Author Topic: Epic FU money stories  (Read 2794845 times)

TexasRunner

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1300 on: September 14, 2016, 12:26:25 PM »
How to do you initially connect with recruiters?

Linkedin.  Responding to online job ads (typically Indeed).  Sometimes through CL Jobs section.  Also, you can google search and call recruiters that work in your specific industry and location.

Seriously, make sure you have a LinkedIn account.  Update something and it will ping recruiters that you have an 'active' tag.

RyanAtTanagra

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1301 on: September 14, 2016, 12:30:03 PM »
How to do you initially connect with recruiters?

Linkedin.  Responding to online job ads (typically Indeed).  Sometimes through CL Jobs section.  Also, you can google search and call recruiters that work in your specific industry and location.

Seriously, make sure you have a LinkedIn account.  Update something and it will ping recruiters that you have an 'active' tag.

You can contact the big recruiters first, and you'll forever be on their list from then on.  I'm not on LinkedIn and I get contacted constantly from recruiters in states I haven't lived in for 5 years, because I once talked to them about a job.

FunkyStickman

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1302 on: October 01, 2016, 06:27:23 PM »
Just to give you folks an update on my situation:

I was told Wednesday that my position is being eliminated in a couple of weeks. I'm now looking for work.

They moved me from an office job to working 11-hour shifts on the factory floor assembling heavy machinery, because so many people have quit. My legs and feet are killing me- especially the hardware implanted in my left leg. Screw that, man.

Yeah.... I'm not sticking around. FU money, indeed. Got a few months income while I look for more suitable work.

ender

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1303 on: October 01, 2016, 06:36:01 PM »
Just to give you folks an update on my situation:

I was told Wednesday that my position is being eliminated in a couple of weeks. I'm now looking for work.

They moved me from an office job to working 11-hour shifts on the factory floor assembling heavy machinery, because so many people have quit. My legs and feet are killing me- especially the hardware implanted in my left leg. Screw that, man.

Yeah.... I'm not sticking around. FU money, indeed. Got a few months income while I look for more suitable work.

Sad to hear.

Glad to hear you are going to get the last laugh ;-)

TomTX

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1304 on: October 01, 2016, 06:43:55 PM »
Just to give you folks an update on my situation:

I was told Wednesday that my position is being eliminated in a couple of weeks. I'm now looking for work.

They moved me from an office job to working 11-hour shifts on the factory floor assembling heavy machinery, because so many people have quit. My legs and feet are killing me- especially the hardware implanted in my left leg. Screw that, man.

Yeah.... I'm not sticking around. FU money, indeed. Got a few months income while I look for more suitable work.

Unemployment filing sounds justified

arebelspy

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1305 on: October 01, 2016, 08:02:15 PM »
Sorry to hear it.  Glad you're in a good position financially to deal with it.  I'm sure some of your coworkers are hurting.

Good luck with the job search!  Start now, while still employed.  :)
I am a former teacher who accumulated a bunch of real estate, retired at 29, spent some time traveling the world full time and am now settled with three kids.
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No Name Guy

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1306 on: October 02, 2016, 10:40:58 AM »
Update on my FU story.  As a reminder, this is the person that got effed over by a bean counter for not perfectly following a ridiculously complex accounting system.

I chatted with him a bit back and he is currently enrolled in the local community college to learn a foreign language.  His plan is to slow travel this country next spring / summer.

Ahhh....having the money to tell bean counters where to shove it.

Metric Mouse

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1307 on: October 04, 2016, 12:13:51 AM »

Ahhh....having the money to tell bean counters where to shove it.

That 'ahh' feeling, for those that haven't felt it, is the same one that working people get on the weekend when they can enjoy their morning coffee on their sunny patio with nothing else planned.  Or, at least, that's what I imagine working people feel like...

marty998

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1308 on: October 04, 2016, 01:33:02 AM »
Update on my FU story.  As a reminder, this is the person that got effed over by a bean counter for not perfectly following a ridiculously complex accounting system.

I chatted with him a bit back and he is currently enrolled in the local community college to learn a foreign language.  His plan is to slow travel this country next spring / summer.

Ahhh....having the money to tell bean counters where to shove it.

On behalf of all Bean Counters I can tell you we have just as much trouble with complex accounting systems as the rest of you lot.

We blame the IT guys.

zolotiyeruki

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1309 on: October 04, 2016, 06:43:43 AM »
We blame the IT guys.
Shouldn't we all be blaming the lawyers and politicians?

TexasRunner

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1310 on: October 04, 2016, 07:30:07 AM »
We blame the IT guys.
Shouldn't we all be blaming the lawyers and politicians?
The answer to this is always yes.

Papa Mustache

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1311 on: October 04, 2016, 09:43:13 AM »
How to do you initially connect with recruiters?

Linkedin.  Responding to online job ads (typically Indeed).  Sometimes through CL Jobs section.  Also, you can google search and call recruiters that work in your specific industry and location.

Seriously, make sure you have a LinkedIn account.  Update something and it will ping recruiters that you have an 'active' tag.

You can contact the big recruiters first, and you'll forever be on their list from then on.  I'm not on LinkedIn and I get contacted constantly from recruiters in states I haven't lived in for 5 years, because I once talked to them about a job.

Thanks. I killed off my LinkedIn account a few years ago. Might rethink that now. Am happy where I am but always want to be ready to leap if something changes for the worse.

WerKater

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1312 on: October 04, 2016, 09:54:48 AM »
Update on my FU story.  As a reminder, this is the person that got effed over by a bean counter for not perfectly following a ridiculously complex accounting system.

