She Was Fired, But Never Told 373
A fun one: "An employee at Network Commerce Inc. (formerly shopnow.com) found out that she was fired when her company cellphone was cancelled, network account was disabled and building keycard wouldn't work. This article from The Stranger talks about the somewhat callous attitude that this particular dotcom has taken towards its soon to be ex-employees." Now, with readership as diverse as ours, I'm sure there are a few good stories out there about getting fired from a dot-com.
Re:I Quit and I'm still waiting for my paycheck (Score:2)
Re:Going postal? (Score:2)
Re:There are .COM's and there are .COM's (Score:2)
Have you been in a cave for two years? Yahoo has already cratered in the market, but the paychecks are still coming through and they are still meeting their numbers every quarter. Ebay too.
Of course I'm not arguing that these companies are sitting pretty, but they are in no dnager whatsoever of going under, not even close.
In fact, you could argue that things are going according to strategy - both of these companies should comes out of the downturn with most of their competition wiped out, allowing them to raise fees for advertising and services without fear of losing customers (immediately). This happens in any competitive market - eventually two or three players emerge who gradually push prices back up for services or merchandise once the competition is pushed out.
Fairly Common in the Valley (Score:3)
I used to work for $(MUMBLE_SALT_PILE_MUMBLE), and they were actually fairly nice to me, as such things go. During one of their countless 'reorganizations', they gave me six weeks' notice, as there was a deliverable they needed me to finish. Everyone else had to be out of the building that same day.
Despite the fact that I was staying on, the IS department (IS&T, Information Services and Telephones, which we constantly referred to as "isn't" behind their backs) froze out my account. No big deal; I still had an open 'telnet' session to the build machine, which I kept open until the account was reactivated.
I was a good little drone, and although I publicly flamed IS&T for spending time farting around setting up a PointCast proxy rather than focusing on keeping essential services running solidly, I finished my deliverable, and left only with those things that rightfully belonged to me.
I would have sworn they would be F*ckedCompany.com material by now. But, remarkably, the company is still in business, focusing on its core competency (spending lots of money creating derivative products).
Schwab
It's more fun to be on the other end... (Score:3)
The manager would, without a word, go to the break room, unlock the comment box, and place the card in the hand of the hire, who by now couldn't pronounce the word "sorry" if his life depended on it.
The manager never seemed to mind - I suppose the shakeup was just what most of the victims needed.
Unfortunately... (Score:2)
One of the cool things that I have learned is that there are websites out there that critique IT companies in local areas... Here in Chicago, we have http://themayreport.com. [themayreport.com] The may report allows ex-employees (or anyone for that matter) to give opinions of the companies they work(ed) for. All the comments are available for posting on the web, and if the person so chooses, they may have it posted anonymously...
I think this gives a great way for people to do their own research (even if its based on hearsay) of what ex/current employees feel.
Re:Had something like this happen.. (Score:2)
In the real world, our data is stored on a central server (dual 300mhz Ultrasparc 2 w/ anA1000)... Which I backup when I can (no autoloader), but we're horribly understaffed as I mentioned before (as most places are ... once again, in the real world I usually end up doing OTHER peoples work : Teaching secrataries Latex, Photoshop, Word, Access, Illustrator ... Correcting Proposals, answering programming questions etc etc ...
I spend 30 mins a week doing actual administrator things, and the rest is wasted away...
And the thing about the research is, its not even OUR research, the length of most research projects is a year, and we get X dollars to do research on project Y in time T ... If some guy strands us because he got offered a real job (again, our fault:) we're still liable for that research he was supposed to be doing, and we'd better have a paper ready to publish at the end of the contract
So your correct, if we weren't in crisis mode all the time (which my boss chooses to be in -- we have the money to hire more people) then backups would happen 3 times a week and everything would be cool. But we are and its not :)
Mail Alias File? (Score:2)
i don't remember hiring anybody named 'ph33r' or 'eleet'.... i'll have to remind them that they shouldn't have blank passwords. darn users.
I don't understand why, in my mail handling /etc/aliases file, all the research, engineering and top management e-mail addresses are listed as follows:
username: username,covert_operations@bigcompetitor.ru<sigh> I guess the old IT guy who was finally fired just had a different way of handling incoming mail than I have. You know, when you inherit a system from someone else...
<grin>
the inverse (Score:5)
Re:Like 'Office Space' (Score:2)
ohhh, it's not limited to .com's (Score:2)
Re:the inverse (Score:2)
Jeez, if I only had a nickel for every time I found out I had been hired, from checking the /etc/passwd file...
Contact you state's wage and hour division. (Score:3)
Strange ways to fire (Score:2)
First they fired my assistant, which pissed me off immensely but didn't make me leave. Then they tried making vague implications to all my coworkers that I was psychotic, which merely got them laughed at. Then they tried to convince me that I was psychotic, which was surreal to say the least, but I wasn't buying it.
Then they accused me of falsifying my timecard, but I produced a log in which I had documented for each day not only how long I had worked but what I had done and why I had overtime every single day. They never admitted they had made up the accusation, but they stopped trying to use it as an excuse to get rid of me.
Then they accused me of doing poor quality work, so I produced memos from all the department heads saying what I wonderful job I was doing and how grateful they were that I had helped them to so substantially increase productivity in their departments.
Then they turned off my account on the server, which meant that as a systems administrator I couldn't do any work, and hoped I'd just *assume* I had been fired and leave. So I officially asked (in writing) if the disconnection of my account was intended to indicate that I was fired, which resulted in my boss throwing a screaming fit at me loud enough to send the whole staff running to the phones to call their headhunters, but no firing.
So I inquired politely what they would like me to do on company time, and was told to sit at my desk and do nothing, do not touch the server, do not do any work, do not read anything, do not talk to anyone. That got *awfully* boring quickly, so I wrote a memo to my boss in which I ever so politely pointed out that as he had rendered me unable to do any work, I was not creating any value for the company, and if he would like me to be able to do something to contribute I would need access to the server. Within an hour he fired me for "insubordination" for "ordering" him to give me access to the server. They gave me enough severance to buy a new suit and pay a few months rent, but it didn't matter because right after I put my resume out Harvard phoned to hire me for a contract job without an interview. (Always nice to have a job negotiation begin with "you're hired, can you start today", don't you think?)
