The Big (Employment) Squeeze
It’s funny how information tends to come in waves. Recently, I came across two articles that had similar themes about different victims. The first was the notion that engineers that are over 35 are essentially unemployable. The opinion piece from CNN discusses how “older” workers are perceived as too expensive to hire. It also discusses how the point of mass layoffs is to eliminate the older, more expensive workers and foist more work on less people. Fluxor has discussed the reality of this situation in many of his posts. Shortly before this article came out, another one showed up on Bloomberg. This one had the age of unemployability as 40, but around the same ballpark. All of this has been discussed often on EngineerBlogs. However, what brought this to mind was an article I came across a few weeks ago. This one talked about the other end of the employment…
WTF #5: The Undead Amongst Us
Back in WFT #2: Motivating the Unmotivable, I mentioned how I had been handed the impossible assignment of making sure my undead colleagues — working for now, but have been notified of their pending layoff — continue to be fully committed and motivated to the project at hand. At least one reader mentioned in the comment section how he was surprised that being an undead was demotivating. Although I responded to that comment in length, I had no concrete evidence that they weren’t doing their jobs. Well, I did, sort of. I was aware of their job searching efforts. In fact, I quite encouraged it. I quite like my soon-to-be ex-colleagues and I do wish better futures for them, wherever they may land. Then there was that time when I ran into the lot of them at a restaurant during lunch. We’re all working from home nowadays so running into…
WTF #4: Illusory Superiority
Illusory superiorty, a.k.a. full of ourselves. This is the only conclusion I can come up with to explain the surprise that all of us felt when FluxCorp decided to shutter our satellite design centre and to layoff my entire design team, save myself (who’s being transferred out-of-country). Last August, our team was re-org’d into a new division. We all thought it was a positive move. The new division’s goals were better aligned with the products we were working on and both our new manager and new director are old guards in this product line. Although we knew that our building lease was soon coming to an end and that an office move was likely in order to save money, we felt confident we would move along with everyone else to the new site. After all, why wouldn’t we? We are “wonderful” designers. We have a good reputation with the people…
WTF #2: Motivating the Unmotivable
What The Flux is a semi-regular weekend feature on EngineeringBlogs.org that follows the follies and jollies of an engineer in industry, yours truly.— Last week, I mentioned that Santa Claus came to town to shut down our satellite office. What I didn’t tell you was that Santa Claus had a private meeting with me the night before the official announcement. He wanted me to stay with FluxCorp and suggested that I accept an offer to relocate and transfer to another part of the company. He also made it clear that there was no Plan B should I reject the offer. Next morning, I went to work and watched my colleagues being their usual cheery selves, knowing that in another hour or two, those cheery smiles will be turned upside down once Santa Claus arrived at the office. Santa was pretty blunt in his delivery — straight forward, no BS, and…
WTF #1: Santa Claus is Coming to Town
What The Flux is a semi-regular weekend feature on EngineeringBlogs.org that follows the follies and jollies of an engineer in industry, yours truly.— Christmas. It’s over, but I’m still thinking about it. It’s a time for family. It’s a time for food. It’s a time for gifts. It’s a time for bright eyed children peeking under the Christmas tree. It truly is the most wonderful time of the year. Red, green, blue, white. The multi-coloured lights hanging off snow-covered pine trees create a beautiful spectacle when reflecting off newly fallen snow on the front lawns of suburbia. A winter wonderland indeed. And here at work, here at FluxCorp, the mood was no less festive. Two weeks before Christmas, one of our higher-ups was kind enough to fly from somewhere close to the armpit of America all the way to our igloo. We sure were excited. What yuletide greetings will he…