I have joined the ranks...
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Roger Wright wrote: What the hell, no one hires an engineer over 40 anyway Man, that's grim. I've got a year on you and I'm out of work also. I'm not sure that being out of work in this industry is that big of a deal though. The computer industry sucks. I love to program, but I'd rather shovel shit than work in this industry. I wonder what the hell the big deal is about hiring older programmers? If someone *would* give me a decent job, I would probably finish my career with them. But, no, they'll hire a 20 something who will quit for greener pasteurs in a couple of years. Oh, well, just prooves that the people who manage this stuff are complete morons. And who wants to work for a moron?
Stan Shannon wrote: wonder what the hell the big deal is about hiring older programmers? My dad was in the same situation and the line they fed him for every rejected application was "You are over skilled and we fell that you will be restricted by the position we are offering.". Basically they are scared that he will go in there and after a month want to do more than they want him to do, i.e. make decisions, try run the companty eytc. etc. Never mind that he said "look, I don't care, all I want is a salary right now, you can make me write text files, I can do it all, or exactly what you want." It is however a valid concern. Stan Shannon wrote: Oh, well, just prooves that the people who manage this stuff are complete morons. And who wants to work for a moron? lol, not all are morons. But most are. Start your own business and then see what your employees say :) regards, Paul Watson Bluegrass Cape Town, South Africa "The greatest thing you will ever learn is to love, and be loved in return" - Moulin Rouge Martin Marvinski wrote: Unfortunatly Deep Throat isn't my cup of tea Do you Sonork? I do! 100.9903 Stormfront
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...of the unemployed. Oh, let me tell ya... <vent> The higher-ups decided to kill our product, for valid reasons: it wasn't selling. The reasons it wasn't selling were pretty obvious to everyone: our competition was ahead of us because we were missing features. But why were we missing features? A few years ago we had all the features and a better design than all the others. Time passed, and the competition caught and passed us. But, instead of putting our efforts into catching up (which wouldn't have been impossible), our division was told by the higher-ups that the "web" was the future (for all applications), and we had to "put the app on the web" - even though they had no idea as to what "put it on the web" involved (security, scalability, I.T., support, etc.). So, our team grew as we geared up for the massive undertaking. 15 developers spent a full year trying to port a monolithic (10MB EXE) desktop app to the web. And we got within a month or two of completing it. But in the meantime, the desktop app withered: no new features, no new releases. Sales dried up. Because web product wasn't done, there were no sales there either. So our division was cut. It's a reasonable business decision, I don't deny that. But who took it in the ass for this mistake? Not the people who decided to "put it on the web" at the expense of the desktop. No, it was the people who actually did the work - the programmers, designers, customer support and sales people. Management, the people who made the fatal decision, just lowered their eyes as we were led to a conference room and were given our severance packages - told that tomorrow would be our last day. Yet when we returned to our desks to pick up our stuff - we found our computers had been wiped and our accounts disabled. I threw the only copy of the application spec (no electronic version exists) in the trash, on my way out. As I was driving home, NPR was talking about the 35,000 people who are getting laid-off at Ford. I was crushed, thinking of how much pain, anger and sorrow that must add up to. </vent> Anyway. Now I have some time to work on my own stuff . Fuck corporate America. -c
Your management layer failed, plain and simple. Frankly I don't think dropping a product because they made a bad decision before is a way to correct or rectify the solution. Obviously the product had merit before and so probably still has at least the potential of merit. Plus the team is there and they have proven before that they can make an industry leading product. Really, they are throwing away a huge amount of investment and their justifications are wrong, IMHO. I hope you either start your own company or find one with wise management Chris, best of fortune to you in your new venture :) regards, Paul Watson Bluegrass Cape Town, South Africa "The greatest thing you will ever learn is to love, and be loved in return" - Moulin Rouge Martin Marvinski wrote: Unfortunatly Deep Throat isn't my cup of tea Do you Sonork? I do! 100.9903 Stormfront
