Guest Art: Mackenzie Schubert
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/guest-art-mackenzie-schubert1
Employees Only!
AnonymousI work as a contractor in software design for one of the Silicon Valley companies that got started by a couple of guys in a garage and eventually became a huge monolithic multinational corporation that loses more money in a hour than most of us will ever see in a lifetime. And no, it’s not one of the newer garage companies you might be thinking of; it’s the one that built the expensive calculator you’ve had buried in a box in the closet since college, at least one of the printers you’ve owned and possibly the PC you’re reading this on.
A week or so after Thanksgiving break, posters proclaiming the “IT Holiday Potluck Lunch” were hung throughout the floor with accompanying sign-up sheets in the break area. Longtime employees began buzzing about the spread the company brought in as well as the sweet prizes that would be raffled off with one ticket for each toy donated.
A few days before the big day I dutifully signed up to bring in a dish and bought a small toy to donate; part of being a contractor in the Valley is a desperate desire to belong so we’re suckers for any remotely team like activity.
Then the day before the shindig, signs much less elaborate than the original posters began popping up with “Potluck is for __ Employees Only”.
“Surely they must be speaking of uninvited guests,” I thought aloud. “Nope,” one of the older contractors laughingly told me, “No contractors allowed; we get paid to work not to party! “
The next day as several hundred laughing and smiling “employees” lined up for a 2 hour party with loud music, food, games and sweet prizes, long faced contractors packed up their laptops and other belongings in preparation for their search for alternate work spaces away from the Holiday cheer. Merry Christmas!
Posts
Eh, I think that would just be something managers would say to try to justify the shitty behavior in this case. A holiday party and purchase of stock are incredibly different beasts legally and financially.
The more likely story is that employees are salaried which means they're getting paid the same amount of money despite fluctuations in work, while contractors are paid by the hour. If they're in the same building as the party and allowed to go to the party then there is no way for their managers to verify exactly how much time they're working vs. partying. Its incredibly similar to why most departments won't let their employees or contractors telecommute. Managers and their Lovecraftian Overlords are incredibly insecure and need to feel like they have eyes on their employees at all times. Also, there is a pervasive stereotype that contractors try to constantly cheat their employers to pad their invoices that may be coming into play.
Seriously though, I've been a contractor for 10 months now and at the company I work for (easily as large as the unnamed company that OP speaks of) I get treated just like a regular employee with the exception that I am paid by the hour, paid significantly more than the regular employees, and don't get to participate in company HR benefits.
But I'm still invited to all the company and team events and constantly reminded that they appreciate what I do for them. It probably helps that programmers/developers are in such high demand in Charlotte at the moment that only 1 in 4 of my team members are full time employees of the company. But even then, the other places I have worked (as a permanent employee) may have had some old timers who were resentful of the contractors, but otherwise they were treated equally well.
I think that the other stories about how testers are treated badly are pretty shitty in general, but at least those people have limited ability to fuck your company in the ass. I've always said code reviews for purposes of security are a joke at 99% of companies they end up being more about some guy trying to ram his personal preference for indentation or white space or variable naming convention down your gullet. If you know what you're doing you can build in some vulnerabilities that would be undetectable by the vast majority of your peers, and even if they did find it you could easily profess ignorance of the vulnerability you included.
So even if being nice to your employees and treating them like valuable assets and at least partly human isn't the best way to prevent you from getting screwed over by your employees, it certainly doesn't hurt.
No, I feel that employees (whether contract or permanent) should be treated like team members rather than a sub-human dirt, or I wouldn't be surprised if a disgruntled individual did sabotage a client's product.
I mean if you want to read into it more than that, for the sake of argument you're absolutely welcome to do that. I mean trolls gonna' troll after all.
However, I am simply stating that the management in the story was absolutely tone deaf and clueless. That's not actually a big surprise given the era that the story is from, there was a time when most mid-level and all upper-level management was blissfully unaware of the reach and scope of technology and the people within their organization which tend it. Now days, almost all mid-level management and most upper management understand technology a lot better than they used to.
I used to supervise teams of programmers and you better believe that I treated every last one of them like a valued member of the team, whether they were contract or permanent. If upper management tried to pull something like that when I was lead I would have raised hell, and if management didn't listen I would have brought my ENTIRE team to the party and dared my bosses to fire me over it. Because not only would it have been the right thing to do on a human level, I am also keenly aware how stupidly easy it is to insert vulnerabilities into enterprise level distributed applications. I would lean on professionalism and basic human decency for them not to do so, but if treating them like people instead of undesirable elements was going to reduce the chance that one of them would decide to fuck over the company by even 0.01% then HELL YES I would do it.
You misunderstand his point. In that court case, since Microsoft treated the contractors as employees for the purposes of workload, employment duration, etc., the courts ruled that they were entitled to the same monetary benefits as the "normal" employees, such as stock benefits.
Allowing contractors to attend on-the-clock parties could be considered "paid time off", and could potentially be a factor in a determination that the contractor was actually a de facto employee.
http://trenchescomic.com/tales/post/tech-support-in-the-restaurant-industry
http://trenchescomic.com/tales/17741
Or is it? I guess I don't know.
