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Trenches: 3rd of January 2013
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Tales from the TrenchesFirst Article Previous Article Read More Latest Article
Miscommunication
01/03/2013 - AnonymousShare:Share On TwitterShare On Facebook
I started my new job as a video game tester with a burning desire to advance. I was passionate, dedicated, and clever. I found bugs deep in the core tech, I exploited systems in new, awesome ways, and pulled over 2500 hours of overtime in 10 months. I lived and died by our project.
Periodically I asked for feedback from my lead, who always replied with “if you were doing something wrong, I’d tell you.” I heard the same from my supervisor and the head of the department. My six month review date came and went without hearing anything, and when I asked I was told they were running a little behind and to wait a week, then ask again. So I did. I was told to ask again in a month, so I did. I was starting to get nervous/frustrated when I was told my review was all done and they were just waiting on “corporate” to approve it… which was the case for promotions and raises.
My 9 month review date came and went without hearing anything else. Then, a year. I had been told now to *stop* asking about my review. All I got was the line about “if you were doing something wrong, we’d
tell you.”
My 1-year anniversary passes. Flash forward, and my 18-month milestone passes. My original review is over a year late now. I was told “corporate” had finally signed off, but now there was another year of service to evaluate, so the review had to be rewritten, BUT, I was told raises (of which now I was looking at two) were retroactive, so hang in there.
Finally, my boss brings me into his office at the ~22 month mark.
He tells me I’m being laid off in 60 days.
Flash forward to my final day. My lead finally takes me in for my 6 month review, which had become a year review, then finally, an exit interview. Only then, at the very end, did I learn about their laundry list of completely fixable complaints they had about the way I worked, for almost two years, and how their concerns had culminated in their decision to let me go.
I asked why they hadn’t been telling me these things during my repeated requests for feedback. My supervisor simply shrugged.
I lost my dream job, because….*shrug*
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1) They were just stringing him along the whole time, and they made up the complaints to justify firing him before he hit two years.
2) Someone along the review chain severely dropped the ball. What's worst is the passive-aggressive "not going to mention them face-to-face (even when directly asked), but put all the issues in the review."
I got an internship at Microsoft and I was doing a horrible job. I was way too green to realize that so I relied on my supervisors to point out to me that I was screwing up. Instead they gave me seemingly neutral reviews. The reviews actually had phrases that would be considered red flags but I was of course too inexperienced to pick up on the meaning. When the 4 month internship was over, everyone seemed to be sad to see me go and my exit interviews seemed to be positive. A few months later I tried to apply for a position at Microsoft and was told that I would not be considered because I had a No Hire flag in my file.
In retrospective I know I was a lousy employee who should have been fired but the whole reason for that internship was for me to learn and because my bosses did not want to give me real feedback it ended up being a big waste of everyone's time.
- Too much overtime logged.
- Keeps nagging about review/raises/promotion.
I mean, maybe the fixable thing was, "Never does any goddamn work."
It's unlikely. He would have to log 8, sometimes 9 hours of overtime every day, 7 days a week, for 10 straight months. Zero days off. That's just at 2500. He said over 2500.
Of course he did profess to being "clever" so perhaps that explains how he conjured those numbers. I bet it's just his made up estimate to make himself look good. If we (foolishly) assume he got paid for those hours, even at a modest salary of $8 an hour, he would have net an extra $30,000 over that 10 months in overtime alone.
It really would have to be my dream job to work 16 hours a day from Monday-Friday and about 16 hours every weekend. If we assume 8 hours for sleep, eating, showering, he had, at most, 8 hours total of free time (we'll say between the hours of 5pm and 1am) every Saturday and Sunday. That's it. There wouldn't be another free minute on the table. Living the dream!
Warframe: TheBaconDwarf
But yeah, my first thought on reading this story was that the number seemed way too high. I can't imagine anyone being willing to pay 2500 hours of overtime. Especially not for what usually amounts to a temporary low-wage position (based on what I've read in the other stories), and doubly especially not when you figure that all the other testers are likely putting in the same number of hours. That would add up quickly.
There were people like that when I did QA. I just saw us all being taken for a ride so I got the fuck out.
2500 hours over 10 months is 250 hours/month, which divided by 30 days is 8 1/3 hours of overtime a day. So in a 7 day span he'd have to work 40 regular hours and 58 overtime hours, or 98 hours total, which averages to around 14 hours a day, if he worked every day. That leaves about 2 hours a day of free time (after deducting 8 hours for sleeping, eating, commuting, etc.) or 14 hours a week of free time total.
And, keep in mind, this is to reach the minimum of 2500 hours, the story author claims to have worked more.
@Karl, you're right that it could've been unpaid overtime if he was salaried. But he was actually working more overtime than regular time. He could've been juggling two regular-hours only jobs and still had more free time. If his overtime was all unpaid, his per-hour pay was effectively reduced by nearly 60%.
Just for the sake of my sanity, I'm going to assume it was a typo and he meant 250. Or maybe one of his issues was "bullshits constantly".
PSN ID: fearsomepirate
PSN ID: fearsomepirate
Most public companies will try to build a case against you before letting you go so there's less chance of a lawsuit due to age/race/etc.