[TRENCHES] Tuesday, June 12, 2012 - Radius
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
Radius
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/radius
The Feedback Loop.
AnonymousIt was common to find out about “concerns” only when they had matured into something for which they would write you up. I was written up for “unsatisfactory communication to production” and when I asked for examples, my boss had none. No print outs, no emails to show, nothing. He just said, “well it’s been a pattern for the last year.”
I said, “So for the last year you’ve let me hang myself and never told me.” His response was “If we see a problem, we want to see if it auto-corrects or not, and you didn’t.” I was denied a promotion and a raise for a “concern” that was never communicated to me until it bit me in the ass.
On top of that, I regularly sent requests to management for feedback on how I was doing, only to get back generic “you’re doing great!” emails.
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Isaac you fool, if you tip over the bottomless fries we'll all drown in them!
Oh, to fall for eternity. Through steak fries.
In most states, non-contract employees are "at will", and can be terminated for any reason or no reason (except for illegal discrimination or violation of public policy), so employers can definitely decide to deny a promotion or not give a raise even if they've been saying the employee has been doing a great job. The employee's ultimate recourse is to quit and try to get a better job.
Pretty sure she's the mole who leaked about the roleback and Isaac's abuse of the glitch.
I'm not sure about US employment law, but I'm not surprised if there's no recourse for their belief that telling people to correct their behaviour is totally pointless.
"How am I doing?" should become "Did I meed expectations while completing X, and if I did not, what expectations did I not meet?"
Et cetera.
Unless Isaac and Cora are having a hilarious misunderstanding and talking about different things, it is all but confirmed Cora is the one responsible for the leak. That puts her job very much in danger if management were to find out, and the entire QA team at risk by extension if the higher-ups just decide to say "Fuck it" and start over with a fresh group, since as we've seen from the Tales, QA workers are considered highly disposable.
Even if they don't can the whole team, Isaac would possibly be in some trouble if it's revealed he abused the glitch instead of reporting it.
Is the key "gotcha" the fact that the tester was probably a temp instead of a full time employee? Or are you saying employers can do this to even full time employees?
My girl would need a extra set of hands and feet to count how many times her managers at Target tried to write her up over a 2 year period simply because they thought they could for any little thing. Thats one of the things about working in corporate environments (Depending on state of course, I know nothing about "At Will" states) The same system your bosses use to abuse their employees, can work both ways as long as you're intelligent about it and know your rights.
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Texas is an "at will" state.
I don't think right-to-work is relevant to this situation. IIRC, that only has to do with whether you can be forced to join a union as a condition of employment. But your gf might have had something in her employment contract dealing with warnings.
"At will" means that the potential employee came to the business on thier own free will looking for work. The company has no obligation to hire that person and has no obligation to keep that person employed. They also have no obligation to tell them why they were fired. So they can fire someone for any reason whatsover, including none at all, except in the case where it runs into state/federal discrimination laws.
My state is an "at will" state. It's also a "right to work" state, meaning that if you are hired by a company that has a union, you must join the union and pay dues, even if you don't want to.
So, yea.
Yes you are correct sir, I was mistaken. I guess that is something I did not take in to account is the actual contract itself. I have no idea just how crappy the contracts testers have to sign (thats even assuming they make it to full time hire). On the other hand thou, most companies down here have a 3 strike policy with write-ups as opposed to being fired on the spot because they are deathly afraid of paying unemployment*EDIT* also as another poster pointed out, because of discrimination lawsuits . Its kinda fucked because ive been stuck working with some of the laziest screwups that in a sane world would have been fired day 1. But because of HR and corporate structure and state laws (like I said,the system can work both ways) , the managers have to wait till write up num 3 because they dont want to get stuck paying unemployment to said screwup. In the mean time, all the rest of us that do our jobs properly have to work harder to pick up for someone elses slack.
This is actually backwards. "Right to work" means that you don't have to join the union if you don't want to. As in, I have a right to work wherever I want without paying dues.
