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Presumably you're after hours? Turn your phone off?
Refer to the prior legal precedence of Arkell vs Pressdram?
Normally a recruitment agency will charge a hefty fee if you employ someone. A 'finders fee' if you like. That's how they make money.
If said employee is taken on full time and subsequently quits.. That's a contractual argument between the agency and the employer. Nowt to do with the employee.
If you are having trouble recruiting then you are underpaying.
Well no, we aren’t really. We just happen to work in a particular sector of the business that is quite niche (web development with a strong focus on NHS and public sector). So many potential employees just don’t find it as sexy as working for consumer brands.
Nah, you're missing TJs point. It always comes down to market forces. If clients are commissioning work from you, you need to understand how big the market is and price it accordingly. Then the work those expensive developers you need to recruit, can be spread out over more contracts, or if the work cannot be reused, then the contract needs to be priced accordingly as a one-off.
And if the client doesn't like your prices, they can either kill the project as not cost effective or just off-shore the work and your business goes under...the brutal reality of market forces 😉
getting bollocked for submittimg an overtime claim for a business critical issue without prior authorisation
Ah, the old "one-way door."
We had a clampdown on people basically taking the piss, had a company-wide email blanket-banning with immediate effect any overtime that wasn't authorised prior.
At 4pm that self same day, maybe two hours after the email dropped, our core switch exploded and I was first man on the scene. It took out all the networking on our site, and the entire business's telephony. I responded by variously rounding up network engineers who could reprogram a switch, phone engineers who could redirect the external phone lines, logistics guys who might be able to provide hardware, a manager who could fend off the board of directors, and a screwdriver and a hammer.
An hour later, pissing sweat and blood and with a lower intestine's worth of cable hanging round my neck I saw the manager milling about outside and went to ask him, "in light of the email today, am I going home in 20 minutes then?" and basically got back "shut the **** up, stop taking the piss and get back in the comms room."
Neither of us took each other seriously, Brett and I got on very well and he knew I was kidding. Point is that it's suddenly OK when it benefits them.
So your boss has made multiple unwanted calls; suggest you tell him clearly and politely that it's unprofessional behaviour, reflects badly on the company and could be defined as harassment.
What happed, did he threaten to install a key logger?
We just happen to work in a particular sector of the business that is quite niche (web development
Web... deve... ? No, you've lost me, I can see why you're struggling.
This is a bit of a devil's advocate argument, but if you pay enough then you will attract people to do anything. Offer me five million a year, I'll retrain and relocate. I'll come be a fluffer or a jizzmopper for that sort of wedge. I'll bring Drac's sponge.
I'm staying where I am because my boss is a **** and staying annoys him far more than my leaving would. Also, I don't really have much contact with the fat *****r
The final straw was being told to take on an ongoing task that would probably take up to 25% of my time, on top of my normal stuff. I almost launched my laptop across my home office in frustration after that call. It was at that point I decided life was too short to deal with that, and resigned, whilst getting signed off with stress for my notice period.
Yikes, I'm about 90% along this road, phone has a few dents from being flung across room...
Worryingly enough, handing in my notice might be hardest part of process, don't think my current employers realised I'm only on 4 weeks notice!
Web… deve… ? No, you’ve lost me, I can see why you’re struggling.
Are you suggesting web development isn't a thing or doesn't deserve to be development?
I’ve literally never heard of that being a thing before.
Because it’s absolute nonsense!! Recruiter fees may be repayable, but that’s by the recruitment firm, not the candidate!
Op..if the guy is that desperate to keep you (and it sounds like he is), can’t you ask for a huge hike in pay to stay? Although given he sounds borderline insane I’m not sure you’d want to..
Ah, the old “one-way door.”
Sounds very familiar.. I'm in service management and on this particular escapade I managed to rally a few key devs and our best infrastructure guy, we were all up until about 2am getting things fixed and my part mostly was fending off the customer to let the experts do thier stuff.
It was an out of hours software release that went wrong. The release manager was unavailable so I was basically doing that and major incident management at the same time.
I never got a thank you, just a bollocking for presumably running up a few thousand quids worth of expensive dev and infrastructure overtime.
Boils my piss hahaha.
I'm out now. I think I just want to drive a van or something.
