I'm Not Like You
Posted Sat Jun 16 00:00:14 2001 by sbaldwin |
By Aaron Man
I don’t have a degree in computer science. I’m not an IT professional. Hell, I can barely work my way through MS Access, let alone design a programming matrix that will keep track of X or define Y. I’m just a Liberal Arts major who ended up working in the HR department of a young, budding ASP, located in the suburbs of Minneapolis, MN. I was lured away from a decent job at a major payroll processor to work for an illustrious tech company. Oohh boy – throw the word “tech” at somebody who studied early American history and literature and he or she will start to drool. I wanted to get in on the “sure thing” that was the tech industry, so I jumped at the opportunity (and stock options) that came with working at a start-up firm.
The very first meeting I attended at this company, the CEO stood at the podium, fine liquor in hand, and confidently announced that we would soon be the most powerful provider of “customer intelligence” in the nation, quite possibly the world. Literally, cigars were passed around and the beer was flowing like water that day. Our meeting was held outdoors at a business meeting center (I never knew such a place existed) and in the grassy field beyond where our chief officer stood, one of the veteran engineers (employed for over three months) did drunken somersaults, staining his pressed Banana Republic chinos green. I sat back and felt as though I was now a part of the privileged class, despite the fact that I was to play a secondary, administrative role in the company. A new headquarters was being built and one of our existing buildings was named the “Garage” after so many of the other big tech firms who began as a dream in someone’s single-car garage.
In the office we had a robot dog named Digit, who was given free reign to walk and mechanically piss on anything it wanted to. Very few knew that this dog had a 3500.00 price tag and had to be coaxed to life every morning after sucking wattage overnight. We had free snacks, drinks, whatever. There was a ping pong and foosball table, memberships to health clubs, etc. Most of the staff attended “business” meetings on board a Disney cruise liner and it seemed as though half of the 300 person staff lived in some sort of subsidized corporate apartment.
My job was to handle many of the HR functions, including
payroll/accounting, so I had an inside view of the economics of the company, working with the CFO, Controller, etc. The person who used to do the payroll was promoted to – get this – Senior Morale Officer! Hah! That is an actual title!
My first inkling that something bad was happening should have been when the Senior Morale Office didn’t show up to work and didn’t return on a regular basis for approximately one month. Rumor has it she hit the wall – nervous breakdown. What could the person “in charge of” morale be worried about? My accounting insight told me what was really going on.
It’s pretty damned expensive to provide King Size Snickers bars to every single employee, especially when the engineers were wired on more than JavaScript (I still don’t know what they did). It takes a lot of caffeine and a lot of refined sugar to keep those turkeys in line and producing viable products. It ain’t cheep.
How can you ask a potential investor to drop their cash into a company that allows their employees to suck down 5 cherry cokes and 3 bags of Chex Mix everyday, without recovering a single dime from them? Sure you ask the employees to work 15-hour days, but the VC wants to see some solid figures, not just a lot of hours worked. Trips on a Disney Cruise? The VC gives your company 500 grand and all they see is Drunken Sommersault Joe or Jane hanging out with Goofy, Disney’s own version of the “Morale Officer”? Something has got to give. Right?
So I show up to work one fine Thursday morning in November and hear that there is a “mandatory” meeting at a local community college. “No drinks at the business center?” I ask. A friend of mine at another company told me that a mandatory meeting always means one of two things. “You all are doing great, here, have some more stock options,” or “You all are doing great, but the company doesn’t have enough money, so smell ya later.” My wise friend also suggested that I sit near an exit in case they tried to lock the doors and set the building on fire. Harsh, but he was close to the truth.
Our omnipotent CEO stood up, this time with no drink in hand, and announced that there would be layoffs. Then we were led into “break-out” rooms where some of us were told we were canned (by a whimpering Vice President) and others were told they would still have a job, if they wanted it.
Basically, the fat was trimmed and I (along with 80 other souls) was considered to be bad fat (I guess there’s good and bad fat now). Boxes were waiting when we returned to the office, etc., etc. You’ve heard it all before and you’ll hear it again before too long.