As I was walking out the door I heard the scream of the alarm indicating the server's UPS shutting the server down due to overload because the boss had plugged a laser printer into it. (The manual specifically said not to do that...) I thought it fitting that the server I had built, which had never once gone down while I worked there, died as I walked out the door. I heard from former co-workers that a month later the boss had a nervous breakdown and had to give up computing forever and became a waiter in a coffee bar.
Re:The Time I Got Fired By Mistake. (Score:2)
Re:The Time I Got Fired By Mistake. (Score:2)
At one point, her contract was coming up for renewal. One Friday after work, she opened up a non-descript envelope in the mail, containing a 'status update' printed on a tractor-feed self-duplicating form. The form had several checkboxes indicating whether or not your contract had been renewed or terminated.
Imagine her horror when she discovered that 'terminated' was checked, with no explanation. She had the entire weekend to fester over how cold-hearted this was, having no options other than to leave a voicemail for her boss politely asking for some sort of explanation.
Her boss called her on Monday and was even more surprised about the termination notice. She made a few phone calls, and came back with good news...
Apparently, many other contract employees had received similar mailings that Friday. It turns out was not fired at all--it was a simple misprint. The form was laid out with the 'fired' checkbox directly above the 'not fired' checkbox. The forms had apparently slipped in the printer, causing the printed 'X' to land in the wrong box.
I'm *sure* there's a usability/form design lesson in all of this...
I Knew I'd Be Moving to Some Poor Sap's Cube (Score:2)
My manager let it slip then asked me to keep quiet about it.
Been through a couple layoffs at Apple. Read about what I think about Apple's management [scruz.net]. But don't think I'm still a fan of Be, Inc. - read about what I think we ought to do to all operating systems vendors [sourceforge.net].
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc
I wasn't fired, I was just turned into a volunteer (Score:2)
Re:Forgive me if I sound callow too, but... (Score:2)
About a year ago, maybe less, I was predicting that the tulip bubble the Internet was experiencing was going to burst. In fact, when I heard about Redhat's stock becoming ridiculously inflated, I posted something like, "Ah! I'm going to go hide under my bed" right here on Slashdot.
See that's the trouble with tulip bubbles. Tulips are worth something, and maybe even experience a great jump in value over a short period. (Especially if there is a Rennaisance in horticulture and you get lots of new and interesting breeds of tulips.)
Unfortunately, at this point you get fools with money jumping in who don't know a damn thing about tulips but figure they'll make mucho dinero. They over inflate the market... which is ok as long as you have a further influx of monied fools. Of course, eventually more of these fools are involved in, and thus controlling, the market than serious investors.
This sort of thing can't last forever, of course, and when the bubble burst the fools start running around like chickens their heads cut off. Then, since they now run the market, they are able to depress the value of tulips to a ridiculously low bargain price. It's a really good time to buy tulip bulbs for incredible bargains.
So now I'm out from under my bed, carefully investing in stocks that are ridiculously undervalued and building my portfolio. Yes, some will probably fail completely, and I'll lose my money... but with enough diversity I stand to clean up.
I love being a bear... bulls never have any fun.
Re:Stupid Company (Score:2)
Shit in the toilets, don't flush
Shit in the drinking fountian
Shit in a bag, put it with lunches in fridge
Shit in bosses in-box
Smear shit under bosses desk
Make some shit brownies, leave (in nice box) for boss
Make some shit pudding pops, put in freezer
Paintball outside of office building
Shove plastic lighter up bosses tailpipe, with bent hanger, till it drops in muffler
Poison bosses pets
Run hose through bosses mail slot, turn on
Pull fire alarms
Copy building keys, leave around town with address tags
Buy a load of nasty-pulp books, print "Gladly donated by 'Your Coumpany Name'" inside cover, salt childrens section of libary with these
Limburger cheese in vents
Stop-A Stop-A Stop-A
Bend HD15 pins together on monitor cables
HD magnets under mag-media carts, cases, drawers
Call piracy hotline and dime them out, even if SW is all reged.
Switch around cables between switches, hubs
Poke pins in cat-5 clip tops off
Post bad info, true or not, on company in NGs
Kiddie porn sent to boss @ office
Sign boss up for every site on web using his work e-mail
Just a few...
Re:Had something like this happen.. (Score:5)
Its standard policy if someone tells us their leaving to lock their account and start up the taper that minute (though if they tell us they're leaving they've probably already done whatever they were going to do).
Though this still isn't an endorsement of those jerks mentioned in the story :)
Meat in the ceiling (Score:4)
(1)Remove a ceiling tile
(2)Toss a piece of meat up there
(3)Replace ceiling tile
That is not funny (Score:5)
Have any of you been fired before?
I was the angriest I have ever been in my life when I was fired. Being a tech worker I was treated like nuclear waste and was really embarrased and humiliated by having security escort me out in front of everyone. What hurt was being treated like I was a percieved threat after the blood, sweat and hard work I provided for that company.
The non tech workers are not fired fired that way because its cold and too humiliating. I felt like the people staring thought I was stealing or into extortion or somthing really bad when a security guard comes in. That just put fire into me. At least my other co-wrokers didn't know ahead of time. That would of made even more angry and betrayed.
WHen one of
Its not funny at all.
Re:Had something like this happen.. (Score:2)
The equal opportunity and disabled american laws mean a blind person can not only get a job as easy (or easier) than anyone else, but can also require the company to spend extra money to accomodate their disability.
So, what's your personal firing priorities? Should we fire the people with families to support first, or the blind people, or the people without much savings?
Doh!
... and quitting (Score:3)
Blind... (Score:3)
make such a big deal of them firing a blind person.