I chatted with him a bit back and he is currently enrolled in the local community college to learn a foreign language.  His plan is to slow travel this country next spring / summer.

Ahhh....having the money to tell bean counters where to shove it.

On behalf of all Bean Counters I can tell you we have just as much trouble with complex accounting systems as the rest of you lot.

We blame the IT guys.
And we IT guys blame managers who requested the overly complex system (or forced us to make a well-working, simple system much more complex) because they absolutely needed some useless reporting function. With colors. And interactive. And "can you put it on a website so I can check it from my phone"?

Pooperman

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1313 on: October 04, 2016, 10:31:41 AM »
Update on my FU story.  As a reminder, this is the person that got effed over by a bean counter for not perfectly following a ridiculously complex accounting system.

I chatted with him a bit back and he is currently enrolled in the local community college to learn a foreign language.  His plan is to slow travel this country next spring / summer.

Ahhh....having the money to tell bean counters where to shove it.

On behalf of all Bean Counters I can tell you we have just as much trouble with complex accounting systems as the rest of you lot.

We blame the IT guys.
And we IT guys blame managers who requested the overly complex system (or forced us to make a well-working, simple system much more complex) because they absolutely needed some useless reporting function. With colors. And interactive. And "can you put it on a website so I can check it from my phone"?

Don't forget the sales people. They're in on it too.

Threshkin

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1314 on: October 04, 2016, 10:41:40 AM »

RedmondStash

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1315 on: October 04, 2016, 11:38:43 AM »

sw1tch

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1316 on: October 04, 2016, 12:17:27 PM »
I am about to print that and put it on my cube wall.

JLee

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1317 on: October 04, 2016, 12:30:18 PM »
Update on my FU story.  As a reminder, this is the person that got effed over by a bean counter for not perfectly following a ridiculously complex accounting system.

I chatted with him a bit back and he is currently enrolled in the local community college to learn a foreign language.  His plan is to slow travel this country next spring / summer.

Ahhh....having the money to tell bean counters where to shove it.

On behalf of all Bean Counters I can tell you we have just as much trouble with complex accounting systems as the rest of you lot.

We blame the IT guys.
And we IT guys blame managers who requested the overly complex system (or forced us to make a well-working, simple system much more complex) because they absolutely needed some useless reporting function. With colors. And interactive. And "can you put it on a website so I can check it from my phone"?

Or they want $500k in performance, scalability, and redundancy, but only want to spend $50k to do it.

mm1970

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1318 on: October 04, 2016, 12:57:49 PM »
Update on my FU story.  As a reminder, this is the person that got effed over by a bean counter for not perfectly following a ridiculously complex accounting system.

I chatted with him a bit back and he is currently enrolled in the local community college to learn a foreign language.  His plan is to slow travel this country next spring / summer.

Ahhh....having the money to tell bean counters where to shove it.

On behalf of all Bean Counters I can tell you we have just as much trouble with complex accounting systems as the rest of you lot.

We blame the IT guys.
And we IT guys blame managers who requested the overly complex system (or forced us to make a well-working, simple system much more complex) because they absolutely needed some useless reporting function. With colors. And interactive. And "can you put it on a website so I can check it from my phone"?

Or they want $500k in performance, scalability, and redundancy, but only want to spend $50k to do it.
No no no, what managers REALLY want is this great reporting system that links all the databases that we have.  So we can pull, analyze, and report data efficiently!

But!! What they want is to NOT spend any money on it.  No, we don't need in-house IT, nor do we need a full time DBA!  We are a start up and WE CAN DO IT, with one lady who lives in another state & works part time, one guy who works full time somewhere else and comes in for a few hours a week, one young guy who likes programming on the side and...people like me, who SUCK at programming but are DESPERATE to find ways to pull the data that doesn't involve hours of cutting and pasting, or querying 3 different databases.

/rant

Kitsune

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1319 on: October 04, 2016, 01:09:17 PM »
Update on my FU story.  As a reminder, this is the person that got effed over by a bean counter for not perfectly following a ridiculously complex accounting system.

I chatted with him a bit back and he is currently enrolled in the local community college to learn a foreign language.  His plan is to slow travel this country next spring / summer.

Ahhh....having the money to tell bean counters where to shove it.

On behalf of all Bean Counters I can tell you we have just as much trouble with complex accounting systems as the rest of you lot.

We blame the IT guys.
And we IT guys blame managers who requested the overly complex system (or forced us to make a well-working, simple system much more complex) because they absolutely needed some useless reporting function. With colors. And interactive. And "can you put it on a website so I can check it from my phone"?

Or they want $500k in performance, scalability, and redundancy, but only want to spend $50k to do it.
No no no, what managers REALLY want is this great reporting system that links all the databases that we have.  So we can pull, analyze, and report data efficiently!

But!! What they want is to NOT spend any money on it.  No, we don't need in-house IT, nor do we need a full time DBA!  We are a start up and WE CAN DO IT, with one lady who lives in another state & works part time, one guy who works full time somewhere else and comes in for a few hours a week, one young guy who likes programming on the side and...people like me, who SUCK at programming but are DESPERATE to find ways to pull the data that doesn't involve hours of cutting and pasting, or querying 3 different databases.

/rant

Or people like me, who find ways to run Excel files built on vlookup and formulas to extract data out of the incompatible extracts of 3 different databases. And then the bosses wonder why they can't do it... 'cause you didn't spend a few days building the 'master' Excel file that bridges the gap between your stupid system, and like hell am I letting you mess with it, that's why.

