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Stannis Eats No Peaches

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Paybands are terrible. Used to have them too. They can completely put all responsibility for pay raises on the employee. Usually without giving them the agency.

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12 minutes ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

I once literally had my own pay band. 

I believe those things are more commonly called wedding rings :P

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2 hours ago, HoodedCrow said:

Isn’t it often because you are smarter than your boss?:)

Never ever be smarter than your boss. That is a CLM. (Career limiting move). 

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Pay bands are a bureaucratic way of governing pay consistency.  Their primary benefit is to help employers control the rate of pay growth — especially since most middle managers want to and actively try to give their people above-average raises each year — but they have an ancillary benefit of enforcing consistency across employees, which tends to benefit women and minorities, who might otherwise not bargain as aggressively and/or have less unconscious support from their managers.  It also gives managers an easy way to push back on any grabby employees who are always demanding raises even if they are paid the same as all the others who do the same work.  There is a subset of people who just demand more (not just pay; think of people who always try to blag airplane upgrades) because they figure they might get something for asking and it costs them nothing to ask.

@A True Kaniggit and @Isisasking for a 12% pay raise off-cycle, especially for someone new to the job, looks like a large ask on the surface.  The context is wages have grown approx 2% annually in most of the developed economies over the past decade.  Off-cycle raises are usually for promotions or to counter-offer to avoid losing a proven employee.  Employees on low hourly rates are rarely paid for their individual ability (that usually comes at higher paid roles where individual skill has a greater value impact; hint: there’s a reason they measure some workers’ value only by number of hours worked rather than output generated).    If it’s a cog role, then the system doesn’t want to spend time sorting out individual ability — it’s not worth the time or effort at that low level of value contributed.  It’s also not clear to me that pointing to an incompetent employee — e.g. who cannot type at a normal speed — is a basis for higher pay; it just means the incompetent employee should no longer be employed there at all because they weren’t worth even the low wage.  OTOH 12% of a very low wage isn’t very expensive and this is the moment when workers have more bargaining power and low end wages are rising (in the US at least) and there should be greater acknowledgment that high quality employees (responsible, accountable, ability and effort) are worth keeping rather than struggle to replace them.  But if the job is really worth so little that the employer still doesn’t show any flexibility, then the high quality employee should recognize that they’re in the wrong type of job and that it’s better to switch to one where higher quality actually produces enough value to matter.

TLDR: don’t expect a meaningless cog role to get paid for their individual ability.  If you think you’re above average, then make sure you’re in a job where your individual contribution is meaningful and therefore worth more. 

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2 hours ago, HoodedCrow said:

If you are an excellent computer programmer, you can wear a cow suit to work if you want to, well, maybe not anymore?

I think you have to wear a tie with the cow suit.

I’ve been trying to make Tie Tuesday a thing, but the other 3 men I work with don’t seem interested.

I’m a one man Tie Tuesday.

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6 minutes ago, HoodedCrow said:

No ties, TK! Unless you want people to know that about you:)

One of the few things I miss about the Air Force was Blues Mondays, when everyone dressed nice. That's why I want to get Tie Tuesday going.

Too many people at this place just where scrubs everyday, even though we are in an office setting.

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So one of my managers at the Very Large Organization currently has me running 3 projects in parallell, one which is really large and complicated and involves managing a team of 15 people and like an actual budget and everything, where letting it slip will seriously be throwing people's time (and the money) down the drain in ways that can't be recovered, because its currently in the field and that's that. Manager is much more interested and engaged in Much Smaller Projects, that have a fraction the budget and much more flexibility and less logistical complexity, and I think thinks that Big Project is something that I like pushed a button on and is done, and why isn't the report for the other two done....Even if it wasn't for the Big Project, the Smaller Projects are just time consuming and require multiple stages, and they just sort of want it all done in parallel (which is impossible, as inputs for stage 2 are gathered at stage 1, those at stage 3 based on the product of stage 2 and so on.)

So I feel like I've over-promised, or not  made things very clear about how this actually works, but, well, I thought manager knew the deal. So that's on me...I need to stop saying yes to things assuming I'll just sort of pull it off. I also think the Very Large Organization thinks of me as  firm or something and like why haven't I put an intern on it yet and its...nope, just me. If I'm troubleshooting a thing on Big Project, then I am not writing up the yet-nonexistent findings of Small Project, because there are limited hours in a day. And I'm just talking about the most mechanical side of getting things processed and down on paper, nevermind any like highfalutin silliness about putting in necessary time to develop rigorous empirics or meaningful intellectual contribution or whatever.

Anyway that is a conversation I will be having, if anyone has any advice. *do not get defensive...do not get defensive...do not get defensive...*.

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  • 4 weeks later...
17 minutes ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

Just as bad as people who misuse “reply all”

 

aaaaaugh

Hahahaha!