A co-worker of mine .... (Score:2)
my lay-off story (Score:4)
I was nearly burnt out at the job i was still at, doing all the sysadmin work - some tech support - and doing a lot of the programming, and told the company I was taking my first 2 days off. On the evening of my first day off (a thursday) one of the two owners said there was an all-hands meeting the next morning and i had to come in for about 30 mins at 9 am i think. Well at 10am was my in person interview with collabnet. So I got there at 9am with no worries since both places were close from where i live in downtown.
well they laid off about 15 people myself included. after their lil spiel about how sad they were and how this wasnt personal in any way but a financial neccesity they asked if anyone had any questions. I asked what time it was, and when they told me and asked why, I replied, "I'm in a hurry because in 30 minutes a have my second interview with a much better company."
I filled out a few small papers, got a shitload of severence and left.
I'm now *extremely* happilly employed @collabnet.
Who's stabbin who?!!
Re:The Time I Got Fired By Mistake. (Score:2)
Took MONTHS to get it resolved. Teach HR not to fat-finger employee IDs!!! (Worst part was, there were 2 systems. The data was right in one but when the person RETYPED it into the second system, I got automagically fired!)
that is some cold shit (Score:3)
The poster 'PaxTech' never said that blind people should get a "get out of downsizing free" card. Read what was said and you will see what was said. They fired a women with disibilities who had worked there for 13 years. I am not 100% about this, since I didn't see this personally, but chances are she worked hard and made some money for the company. One day, they fire her and don't even have the decency to help her get her property, which belongs to her and is probably needed for her daily survival, home.
Disabled people should not be imune from critisism. But they should be treated with decency, mostly when they are a long term and faithfull employee. Maybe the company did have a good reason to fire her. The least they could have done is ensured that she had all the help she needed on her way out. That is how a blind person should be treated fairly.
-theman2
Re:I Quit and I'm still waiting for my paycheck (Score:2)
Hahaha, this reminds me... (Score:3)
I hope she got to keep her stapler!
Security concerns (Score:3)
Finding your termiantion letter... (Score:4)
My position was as a Security Analyst, the direct interperetation being "Someone who analyses security", saving the company from a IPO Web Deface Hack and implementing security policies that previously did not exist.
While doing a "screen lock" check, jotting down the workstations that were not locked, I came across an office in HR, on the screen - open - in Word, was my termination letter. I printed out a copy, and took it to my Exit Interview that I found out about two hours later, along with my badge and cellphone. Needless to say, HR was rather - stunned. My boss was impressed, smirked, and stated "Hey, I hired him because he was good.", while the HR bitch just stared at me.
Funny thing, they didn't pay any of my relocation which cost me out of pocket over $7.5k and gave me none of my hiring bonus.
My boss (only other person there who did security) was terminated a couple weeks later. Leading to the "passive/reactive" approach to security.
Not paid for leaving early, after promised pay (Score:2)
Re:Hahaha, this reminds me... (Score:2)
It happened to me (Score:2)
On a personal note, I left my University employment for the summer for an internship at IBM. They guaranteed my position, and that of the three others leaving for internships (Intel, Motorola, Alcatel). My personal mailbox is my univeristy account, so it was kind of annoying that over the summer I, and the other three guys, would receive email to those account because we were still on their group list. About a week before school started they stopped coming.
When I returned they informed us that they needed to re-interview us, and then only took one of us back. No, it's not personal, but they could not name one person working there at the time who was better qualified than I. They told me this when I showed up to work the first day of class (8am). By Three I had had two interviews. Within 24 hours I had an offer (for more $$, no less), and started 48 hours after being let go. The kicker is that it's in a sister group to the department that fired me.
The manager who let the three of us go left for some startup a month later. No one in his group (who he had hired) was qualified to take his place, so they merged our departments. Now my manager is over his old group, I get the pick of assignments. All in all, I came out on top.
NWKC was hell on earth (Score:5)
Re:Like 'Office Space' (Score:3)
-antipop
Getting fired from Atomfilms.com (Score:5)
This is one of them:
Saturday September 16th, 2000
5:30 am:
I wake up on my kitchen floor with a severe hangover and no memory of how I got there. Further investigation reveals that I have no memory of the previous 12 hours. Fuck.
6:00 am:
After downing 3 cans of Diet Mountain Dew and 8 Excedrin I stagger into the shower.
6:05 am:
36 fluid ounces of Dew and 8 partially dissolved Excedrin tablets wind up in my toilet bowl. This brings back a memory of the previous night - a memory of vomiting in a computer case at work to be precise. Fuck Fuck.
6:10 am:
I realize that since the cleaning crew only works Sun. - Thurs., my gift to the company is going to sit there for a couple of days unless I go clean it up. Fuck Fuck Fuck.
8:30 am:
I arrive at atomfilms on a vomit scrubbing mission.
9:15 am:
After dragging the case up to the roof, I hose it down and leave it to dry.
9:30 am:
Since I'm at work anyway I ought to check email.
9:45 am:
I unlock my workstation and find myself staring at the "Comment Submitted" page at http://slashdot.org/. "That's funny, I don't remember posting anything on slashdot last night," I think to myself. Then it occurs to me that I don't remember doing anything last night and that it isn't very funny.
10:00 am:
I work up the courage to read what I posted. It turns out to be an expression of carnal desire for our young, female (god be praised) sysadmin. Fortunately I posted it on a small, out of the way website that only server up 1.5 million pages/day and is only read by young sysadmins and their friends. I begin praying for the sweet release of death.
10:05 am:
It dawns on me that I'm an atheist - so I switch to merely hoping for the sweet release of death.
10:06 am:
I recall that our young, female sysadmin's hobby is competitive target shooting and that she has more firearms than the armed forces of Malawi - 12 to be precise. I begin hoping to avoid the sweet release of death.
