[TRENCHES] Thursday, June 28, 2012 - Impasse
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
Impasse
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/impasse
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Anonymous- They routinely made people work every day of the week without a day off, which is illegal in our state. They would then lie to HR and production about it. When they were finally busted on it, they started giving people “split” days off, i.e. 12 hours off one day, and 12 hours off another day, which is just as illegal.
- Management would frequently give “rousing” speeches during crunch every day at 4:55 about how necessary our overtime was, and how we should proud to be giving it our all because it’ll be just so worth it when the game ships. Why 4:55? Because management left at 5:00.
- One day we were locked out of the building. It was the weekend and the complex was closed. I called the boss to tell him we needed let in, and he bitched me out. He eventually drove by and threw his building key out the window then sped off.
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Did we skip a comic?
However, the matter of the mole is still afoot...unless Q was to be blamed for it as well? O.o
Bingo.
As I've mentioned before, Q somehow getting blamed for the leak so he can be busted back down to QA and be in the comic regularly again was my initial prediction. I'm not sure how "necessary" it really is though, since he's still around often enough.
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/vomtn/update_my_friends_call_me_a_scumbag_because_i/
edit: that reddit story (the original) is exactly the same as mine, only about 5 minutes into the job I let them know I could have this spreadsheet fed into this vb form using a vbscript I could write in about an hour, with more accuracy and faster then I could ever do it by hand. They were super impressed and had me do it, but really confused because thats all they had for me to do for weeks as busy work while they got my training ready for my real position. They recognized my talents and shifted my job pretty soon to working on automation/MSSQL stuff for the company. That guy took a super lazy wrong approach to all of that and is lucky he isn't sued/in jail for preventing access to code that the company owns.
This would probably result in me leaving around 5:05.
That dude is all up in the absolutely not in the right. Any code you write on the company dime belongs to the company, and he's violating all kinds of shit with what he's pulling.
I found this story a little unclear. They fired the guy and then demanded his password? At this point they have his code, they just can't access it, and he doesn't owe them anything, because he doesn't work for them. Then he has a bunch of meetings with the company management. Was he never fired, or did he get rehired?
I think his intentionally preventing others from accessing the code specifically is the biggest issue. Most corporations set up their work machines so that they're inaccessible without the correct passwords (on the hard disk and OS), to limit the damage caused if a machine is stolen. Many developers I know have tons of code on their machine that they've written on the company dime to help them do their job that isn't widely available, because it's in a state where it's really hard to use and/or specific to their job. Writing a tool that's only on your machine is natural, but writing one that only you can use is pretty difficult to justify.
On the other hand, the moment he mentioned the tool, he got fired, which makes me think his actions, while wrong, were appropriate.
I dunno about the Netherlands, but in the U.S. they could sue his ass into the ground for not providing that password.
You would be surprized how many companies do things manually and by hand just becuase its how it's always been done. I still run into this issue where I work.
It all depends on the mindset of management, at the end of the day.
If your department/project/whatever is focused on providing value for the money spent and trying to get more efficient at what they are doing so that they can use savings to help drive improved services and add more value, then it should be really obvious after you work there for a while (assuming this vision is communicated down to you). If you've been at your job for two years, and your efficiency is the same as it was last year, people should be talking with you and asking you why that is. In this kind of environment, you very rarely see these types of pointless processes- people are encouraged (maybe even rewarded) to make things more efficient, and then given other things to do that could help save more money down the road.
If your department/project/whatever is focused solely on maintaining the status quo, then you'll also know this pretty shortly. If you do things quicker than others you'll be told to slow down, if you think of a better way of doing things you'll be told to never talk about it again. This is the type of workplace where you find these processes. Sure we could do it better, but that would change the status quo. What would people do with the extra time? Would they just be let go? Will that be my fault?
It'd be nice to think that globally we're moving away from the latter culture and towards more of the former. Current evidence doesn't really point that way in any statistically significant way.
Is that the law where you live? Sounds awfully messed up.
Most places, doing it on company's time doesn't make it company's owned. It's HIS intellectual property, as far as software rights go.
However, doing it on the company's time is what got him fired, which is perfectly legal as engaging in any other activity save work, as per company regulations, (and some exceptions such as restroom-time) on company time is negligence of duty and grounds for dismissal.
Naturally, the fact that he came up with a technological solution that saves the company money as well as turn their process more efficient and accurate is the reason he got rehired.
His boss' failure to understand that and handle it properly, as well as previous failures (or so alleged), is what got his boss replaced.
Bottom line of that story, I think, is: Make yourself indispensable by being able to tell when opportunity knocks.
A by-the-book drone manager is no good, of little value and can easily be replaced by the next drone in line.
If you want to advance in managerial positions you need to open your head for identifying initiatives that are good for the company, even if they're not the norm in the way the company works and bring them up to your superiors. Then you look good, they look good and no one gets fired.
If you've designed something related to your job function using the resources of the company while on company dime, it makes perfect sense that it belongs to your employer. If it's unrelated to your job and you did it on your breaks, that's something else. The whole reason you employ the most talented people to work in your company is because you hope to see benefits you couldn't specifically predict and ask for, including advances in software development. That's the trade you're making, though, you're part of the brain pool that makes up the company when you're doing those things, and of course the things you do as part of the brain pool belong to the brain pool. That's what joining a company is.
And unless he signed a contract, which states that should he make software (for producing work) under company time it belongs to the company, then it's his.
What he did was operating outside his specified regulations which is why he was fired.
If you're a manager/consultant/troubleshooting&solutions-provider, not if you're a cog in the system.
Drones are tasked with specific work and specific operational parameters.
And, sad as it is, managers oft discourage "big head" thinking and prefer the drones to behave as a predictable robot.
The last thing drones are expected of is to out-think their frame. Infact, they fear 'smart' drones.