This happened a couple weeks ago for a message from Human Resources.

Someone replied how they wanted to handle their extra PTO hours to 100+ people.

 

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I’m hiring for two open positions on my team.  It seems like a really hot job market currently but we’re still getting great receptivity from anyone out recruiting team contacts.  We don’t post most jobs publicly.

These past few months we’ve seen quite a few people across the firm depart for COVID-prompted reasons like childcare, family relocation away from the NE and just taking a completely different career path to chase a passion project.

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Oh goodness. Anybody ever feel like you just want to quit and rescue puppies, or open a pie shop or become a gardener? Or just retrain to become an assistant conservationist or archeologist or anything to stop the flood of corporate bullshit drowning your brains?

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21 minutes ago, RhaenysBee said:

Oh goodness. Anybody ever feel like you just want to quit and rescue puppies, or open a pie shop or become a gardener? Or just retrain to become an assistant conservationist or archeologist or anything to stop the flood of corporate bullshit drowning your brains?

One of our reasonably senior guys quit to focus full time on his film production side project.  Some junior people decided to move to California or Colorado with vague notions of new careers, and then landed in fintech anyway once they realized that other careers would pay.  

That’s probably our biggest shift: a few people drifting into fintech or crypto because it’s more of a Wild West and they hadn’t made it particularly big in plain ol’ asset management so far.  Chaos is a ladder.

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In one month I hit my one year anniversary at this place and am taking 10 straight days off to celebrate it.

From Tuesday to the Thursday after.

 

I will work the Monday before leaving to try and make things as easy as possible for the people covering for me. And then I work the Friday I get back to try and fix things.

(I also avoid the insane weekend plane ticket prices)

Friggin Jean Yes.

 

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10 hours ago, RhaenysBee said:

Oh goodness. Anybody ever feel like you just want to quit and rescue puppies, or open a pie shop or become a gardener? Or just retrain to become an assistant conservationist or archeologist or anything to stop the flood of corporate bullshit drowning your brains?

Every. Single. Day. 

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20 hours ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

It’s a hot af job market. We’ve had four people bail on offers $230k and up. Like “oh, I got a counteroffer to double that” or “yeah….I accepted your offer, but A Very Dark Stone Company came in at $500k and they said I don’t have to move to NYC for two years and can work remotely.”

I'm working 90 hours a week and we are incredibly understaffed. 

It’s insane.

This feels extremely relative. 

It is not as hot in the service sector I'm in.  Particularly as everyone seems to need management, but the pay is not reflective of the need.  Particularly going into a new situation where those on the front lines are non existent. 

I'm absolutely in the market for a move and I'm lamenting that virtually everything I know is stuck in the dining services sector.  In light of the current situation, I'm absolutely ready to get put of the University Sector, at least the side I'm in.  I had a really great interview about 10 days ago with a local hotel that is looking for a F&B Director. Despite the fact that that they're slow walking their F&B reopen post covid (none of their furloughed employees wished to return and they're struggling, as is everyone, to fill those slots), if the pay scale is in any way close to what I need, I will jump.  11 years with my current company and it feels like they've done everything they can to do things wrong, specifically at my current account...

Today was day one of at least a minimum of 21 in a row, in which I will have to skip a wedding I'd committed to attend, my daughter's birthday party, my son's sixth grade orientation, and a couple other things.  

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Honestly the job market is insane (anyone know any junior tax lawyers who want to work in M&A at a big firm for someone who is only slightly more crazy than the average tax person (I.e., me)?). And on the other front I get recruiter calls at least daily to try to get me to lateral (most of them can’t pay me CLOSE to enough).  I’ve decided what I really should do is start my Luxury Yurt business and take it public via SPAC.  Seems like it would work, right?

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2 hours ago, A True Kaniggit said:

In one month I hit my one year anniversary at this place and am taking 10 straight days off to celebrate it.

From Tuesday to the Thursday after.

I expect frequent updates to the Drunk Thread.

As for my career, I'm plugging along.  20 years in and still haven't met with a recruiter.  But my income is based on relationships with my existing client base, not some sort of salary, and changing seems like a right pain in the ass without way more upside.  

I remember someone saying that you can't double the hours you work and double your income (I think it was Don Connelly from Putnam Investments for anyone on the retail investment side, he's got so much great stuff regardless of this point) but that's probably not the case for me over the medium term or longer.  I recall one of my managers talking about the Pareto principal / 80 20 rule, and I told him the next day that he shouldn't talk to us like that if he wants to hit his own numbers, because I'm willing to take 64% of the income for 4% of the work, running that twice.  And if I don't like working with someone, I don't.

On the other hand, I'm not burned out at all, have plenty of time for my clients when they have something come up, and look well preserved for my advancing age.  Realized the other day that I straight up remember shit that happened 40 years ago. 

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