10:10 am:
A sudden rush of paranoia drives me to check my "sent items" folder - there I see a message to our young, female sysadmin. The message has 34 lines. Lines 1-3 contain a delicately phrased and badly spelt expression of tender affection. Line 4 explains that the aforementioned affection should lead to the two of us knotting an coupling like frogs in a cistern. Lines 5-30 outlined the techniques and approaches that should be utilized in our impending bout(s) of carnal riot. Line 31 presented my conviction that these activities should be carried out until the bed collapsed in a pile of splinters. Lines 32 and 33 advised that our offspring would have to be named after confederate generals - even the girls. Line 34 was my signature. Betting odds began to favor my meeting the sweet release of death.
10:30 am:
I send an apology. Since the thing I'm most sorry about is my failure to use spellcheck, It's not the most touching thing ever written.
10:00 pm:
I send a dozen yellow roses with a carefully worded note expressing my heartfelt sorrow at having failed to use spellcheck.
By monday I was unemployed.
This is all 100% true.
--Shoeboy
The Time I Got Fired By Mistake. (Score:5)
It happened when I was in tech support. We always "punched in" by typing a code into a computer time clock. One day, the computer gave me a wierd error I had never seen. I told my manager about the error, and she said, jokingly, "maybe you got fired". I was in good standing, so we could both laugh about this. I guess she knew that the error was associated with termination, but she figured it was just a glitch and that it would resolve itself. The problem persisted, and I reported it to her again. Well, then she realized it wasn't going away and did something about it. Sure enough, I was "fired" by accident. They even paid me for my vacation hours and zeroed out my leave balance. Getting a severance check was nice, but I lost my leave which was OK because I didn't have much saved up anyway.
Anyhow, stuff happens. I took this accidential "firing" in good stride. Starting termination mechanisms before the employee is actually informed is just COLD though.
Re:NWKC was hell on earth (Score:2)
Hardly. The sex industry is extraordinarily profitable
That was exactly my point. As "legitimate" businesses fail to turn a profit, it stands to reason that some of them would turn to sex to subsidize the other side of the business, or perhaps as an alternative to the business.
That was a fun one (Score:2)
One throw away comment [slashdot.org] and something like 15 responses going "uh, actually bind does hold the net together."
Slashbots crack me up at times.
--Shoeboy
Re:the inverse (Score:3)
About 4 months later, I went into the main office to get a new toner for their laser printer, and they asked me who I was....
`ø,,ø!
60-day notice? (Score:5)
Don't tell anyone, but... (Score:5)
Not all that uncommon (Score:2)
Pot, meet kettle. Don't be calling names, now. (Score:2)
Ah, this would be a person who is flaming Taco about not reading the linked article [slashdot.org] in a given story yet doesn't check the linked article [thestranger.com] himself. Very funny.
It's people like you that have made me just about give up looking for real discussion on Slashdot. But then, I suspect that's probably the reason idiots like you post anymore; too pathetic to stop reading yourselves, so you'd rather drive everyone else away.
Jay (=
Re:Fairly Common in the Valley (Score:4)
Re:the inverse (Score:5)
i don't remember hiring anybody named 'ph33r' or 'eleet'.... i'll have to remind them that they shouldn't have blank passwords. darn users.
jon
Glad I'm not in the civilian world (Score:2)
At least I know I'm still going to get a pay check...
Save money for a rainy day and don't whine. (Score:2)
Every programmer worth their salt makes enough to save some on the side - if you don't have enough money saved up to last you six months of lean living in the event of a layoff, either your expenses are too high, or you're a moron. Either way, you screwed yourself.
Pink slips happen, and anyone with a brain can see it coming by at least a month.
Re:60-day notice? (Score:2)
> do mass layoffs are required to give sixty
> days of notice before people are laid off
This is law in Germany: Each employee must be given at least 1 month of notice before laid off - no matter how many employees that company has.
Something like "We must make profit faster" isn't allowed for a reason to be laid off in Germany.
Re:Ready to come back to the big companies, now? (Score:2)
I was hired in Europe, but the team didn't know exactly what its job was. The boss left the first week I was there, and it went downhill from that point on. The new boss was an american, who decided to "repurpose" the team into something we knew very little about. The idea was that we would be travelling to America quite often to work on projects because Europe didn't have the facilities. Suddenly a group of hardware engineers with very little programming experience were writing java servlets to do network management.
Since I was the only European with a permanent green card, I got stuck working full time on the east coast of the U.S. 11 months after being hired, and after 6 months of stressful hell and living far from my family, I was summoned back to Europe by the American VP. There I was told my performance wasn't up to their standards and to shape up or find another job. Since I had only 6 more weeks until stock options started to vest, I kept my head down and flew back to the U.S. Sometime during those few days of travel, my boss was replaced with another American, who didn't know a thing about European working laws, and decided to fire the team.
The company HR group in the U.S. has a policy to eliminate the bottom performing 5%-10% of every group each year, to clear out the slackers. This violates European work laws, but the Americans don't care. A group of 4 European engineers fucking up royally exactly equalled 5% of the division, so the decision was easy.
Nobody told the new manager about how expensive it can be to fire Europeans. I flew back to the U.S. and found out I had been fired, not from the manager, but from the security guys who came to clean out my desk. (note to stupid managers: when you have security experts working on your team, they will make friends with the local security folks) The manager just assumed the European HR people would do the dirty work for her and I would never return, but I had returned to the U.S. before the paperwork made its way across the pond. European HR assumed the American manager did her job on her end, and just mailed the required notices to my home, so I didn't see the letter for months.
With the help of a lawyer who could walk into the HR offices in Europe, I got some major concessions from the European HR, such as an additional 6 months pay on top of the guaranteed 3 months severance pay, and 50% stock options vested.
The fun part is that I was still in the U.S. with a corporate apartment paid until the end of the next month, and a company car, and an open ended return ticket to Europe. Once I was assured of a large severance package when I returned, I took off and drove all around the U.S., a nice little vacation on the company.
Even better, the whole severance package costs came out of the budget of the manager who fired us, nearly killing her budget for the whole next year. I hear she is still running around inside the company, sowing fear and fouling up projects left and right.