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Stan Shannon wrote: wonder what the hell the big deal is about hiring older programmers? My dad was in the same situation and the line they fed him for every rejected application was "You are over skilled and we fell that you will be restricted by the position we are offering.". Basically they are scared that he will go in there and after a month want to do more than they want him to do, i.e. make decisions, try run the companty eytc. etc. Never mind that he said "look, I don't care, all I want is a salary right now, you can make me write text files, I can do it all, or exactly what you want." It is however a valid concern. Stan Shannon wrote: Oh, well, just prooves that the people who manage this stuff are complete morons. And who wants to work for a moron? lol, not all are morons. But most are. Start your own business and then see what your employees say :) regards, Paul Watson Bluegrass Cape Town, South Africa "The greatest thing you will ever learn is to love, and be loved in return" - Moulin Rouge Martin Marvinski wrote: Unfortunatly Deep Throat isn't my cup of tea Do you Sonork? I do! 100.9903 Stormfront
Paul Watson wrote: Basically they are scared that he will go in there and after a month want to do more than they want him to do, i.e. make decisions, try run the companty eytc Well, basically, in my case that would be a valid concern. I *do* believe that I am more capable of running the operations at most places better than they are being ran by the people already there. I essentially quit my last job simply because of that issue. The people "managing" the operation didn't have a clue, and would not listen to the ideas of someone who had hands-on experience with how to do it better. Paul Watson wrote: Start your own business and then see what your employees say That is exactly what I am doing. I have contacts here who do consulting (non-programming) for industry around the mid-west. Through them I have direct contact with industries that have software needs to build a consulting service around. I've already got one little gig lined up. I am also trying to develope some of my own ideas. I've got a little money to risk at this, plus my wife works, providing the health insurance and enough money to cover the mortgage and food. If it fails, so what? I can always go back to being a truck driver or a librarian, or a bum in a trailer court. It 'doesn't make me no never mind' as we like to say down Oklahoma way. If I can't get something going on my own, I am just going to turn my back on this entire sorry industry.
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Nish [BusterBoy] wrote: Funny how quickly and unexpectedly it all happens. Not to be negative but I think most people could see what was coming at least far ahead enough not to be surprised. If you just read the news and keep up with the rumours you can pretty much figure out who is going down and who isn't. regards, Paul Watson Bluegrass Cape Town, South Africa "The greatest thing you will ever learn is to love, and be loved in return" - Moulin Rouge Martin Marvinski wrote: Unfortunatly Deep Throat isn't my cup of tea Do you Sonork? I do! 100.9903 Stormfront
Paul Watson wrote: If you just read the news and keep up with the rumours you can pretty much figure out who is going down and who isn't. That is not enought to know whether you are next to go. Right now there seem to be a popular trend to fire people, regardless of the company's condition. Just before X-Mas I've seen nearly the whole department fired, now they are hiring a new peoples! Company is doing very good and has a great prospect. They simply know that it's good time to "cut the cost", just because "everybody else is doing that", and they are abusing the opporunity.
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Yes, but how much can you really do to a company as big as a country?
Take it to the press. The bigger the company, the more interested they will be, and the more damage they can cause. ________________ David Wulff http://www.davidwulff.co.uk "My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group, there was less competition there" - Gandhi
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After four years the issues to me are 1/ Trust. 2/ The real possibility that the work PC contains things like personal emails, which have been arbitrarily wiped. 3/ even from a self interest POV, putting the developers on your bad side like this does not bode well when they know the product, and if they have any sense, have a copy of the source at home. Christian I have come to clean zee pooollll. - Michael Martin Dec 30, 2001
Sonork ID 100.10002:MeanManOz
I live in Bob's HungOut now
2. Read the fine print I'm sure it says these are our PC's and there is no such thing as personal files on them.
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Paul Watson wrote: If you just read the news and keep up with the rumours you can pretty much figure out who is going down and who isn't. That is not enought to know whether you are next to go. Right now there seem to be a popular trend to fire people, regardless of the company's condition. Just before X-Mas I've seen nearly the whole department fired, now they are hiring a new peoples! Company is doing very good and has a great prospect. They simply know that it's good time to "cut the cost", just because "everybody else is doing that", and they are abusing the opporunity.