*grump*

Oh, turns out getting the data we actually need out of the system? Less than 5K programming. How long has this been pending? A year. How much of my time (and salary) has been spent figuring work-arounds to the same information? Significanly more.

No Name Guy

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1320 on: October 04, 2016, 01:39:25 PM »
Update on my FU story.  As a reminder, this is the person that got effed over by a bean counter for not perfectly following a ridiculously complex accounting system.

I chatted with him a bit back and he is currently enrolled in the local community college to learn a foreign language.  His plan is to slow travel this country next spring / summer.

Ahhh....having the money to tell bean counters where to shove it.

On behalf of all Bean Counters I can tell you we have just as much trouble with complex accounting systems as the rest of you lot.

We blame the IT guys.
And we IT guys blame managers who requested the overly complex system (or forced us to make a well-working, simple system much more complex) because they absolutely needed some useless reporting function. With colors. And interactive. And "can you put it on a website so I can check it from my phone"?

Nope...this one is straight on the bean counters. 

See, back in the day, even when I was a young pup engineer, bean counters were a sensible lot.  When there was a project, they kept the accounting codes identical throughout the length of a project.  They kept the number of codes to a reasonably small number.  Proving you were using the right codes was easy - go to your manager and get the "Big Book of Accounting Codes" which had about 1 sheet and 10-15 codes in it.  While the engineers grumbled a bit, all in all it was easy to correctly charge so rarely did an engineer get his balls busted by a bean counter for making a mistake (see the correlation - easy system, easy to get it right).  And low and behold, the bean counters could actually provide useful information on past projects.  Like, how much did we actually spend accomplishing Task X on Project Y for Customer Z, since we have Customer B asking for their version of Project Y (lets call that Project Y Alpha) and I need to put in my estimate for Task X-Alpha.\

Now, on the other hand, bean counters are useless pieces of overhead dead weight.  Accounting codes, which the bean counters control, are changed at random intervals.  They proliferate faster than rabbits, with correspondingly narrower and narrower scope per code.  We're audited by bean counters who, I suppose are competent at counting beans, but are ignorant about technical work and if what you're doing is within the described scope of the code.  Their ignorance is my problem, not the other way around - their ignorance can get me fired.   Additional variation codes are added (for example, on training, the generic training code isn't good enough any more, nope....gotta code each individual training class).  The " Big Book of Accounting Codes" no longer exists - it's now an on line resource (since with all the code changes all the time, we just HAD to have it on line instead of paper so those doing actual work could access the most up to date codes)...with an absolutely useless search function that guarantees if you don't already know the correct code, you can never, never I tell you (while twirling my Evil Mustache) find the correct code.  As a results, at times HOURS are wasted trying to find the correct accounting code.  With all the constantly changing codes, the bean counters are now absolutely unable to correlate our past project costs.  What, you want to put in a bid for Project Y Beta based on Project Y and Project Y Alpha?  Sorry, I can't correlate all the charges for Task X and Task X Alpha since we changed the accounting codes at least a half dozen times.

So, yes, in this case, it IS in fact evil bean counters.  It's not the IT system, the bean counters made the coding so effing complex, so narrow, and change it all the time so as to make it almost impossible to comply.  The bean counters own the codes.  All they have to do is stop changing them, and stop narrowing the scope of them.  Of course, the problem then is the Pointy Hair Bean Counter would have to fire 3/4 of his staff due to the reduced bean counting work load, and that would down grade him from a "big important PHB" with a corner office to a peon PHB with an inside office, seriously crimping his empire building.

And I shall have my FU money one day (which I suppose I already do, at 28-30x retirement expenses, but I want 33x as margin) and shall tell the bean counters to shove the beans up their bums, so they're in sight of their eyeballs.

marty998

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1321 on: October 04, 2016, 02:32:41 PM »
Hmmm... No Name Guy...

Our project reporting starts off simple, then Project Managers start getting upset that we tally up ALL of their expenses, including their celebration drinks.

I've had PMs ask me "what is this?" and then express shock when I send them over the invoice they signed 3 weeks earlier.

It's starts with a single account code (IT project costs), cost centre and project identifier code.

Then they complain about not getting GST refunds, so we add a GST account code for certain expenses.

Then they complain that the contractors costs are being lumped with permanent staff, so we split the staff costs in two.

Then they complain that the IT staff costs are being captured in the staff expense line and not the IT line, so we need a manual workaround that fits with their reporting and not the overall group.

Then they complain that the costs are not being broken down by region, so we implement cost centres for each country in the world.

Then they wonder why we keep coming back to them asking to confirm the details they've written on invoices because according to their own reporting requirement they've coded it incorrectly.

I shouldn't rant however. These guys help keep me employed :)

« Last Edit: October 04, 2016, 03:13:35 PM by marty998 »

G-dog

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1322 on: October 04, 2016, 04:35:11 PM »
Update on my FU story.  As a reminder, this is the person that got effed over by a bean counter for not perfectly following a ridiculously complex accounting system.

I chatted with him a bit back and he is currently enrolled in the local community college to learn a foreign language.  His plan is to slow travel this country next spring / summer.

Ahhh....having the money to tell bean counters where to shove it.

On behalf of all Bean Counters I can tell you we have just as much trouble with complex accounting systems as the rest of you lot.

We blame the IT guys.
And we IT guys blame managers who requested the overly complex system (or forced us to make a well-working, simple system much more complex) because they absolutely needed some useless reporting function. With colors. And interactive. And "can you put it on a website so I can check it from my phone"?