And even better, I still get contacted by the big company to do various odd contracting jobs for them, American companies don't count getting fired as a bad thing
And as for the comments from other about how bad it feels to be fired, I second that. I was very depressed after being fired, and quite angry, even with the nice little vacation at the end. Being fired from a big, respected company makes you feel like shit, even if you can rationalise how it is mostly their fault. If I could play corporate politics better, I probably would have been more alert to the deteriorating situation and avoided it. But I'm an engineer and a geek, and politics doesn't interest me, I leave that to the PHBs.
the AC
Any relation to any large, monopolistic, networking company is purely coincidental. And since their stock tanked recently, I'm very pissed at them.
George Carlin comes to mind... (Score:5)
"Did you ever get a pink slip? I didn't. Usually a guy would come up to my desk and say, 'GET THE FUCK OUT! GET YOUR SHIT AND GET THE FUCK OUT!'"
Apparently, we don't even get that anymore.
Re:Going postal? (Score:2)
While I was working there I did a few things to piss him off. One was hiding his cellphone in a place he couldn't find it in his office and some coworkers and myself would call it and watch in the window while he popped up and looked for it. That was hilarious. We did a number of other things. He had installed some remote control software on his computer so I opened it to a bad webpage. Nothing pornographic because he was always worrying about things that were not politically correct and would probably have fired me if porn automatically popped up on his PC. There were a number of other pranks me and my coworkers did, even on each other. But to answer your question:
What I did when I quit that was the biggest form of revenge, was simply to leave and not give anyone documentation on what I did. I wanted my boss to know how difficult it would be to replace me, which I believe may be one of the reasons I never got a promotion. So, I don't know what else happened but I heard that the company has even more problems than when I worked there. I'm so glad I got out with a portion of my sanity and was not completely burnt out yet.
Re:Glad I'm not in the civilian world (Score:2)
`ø,,ø!
How to get fired and enjoy it ... (Score:2)
Once upon a time, I worked for a fscked-up little company called Ultimate Data Systems (UDS) in Wilton, Connecticut. I was working as a Programmer/Analyst, and doubling as a SysAdmin because they didn't actually have any SysAdmins on staff.
Saying that UDS was not well managed would be somewhat akin to saying that there was a tiny bit of controversy about the latest US Presidential election. As an example, the week that I was hired I was assigned to three different departments, one after another. The first two months I was there, they reorganized the company every two weeks, like clockwork. I didn't really care, since I only took the job as an interim step -- my previous company decided that they couldn't afford to pay little things (like my healthcare and salary) but they still wanted me to keep working...
I could tell lots of sad tales about UDS, but the saddest was that after working there for 6 months, they decided to layoff a third of the employees and move the company from Connecticut to Texas, presumably for some sort of cost savings. They notified everyone by holding a late night conference call, and announcing 3 rounds of layoffs, with the first 12 employees to get the axe the next morning. The next round would be in a month, with a third round a month later. In the meantime, the new company president (who coincidently lived in Texas) was coming in a couple of days to talk to the entire company and explain ALL of the transition plans to everyone...
Yeah, right. As it happened, the new president DID show up and hold a meeting; he just didn't explain anything. He tried to tell everyone that inspite of the upcoming layoffs, and the upcoming move, everyone would still have a place with UDS, even if they didn't want to move. The asshole spent 20 minutes trying to sell that load to the entire company ... and this being 1992, and the country still in a recession, these people were actually hoping that he was telling the truth.
For myself, while I was hoping to stick around for a couple more months so I could pad my savings account, I wasn't hurting for job prospects (no family to support, no mortgage, etc) ... so I did the only thing I could: when the asshole asked if anyone had any questions, I asked him questions. Every question that anyone in that room could have wanted to ask, I asked. And I didn't take "I don't know" for an answer. Which departments would move, which would stay, what order, what time schedule, what about working from (now) remote areas, what about salaries and relocation expenses, and anything else I could think of to ask. I don't think anyone else asked a single thing in that meeting.
Afterwards, the asshole made time for private meetings, and oddly enough, I was first ... heheheh. The really odd thing was, he just asked me questions, and I explained that I wasn't planning to move to Texas (I don't look good in boots and a Stetson). Then he had more one-on-one meetings with other people, left someone else in charge of the office and went back to Texas.
The next morning, as soon as I came in, the new vice president came to tell me the bad news ... I was being laidoff. I laughed and told him that I rather expected it, and that I didn't blame him for it. He didn't know what to say after that, so I started cleaning my desk out and went around and said goodbye to everyone. They were all sorry to see me go, but not sorry that I asked all those questions.
I moved to Northern Virginia, got a good job, and made a good life for myself. As for UDS ... they eventually folded and are only missed by their creditors.
Are you moderating this down because you disagree with it,
Re:Going postal? (Score:2)
Thats bullshit (Score:2)
Thats not even counting the numerous businesses that are moving substantial portions of their operations to the web (like, say, every bank, bookstore, brokerage house, etc.).
Re:Yet another example of lame ways to fire (Score:2)
Profitability (Score:2)
The fact that they were making a profit means little. Thanks to the day-traders' chaotic and typically senseless affect on the market and the last five years of "impress me now, back it up later" acceptance of Internet companies, people are not satisified unless a company is making ten times what they are really worth. This is the problem in an economy where companies are valued on unfounded expectations and promises rather than facts and a history of profits.
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seumas.com
Re:NWKC was hell on earth (Score:3)
Eventually all the good people got out of there and the only people left are yes men/women and those that sleep with their bosses.
Maybe this company should reorganize as a bordello and move to Nevada, where prostitution is legal.
Then again, we all knew: The limit of a dotcom as perception approaches reality = the sex industry.
Re:I Quit and I'm still waiting for my paycheck (Score:2)
You can resign in a similar way... (Score:2)
Re:The other side.. (Score:2)
best severance packages in late 90s (Score:2)
majors, they gave one month per year of service,
minimum six months!
