerk in the firm.  There's not much I can do to protect them from it.

 

Thank you. I actually landed in my current role after organizational restructurings -- my previous job with the same company was laid off and I slid into another role. It sucked. I hope your own org transitions go well :). Those big changes can be unsettling for sure...

[breathe.teardrops]

Okay first couple of posts on the forum and my first in this thread. My first thought is that I could tell all the people here what my job is because I'm never really going to be found out for being the real individual that I am by my coworkers if I say my career name but would love to say it just to be like, "Okay this is what is the thing that really drives me and the thing that has helped shape me into a person."

What I do is music therapy for an organization I don't want to say. I love it because I think about it like I'm teaching the people I help skills if they would like to do it in real life. 

I even walk to work.

[Datepalm]

On 4/7/2019 at 4:29 AM, Datepalm said:

I think I'm about to make a hot mess of my summer, with too many things on the table none of which I am saying no to and all or most of which may be extremely problematic...

1. In talks to take on a data-gathering project for a large organization in a small country. This would be a few weeks of fieldwork and some analysis, but they want it started mid-May, which is squeaking right up against my teaching commitments at home (I would be grading exams like all night for a week while trying to run around and get this fieldwork done during the day...). It is a very cool project that is 100% in the middle of my research agenda, but its not per se research and I'm not sure how much influence I can have to nudge it into being a good research program as well - it may be it can fit perfectly, it may be not. The again, it is also an actual paying job and building up the practitioner side of my CV.

This may also all be absolutely moot because I realized at some point small country does not have diplomatic ties with my country - this could be anything from a minor inconvenience for Large Organization to hire me, to a complete undoable. The people I'm talking to there either don't realize I'm from where I'm from, or don't realize this could be an issue. It's been primarily mailing back and forth on technical questions so far (and no actual offer - there were, I think, other people in the running...maybe there still are) but supposed to do a call next week, where I'm going to have to bring this up. Hopefully they don't think I've been terribly duplicitous up to this point...

2. I've also gotten a simultaneously vague and serious invite to go to a different country for a short trip to do some preliminary seeing/thinking about a different project which I would join in on long term. This would be, if project 1 above works out, again squeaking up right against it.

Well, it could go a few weeks later, except then I would not overlap as much or possibly at all with the inviting person's own time there...this might not be a professional problem, but project 2 is mixing the professional and the personal like goddamned cookie dough (see, oh, many many iterations of my whining in the dating thread between roughly 2 and 4 years ago.) Lots of mixing. Terrible idea. I desperately want to do it.

(a. I may try go to a conference and a wedding right after this. They are close to each other, but otherwise very far away from anything else - Brazil's northern coast. Everywhere else in this post is in East Africa.)

3. After that, I will finally get to a third country in which I am actually supposed to be spending my summer. I would still have a respectable 2 months for research there, but I might just be exhausted and swamped with everything by then and trying to juggle various follow up and analysis for now 3 ongoing projects + keeping up with a couple other side-gigs (some data analysis, some translation) plus working on my actual exams...On the other hand, I'm still waiting to hear back about whether I've got any funding for project 3, so if that doesn't come through, pursuing other paid opportunities and avenues becomes much more reasonable (to myself and, more importantly, to my advisor.)

I kind of rationally recognize something will have to give here...but also really want to try and pull it all off.

Who am I kidding, project 2 is going to be a catastrophe.

All of this has now happened/is happening. I'm drowning a bit but I'm loving it. Its now piled up to 14 flights, 4 countries, 3 projects, 2 conferences, 1 wedding, and, so far, 1 broken heart, all quite as expected.

[Iskaral Pust]

So about that re-org going on in my firm: I was in full-on depression last week as it was announced, especially since most details were still TBD and the only real announcement is that we're changing yet again and a stupendous asshole will now have huge sway over lots of people.  My motivation dropped to zero and I couldn't find much solace for those of my team who will fall directly under that sway. 

The president of the firm is still making a big effort to tell me that this is being done with the best of intentions and it will turn out fine.  And reassuring me that I personally will have a significant and central role to play.  I appreciated his effort and I want to believe him but I suspect the lived reality will be unpleasant.  Regardless, I'm tired of losing sleep over this -- figuratively and literally.  I'm done with being stressed & disappointed about it, now I want to figure out how to live with it.

So I'm navigating my options internally and thinking about external options too.  I know I have a couple of extremely likely alternatives that would be easily available (but no guarantee of perfect fit), but I'll use this time to explore other, more exotic possibilities too.  As in type of firm, not location; I'm trying not to relocate my family again.

[Tears of Lys]

On ‎6‎/‎17‎/‎2019 at 4:09 PM, Iskaral Pust said:

/snip

The president of the firm is still making a big effort to tell me that this is being done with the best of intentions and it will turn out fine.  And reassuring me that I personally will have a significant and central role to play.  

/snip

I truly hope that the significant and central role you will be asked to play is not the bad guy having to break the news to all the underlings and then cleaning up the mess that's left.

My husband has been in those shoes, and it definitely is unpleasant.  

[Iskaral Pust]

On 6/19/2019 at 12:26 AM, Tears of Lys said:

I truly hope that the significant and central role you will be asked to play is not the bad guy having to break the news to all the underlings and then cleaning up the mess that's left.

My husband has been in those shoes, and it definitely is unpleasant.  

Sorry to hear that Tears.  Sometimes when you’re the only manager left with any perceived integrity or humanity, then you become the messenger even if you vehemently fought the decision.  And maybe that is better for the underlings to at least have some genuine compassion and honesty as the message is delivered, but it is very tough on the person bearing that message.  Not caring (sociopathy is convenient) would relieve a lot of that burden but makes it insincere and hollow.