Or they want $500k in performance, scalability, and redundancy, but only want to spend $50k to do it.
No no no, what managers REALLY want is this great reporting system that links all the databases that we have.  So we can pull, analyze, and report data efficiently!

But!! What they want is to NOT spend any money on it.  No, we don't need in-house IT, nor do we need a full time DBA!  We are a start up and WE CAN DO IT, with one lady who lives in another state & works part time, one guy who works full time somewhere else and comes in for a few hours a week, one young guy who likes programming on the side and...people like me, who SUCK at programming but are DESPERATE to find ways to pull the data that doesn't involve hours of cutting and pasting, or querying 3 different databases.

/rant

Hey, I don't remember writing this? and this isn't my username? But, this was my life!
Funny how companies want to get everything cheap, but want to charges their customers a premium...

Papa Mustache

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1323 on: October 05, 2016, 09:36:08 AM »
Hmmm... No Name Guy...

Our project reporting starts off simple, then Project Managers start getting upset that we tally up ALL of their expenses, including their celebration drinks.

I've had PMs ask me "what is this?" and then express shock when I send them over the invoice they signed 3 weeks earlier.

It's starts with a single account code (IT project costs), cost centre and project identifier code.

Then they complain about not getting GST refunds, so we add a GST account code for certain expenses.

Then they complain that the contractors costs are being lumped with permanent staff, so we split the staff costs in two.

Then they complain that the IT staff costs are being captured in the staff expense line and not the IT line, so we need a manual workaround that fits with their reporting and not the overall group.

Then they complain that the costs are not being broken down by region, so we implement cost centres for each country in the world.

Then they wonder why we keep coming back to them asking to confirm the details they've written on invoices because according to their own reporting requirement they've coded it incorrectly.

I shouldn't rant however. These guys help keep me employed :)

Then I have nothing to complain about... Holy cow what a POS system. The lack of logic I deal with at work is a whole magnitude lower. ;)

mm1970

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1324 on: October 05, 2016, 09:43:43 AM »
Update on my FU story.  As a reminder, this is the person that got effed over by a bean counter for not perfectly following a ridiculously complex accounting system.

I chatted with him a bit back and he is currently enrolled in the local community college to learn a foreign language.  His plan is to slow travel this country next spring / summer.

Ahhh....having the money to tell bean counters where to shove it.

On behalf of all Bean Counters I can tell you we have just as much trouble with complex accounting systems as the rest of you lot.

We blame the IT guys.
And we IT guys blame managers who requested the overly complex system (or forced us to make a well-working, simple system much more complex) because they absolutely needed some useless reporting function. With colors. And interactive. And "can you put it on a website so I can check it from my phone"?

Or they want $500k in performance, scalability, and redundancy, but only want to spend $50k to do it.
No no no, what managers REALLY want is this great reporting system that links all the databases that we have.  So we can pull, analyze, and report data efficiently!

But!! What they want is to NOT spend any money on it.  No, we don't need in-house IT, nor do we need a full time DBA!  We are a start up and WE CAN DO IT, with one lady who lives in another state & works part time, one guy who works full time somewhere else and comes in for a few hours a week, one young guy who likes programming on the side and...people like me, who SUCK at programming but are DESPERATE to find ways to pull the data that doesn't involve hours of cutting and pasting, or querying 3 different databases.

/rant

Hey, I don't remember writing this? and this isn't my username? But, this was my life!
Funny how companies want to get everything cheap, but want to charges their customers a premium...
I'm sorry that you feel my pain...the pain of the last 8 years...

G-dog

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1325 on: October 05, 2016, 09:49:26 AM »
Update on my FU story.  As a reminder, this is the person that got effed over by a bean counter for not perfectly following a ridiculously complex accounting system.

I chatted with him a bit back and he is currently enrolled in the local community college to learn a foreign language.  His plan is to slow travel this country next spring / summer.

Ahhh....having the money to tell bean counters where to shove it.

On behalf of all Bean Counters I can tell you we have just as much trouble with complex accounting systems as the rest of you lot.

We blame the IT guys.
And we IT guys blame managers who requested the overly complex system (or forced us to make a well-working, simple system much more complex) because they absolutely needed some useless reporting function. With colors. And interactive. And "can you put it on a website so I can check it from my phone"?

Or they want $500k in performance, scalability, and redundancy, but only want to spend $50k to do it.
No no no, what managers REALLY want is this great reporting system that links all the databases that we have.  So we can pull, analyze, and report data efficiently!

But!! What they want is to NOT spend any money on it.  No, we don't need in-house IT, nor do we need a full time DBA!  We are a start up and WE CAN DO IT, with one lady who lives in another state & works part time, one guy who works full time somewhere else and comes in for a few hours a week, one young guy who likes programming on the side and...people like me, who SUCK at programming but are DESPERATE to find ways to pull the data that doesn't involve hours of cutting and pasting, or querying 3 different databases.

/rant

Hey, I don't remember writing this? and this isn't my username? But, this was my life!
Funny how companies want to get everything cheap, but want to charges their customers a premium...
I'm sorry that you feel my pain...the pain of the last 8 years...

I'm sorry that you are still soaking in it. My former company is still in the process of granting HUGE bonuses to the upper mngmt and cheating out on everything (mostly by putting it on hold). The amount of profit companies could make if they supported good systems and good workers is mind blowing! I think a factor of 10 increase at least.

