Job Market Stories & Experiences

Few years ago, during another recession, I got a job in another sweatshop. Medium size company with a lot of branches in North America. I was hired in the R&D department, but this department also had to deal with the manufacturing department and with some other departments.

Form an outsider perspective a company nice to work for, good benefits, vacation, not very good pay but decent for that time.

First day of work, after I signed all the papers: “You have to bring clients to this company and to get what we promised, you will have to be an account manager” “OK, but from my understanding this staff is handled by the marketing and sales department” “No, you have to do it” “Look, I signed a contract as R&D not sales, and to be sincere if I have to sale something to me I will not be able to convince myself to buy it, how do you think I will be able to convince others” “Don’t care, you have to do this job, and I don’t care how you manage it”

At that moment I knew I will not spend too much time in that company, but still, it was a recession and I needed a job. I decided to stay and see what will happen. The time passed, made some friends in the company, find out that the salaries were under the lower limit of the job market. And… one day… we where asked to came to a meeting, a meeting where will be discussed the bonuses and staff like that.

I was amazed, bonuses in a company where the salary is minimum allowed by the government, maybe they came to their senses. I went in the meeting room, there, only guys from R&D and testing departments, all of them sitting straight on the chairs, no smile on their faces, a very cloudy atmosphere. The boss came and .. he started by announcing the bonuses: “Will be 5% of your salary every year” “Great” I was thinking, a senior engineer there was making maximum 29k/year so the bonus will be 14.5 hundred per year - not bad but also not very good.

The nice moment passed, still no smile on the fellow employees faces. And the boss started with the conditions that will lead to getting the bonus. As he was speaking a smile started to grow on my face, and after a few of the requirements I started laughing. He asked me “Why are you laughing?” “OK, I said, I would prefer to tell you this in private and not here” “No, tell it here for the others to hear” “You are sure?” “Yes!!!, he yell” I said “What you are saying is that we will never see these bonuses, because we can’t meet the requirements” “How is this so?”. “First of all you are saying that the company should not lose more than 3 employees per year for us to get the money, but only last week 16 employees left the company, this means that we will never get our bonuses, because we can’t do anything to keep them here, this is the management job and not of a guy from R&D or testing” “No, we plan to keep the employees here, and they will stay because of the bonuses.” I was thinking “You are joking, right? If someone will find a job that is paying 32k instead of 29k do you think that person will stay? Or if a worker payed with minimum allowed will get 1$ more/ hour do you think that worker will stay for a bonus that is covering the gas for one month”. I said: “OK, let say you take care of this (in my mind” in your dreams”) now you are saying that we have to bring at least 10 new customers a year. The total number of the customers that the company have is twelve, and this was done over a long time, how do you think someone from R&D will bring customers? I don’t think we have any chances to do that, if we are lucky and we can convince people in the company that we worked for, may be we will be able to bring one or two, but not 10/year. From what you are saying, the company is giving us a nice bonus that we will never see and that is the reason I am laughing”

Two weeks after this meeting I took another job. The nice part is that after a few days from my resignation I was called by them and offered a job. Job that I turned down and I am sure you understand why.

A few days ago Nortel announce that is pushing forward a plan to spend 45 million dollars (yes you read it right fourty five million) on bonuses for its top 1000 executive. The company described this as incentives to get them stick with the company. Another 3 millions will be use as retention bonuses for the rest (19400 employees across North America).

For the sake of the discussion I have to remind you that not too long ago the company filled for bankruptcy and a few days before this announcement the company announced 2.1 billion dollars in losses for Q4 2008.

It is outrageous the same individuals that where able to bring the company from a stock price over 140US$ to almost nothing, now need bonuses to stay, and not penny cash they need 45 millions to stay. Why a company that is struggling to survive will pay money for some individuals that where able to get it to sign for bankruptcy is beyond my comprehension. Why a company that is not able to make a good product in ages, a company that the only worth are some buildings (and is not a construction company, is telecom they say) would keep some leeches, again I don’t understand.

From my point of view, at this moment Nortel is dead, they should cut this company suffering selling it by pieces. They lost the competition in 2001 when they decided to layoff the people form the wireless division, they lost it again when they decided that optical division has to be layoff and the future is the wireless (yes you read again right, after laying off the good engineers they decided that wireless is good), but mean time one year passed and other companies where number one, two in the wireless market so the wireless didn’t went well, back to optics, but again the technology changed and the products from 2000 where outdated for the market of 2004. Good decisions, bad decisions, it should have been very bad decisions if the company stock went in to the pennies trading.

At this moment the company is almost dead, and instead of using the money that they can get to get the company up and running, they borrow more money to pay the very persons that took the decisions that got the company where it is now. I would have fired them long before, now let them live, and go to the competition, maybe this will be Nortel chance, they will destroy the competition as they destroyed Nortel, and this way maybe, Nortel will be able to rise again.

Admin

You wonder if there is any difference between the big and the small sweatshops. Yes, there are a lot of them.

First of all in the majority of the big sweatshops the employee is only a number, a head count if you may. It doesn’t matter if you are one of the few best in the world or one lazy SB, you are a number for them, if the company is making good profit and the shareholders are happy, you can stay there doing nothing, if the specter of the recession is near, it also doesn’t matter how good you are you will be let off only because they have to show numbers to the  same shareholders. there is no mercy or no remorse even if you generated revenue of billions of dollars, no way Jose, you will be let go.

On the second hand, a big company - when is no recession have some advantages: good perks, good benefits, chances of growing with the company.  Sometimes can be a good workplace, sometimes not. And to illustrate this:

It is a big, huge company in this world, a company that is well known, the bad thing about it - the internal policies… instead of promoting competition between different teams or between its employees and the outside world, it is demanding competition between members of the same team. And why is that, because all the employees know that it doesn’t matter what, the one with the worst accomplishments in a team will be layoff in February. You will say is a smart thing, this way the members of the team will figure out new products, better ones. Yes, but the human nature doesn’t work this way. The result of this kind of treatment headed towards your employees lead to total anarchy team members will not share that part of the project, or will delay in sharing it to others (normally, because the one delaying it will finish the job in time for the dead line and the other will not have enough time), will give false leads to the other team members, will… oh will do whatever it takes for him/her to have very good results and the others worst than his/hers.

This is an example of what happen in big companies, and I am sure you figured out what happen with that kind of company: less income, products that doesn’t work in the parameters, not too much innovation, and so, and so. The company is still there because it doesn’t have competition or the competition is weak, but in the future, I am predicting (if the weak competition will do a better job in treating its employees) that this company will lose first place and will go quick in second or even lower.

There are other examples about big companies that are sweatshops and are treating bad their employees, but about them in other posts.

The small company: it can be a hell or it can be family, I worked in quite a few ones where I was feeling like it was family, helping each other, also helping the company to make good money, great places to work even sometimes the workday was 16 hours or you had to work weekend, but when the work was finished all we got together had fun, days off - wonderful time.

On the other hand you can get in one that will be the hell on earth, the president that wants to know about every work minute, the manager that will always stay behind you and asking if you finished the job 5 minutes after he assigned to you and even if he/she knows that the job will take more than one month. The same CEO that will cont the hour when you got in, the minutes spent at the restroom, the minutes when you left heading home and so on. That is a hell, if you get in such kind of company, don’t hesitate live it as fast as you can, it is the best option that you have.

Admin