No new comic yesterday, but a new tale.
http://trenchescomic.com/tales/post/the-big-retail-score People bemoan the loss of independent game stores, but customer loyalty only lasts as long until someone else has a cheaper price.
This makes it sound like they started their business at the same time as they got an imported N64.
I think you're reading it right. The N64 was released in Japan on June 23, 1996, the Neo Geo CD was discontinued in 1997, and Final Fantasy VII was released in North America on September 7, 1997. So the timeline works, although it means they had been open only a little more than a year when FFVII was released.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_64#Release
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo_Geo_CD
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_VII
BTW, the N64 was released in NA on September 29, 1996, 3 months after the Japan release, so you had to have been really impatient to want an imported N64.
I didn't get how they could have a long history of selling FF games if they had only opened a little over a year earlier (during which no new FF games were actually released anyway).
This would have been around the turn of the internet, where people were now discovering there were 3 whole FF games they never even frickin' heard of, and the whole numbering system was a lie. So it depends how long a "long history" is to them, but if they were dealing in imports then that must be it.
http://trenchescomic.com/tales/post/software-testing-101
http://trenchescomic.com/tales/post/its-not-what-you-know
http://trenchescomic.com/tales/post/good-intentions
That... sounds like a pretty clear cut case of theft (albeit minor theft) to me. If you just want to help a gamer out, cover the amount he's short out of your own pocket.
While logistically true, having worked in retail it tends to not be that cut and dry.
I've seen managers push for this kind of thing to make sure they get a sale. I've seen others knock down the price of products to cover service plans and the like just so they can show there was a sale.
I'd imagine had he used that card on that sale to insure the sale of some accessories and a service plan on that 3DS, he might have gotten a pat on the shoulder for that.
Of course, using it to get a deal for a friend in the other occasion was dumb unless it also had a similar benefit to the store. And the two other $0 instances I can't comment on because there were no details.
The one thing I would disagree with is possibly the outright firing, especially if it's a first offence. Some sort of warning and probationary period may have made sense, or banning him from using the power up card as punishment. Still, as it was a new store, they may have wanted to set an example and try and nip any potential abuse in the bud.
http://trenchescomic.com/tales/post/dont-ever-complain
This person has horrible friends/roomates.
Honestly, I don't think I could ever take a job involving a major hobby of mine, as I think it would make me grow to hate my hobby.
From my point of view, if you really enjoy video games, the last thing you should do is take a job testing video games. You'll end up hating both your work and your play.
http://trenchescomic.com/tales/post/game-translations
http://trenchescomic.com/tales/post/i-could-have-this-done-in-5-minutes
Promising double pay and then never giving it is just wrong.
That made me laugh a little, since I do like Marie more, and if the item was a discount off a product, I'd be confused by calling it a voucher instead of a coupon. The only time I hear the word "voucher" is in reference to something to do with schools.
So if that's the sort of thing they were changing, it sounds like good editing to me.
http://trenchescomic.com/tales/post/5-too-easy
http://trenchescomic.com/tales/post/pizza-pizza.-pizza-pizza-pizza It's a sad state of affairs when someone wants a Subway sandwich over pizza.
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/guest-art-nick-trujillo
Some other stats:
Season 1 08/09/11 - 02/16/12
Season 2 03/20/12 - 11/15/12
Season 3 01/08/13 - 09/05/13
Season 4 11/19/13 - 09/16/14
Break between Season 1 & 2: 33 days
Break between Season 2 & 3: 54 days
Break between Season 3 & 4: 75 days
Break between Season 4 & 5: 70 days (so far)
Note that I'm not counting guest comics, concept art, or sketches as part of the seasons.
http://trenchescomic.com/tales/post/fudgin-football I'm trying to figure out why they had them kick an American Football, when that's only like 3% of the game; the vast majority of the time the ball is either tossed or held.
I was wondering that myself. Was this some misunderstanding of how the game is played on the part of those requiring the training?
Also, what could possibly be so "awful" about having to kick a ball "like 8 times"? If they were made to play regularly for hours at a time, I could understand that. But kicking a ball eight times? That's a mild annoyance at best.
New Tale:
http://trenchescomic.com/tales/post/the-committee
I'm wondering more about the "partially refund us for some of our baking expenses" bit. If this was a group that was solely baking stuff for work-related events, I'd want all my baking expense paid. After all, the company is still benefiting from the free labor, since I'm assuming the baking was done at home after hours.
http://trenchescomic.com/tales/post/im-team-rocket This only works because Nintendo kept with cartridges on their handhelds. Otherwise, the saved games would be on some memory card, and the traded-in game discs would basically be like new.
-Tycho Brahe
Nintendo ID: Incindium
PSN: IncindiumX
I traded all his Pokémon over to my copy of Pokémon Stadium before restarting the game, so now they sit there in my Stadium Box, unused, a reminder of a failed Pokémon Trainer...