Mother Fussbudget

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1326 on: October 05, 2016, 12:57:05 PM »
Asshair#0: (c.1986 - I'd completely forgotten about this one. Not Epic, but a 'probationary-to-FTE' lesson here...)
Just out of college, my 2nd short-lived IT job (my last, and only COBOL coding job) was at Loyal American Life Insurance (now defunct). They were the most regimented IT shop I've ever seen. Every day everyone had MANDATORY clock-in (with an old-fashioned time-clock & time-cards) within 5 min of 8am every morning, AND clock out within 5 min of 5pm.  Also, MANDATORY breaks: 15 min at 9:30am, 30 min (lunch) at noon, and 15 min at 3:15pm. Very dehumanizing. 

I was in my 8th year DJ-ing at WABB-FM - a local independent rock station - where I cut back to working strictly weekends while working at Loyal American during the week.  The reason I needed to stay on at the radio station was Loyal American was THE LOWEST PAYING IT SHOP in the region. They not only knew it, but the DevManager kept a public file posted on the system documenting the salaries at other local IT shops (this list included hospitals, tire-manufacturing plants, etc.) The DevManager was working to try to raise salaries for everyone, and hoped to raise everyone very soon.  I started at the Probationary-Programmer rate of $16K/year.  If I did well, within 3 months, I would get a raise to $18K as a regular Programmer.  Joy.  So rather than drop radio airtime duties completely, I kept working weekends to make ends meet. [NOTE:  I pursued a CS degree to increase my income potential.  I had learned the average pay at WABB was around $20K/year as a full-time DJ.]

Also, because of the low pay, I was convinced someone with a good work ethic and enthusiasm could find a better job, so I did NOT stop circulating my resume.  I kept looking for outside work while at Loyal American.  AND, the salary comparison chart gave me 5 additional places to apply! 

Fast forward to the holidays. After 3+ months I received a promotion to FTE Programmer with the updated salary effective on 12/22.  Yay!

BUT... I only received that salary for two holiday-shortened weeks.  The 2nd week of January, I was called into a meeting with the DevManager, and told I was being fired for poor performance.  I was shocked, and stunned having JUST been promoted less than 3 weeks ago - why the sudden change.  The DevManager couldn't come up with any convincing reasons, but the decision was final.  I packed, and left. 

- - - - -

Later, I found out from shocked colleagues what REALLY happened.  Fresh out of college, I stupidly included the Loyal American job on my resume.
[NOTE to others:  if you're looking for a job, and consider a job a temporary position - do NOT include that 'temp' job on your resume.]
I sent that resume to two job applications - including a nearby Sony plant with an IT department. The SONY Director of IT *knew* the Loyal American Director of IT - aka 'Asshair#0' - and called for a reference. (they were golfing buddies)  Asshair#0 apparently said:  "Oh, we were just thinking of firing him".  Bottom line:  Asshair#0 was 'embarrassed' to find one of his happy little automatons was looking for work "without permission" (?!?!) outside the 'happy Loyal American IT shop',  and fired him/me to 'save face'. 

In later years, I learned this is illegal - a violation of federal labor laws.  You cannot give someone a promotion to a regular position (which ends the 'probationary period') and turn around 2 weeks later and 'fire for lack of performance'.  The promotion assumes acceptable performance.  But I was fresh out of school, and didn't want fight it. I didn't want to deal with the negative karma dredged up by fighting the system.  AND... in my own mind I thanked Asshair#0 for giving me a "kick-in-my-complacency...ass".  Had Asshair#0 not 'fired' me, I would never have gotten off my ass and looked for work in Silicon Valley.
« Last Edit: October 05, 2016, 01:05:00 PM by Mother Fussbudget »

JustGettingStarted1980

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1327 on: October 06, 2016, 07:18:40 AM »
These petty men (and women), with their little fiefdoms.... these can't possible be happy individuals, can they?

FIREby35

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1328 on: October 06, 2016, 07:22:48 AM »
These petty men (and women), with their little fiefdoms.... these can't possible be happy individuals, can they?

I don't think so. But, they seem to be everywhere. I'll never understand it.

UnleashHell

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1329 on: October 06, 2016, 10:48:26 AM »
Update on my FU story.  As a reminder, this is the person that got effed over by a bean counter for not perfectly following a ridiculously complex accounting system.

I chatted with him a bit back and he is currently enrolled in the local community college to learn a foreign language.  His plan is to slow travel this country next spring / summer.

Ahhh....having the money to tell bean counters where to shove it.

On behalf of all Bean Counters I can tell you we have just as much trouble with complex accounting systems as the rest of you lot.

We blame the IT guys.
And we IT guys blame managers who requested the overly complex system (or forced us to make a well-working, simple system much more complex) because they absolutely needed some useless reporting function. With colors. And interactive. And "can you put it on a website so I can check it from my phone"?

Or they want $500k in performance, scalability, and redundancy, but only want to spend $50k to do it.
No no no, what managers REALLY want is this great reporting system that links all the databases that we have.  So we can pull, analyze, and report data efficiently!

But!! What they want is to NOT spend any money on it.  No, we don't need in-house IT, nor do we need a full time DBA!  We are a start up and WE CAN DO IT, with one lady who lives in another state & works part time, one guy who works full time somewhere else and comes in for a few hours a week, one young guy who likes programming on the side and...people like me, who SUCK at programming but are DESPERATE to find ways to pull the data that doesn't involve hours of cutting and pasting, or querying 3 different databases.