Not just .COMs.. (Score:2)
Re:Had something like this happen.. (Score:2)
Proud of yourself aren't you? How many people that had nothing to with firing the girl, ended up out of job because you are an asshole?
--locust
moderators: go a head make my day.
Re:Save money for a rainy day and don't whine. (Score:2)
Ahh, I see. The government should pay for your higher education so that you can get a higher-paying job than a grade-school graduate...
I suppose the argument can be made that the gov't paying for education results in a populace with higher wages (thus higher tax revenues)... but then the counter argument can be made, if the gov't wasn't paying for so many graduates, imagine how much less expensive higher ed could be?
Re:is this legal? (Score:2)
That happened to my girlfriend once (she worked as a secretary, before giving up work (temporarily) to have our baby). She was given no notice whatsoever, just called in to see her boss, to be told that she was being made redundant, effective immediately.
She cleared out her desk, said her goodbyes, and was escorted out of the building. She did get her redunancy money, though, so it wasn't all bad, just a bit sudden (and she didn't like it there anyway; she was actually quite happy about it
The weirdest thing, though, was that her boss didn't know it was going to happen until that day; the order came down from above. She and a mutual friend who also worked there put it down to the evil machinations of one of the other secrataries, who had never liked her, was generally perceived as being a cow, but seemed to be adored by the upper managers...
Aren't office politics great?
Cheers,
Tim
Re:Mail Alias File? (Score:2)
That's really stupid and not at all funny. The post you responded to was clever, but the same joke told again in slower, less elegant language just doesn't seem to tickle the funnybone the same way.
<sigh> You're probably just the same A.C. as who was jealous of my circumcision.
Moderators: Go for it, I still have more karma than you.
Re:Save money for a rainy day and don't whine. (Score:2)
Indeed. I have a girlfriend and a one year old daughter, and am the sole earner. Thanks to buying a car (have you tried getting on or off a bus with a young child, pushchair and shopping?), my student loan (thanks to our previous government's decision to cut grants for higher education in the UK) and my girlfriend's loan, I make enough to cover our expenses and live reasonably comfortably, but not enough to save for a rainy day. I've also only been working now for just over 18 months; I don't know if that counts as "just starting out", though.
Given time, I'll have cleared the two loans (a bonus I've been promised in December, if I stick with my company (we've just been bought by a large corporate, though, so that remains to be seen) will clear one), then I'll be able to think about saving money.
Oh no, wait, then I'll have to think about getting a decent pension, and some life insurance.
If I didn't have my family, my life would be very different. Not better (although certainly richer, financially speaking
Have I screwed myself, at least temporarily? Perhaps, perhaps not.
Do I regret it? Not for a second.
Cheers,
Tim
...if you can Keep Yr Employer out of Yr Pockets (Score:2)
Take my situation. I worked for a corporation called GST Telecom, a CLEC or Competitive Local Exchange Carrier in Vancouver, WA, which declared chapter 11 bankrupcy back in April, roughly a month after I had just put almost $1000-- into the employee purchase plan for some stock.
So, being the cautious type, I started looking for another job, & managed to get a new one by the end of June. However, when I left, I lost 24 hours of accrued leave (the acting CEO forbade everyone from taking more than 2 consecutive days of time off in a month), & lost several hundred dollars when I rolled my 401(k) over into an IRA. But since I was making a good deal more money, I decided not to whine about it.
A few weeks ago, my wife & I noticed that her retirement accounts had taken a $9000-- hit since September, so I started taking a closer look at her investments. And the annual report for one bond fund came in the mail yesterday. The fund manager admits that the fund lost money due to investments in the telecommunications field. And guess which telecom corporation was singled out for mention?
Right now I can see the humor in this, but I wonder when GST will take another bite out of my earnings & savings.
Geoff
dot com deadpool (Score:2)
First he let go of two or three employees in which we all knew what was coming, then he re-hired them to finish on a promise things would continue but his underlying factor was he needed them to finish some book keeping stuff first and after it was done he fired them. (what a snake) While this was going on most of us were thinking he would work things out or something and decided to give it another week or so. Instead one day we come back to have everyone's belongings packed in boxes including personal stuff in which I had to fight to get my Sun Ultra1 and routers out of there. I mean literally threaten to bust this idiots ass.
Shit happens whether or not its a dot.com or other business. Its funnier online since it reaches a larger audience but its typical business.
Firestone Tire Spoof [antioffline.com]
Re:Security concerns (Score:3)
That sounds like a plausible explanation, but in this case it sounds as though the company wanted to drop firings on employees by complete surprise, rather than just limiting retribution. They literally demanded to know how she knew that she had been fired, despite the fact that they had already turned off her phone and disabled her logon and key card. If you want to prevent mischief, write a shell script that will log off and disable the accounts of everyone on a list, and run it as soon as you've called them in to let them know that they've been laid off. But don't come to pick up their computer before telling them they've been fired (as this company did with other employees) or just let them figure it out when their stuff stops working.
Re:The Time I Got Fired By Mistake. (Score:2)
You don't need to be a shareholder to get info (Score:3)
Nah, you don't even need to be a shareholder to get information. Hell, you can get so much information due to required public disclosure that it becomes a matter of filtering out information. The SEC filings are a prime source for this. If you pull a symbol lookup on Yahoo! Finance [yahoo.com] for example , click on "Research", and then in the research section on the "More Info" line up at the top click on "SEC" to get 10-Q Quarterly and 10-K annual reports. (I'm a computational chem major but I have a business minor (need easy buffer classes, and believe me if you have half a brain you can get a 4.0 in business), so I had to use this stuff for some financial accounting classes.) There are other sources of this information, like EDGAR Online [edgar-online.com], who have everything, not just 10-Q/Ks.
WRT Amazon, here's a link to their last 10-Q [yahoo.com] from Oct. 30, 2000 and archived reports. This is dry reading, as they don't try to make it easy to read like the shareholder's reports, but this is the hard data that shows where the money goes inside Amazon.