What makes me different from you is that I’m not a techie, but for five short months I took part in the “revolution” that made a handful of people rich (at least on paper). I was sucked in with the lure of stock options and free rolls of Life Savers, and was spit out the other side, still intact. I was incredibly lucky and found a wonderful job with another non-tech start-up, of sorts. I will never return to the tech industry, but am totally fascinated with the psychology of economic downturns and all the BS that comes with it.
I’m different from you, but have gone through a tech layoff just the same and it still burns when I remember what it was like to wake up on a bright Friday morning, without a job or a paycheck to pay my rent. Maybe we’re not as different as I originally thought…
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Name: HR Guy
Email:
Date: Tue Jun 19 10:34:22 2001
Comment: I hate the fact that administrative people are considered expendable. Without the bones, the body would be a lump of muscle and fat. Here's value add - a company that has a smooth running accounting and HR dept.
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Name: Marilyn Vos Savant
Email:
Date: Tue Jun 19 00:17:22 2001
Comment:
>If you had been adding value to the company, you would not have been laid off. It's as simple as that.
Harvard MBA (if that's your real alias), what if you were adding value to the company and your supervisors were cognizant of your contributions but top management made really bad and costly decisions (burning through, say, 30 million dollars in 18 months), lost the confidence of the investors, were unable to close a badly needed round of financing, went bankrupt, and fired everybody? Hasn't this happened to any company you know of on your home planet (Uranus, I'm betting)?
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Name:
Email:
Date: Mon Jun 18 17:00:54 2001
Comment: Get in my belly!
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Name: PHROSO
Email:
Date: Mon Jun 18 12:32:01 2001
Comment: From the 1932 movie "Freaks"
ALL FREAKS (Netslaves, feel free to join in):
(chanting) We accept her--one of us--gooble, gobble--we accept her--one of us--gooble, gobble...
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Name: MasterPo
Email:
Date: Mon Jun 18 09:22:26 2001
Comment:
Steve,
Good article but I have to ask: What's the point?
NetSlaves has posted many "It happened to me" articles already. Yea, this guy wasn't a techie but but that doesn't change anything. Obviously, any company has non-techies/admin-types employeed too.
While I feel this guy's pain, why beat a dead horse? This story adds no value. Has it really been that slow a month for news?
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Name: fedup with florida
Email:
Date: Sun Jun 17 17:27:32 2001
Comment: Ps:One of the founding fathers of Mis/It/Dp was a girl her name was Grace Hopper.
She was an Admiral in the US Navy.
She had a PHD in Math and Physics.
She invented Cobol
-Cobol was the first high level language.
All other high level languages stem from it.
High level langages look something like English depending on which language(C,Fortran,Rpg,ect.)
you use and converts it into machine language.
The machine langage is what the computer actually uses to execute what ever you want it to do.
It(machine langage) can be in hex,,oct.,or binary based. This is where you here the terms "bits and bytes" from -it is based on the binary number system which is either an 0 or a 1.
She(Grace Hopper) died a number of years ago.
They use to kid her about the "nano seconds" this and "nano seconds" that sayings.
She also invented the term ,"bugs".
Just like Carl Sagan and the "billions and billions" saying.
Before there were Pc's and there still are mainframes.
Before the mainframes(IBM,Burroughs,Honeywell etc) were unit record equipment.
Most of the programers were either Math,Physics or
Engineering majors before the Pc's came into vogue.
Pc's are not right for all things.
You need a mainframe.
Ex. Social security,a lot of banks,and insurance companies have mainframes and maybe some pc's too.
I too had to take a couple of management classes in college-the theory they taught was if you know how to manage people you do not have to know what the product is.
WRONG WRONG WRONG
When you program you also have to know something about the industry you are programming for too.
There are things particular to the industry you are working for.
A lot of Mis/DP/IT/ is dealing with Accounting functions.
You have to know what a debit and a credit is,
what a ledger,journal,balance sheets,accts payable,payroll,accts rec.etc are.
In order to do a query,set up a spreadsheet,set of a screen in a database or vb etc.
The guys in my class really could not take it when
a girl knew more than they did.
