Be Excellent To Each Other

Quit my job on Friday. Man oh man, it felt good

Best bit was the exit interview with HR. HR lady: "Why are you rejecting the counter-offer made to you by <director bloke> which had more money and moved you into the role you want?" Me: "Well, it comes down to whether I believed his promises or not and, well, here we are!"

Second best bit was, same Director Bloke has now decided that the one remaining Java product we have in the company (for which I am sole developer -- everyone else is a Microsoft coder) should be handed over to the Russian outsourcing firm we've been working with. He apparantly suggested to my boss that perhaps I should work out my notice period in Belarus at their office doing handover things. I'm quite looking forward to Director Bloke suggesting this to my face so I can explain exactly how much he can get fucked.

While I do support telling people to get fucked in general, I've always held back when it's come to employment. Ultimately, even if your existing emplorer is a complete tosser, you'll rely on them for some kind of reference in your next job. It might look a bit dodgy if you can't explain why your previous employer isn't down as a reference.

A reference would come from boss man not director man, and boss man thought it was just as ludicrous as I did. Also, I wouldn't be quite that direct, although it would amount to the same thing.

I've been telling them for eighteen months that having just one developer behind a key product is a strategic risk and they've ignored me the entire time. They're reaping what they sow now though.

I've always said, NEVER accept an offer they make to keep you. If they had any intention of treating you right it wouldn't have taken blackmail to get that offer, they'll just fuck you over the next year.

I did exactly that last year except that time I had my doubts about the two offers I had on the table (one didn't look that enthralling, the other involved travel I was uncomfortable with) and the counter-offer from my employer involved moving me to a new group as well as a fat pay rise.

Sounded promising, but even then it was a mistake! I was thrown into a new group using totally unfamiliar technology, with a very complex product, and expected to produce stuff from day one with no training or mentoring. I muddled through for six months until I was taken out and reassigned back to where I came from because I wasn't hitting deadlines.

The only time I'd advise accepting a counter offer is when it comes with some specific piece of training or job title that will open doors elsewhere. A mate of mine toughed it out at a place while he completed his Chartered Engineer training, for example, and a colleague of mine has accepted a team lead role he doesn't really want much with firm plans to head out into the job market with a much stronger CV six months from now. I think these can be valid plans if you are very cautious. Overall though I agree with you Dudley.

Nice one Richard.
I'm in essentially the same position myself (sole developer wise) and it's all getting a bit silly. I'll probably avoid making that move though as it looks like we've just merged with another company which has cheaper hardware and has cracked offshore development for the apps, so our entire engineering arm is looking likely to be wiped out soon anyway, so I may as well hang on for that. C'est la vie.

Yes, there is perhaps some scope for using it to screw them if you're not really sure about the new offer.

Cheers mate!
The product I was hired to work on, the only Java product we have, was officially end-of-lifed nearly two years ago with the little detail that we didn't tell it's ongoing customers, we continued to sell it, and we made no investment into any sort of replacement product. This strategy has WIN painted all over it, I'm sure you'll agree.

Interesting. We've tried a few different outsourcing options, with different devs and different projects, and most of them have pretty much failed. What's your experience? What sort of field are you in?

In our industry (web service based travel software products, e.g. stock aggregators, search engines, CRM systems, accounting systems, and stuff like that) the business value we add is nothing to do with implementation -- it's in the business logic. It's the discount rules engine, or the harmonisation of differing stock sources (e.g. scheduled versus low cost flights) into a unified interface, or the stock de-duping rules. The hard part of these isn't implementation, it's design, and it can only be effectively designed in close co-operation with expert business analysts, either in-house or at our clients. You just can't outsource that sort of work because you could only get good results back if you provide the outsourcer with specs so detailed they'd be as hard to produce as writing the software in the first place.

If you have an HR department, then you reference will come from the HR department, and not from anyone that you actually worked with.

Congratulations that man.

There is no better feeling than telling the man "Sod it, I'd rather go home and sit on my arse than continue to work for you".

If you were willing to travel (eg abroad) I'm sure you could parley that PhD into some cash.

I'm currently counting the hours until Thursday when I come home for the last time, in my case it's solely because of 'corporate shite' that I've resigned and am coming home.

Why does the serious smiley man look so sad?

Won't work like that at my (soon to be ex-) employer, we're too small and informal. We're 100ish staff with just two people in the HR department; they have their hands full doing exit interviews! My reference will come straight from my line manager.

Thanks!

No need to travel! The new place does automated cell planning tools for the wireless industry. My PhD is in... automated cell planning techniques. Of the new place's six staff, four of them did PhDs in the same group I did. This is not a coincidence of course

I'm still on a high from Friday!

Good for you Richard, it's good that you're taking your life in your hands. I'm glad you feel better for it anyway.

Either way, don't worry about it. whilst the myth that you are not allowed to give a negative reference is indeed a myth, it IS illegal to give a negative reference that is not 100% factual and verifiable via documentation. As such, a company can say "Mr X did work here from 2006 - 2008, and in that time took 79 days of sick leave", but they cannot say "Mr X did work here from 2006 - 2008 but got a bit lazy in his notice period; in general he was a bit of a cunt."

Congrats again, the new job sounds rather special.

Which is why in practice, negative references don't happen.

What might happen of course is they ignore the request, as I did when a guy who was fired for stealing from my store, put me down as a reference.

A former boss once took a reference form and simply wrote "no comment" in each space, for someone who was fired for general incompetence, absenteeism, and showing up to work drunk at 10am.

Card payment, umm, things. I'd have said that practice had universally failed for us too, the latest attempt being to farm out a porting job to two different offshore houses, and picking a winner at the end. I'm not sure of the details (all this happens at application level whereas I'm at device driver level) but I'm pretty sure that was classed as FAIL as well.



Ours apps are fairly easy user interface and sticking-to-banking-guidelines stuff. Bit of comms, printing, quite old school really. Also, they've basically all been written - new developments tend to start with a modification of something that already exists. So, ripe for the outsourcing if it's managed properly, and by all accounts our new chums have done so.

The tricky stuff in the platform which you can't outsource has been pared down to scarily few people, and as I say I think now we've merged with another company which seems to have all that already (and has engineering types in their management, rather than sales types), that's clearly one two many OSs.

Minskcna be quite beautiful this year though Richard..

(not that you would probably would get to see much of it so good work!)

This could lead to a Doctor Who-style spin off thread "CV advice". Or not.

Now that shows some serious balls on his part. Did he expect a reference? And surely the reason for his dismissal would be recorded?

I'm not sure that was the official reason for dismissal, it's always next to impossible to prove, I think they just got him by picking at every little tiny breach of procedure.

Nonetheless, I've no idea what he expected other than me binning the request immediately.