--
Re:60-day notice? - there are always exceptions (Score:3)
I would assume that (3) is out, but (1), (2) or both were probably invoked in this case...
Just call security (Score:2)
Re:if they fire you without telling, do the invers (Score:2)
Fired for not drinking beer (Score:3)
is this legal? (Score:3)
I have heard of companies that once you turn in your notice they have you clean out your desk, but they tell you this. I have heard about people getting laid off and being escorted out after cleaning out there desk. I have also heard about people geting home and having a message on their answering machine saying don't come in on Monday your employment is no longer needed, but all these people were told.
This is callous, and I think I'd be suing, I am sure there is some ground for suit.
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
It happened where I worked once... (Score:4)
Not quite fired... (Score:3)
I was asked to drive to the office (which I never did since I worked on the road or from home). When I arrived I found the place padlocked and a guy from the bank there to take my company credit cards and car. They wouldn't even give me a lift back to town. They did finally let me use a phone in the office to call a friend for a ride.
When are you really fired? (Score:3)
I received email that I was fired on 9/30/96, but they sent notice to their email account which they cut off and wiptes, then reinstated.
In some states, there are laws that required wages be paid while employed. Now, if you are not paid for two weeks, but not told that you are fired, then are you still employed? Are you due the wages (and multiples under the payment of wages act) until they are notified by certified mail? email? fax? armed guards and automatic weapons?
As a FIRING manager... (Score:5)
There's no easy way to do it. On the reorg, it was done professionally and was completely out of my control. Laid-off people were met at the door when they arrived and escorted to their work areas where boxes had been set up for them to pack their things. Then they were escorted to a holding area where HR lectured them on their options. The rest of the employees were sent to a central meeting area where the layoff actions and reasons were explained.
On the cause side, I'm not proud of my first effort. The guy turned out to be incredibly strange. He interviewed well, but when he started work he didn't seem to understand instructions, and he couldn't communicate with the other employees. After a few weeks he became upset and sullen. Nobody could understand what he was upset about. He didn't seem to understand or to be able to follow verbal instructions. Finally I gave him written instructions on what to do one week, and reviewed his progress at the end of the week. There had been none. So I gently told him I would have to let him go. He did not seem to understand. I repeated this about 6 different ways, but he still didn't seem to understand. Finally after about 10 minutes of this I completely lost it and just yelled at him, "HERE IS A BOX. GO TO YOUR DESK. PACK UP YOUR THINGS. GET OUT. CALL HUMAN RESOURCES TOMORROW. GET OUT NOW. GO." This is literally true. It was as ugly as you could imagine. Everyone was horrified (although sympathetic).
The second two firings (done together) I handled better. I had taken over an Engineering organization for a turn-around effort. I gave everyone tasks, and most people responded really well with great original ideas and enthusiasm. Two guys didn't seem to "get it", though. A more experienced manager urged me to fire them immediately. He said that on a turn-around effort, the people that aren't willing to turn things around stand in the back with their hands up (figuratively), saying "Please fire me." But I didn't listen, and kept giving them more chances. Finally after two months it became clear that they simply couldn't (or wouldn't) do their jobs, and I had to fire them. I met with them individually, and explained that I couldn't keep them on because they had not been able to accomplish their objectives. It was unpleasant, but I felt that I had given them every chance possible, so I could look them in the eye without flinching. So I felt that I handled it OK from a human perspective. From a business perspective, though, I really hosed up my schedule by keeping them on the payroll, because all their work had to be tossed and re-done by others. I should have taken the advice of the more senior manager.
No matter which way you cut it, firing people is hard and ugly and messy. Also many managers are avoidant -- they don't *want* any contact with the people they are firing. I think the right thing to do is to go face to face, regardless of what happens. Even if the employees are angry, and they probably will be, at least they will respect you later for having the guts to talk to them mano a mano and explain in detail why they're being let go. And you can keep your self-respect too, for being honest.
Like anything else, one learns by doing. A lot of people become "managers" way before they're ready. It's not surprising that they fuck up the hiring/firing process -- where were they supposed to learn how to do it? Business school? Don't make me laugh.
You guys are wimps: try Wall Street (Score:3)
Some people worked hard the whole year, and then, right at the end, were told that they were fired. Many of the people that got fired were good, but each company decided that sacking large numbers of employees just before bonus time was the best way to increase its profits. Real trauma resulted.
On Wall Street, these things are much disliked, but accepted with the jobs.
____________________________
"... the microkernel approach was essentially a dishonest approach aimed at receiving more dollars for research. I don't necessarily think these researchers were knowingly dishonest. Perhaps they were simply stupid. Or deluded." --Linus Torvalds on kernel research by Computer Scientists (in Open Sources)
Re:Getting fired from Atomfilms.com (Score:5)
heh.
well. some things to note:
1. the flowers were lovely.
2. despite what one of the other posters assumed, atom does have many unix boxes as well, and i adminned those.
3. i have 13 guns. [though, admittedly, the glock is new, and you wouldn't have known about it when you posted this.]
4. i'm still a very good shot.
5. while your story *is* 100% true, in that all that you wrote about happened and that by monday you were fired
6. bet you were thinking i don't read slashdot.
*grin*
Going postal? (Score:4)
1. Run up the toll free 800 phone bill?
2. Remotely reboot the servers?
3. Post the radius passwords on usenet?
4. Cut the t1 on the side of the building?
5. Use a pin and poke the t1 cable (let them find the problem)
6. Take his/hers customers?
7. Become their boss?
8. Sleep with their spouse?
9. Spam the hell out of their private email accounts?
10. Subscribe them to every mailing list you can find? (root@ webmaster@ sales@ info@)
11. Sugar in the gas tank?
12. IRS?
13. 1-888-NOPIRACY
14. Post those drunken party pictures on yahoo personals?
"Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny." -Kim Hubbard
IRS (OT) (Score:3)
I'm so glad this has worked for you. Since you are volunteering that you made 50k I'm sure you will remember to report it to the IRS this year. For your convenience I'm copying this message to the IRS also. Good luck avoiding an audit!