Someone else mentioned company write-ups and all that crap. The basics of it are that even in at-will states, big companies usually have well defined procedures for firing someone that include having to formally document all the reasons the person is being fired. This is not because this is required by state law to fire the person. It is because they want to have all their ducks in order so that they barely have to respond to discrimination lawsuits. Even in an at-will state, you could file suit claiming that you were fired for being (race) or (gender) or (protected class). If the employer has all of the paperwork in order to show that you sucked, they can basically get the case tossed the first time a judge gets involved for lacking merit. If they DON'T have that paperwork, at the very least they're going to have to spend some money with lawyers, or even just toss out a settlement because it's cheaper to pay off a fired bad employee than to prove they were bad in the courts. That's what someone was talking about with signing/not signing a manager's write-ups.
Now, a good manager is going to work to improve his employees with good feedback and communication. Sometimes, though, he just doesn't like the way you eat your lunch and isn't in the mood to train you, so, fired.
Yup, hence why he referred to it as an "AoE Attack".
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I was working as an intern at a major software company. This was actually a serious internship since the company had a non-BS policy of hiring the interns for full time positions (my roommate got a full time offer after his internship). I was struggling with the work but my supervisors did not complain to me about the quality of the work. My half-point evaluation pointed out some problem areas but I got no further complains so I assumed that I corrected the problems in my performance. My final evaluation was not glowing but did not say anything really bad about my work. I was told that there were no full time openings right now but I should apply in a few months.
Two months later I was talking to the HR person in charge of the internships and when I told him I wanted to apply for a job with the company, I was told not to bother since I was essentially blackballed in the company due to incompetence. This came as a massive shock to me since I was never given a hint that they were so unsatisfied with my performance during my internship. I was way too green and too stressed out at the time to realistically evaluate my own work and if one of my bosses actually sat me down and told me I was doing a horrible job, I could have tried to fix the problem.
Ugh, I probably shouldn't bring up a political discussion in a comic thread but this demands a little correction.
Closed shops (being forced to be in a union) have been illegal since the Taft-Hardley act in the late 40s. Over 60 years now. What is legal and exists (except in "Right to Work (for less)" states) is what is called an "agency shop." Where you do not have to join the union, but if you do not you do have to pay a fee to cover the costs of collective bargaining upon your behalf. Considering every study ever done on the subject (as far as I know) shows that employees under a collective bargaining agreement make more and have better benefits than those who aren't that seems fair to me -- however according to Federal law if you state you have moral or religious objections to paying a union anything (WTF??) you can instead chose to donate what you would have paid the union to a 501(c)(3) charity of your choice. Even to the Mormons if you wanted, which is a somewhat common practice for LDS since they practice tithing (and in much greater amounts) anyway.
All Right to Work does is intentionally create a "free rider problem" so as to intentionally weaken unions. The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows unemployment to be on average about the same between "Right to Work" and everywhere else (RTW states have about 0.4% less unemployment, but many are experiencing huge natural resources booms) while average pay is lower if you're in a Right to Work state compared to everywhere else.
So, in conclusion, if you want to make more money then oppose lawmakers who propose right to work laws in your state.
Also, to someone who said you could refuse to sign a write-up in a discipline situation with a supervisor at work -- you can, it is true. It is a free country, but of course then you can immediately be fired for insubordination and ruin any actual case you have for an improper job action. Unless there is small text that says 'I agree with everything written here' then all you are doing is confirming receipt of the write up. Tell your supervisor your concerns, and if he or she doesn't change the write up then sign it and if you want to write 'Signed under protest' under your signature. Then keep records of all the times the company has praised you or said you're doing a good job, and the lack of any kind of corrective action or counseling presented to you to. If you do have a case of some sort of illegal job discrimination if you keep these records it will be obvious to the EEOC that what they were doing is trying to 'pad your file' with negative information in order to justify firing you later. Its a common practice.
If you're in an at-will but not right to work state and this type of behavior is going on, perhaps you should look to forming a union. Employees are only at-will if they're not covered under a collective bargaining agreement -- this is one of the primary reasons people form unions, to protect themselves from capracious job actions. Additionally, if you think they'll likely going to fire you anyway taking the initial steps and making an organizing committee for a union election will either get them to back off or get them to fire you instantly which is illegal under the Wagner act.
Good luck, happy Working!
(My background: Former HR at large company (PHR designation), also former union rep and grievance committee chairman at a different company. I have worked both sides.)
That said, should you be fired for no reason, they also have no grounds to deny you unemployment and a firing without reason will often be ignored by your next job.
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