Our team was given a ridiculously unrealistic deadline set by management consulting with the marketing team for a new site release. Dev management had no idea what was involved and never even asked us if it were feasible. When they told us jaws hit the floor. We worked like nutters for two weeks and then to meet the deadline we worked straight through from I think it was a Wednesday morning to hometime on Thursday. We managed it, sort of. I didn't trust myself to drive an hour and a bit home so I had to stay at a colleague's house nearby. As I was leaving the office I jokingly said 'I may be a little late in tomorrow' to the manager, he said in all seriousness 'no I need you all in at 8am tomorrow in case there are any issues'. At my colleague's house I went straight onto jobserve.com and fired off a load of applications. I got one quite quickly, and this was just inside my 6 months probation so I was still on one week's notice. It was highly satisfying to tell them that as I think they'd forgotten 🙂
Op..if the guy is that desperate to keep you (and it sounds like he is), can’t you ask for a huge hike in pay to stay? Although given he sounds borderline insane I’m not sure you’d want to..
I think it’s heading in that direction ie they’ll make me an offer to stay. They’ve already said they can’t match it, and even if they could it come with bigger strings attached I think.
I’ve never had this before - you hand your notice in, everyone says thanks, and off you trot.
I have to say this whole episode is making me reconsider whether or not I’d want to stay even if they matched the new offer.
Congratulations Jakester, sounds like you are better off well away from a boss like that.
Sounds like gaslighting behavior, maybe this is a good place to leave this : Mother Gothel, the villain of Disney’s Tangled, is one of the best on-screen examples of gaslighting.
I have to say this whole episode is making me reconsider whether or not I’d want to stay even if they matched the new offer.
No reconsideration necessary.
getting bollocked for submittimg an overtime claim for a business critical issue without prior authorisation
There was a large IT services company who put a blanket ban on travel without authorisation at director level. Some big Tier 1 Telco's network went down and they called out for priority support. It was at a WE and no one (in support) could get hold of a director to authorise the travel, so the call went unanswered (it needed a site visit to resolve). They lost the contract over it!
It is kind of a thing in IT from my experience.. You'll never get a pay rise by sitting still. Maybe a 2% standard rise.
You'll only get a raise by jumping ship.. (that's a risk in itself, better the devil you know etc.) At which point your old employer may or may not be in a position to offer more.
But by then it's often too late in the day.
When i left the last job my boss said he wasn't surprised and then didn't bother saying goodbye.
Can't say i was bothered as he was an arse who was just waiting for everything to go pearshaped and he could get redundancy.
I told my old team that they should get the f out as soon a they can because of that, simply as he didn't care about keeping the place going.
Was a bit sad and i actually felt sorry for him about his attitude
If you are having trouble recruiting then you are underpaying.
Or have a reputation for treating people badly.
We're a charity, pay less than many business but above average in the sector we are in. But we have a reputation for being a great employer, family friendly, flexible and train people.
We have a deeply loyal, hard working team with huge breadth of experience.
We never have difficulty recruiting or retaining staff. But they could earn more elsewhere.
This makes me remember the job I had for 14 years before I left the U.K. the last few years I was struggling with the workload and the lack of ability to drive change in teams in the Us. It wore me down and when the CISO starting behaving like an arse, I started looking seriously.
Got offered a job working for Amazon in Ireland, did not take it. Got offered a job working for Huawei, did not take it, eventually starting looking in Sweden so I could move here, got offered a job at a bank and took it.
By the time I handed in my notice, my boss had been fired and two of my other team mates had bailed to Apple and ARM. One of the others was pretty much out with stress from trying to do stuff in florida and India. The new boss, in Florida, called me as soon as he got my e-Mail, but I think he knew there was nothing he could do. I left on the Friday without a leaving do, card or pretty much anyone from my team around and started the new job on the Monday in Sweden.
The CISO became an embarrassment and “left” soon after. Which did not make up for him screwing over a team.
Had similar, relented got sucked back in...
After a week I was kicking myself.
6mths later I left but only after yet more bribery and emotional blackmail.
If your unhappy and it's not just a leverage tool for more money dont change your mind!
Recently we had one sent to my business partner and myself last thing on the Friday afternoon
Now you know what it’s like for employees when redundancies/poor bonuses/pitiful pay rises are announced on Friday afternoons.
I've only ever really quit 2 jobs properly. The first a couple of people took offence which was disappointing. I'd joined as a graduate trainee, spent 2 years there working on some pretty fun, interesting and critical projects. Reported to directors so had some great mentorship. I didn't leave because I didn't like the job, it was a personal decision as my GF (now wife) were splitting our time between Bristol, Newcastle and London.
My last job I quit after 12 years. They weren't surprised, I'd had plenty of conversations about how I wasn't happy with the department culture, my role and where I saw things going. It was professional and I worked my notice diligently making sure everything was in a place to be handed over. Handy, because this was right at the start of covid and I was on the phone to the HR and Research directors asking for an extension to my notice period when things went a bit wrong.