Re:When are you really fired? (Score:3)
Buddy of mine KNEW his employer has a policy of "never accept notice" so he gave them three months' notice, in writing, etc. etc., and eventually (after several days of wrangling and one call from an attorney) he got paid for watching Fred and Barney for 3 months because they were too stupid to know the law. ;-)
Read FC (Score:4)
One of the funniest ones I remember was when some dotcom wanted to announce their layoffs and invited their staff to a meeting at the balcony(!). Why choose such a venue is anybody's guess but this was a feeding ground for many crude and utterly funny jokes on FC.
Not Just Dot.Bombs... (Score:3)
I have worked for a couple of places where the laid-off and fired "just vanish" and/or little or no notice is given.
When I worked doing database programming, amyone fired would just not be seen again. (This place was incredibly paranoid and for good reason. They were hypocritical bastards.) And you knew that if someone was one of the "disappeared" that you did not ask about them, or you might get the same fate.
One contract I worked on, I was told the system had crashed that morning before I got to work. I dialed in and found that the passwords had been changed. Guess what? Yep. Informed the moment I walked in the door. (I asked too many embarasing questions to the new PHMis director.)
Most places where the management is suffering from paranoia that the workers are out to get them seem to manage in this way. Those are the places that are stressful just walking in the door. (I can remember getting blamed for a system crash when I walked in the door. I had not worked there for months and they had no dial-in. Ironically, I knew who was doing it and told them repeatedly. They would not believe me because he wore a suit and played the kiss-up game. He was hacking in file pointers into the middle of kernel VM memory and crashing the machine.)
I learned a long time ago that if an employer does those kinds of things when you leave, get out on your timetable and quick. Companies that do that to employees as they leave are also willing to screw with you for other petty reasons on a whim. (To understand the reasons behind this, find a good book on primate behaviour.)
Shutting 'em off. (Score:4)
Happened to me once, too. The company profit-sharing plan was keyed to the departmental expenses and I was highly paid and had just finished my latest project at the start of the last quarter approached. So the boss who had inherited me (third since I'd been hired) dumped me. I got my first hint when my PPP link didn't work when I tried to check mail before coming in. (It wasn't a security thing - they let me clean out my account and my desk unsupervised. It was just "the way things are done".)
After the end of the year said boss quit, along with the most of the remainder of his department, and started a new company (much to the annoyance and bottom-line damage to the OLD company). A couple months later he called me up and wanted me to consult for his new enterprise. After he'd surprise-fired me at the old shop and then hadn't invited me to be among the founders of the new? Fat chance!
At an auto company's engineering department a couple decades ago I saw what happened when two consultants come to blows. Security had them off the premesis inside of ten minutes. (Took that long because it was a BIG site.) They were permanently banned from the company and their desk contents were packed and shipped to 'em. You DON'T lay hands on co-workers in that industry.
Funniest one was the time Amdahl pulled the plug on Key Labs. Came in that morning to find a sign on the door: "Will build mainframes for food." (Amdahl let the people at Key keep their offices and email for a month or so while they job-hunted.)
Re:Save money for a rainy day and don't whine. (Score:5)
In most states they owe you two weeks pay. I think they owe you a bit of warning (say half an hour), but there is no law that I know of that says that.
Nah, people just starting out may not make enough (I know I didn't). People with a family may not.
Being fired? Yeah, you should be able to see that well in advance. Getting layed off? Well if hte compony isn't public, there may be scant little chance that you know in advance.
If you can afford to save, it's a good idea. You may need it, could be lay offs, could be a family emergency, could be anything. But not everyine can afford to do it.
Had something like this happen.. (Score:5)
The worst part, though, is that one of the employees laid off was BLIND. Yes, BLIND. They fired a blind lady. She had worked for the company 13 years. Fired her dog, too.
She had text-to-speech software on her machine that was owned by her personally and had taken me quite a while to install. It had a floppy disk copy-protection scheme that required you to move the key back on to the disk when uninstalling it, so I had to go up to her desk and remove the key for her. They had called her a cab, but NO ONE was around to carry her things, which included a braille scanner (heavy as hell) and several boxes of books and papers. So it fell to me to go get a cart, load it with her stuff, and escort the blind woman and her dog outside and wait for her cab.
I'd like to say I went right back inside and quit on principle, but I waited two weeks so I could take all my vacation time and get my bonus.
--
PaxTech
registrars.com? (Score:4)
They just acquired the domain registrar Registrars.com last week, per this press release [registrars.com].
According to Network Commerce chairman and CEO Dwayne Walker:
"We believe this is an important addition to our technology infrastructure business. We also believe this will be another avenue for expanding our database of registered customers."
Wonder what it'll do for their database of employees...
if they fire you without telling, do the inverse (Score:5)
There are .COM's and there are .COM's (Score:4)
Yahoo is valued greater than GM, that bubble's gonna burst.
Ebay's starting to realize that people can circumvent them and deal directly with each other.
AOL is just so big, it ain't going nowhere.
CDNow, which I frequent as a customer is in big trouble from what I've heard.
So three out of these 4 companies are on potentially shaky ground, and even if they and other well-established businesses continue to succeed, for each success story there are a thousand failures.
A lot of those businesses that are pouring massive resources into a Web presence are going to learn the hard way that once the novelty wears off (and it hasn't yet), they might be saddled with an expensive operation that isn't paying off.
Companies are starting to run out the leeway they had from the buoyant market and are now facing the reality that ad revenue, upon which many, many content providers rely just isn't there.
I think the Internet bubble burst is just starting. Many will die, a few will survive. The stock market may tank more (at least the stocks... and there's the supposed Economic Slowdown (TM) looming).
The Internet won't go away, but how it works economically might change drastically in the next few years. I think it will be very interesting to see what happens. To paraphrase Terry Pratchett by way of the Chinese: We are living in interesting times.