/rant

Or people like me, who find ways to run Excel files built on vlookup and formulas to extract data out of the incompatible extracts of 3 different databases. And then the bosses wonder why they can't do it... 'cause you didn't spend a few days building the 'master' Excel file that bridges the gap between your stupid system, and like hell am I letting you mess with it, that's why.

*grump*

Oh, turns out getting the data we actually need out of the system? Less than 5K programming. How long has this been pending? A year. How much of my time (and salary) has been spent figuring work-arounds to the same information? Significanly more.

annoying but add access to the excel and thats been my career for the last 10 years. not the next ten though. problems don;t change. staff do!!

jexy103

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1330 on: October 06, 2016, 11:59:29 PM »
Love everyone's stories! Some are truly inspiring, and at the very least, they remind me that I'm not alone in dealing with unpleasant bosses. I love a PP's line that employees don't quit their jobs, they quit their managers. So true for me. I'm cooking up my own FU story that should reach fruition in a few weeks. I'll post my story once I pull it off.

Taran Wanderer

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1331 on: October 07, 2016, 04:23:39 PM »
Hey Jexy,

No need to go force something just to have an epic contribution to this thread!

TW

jexy103

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1332 on: October 17, 2016, 02:54:14 AM »
Hey Jexy,

No need to go force something just to have an epic contribution to this thread!

TW

TW, I'm not forcing anything - this lady deserves it! I need to stick around a few more weeks for personal goal reasons, but I'm leaving as soon afterward as I can and it's because of her (and my second-line supervisor not reining her in). She thinks I'm staying until early February, so she'll be surprised to come back from vacation and I have <4 days left of my two weeks' notice remaining.

theadvicist

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1333 on: December 01, 2016, 08:40:59 AM »
Commenting just so I can see updates from Jexy! Stay sensible though.

dogboyslim

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1334 on: December 01, 2016, 09:43:41 AM »
<Image removed>

I hadn't seen that one, but this one is on the wall of one of my PMs cubes:

LeRainDrop

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1335 on: December 01, 2016, 05:07:25 PM »
I hadn't seen that one, but this one is on the wall of one of my PMs cubes:

dogboyslim, I love that!  I'm totally going to pass that around with my colleagues.

Metric Mouse

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1336 on: December 03, 2016, 05:51:52 AM »
I hadn't seen that one, but this one is on the wall of one of my PMs cubes:

dogboyslim, I love that!  I'm totally going to pass that around with my colleagues.

Nice.

jexy103

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1337 on: December 06, 2016, 01:40:15 AM »

I hadn't seen that one, but this one is on the wall of one of my PMs cubes:

I like it- the last two made me laugh. :-)

theadvicist, as it currently stands, my last working day is this Friday (Dec 9). I'll post my story once it has all played out.

mwulff

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1338 on: December 06, 2016, 05:32:46 AM »
The swing comic is brilliant, but there is also Richards guide to software development:


MichaelB

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1339 on: December 06, 2016, 07:20:14 AM »
Posting to follow. I've found this thread a couple of times and lost it--don't want to lose it again. Too good.

jexy103

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1340 on: December 21, 2016, 08:43:50 PM »
So I don't know if my situation qualifies as "epic", but it was definitely made possible by having FU money. I have a hard time being brief, so I put the TL;DR version first. ;-)

Short version: I'd worked in my office for about a year when we got a new supervisor in June who is absolutely horrid and toxic. I put up with her for a few months, counting down the days until I could quit and never have to deal with her again. When I finally left on December 9th, it got the attention of our executive-level staff, and they are now opening an investigation on the work environment in that office.

Detailed version: I worked as a civilan in the US Department of Defense (DoD), currently stationed overseas. Due to regulations, it was always the plan for DH and I to leave this country in May 2017 (we arrived May 2015 and I started working here in June). I worked in my office happily for about a year, until we got a new supervisor. I didn't use to believe that you could judge a person the first time you met them, but I've learned that you can learn a *lot* from a first impression. She immediately struck me as... well, kind of a bitch. Certainly abrasive. I thought I could learn to work with her, and I did fairly well for a few weeks, but within a month I had created a calendar counting down the number of work days I had left until I could quit. (For those of you familiar with the GS system, I was in a developmental position, meaning I was all but guaranteed a promotion after one year. My promotion date was November 27, so I knew that if I could stick it out until then, I'd get promoted to the next grade level, and then I'd be able to apply for jobs at that higher level at our next duty station in spring/summer 2017. If it hadn't been for that carrot, I would probably have quit sometime between August and early October.)

Anyway, this supervisor didn't know her own job, and therefore didn't understand what her employees actually did or contributed to the office. She was a terrible leader, as in, worse than a vacancy (her hiring manager admitted to me that he wished he had left the position vacant instead of bringing her on, but it's so hard to fire in the federal system). She was very quick to jump to conclusions and/or blame employees for a situation, but then didn't listen to explanations or policies describing why something is the way it is. I worked in a Budget Office, ensuring government funds were spent legally and judiciously, so following policies and regulations is kinda a big part of our job! She would call impromptu meetings, sometimes 2-3 times a day, disrupting our work and scheduled meetings, and half the time the subject content was only relevant to half of us or fewer, so the rest just sat there wasting their time. Then, she changed up everyone's responsibilities, so that no one had the same accounts as before. Her intent was for everyone to learn every aspect of the organization, but what it did was create a lot of confusion for us and our customers, and meant that everyone in our office was learning new accounts all at the same time, meaning everything took longer to get done.