George wrote: They simply know that it's good time to "cut the cost", just because "everybody else is doing that", and they are abusing the opporunity Now that really, really sucks. It seems that us mere programmers are capable of making better business descions than these damned Harvard Business School recruits. :(( If I didn't think it would end my job immeadiately, I would damned well go up to them and tell them exactly what they were. ________________ David Wulff http://www.davidwulff.co.uk "My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group, there was less competition there" - Gandhi
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Paul Watson wrote: If you just read the news and keep up with the rumours you can pretty much figure out who is going down and who isn't. That is not enought to know whether you are next to go. Right now there seem to be a popular trend to fire people, regardless of the company's condition. Just before X-Mas I've seen nearly the whole department fired, now they are hiring a new peoples! Company is doing very good and has a great prospect. They simply know that it's good time to "cut the cost", just because "everybody else is doing that", and they are abusing the opporunity.
New people to do the same job as the people they just got rid of? I thought there was a law against that kind of thing. Michael :-)
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...of the unemployed. Oh, let me tell ya... <vent> The higher-ups decided to kill our product, for valid reasons: it wasn't selling. The reasons it wasn't selling were pretty obvious to everyone: our competition was ahead of us because we were missing features. But why were we missing features? A few years ago we had all the features and a better design than all the others. Time passed, and the competition caught and passed us. But, instead of putting our efforts into catching up (which wouldn't have been impossible), our division was told by the higher-ups that the "web" was the future (for all applications), and we had to "put the app on the web" - even though they had no idea as to what "put it on the web" involved (security, scalability, I.T., support, etc.). So, our team grew as we geared up for the massive undertaking. 15 developers spent a full year trying to port a monolithic (10MB EXE) desktop app to the web. And we got within a month or two of completing it. But in the meantime, the desktop app withered: no new features, no new releases. Sales dried up. Because web product wasn't done, there were no sales there either. So our division was cut. It's a reasonable business decision, I don't deny that. But who took it in the ass for this mistake? Not the people who decided to "put it on the web" at the expense of the desktop. No, it was the people who actually did the work - the programmers, designers, customer support and sales people. Management, the people who made the fatal decision, just lowered their eyes as we were led to a conference room and were given our severance packages - told that tomorrow would be our last day. Yet when we returned to our desks to pick up our stuff - we found our computers had been wiped and our accounts disabled. I threw the only copy of the application spec (no electronic version exists) in the trash, on my way out. As I was driving home, NPR was talking about the 35,000 people who are getting laid-off at Ford. I was crushed, thinking of how much pain, anger and sorrow that must add up to. </vent> Anyway. Now I have some time to work on my own stuff . Fuck corporate America. -c
I have a similar tale to tell. The direct managers of the engineering staff successfully build well received products. We hadn't changed our vision, lost our focus or fallen behind. A foreign company bought us. Soon everything had to be justified in terms of money. Everything was a profit center. Managers who were focused on building products were soon reduced to making short term decisions so they could keep their jobs for one more year. On the balance sheet any product that took more than a year was a liability. This was a spin doctor's paradise. A few bad marketing studies, some questionable projections, a little quick and dirty engineering work (a breeding ground for code bugs) and the Spin Doc has a project to sell to upper management. Money gets taken away from serious work. BANG! That's the sound of the first shot going into the foot. The Spin Doc moves up the ladder of success. BANG! That's the sound of the next shot. More people start taking the Spin Doc approach. BANG! BANG! The less politically inclined get their projects canceled. BANG! The "new products" from the Spin Docs start failing and all have to be replaced at the company expense. BANG! BANG! BANG! To make a long story short, the sound of the gun shots were soon defening. So about 4 years ago I quit. Today, there are nothing but dead bodies piled up against ladders. The doors to that engineering facility are locked for good. I console myself with the fact that the product I helped build (I was the senior engineer on the product) has beta sites that are still running today with very happy users. The other system, that got funding, has had most of their systems taken out and replaced at huge company expense. The only constructive things that I can think of to say: 1) This is not just a problem with corporate America, look for this kind of stupidity all over the world. 2) Don't loose your focus and vision for the product. The goal of any company is to make money. The focus of that company should never be money. Here I am, 4 years later and your story touched a nerve that is still a little raw. I wish you a speedy recovery. Good Luck. Brad Manske
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Paul Watson wrote: If you just read the news and keep up with the rumours you can pretty much figure out who is going down and who isn't. That is not enought to know whether you are next to go. Right now there seem to be a popular trend to fire people, regardless of the company's condition. Just before X-Mas I've seen nearly the whole department fired, now they are hiring a new peoples! Company is doing very good and has a great prospect. They simply know that it's good time to "cut the cost", just because "everybody else is doing that", and they are abusing the opporunity.