I had a guy work for me as a student. He had graduated just before the placement so in the market for a permanent job but had taken a placement to fill a gap and gain experience. He was really good so I tried to help him find a permanent job in the company. I got him another temporary position and we were promised it would be made permanent. He was really apologetic when he handed his notice in. I pointed out it was our loss, we should have made more of an effort and in his position I'd do the same thing. Promises don't pay, so if you are offered a good job, take it.
Not sure I'd ever stay in a job if there was a counter offer. IT would have to be amazing. If the only way you can get paid what you are worth is by handing in your notice it doesn't say much for the company.
@OP even if they matched your offer I wouldn't stay now.
Well no, we aren’t really. We just happen to work in a particular sector of the business that is quite niche (web development with a strong focus on NHS and public sector). So many potential employees just don’t find it as sexy as working for consumer brands.
This is a bit of a devil’s advocate argument, but if you pay enough then you will attract people to do anything.
Got to say I kind of agree with this but it doesn't have to be money. If the job is not as appealing for whatever reason there needs to be something else to compensate for that. It might be money, it might be perks, flexibility, shorter hours, training, child care but there has to be something.
I appreciate it's difficult though as the people I know that own / run their own business are usually pretty passionate (they need to be to put the effort in and cope with the stress!) And it's very hard to see why there maybe other things at play.
My boss knew I was leaving as he's only a few weeks behind me and the area manager who hired me is my previous boss.
I’m out now. I think I just want to drive a van or something.
Ha! Your whole situation has a very familiar ring to it, it pretty much describes the situation I was in up until five or so years ago. I was with a print company that specialised in work for the charity sector, I was taken on because I had knowledge of certain very old processes that hardly anyone used any more, and over time I was trained in a range of other processes so I could swap between them as necessary. Then the owner died, his family shares were bought out, and ‘angel investors’ brought in. From that point the micromanaging started, minute examination of any mistakes, failure to follow a procedure that someone else arbitrarily decided I should follow, instead of doing things the way I always had done, personal reviews, where errors were brought up, and questions asked as to why errors were made; “So, why did you forget to do such and such?” “Because you keep adding more and more things to what you expect me to do in a given number of hours” How can we help?” “By taking away some of the workload” “Oh, we can’t do that, but how else can we help?”
That’s almost verbatim, just before I got the boot, for failing to perform to their expected standards. I’d been there eleven years, and I felt that a load had been lifted as I walked out the door!
I’d actually been to my doctor because of the stress, afraid my forgetting things was a sign of early-onset Altzheimers, and just before the deciding meeting, I had a panic attack in front of my supervisor.
I ended up getting a job as an agency driver for British Car Auctions, which I did for two years, and I enjoyed pretty much every minute of it! Often long days, but I didn’t have to plan routes or anything, our driver did that, the team of five just had to pick up a car, do basic checks on condition, then drive it to a specific destination, where we’d be picked up, rinse and repeat! I drove lots of different vehicles, saw more of my home country than I’d ever seen before, I drove roughly 100,000 miles, and as a result of contacts I’d made at one destination, when the agency drivers were dropped, I got the job I have now, which, considering my age, is really stress-free, pretty well paid, and I’m working with a terrific bunch of people, who have been incredibly caring over my circumstances through the last three months. I’m now effectively an employee of Cazoo, who bought up the company I joined, and it looks like they’re continuing to look after the workforce as well, if not better, so all things considered, I’m pretty lucky.
I don’t drive that much now, I look after our main car storage site, doing pre-despatch checks, making sure all the cars are correctly located, and with 1000+ cars, that takes a bit of time!
So Matty, check out driving jobs, you never know where you might end up! Actually, looking at vehicle logistics, what I was doing for BCA might be something that might suit, it’s nothing like being a courier, you get specific vehicles to drive, say a pickup from our place in Westbury, then dropping anywhere in the country, then arrange your own transportation to the next pickup, with usually a ‘carry-over’, a car or van or whatever that you take home and deliver next day. You never know what you might get, I had a Maserati Ghibli on my drive one day, we have everything from commercial lease vehicles to top of the range Range Rovers, Teslas, we’ve had a couple of fairly new Mazda MX-5’s in recently, there’s huge variety, so worth looking at.
Are you suggesting web development isn’t a thing or doesn’t deserve to be development?
No, I'm merely suggesting that it's not an unusual profession.