Shortly after she started, I learned that I was pregnant. I waited about 8 weeks to tell work, around week 12/13 (end of first trimester), which was early August. I was concerned that me announcing my pregnancy might negatively affect my annual evaluation (end of October) or worse, my promotion (end of November). When I told her, she was surprisingly understanding, and I thought everything was good. A few weeks later, she told me she was changing my work hours, and I now had to arrive at work 30 minutes earlier every day (7:30 instead of my usual 8:00), take an extra 30 minutes (unpaid!) lunch, and leave at the same time (note: this 30-minute change added 90+ unpaid minutes to my work day, including commute). Due to local restrictions in this overseas location, I didn't have transportation to get to work by 7:30 (I'll provide more details if asked), which is why I'd always started at 8:00. By forcing me to change my hours, she made me choose between 1) additional mental and physical stress on me and baby, 2) AWOL for 30 minutes a day, or 3) use 30 minutes of leave/vacation time a day. DH and I chose for me to do option 3, while I simultaneously filed an EEO complaint due to pregnancy discrimination. EEO tried mediation, she refused to budge and allow me my previous hours back, and 60 days later, no change except a stack of paperwork and less leave/vacation time on the books. :-/

Fortunately for me, now it's end of November, I got a suprisingly good evaluation out of her, and she did approve my promotion. I waited until the promotion paperwork was official in the system, then dropped my resignation letter. Thing is, my supervisor was on vacation that week, so I gave my resignation to *her* supervisor... who failed to communicate to her that I had resigned. So she didn't learn until Wednesday that my last day was on Friday. Meanwhile, I'm packing up my desk and saying good-bye to co-workers. When I went to HR to out-process, the supervisor there knew how bad our office was, and she refused to process my resignation letter until I'd had a meeting with someone at the executive level to get their attention. So I scheduled that, explained to him how bad she was, including policies and regulations she's broken, the toxic work environment she'd created, how many employees had left (2 already) or were looking for other jobs (at least 3 others; we only had 10 employees), and the negative impact this one lady was having on the entire organization (when budget people leave, it takes longer to acquire funding and supplies for the mission). He took me seriously (it helped that a co-worker had already talked to him with her similar complaints), and now the organization is opening an investigation to determine what, exactly, is going on in our office. Potential outcomes range from nothing changes to they fire her for misconduct (breaking policies). But whatever the outcome, my resignation cause them to open an investigation on her, and apparently I'm the talk of the organization for it. And I'm told that her next evaluation will have to reflect the fact there was an investigation on her, regardless of outcome.

Now, I'm not due until February, so under other circumstances, I would have continued working another two months, provided more than 2 weeks' notice to minimize my position's vacancy, and overall made for a smoother transition for the organization. However, DH and I consistently save 50%+ of our income each month, and have ~8 years expenses worth in investments. He's active duty military and he alone makes more than we need in a month, and we could choose to never save another dollar until he retires at 20 years and we'd have more than enough to live on with his expected pension plus our current savings. I only worked because... what else was I going to do all day while he was at work? And who here doesn't want more savings? Now that we're expecting, I plan to stay at home for at least a few months after the birth (maybe 6 or so- see how it goes), and if I feel antsy at home all day, then I'll go back to work when I want, on my own terms, at our next duty station. If I love being a SAHM, I'll continue to do that. But it's our current savings that gives us the flexibility to make these kinds of choices, instead of needing to work until I'm due and then get only 12 weeks unpaid maternity leave before I have to go back to work because I need the paycheck.

happy

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1341 on: December 22, 2016, 04:16:59 AM »
I'd say thats pretty epic. You rock. What a difference FU money makes. How much less stress on you and your unborn child.

Dicey

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1342 on: December 22, 2016, 04:20:43 AM »
Was just going to say what happy did. Hooray for you and your FU Money!   

SaskyStache

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1343 on: December 22, 2016, 12:15:29 PM »
Finally followed through with something i had been thinking about for awhile.

Short Version: Stuck between a Guy A and Lady B. Gave notice, getting rid of most of my crap and heading to New Zealand.

Long Version: So I've been working for the same company for quite a few years. Started at the lowest level position and worked for a couple of years before my term was up. Unemployed for 3 days and hired back on with consecutive 2 month contracts for just over a year until I received another temporary position, which eventually became permanent. So far all good. Sure there were a few hiccups here and there, but every new position I took was a step up and I enjoyed the change. I also got along well with the people I was working with and it is a good company. The Canadian dream? I guess depending on the Canadian.

Here's where it starts getting interesting. Guy A has been in the wind after having been fired a couple of years back, but the union was fighting the termination on his behalf. Coworker 1 that I was working with at the time had some bad blood with Guy A and did not want to work with him again so they accepted a different position in the company when it came up. In fact they had changed Guy A's position when he was working with Coworker 1 so that nobody reported to him directly because of "issues" that arose. At this time no one really knew if he would come back even if he did win; he had issues with a few people in the company.

Anyways I work with Coworker 2 for awhile and all is well until Guy A wins and does decide to come back (fun fact: he's still incredibly anti-union (stealing his money as he puts it)). Well, I work with him for awhile and we don't get along to say the least, but the world keeps spinning. Eventually he takes a temporary position outside the main office with the ability to go back to his old position whenever he wants. I move into Guy A's position (step up) and start working with Lady B. People had given me warnings about Lady B, but I figured how much worse could it be. The first year wasn't bad, but it progressively became a toxic situation. I was making decent money and had just earned another week of vacation, but I always knew that I was not suited for the type of work I'm doing (PR) and never planned on doing it forever; there are also a few other factors that are negatively affecting my work experience. I started feeling myself become increasingly stressed and a worse person. Becoming a worse person is not a fun feeling, and the prospect of either working with Guy A or Lady B for the rest of my years did not sit well.

