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Old 03-25-2009, 10:42 PM   #21
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I stayed until 8 PM tonight to help a marketing lady make her presentation. Strange how her 1 graph request turned into 4-6 graphs by the time I was done. Even though I gave her the complete data set in Excel, it appears that she couldn't do a 3x5 trend matrix on her own. I finally had to put a stop to it because she was eating into my study time.

A BD guy tried to pass me off as the lackey who helped him do some little details of a project when in fact I was the program manager for the project. I tolerated his antics because he was helping me pawn off a project that my group didn't want, and the VP he was trying to impress is not the kind of guy I want to work for.

There are way too many freeloaders in megacorp. Most of them are so bad and lazy that they can't use half the standard business tools that a business person is supposed to know like the back of his hand.
Ugh, this kills me. This is so true at my work, which leads to a double edged sword of a hero and trash grouping of employees. Those of us who can't stand to see stuff done wrong play the sucker/hero and the freeloaders sit around and gripe. My saving grace is good people skills which has allowed me to climb. Oh, and a boss who appreciates me. I just handed him a brief for his boss that will save the company about $1.4 million a year minus some initial fixed costs (network optimization/component sharing/throttle back on leased lines etc.) despite me telling him not to mention my name and it's all good just give me a good raise he always says, "Laurence has come up with a great idea let me spell it out for you...."

He knows I dig the praise and the autonomy and that I'll always work hard to make him look good. I already told him that I promised 5 years in the position to him, not the company. So if he leaves the department or the company I consider myself a free agent.
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Old 03-26-2009, 09:57 AM   #22
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I went back to four of his previous mgrs (all of whom gave a strong positive recommendation)...and since the guy was now history, they all admitted that the guy was a disaster and each had "passed the rock" rather than deal with issue. What a shame!
One of my commands had an absolute disaster of a civil servant-- ironically in charge of human resources.

The employee applied for a transfer to a new command, causing our XO to do the dance of joy. Unfortunately the new command's XO was a family friend, so I felt obligated to share some of this employee's challenges with her.

Much to my surprise (and my XO's shock), a year later this civil servant was employee-of-the-year material. I don't know if it was the new environment, a clean slate, or a forewarned XO. She was pretty happy with the whole situation.
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Old 03-27-2009, 09:11 PM   #23
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I never wanted to be a manager, and might not make a good one. I got along reasonably well with coworkers, and perhaps that would not allow me to be an effective manager, being too soft.

The Megacorps I were with all had a career path for people who wanted to remain technical workers and not getting into management. It was called the "technical ladder", among other things. Once I was on it, found out that there was no avoidance of politics and people's issues. The only way out, I thought, was to join small start-ups, where a group of like-minded technical guys could define our own work environment.

Hah! Just a trade-off of one set of problems for another set. The latter even cost me lost wages besides years of hard work.

I am telling ya, "fun work" only exists in your dream. If you get paid to do something, it's gonna extract something from you, either body or soul or both.

I am working part-time now, but "je ne veux pas travailler". Mais oui, je veux dejeuner!

PS. Search forums for "travailler" if you wonder what it is all about.
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Old 03-28-2009, 03:20 PM   #24
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I
The only way out, I thought, was to join small start-ups, where a group of like-minded technical guys could define our own work environment.

Hah! Just a trade-off of one set of problems for another set. The latter even cost me lost wages besides years of hard work.

I am telling ya, "fun work" only exists in your dream. If you get paid to do something, it's gonna extract something from you, either body or soul or both.

I am working part-time now, but "je ne veux pas travailler". Mais oui, je veux dejeuner!

PS. Search forums for "travailler" if you wonder what it is all about.
LOL! Where I am in a start up that got bought by mega corp. Besides the nicer web-company furniture, the crap is exactly the same. You're dealing with people who are basically fighting for a pot of money. The smart ones try to make the pot bigger, but that doesn't prevent others from just wanting to keep the pot the same but get more of what's in the pot for themselves. Oh, yes, it's costing me $15k in pay a year. I may have to go back to being a hardware engineer just so I don't dig a bigger hole for myself.
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