I jokingly said ‘I may be a little late in tomorrow’ to the manager, he said in all seriousness ‘no I need you all in at 8am tomorrow
I had one of those. We'd pulled 12-hour physically hard graft shifts seven days a week for a couple of months in order to finish a project, long story short I got home for the first time in weeks at about 4am. On the drive home our supervisor said "don't worry about tomorrow lads, I'll clear it with the boss."
At 8:32 I got a phone call from the boss demanding to know where I was. I replied "I'm in bed, Andy said that..."
He promptly exploded, "I don't care what Andy said, Andy's not your boss, I told you to be in work and blah blah so if you don't come in I'm terminating your temporary contract." (I wasn't on a temporary contract.)
I said, "good," put the phone down and went back to sleep. That was the last time we spoke.
Been in IT for over 30 years and never encountered someone from a previous job… But then again I’ve only worked for 4 or 5 different companies in all that time.
I moved from Bristol to Silicon Glen and the first people I ran into in the coffee room were two engineers who had according to the rumour tree at old place been sacked for shagging in the coffee room 😀
First people I ran into in the coffee room were two engineers who had according to the rumour tree at old place been sacked for shagging in the coffee room 😀
Did you ask them? I bloody would have.
IT Säk is a very small world and, over here, it's even smaller. People we interview for roles know people I have worked with, or I have friends who have worked with them, which is both good and bad I guess. You can get good background info about them, personal recommendations and the like, but you also get people chancing it by being mates with other people in the recruiting chain.
At my last place I interviewed a bloke that had been a consultant for a while. He liked the flexibility of being able to move and hated the cold winters, so that life meant he could spend six months on holiday in warm places. I was not convinced he would be a good fit and thought he was arrogant as hell. Another interviewer also gave him a down-vote. Sadly, the boss knew him (they were friends) and he got an offer. Luckily though, the boss told this guy that people had found him arrogant and he should work on that. Which is great, a really good way to set up a working relationship. Idiot. I left soon after that.
I worked at a small local place for my first proper job, the boss was happy-ish to give me a day to go to college but wouldn't fund the course or the exams. It was expensive on my wages at the time but the qualifications have since proved worth it.
Once I was out of my time, I asked him about a pay rise and if I could have the spare works van (that sat outside work overnight and weekends) as my own. I had to pay for parking near work and it was quite expensive.
Lets just say NO doesn't really cover it.
Within a few months I'd been offered a job, with the salary going from £9k to £13k with a company car (this was a long time ago), and after I handed him my resignation letter, which he didn't open while I stood there, he never spoke to me again.
I've learnt more from poor bosses than I have from the good ones.
Good luck at the new place Jakester
Did you ask them? I bloody would have.
No, it somehow didn’t seem proper extending the rumour tree 400 miles!
I'd have been more curious to ask them whether they thought it was worth it...
Good luck at the new place Jakester
Thanks all. Spent most of the rest of yesterday being variously cajoled and harangued in turn to speak to my current employer about staying. I've agreed to have a chat, mainly to shut him up, but I know that if I reject whatever they're going to say (which is probably where I'm going) I will be accused of leading him/them on. It's a sort of lose/lose situation for me now.
It is all down to the effect it will have on my boss; nothing really to do with me at all, it will just make his life harder.
I'm left feeling thoroughly drawn out about the whole thing and frankly I wish I'd not done it. I feel I'm being, well, bullied, into discussing something that I don't really want to.
He's off today and Monday, so I am going to spend the weekend stressing about this now. I'm tempted just to tell HR now I'm jacking it in and don't want to discuss it further, but I know come Tuesday (or possibly even over the weekend when he finds out) I'll be in for even more of an ear-bashing.
You should do just that - it is pointless stressing yourself out about it if you have no intention of staying anyway. Either way he'll be having a shit weekend so just do it and put both of you out of your miseries.
Definitely put your notice in in writing if you've not already.
Just tell him ... "it's not personal, it's business"
Just tell him … “it’s not personal, it’s business”
And add that his behaviour is emotional blackmail, getting on for harassment.
Definitely raise with HR but stop just short of making a formal complaint - but don't forget that HR are not there for you; their sole purpose is to protect the company's interests.
I would raise it with HR and ask for a HR manager to be on the next call with your boss
singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/ive-just-told-my-boss-i-have-accepted-another-job/#post-11925436
When I left my last job, with another one to go to, I’d had 10 months of micromanagement, weekly one-to-one meetings, an extended probation and , essentially, bullying by my manager.
Same here...Good money, but the stress was just silly.
Tell him "it's you, not me"
Sounds like you need a 3 month sick note if he's going to carry on acting like that, he'll regret it then!