George wrote: That is not enought to know whether you are next to go. Right now there seem to be a popular trend to fire people, regardless of the company's condition. Well there is your tip right in front of you "there seem to be a popular trend to fire people." You should think about your managements motiviations and what they are thinking for the year ahead. It should be easy enough picking up that management are not happy with a particular department, or they want to change direction etc. You cannot just sit there and code, that is a career killer. You cannot develop a career just on your code quality. You need to be "street wise" as they call it. You need to be always thinking about your position in the company, the industry and in your life. Evaluate your peers and see how you fit in, don't irritate them by shunning them but don't also sacrifice yourself to being like them. Standout without being a prick. Street smarts or wisdom really do help, don't think because you work with computers you don't need them. Business is all about relationships. Between you and your peers, between you and your managers. Even between you and peers at other companies. If you can get them in awe of you then it will filter back to your manager. If you have street smarts you will see a retrenchment coming. Come up with a plan your management may like instead of retrenching you (or better yet save the department). If they are deadset on firing everyone then make a plan with those people being fired, get out of the company and work together. regards, Paul Watson Bluegrass Cape Town, South Africa "The greatest thing you will ever learn is to love, and be loved in return" - Moulin Rouge Martin Marvinski wrote: Unfortunatly Deep Throat isn't my cup of tea Do you Sonork? I do! 100.9903 Stormfront
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Chris, I can't believe they wiped your PCs, what the hell was the point of that? Why they wouldn't sit with each of you can have a discussion about "What parts of what is done to date do you think would be valuble to save" is totally beyond me, but I don't really know the environment you're coming from. Their approach seems borne out of fear and a lack of understanding. My thoughts are with you, for what it's worth. David http://www.dundas.com
Large companies always do that (or something like it). They're afraid that someone might go back to their desk and wipe out the network, steal the source code, or something along those lines. While I would never do anything like that (try to destroy company files as an act of revenge), and I don't think I know any that would do that, I'm sure there are people that would, and the company is really only covering all the bases. If they hurt someone's feelings along the way, they don't care and consider it a valid comprimise if it means that their files are safe. You really can't blame them for approaching it like that. At the same time, you have to wonder if they immediately covered all of their bases. Can they be attacked from the outside? Did they leave those VPN connections active? Does anyone that was canned have VERY close ties tro someone else that's still at the company who could aid in some sort of retribution? Does this company know that it should be shaking in its boots because they canned an entire department of programmers? "...the staggering layers of obscenity in your statement make it a work of art on so many levels." - Jason Jystad, 10/26/2001
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New people to do the same job as the people they just got rid of? I thought there was a law against that kind of thing. Michael :-)
Michael P Butler wrote: New people to do the same job as the people they just got rid of? Probably... Michael P Butler wrote: I thought there was a law against that kind of thing. Not here. I remember back in 1998 I went for a job interview and found out that they just fired 17 programmers, and now they want to hire 4 in their place to do the same product...