So I started planning my next steps. I got a 23 month working Holiday Visa for New Zealand, booked a one way ticket and gave notice.

I knew I had done the right thing after I spoke to Lady B in person to let her know that I was quitting and how the transition would go (tying up projects and who would be looking after what going forward...) before the company wide announcement went out. Apparently that was a "jerk move" and she even convinced some people in the office that I'm only quitting now to make her life harder. The office at times feels very high school if that makes any sense. But to be fair most people in the office have been genuinely interested in the decision and supportive of this choice even if some don't fully understand why I'm walking away from a good job --understandable.

I'm still far from FI, but I have enough built up that I'm relatively comfortable with this decision.


GilbertB

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1344 on: December 23, 2016, 03:09:18 AM »
Not really a FU tale more of a FTS (funk this shunt):

In France I had two successive jobs in not doing so well companies  as an industrial designer where I took a fairly low pay with the promise of large increases based on earnings.

As an aside, the industrial design world is littered with people who get the degree, a black turtleneck and think they are artists. This muddles the field for people who like the graft not the pedantic tittle.
For me, design is being an interface between client, marketing, management, suppliers, manufacturing and reality: 70% whacking your head against the desk to make opposites a whole, 25% cad work to mash thing sufficiently fine so engineers can digest it and 5% creation (not art).

In any case, 1st company I help bring back from the dead, not only create great stuff for one off's but do it so they can be rented out indifinetly after = big income boost!
So after 3 years what about, my raise boss? No can do no money. But boss proceeds to buy a new car, go on exotic holidays, new big house AND a new building in the middle of naught that has a somewhat dangerous 1 hour plus commute - and if I do any overtime, I miss the last train leaving me no option but sleeping under my desk. I resign after 4 months, one hour before a performance review. They never managed to replace me, had to sell the new building and are more or less to back to how they were when I started. In any case, it was painful due to no FU fund.

Shortly got a new job in a great little company that needed help. I managed to reform the drafting methods, because a de facto commercial architect because they never managed to hire one who was competent. In any case, after 5 great years, no salary increase, same excuses, but bosses had nice houses, nice cars, Patek watches but my pay was two low to get on the housing ladder.

So I met this great Flemish lass, slowly disengaged myself  because I had FU starter fund and moved to Belgium.

After struggling, found a job in a impressive local firm... and saw after a few moths that they were trying to pull the same MBA playbook trick on me, but I stayed on until I could find a way out while my DW was pregnant. Finally, burnt out of industrial design, mostly when I understood that all my staff was earning way more than me for less stress and way shorter hours. So l resigned and gave them a very long debrief on how they were massively mismanaging ressources out of arrogance about production - surprisingly, this got into their thick heads, the GM was ousted and the most urgent of my production improvements implemented. In any case, leaving was much easier because I had a 10 month FU cushion.

But I had had it with industrial design, sadly said an internal FU to the whole industry, and went back to Uni to become a Unlimited Machine Room officer.

Took four years to do three, so it was hard financially, finished with the "best of promotion" and "best final project" gongs, got a 1st job in salvage then got hired for a sailing position and am earning about 1.7x my last industrial design job doing something fun (yes, flanges are fun). :)

I just wish that they gave a class in High School about building a FU buffer to allow one to switch jobs/talk head high/not care about consequences, much faster than what I did.

TexasRunner

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1345 on: December 23, 2016, 08:01:37 AM »
I just wish that they gave a class in High School about building a FU buffer to allow one to switch jobs/talk head high/not care about consequences, much faster than what I did.

THIS.

Has anyone volunteered time to discuss FU / FIRE to their local high school before?  I'm thinking it would just take the support of the current economics teacher and their principal.  It is something I'm strongly considering since it would have helped me greatly coming out of HS and into college...

(We can start a new thread if need be).

Rural

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1346 on: December 23, 2016, 08:07:57 AM »
I just wish that they gave a class in High School about building a FU buffer to allow one to switch jobs/talk head high/not care about consequences, much faster than what I did.

THIS.

Has anyone volunteered time to discuss FU / FIRE to their local high school before?  I'm thinking it would just take the support of the current economics teacher and their principal.  It is something I'm strongly considering since it would have helped me greatly coming out of HS and into college...

(We can start a new thread if need be).


You'll need to change the acronym before approaching a school - while FU would be popular with the kids, it will never make it past the admin.

Guesl982374

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1347 on: December 23, 2016, 08:10:09 AM »
What do you mean...FU stands for 'Forget You'....

haha, agreed. 'FU' would never fly in any school.

JLee

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1348 on: December 23, 2016, 08:41:24 AM »
What do you mean...FU stands for 'Forget You'....

haha, agreed. 'FU' would never fly in any school.

Financially Unconstrained. ;)

TexasRunner

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Re: Epic FU money stories
« Reply #1349 on: December 23, 2016, 10:00:02 AM »
What do you mean...FU stands for 'Forget You'....

haha, agreed. 'FU' would never fly in any school.

Financially Unconstrained. ;)

Glad I asked for advice!  ;D

Maybe re-label some things, but at least rolling through the "shockingly Simple Math" with them might set some on the right track.  Good opportunity to discuss why the stock market always goes up and whatnot.