Asklemmy

IBM rocked up.

Don’t believe that IT guys have safe jobs. An IBM sales guy can promise to replace any developer or project with a better version. Happened twice to me now.

I was working for an Australian company, that was bought by a big (F500) American company. Actually they bought over 200 companies globally to become what they were.

After the dust settled, the American corp started talking all sorts of stupid American stuff that would never fly in Australia. For example ALL Aussies have the right to 4 weeks annual leave, and 2 weeks of sick leave per year. They wanted to change that to 3 weeks and NONE! (again would never have happened, legally, but damage was being done..)

Staff started to leave.

Next thing was then global conferences at stupid times of the night/morning with staff that were not typically the type to take meetings AT ALL. (Not upper or middle management, I mean workers and supervisors) This was around 2015, way before anything we are more familiar with today.

More left (work/personal life balance)

And finally was all the stupid buzzwords and never ending general shit that we just didn't care about. "Bi-weekly" (ambiguous globally and simply should not be used. It's either fortnightly or twice a week..) Not to mention the plethora of other buzzword shit like "holistically engaging in resource-maximising virtualisation" and bluesky or "data-only sales" (we made manufacturing equipment ffs!!)

Middle management started to walk, it was becoming a rolling stone covered in moss.

Then when there was a bit of a market shift and the economy went down (and therefore the American company took an EBITA hit, they laid off 20% of the staff). This led to further insecurity in the company and about 30% of the rest of the workers said fuck it and left. What do you expect when they are assembly/production or electricians etc who can get more stability from working out of a van and a mobile phone.

They managed kill themselves and even drop out of the F500 list!

First the boss throws a hissy fit and starts handing out "verbal writeups" for things that were his fault. Then he imposes 7:30am demos every day to prove we were actually working and not... I guess slacking?

Oh I got a story for this one.

"Of course I recognize him, he's me."

So I got hired at a company that was a sub contracting company. I had looked at some of their work they had done in the past and I thought that it'd be a fun place to work. Spin up new stuff for peoplez then move onto the next job.

When I got hired, there was one client who was forking out a lot of money. The client had more dollars than sense, and had before been paying for the cheapest labor he could find to build his dream application and had been burned by hiring a group that quite clearly did not know what they were doing. We basically started from scratch and got him something he was quite happy with.

In fact he was so happy, he decided to cut out the middle man and buy the subcontracting group I was working with outright. Cut a very nice big check to the owner who took it and bounced. Supposedly he was still helping out but I dont think I remember seeing him after that point other than one point.

Well, like I said, my new ceo had more dollars than sense, and thought himself the next Steve Jobs. He liked to call employees directly to ask why things were taking so long (which is why I know he thought of himself as the next Steve Jobs, he told me in a phone call)

I don't think a single person at this company, except for those who were in his inner circle, liked this dude. I know every developer at the company did. I know one of the other companies he contracted with hated his guts. (more on that in a bit)

The thing is, while he sucked, the rest of us liked each other. In all honesty, if any of them called me up and said they wanted to work with me again I'd happily jump up to join them again.

So at the end of this all, we got into a reverse Mexican stand off. No one wanted to quit because we didn't want to screw each other over.

Then it got taken out of our hands, because I was let go.

My response to being told I was let go was to make myself a drink, take a selfie and send it to my coworkers with the caption, "See you suckers!" And call up an old coworker who I had been discussing a project with that we had been thinking of doing as a side gig.

My coworkers flipped their shit. They went into the company chat and publicly called out the short sightedness of letting me go. I no longer had access to the company chat but my now former coworkers were more than willing to let me see them insulting the CEO and his friends.

Then one of my friends quit. Which then made the CEO reach out to my other friend asking what on earth is going on. My friend told him "well, as we said, you made a really dumb decision. So, we aren't sticking around any more. Also, I'm quitting too."

They wound up having to beg one of my friends to stay because he had been in charge of some very VERY important projects (that they only allocated one person to, gave no oversight to, and had no documentation or road map written down) and he told them he'd stick around, but they had to pay him 5 times more, and he wasn't coming in for a 40 hour work week.

And soon after THAT, it turned out the CEO and Owner of the company pissed off one of the dev shops we worked with so badly, that when it became time to renew the contract they told him they had no desire to continue their relationship with him.

Within a year, they had lost every developer they had worked with. And it makes me smile.

Worked in supermarket. New manager came in and decided to change everything, everybody hated it. So as a good 23 year old I decided to start harassing him by ordering free magazines, free stuff, furniture, kitchens etc etc online and get it delivered to his house.

Bought out by a PE leveraged shitshow. Disaster was inevitable.

Poo Gate

Someone incompetent was promoted to manager, they became drunk with power and a complete micromanaging piece of shit. Half the team quit within a couple of months.

(Hello to my current boss who may be here, no it wasn't at our job).

Worked for a F500 company in their data science department. Given the global footprint of the company and the nature of my work, all I did was sit in front of the computer (meetings, coding, etc). The pandemic struck and we went remote. Afterwards, they insisted on 100% return to office. Said I would quit if they did that. They pushed for it so I quit. So did most of the team. Apparently, interns were left picking up the pieces, and the dept has never fully recovered since