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...of the unemployed. Oh, let me tell ya... <vent> The higher-ups decided to kill our product, for valid reasons: it wasn't selling. The reasons it wasn't selling were pretty obvious to everyone: our competition was ahead of us because we were missing features. But why were we missing features? A few years ago we had all the features and a better design than all the others. Time passed, and the competition caught and passed us. But, instead of putting our efforts into catching up (which wouldn't have been impossible), our division was told by the higher-ups that the "web" was the future (for all applications), and we had to "put the app on the web" - even though they had no idea as to what "put it on the web" involved (security, scalability, I.T., support, etc.). So, our team grew as we geared up for the massive undertaking. 15 developers spent a full year trying to port a monolithic (10MB EXE) desktop app to the web. And we got within a month or two of completing it. But in the meantime, the desktop app withered: no new features, no new releases. Sales dried up. Because web product wasn't done, there were no sales there either. So our division was cut. It's a reasonable business decision, I don't deny that. But who took it in the ass for this mistake? Not the people who decided to "put it on the web" at the expense of the desktop. No, it was the people who actually did the work - the programmers, designers, customer support and sales people. Management, the people who made the fatal decision, just lowered their eyes as we were led to a conference room and were given our severance packages - told that tomorrow would be our last day. Yet when we returned to our desks to pick up our stuff - we found our computers had been wiped and our accounts disabled. I threw the only copy of the application spec (no electronic version exists) in the trash, on my way out. As I was driving home, NPR was talking about the 35,000 people who are getting laid-off at Ford. I was crushed, thinking of how much pain, anger and sorrow that must add up to. </vent> Anyway. Now I have some time to work on my own stuff . Fuck corporate America. -c
Bummer, It sucks down here.... Been unemployed three months now. Its taught me to be more self-sufficient professionally. Kind of refreshing though. At least I control my own time now, and not some ignorant micro-manager. Good luck to ya Chris. Josh Knox that-guy.net
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...of the unemployed. Oh, let me tell ya... <vent> The higher-ups decided to kill our product, for valid reasons: it wasn't selling. The reasons it wasn't selling were pretty obvious to everyone: our competition was ahead of us because we were missing features. But why were we missing features? A few years ago we had all the features and a better design than all the others. Time passed, and the competition caught and passed us. But, instead of putting our efforts into catching up (which wouldn't have been impossible), our division was told by the higher-ups that the "web" was the future (for all applications), and we had to "put the app on the web" - even though they had no idea as to what "put it on the web" involved (security, scalability, I.T., support, etc.). So, our team grew as we geared up for the massive undertaking. 15 developers spent a full year trying to port a monolithic (10MB EXE) desktop app to the web. And we got within a month or two of completing it. But in the meantime, the desktop app withered: no new features, no new releases. Sales dried up. Because web product wasn't done, there were no sales there either. So our division was cut. It's a reasonable business decision, I don't deny that. But who took it in the ass for this mistake? Not the people who decided to "put it on the web" at the expense of the desktop. No, it was the people who actually did the work - the programmers, designers, customer support and sales people. Management, the people who made the fatal decision, just lowered their eyes as we were led to a conference room and were given our severance packages - told that tomorrow would be our last day. Yet when we returned to our desks to pick up our stuff - we found our computers had been wiped and our accounts disabled. I threw the only copy of the application spec (no electronic version exists) in the trash, on my way out. As I was driving home, NPR was talking about the 35,000 people who are getting laid-off at Ford. I was crushed, thinking of how much pain, anger and sorrow that must add up to. </vent> Anyway. Now I have some time to work on my own stuff . Fuck corporate America. -c
My brother is also a programer. He got laid off 2 weeks ago. Same sort of crap. Someone was cooking the books so the whole company went under. No, it was not Enron. He said he signed on with a bunch of different head hunters and he kept looking on his own. One of the head hunters got him a job at Honeywell within 2 weeks. I can find out the name of the agency if you want. He didn't have to pay anything. The hiring company paid the fees. Oh, he lives in Tennessee and he didn't have to take a pay cut. Cathy Life's uncertain, have dessert first!