A "man" does not feel threaten by a smart woman.
There is a lot of inflated egos in Mis/It/Dp and believe it or not no one knows everything.
I also have learned to never put a girls name on a resume.
Example: Mary Smith
Put inside: M. Smith on a resume
If a Hr person sees a girls name on a resume
they will put it in the girls sterotype job pile.
You would be amazed how many phone calls of shock I have received when they discovered the resume belonged to a girl and not a guy.
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Name: Firewallfright
Email:
Date: Sun Jun 17 16:30:14 2001
Comment: Thank you very much for clearing up the identity issue, Harvard. For a while there I thought I was actually losing my mind, having actually understood the point made with the comment posted earlier. Whew!
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Name: Harvard MBA (real)
Email:
Date: Sun Jun 17 14:08:35 2001
Comment:
Let me first state, that my imitators below do not represent my feelings on this subject. Of course, like the miserable little wimps they are, these phonies can't come up with an original thought or idea, and find it desirable to steal my identity. Now on to business ...
This gentleman is yet another individual that was bound to be shaken out. And contrary to his history backround ( a la Gilliard ), he will NOT find it easy to land a job in HR as in the past. The fact is, hiring managers are being much more selective in who they bring on board, and coming from a failed company is not a strong point. The fact remains that the service industry has suffered greatly, with people turning their noses up at taking a job at a Starbucks, or Barnes and Noble - and the few clerks that remained were snobby and rude. No more. As the mass exodus continues, people such as Mr. Man need to come to the acceptance phase, that we will never return to the irrational exuberance of the late nineties. It's reality check time. No more 25 year old history majors affording 1500/month rents. Next time someone offers you stock options, remember that options are traditionally reserved for the executives of a company, as they ultimately drive the success or failure of the firm. The lower level employees do work hard, but cannot be expected to be entitled to options - such is the reality of the modern corporation. Fiction? I think not. I have yet to meet one plebe whose options have paid off substantially, or have even been above water. So if you're a bottom feeder employee being offered options, you're being duped. Just ask Mr. Man ...
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Name: Enough Already
Email:
Date: Sun Jun 17 09:26:31 2001
Comment: I really can't feel sorry for this guy. He's a payroll clerk (who doesn't even have an accounting degree) who probably made a much higher salary at this tech startup than at his previous (large) company. As someone else stated, now he's pissed because he didn't become an options millionaire and he got laid off. Tough shit. The notion that technical people would all become millionaires working for tech startups was wishful thinking. The notion that support staff (like payroll clerks and admin assistants) would all become millionaires working for these companies was just fucking absurd. Come on, you're a freakin' bean counter. One thing I learned a long time ago is that unless you're in operations or sales, that is to say unless you are involved with the creation of the good or service that your company makes or are involved in selling that good or service, you don't count in the eyes of the company. For example, if you're a programmer, either work for a consulting firm as a billable developer or work for a software company as a developer of the software they sell. Don't work for a company that manufactures shoes as an internal systems programmer. But the point is that it's absurd for a payroll clerk to think they're going to become wealthy because of the particular industry their employer happens to be in.
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Name: Firewallfright
Email:
Date: Sun Jun 17 02:07:53 2001
Comment: As reprehensible as I have found most of Harvard MBA's comments in other threads, I am frightened to find myself agreeing with him in this instance (in a roundabout kind of manner). When I was in the Marines, where job security was not an issue, I was encouraged to never make myself indespensible, ie. spread knowledge and inform everyone who could benefit from something I knew. I have found in the civilian corporate world, the need for survival and job security often depends upon the careful control of information. Let people know what they absolutely need to know (and make certain that they know that they got that valuable info from you), but keep them coming back to you for continued knowledge and support. It is devious and almost evil, comparable to price gouging, but in the corporate atmosphere of today it is one of the closest ways of guaranteeing job security (if there truly is such a thing these days). It is because of my complete hatred of the necessity of Machiavellian tactics that I ventured out of the corporate world. In the corporate world, those who embrace those tactics will survive. Those who do not may survive, but they will have a very hard go at it.
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Name: Bill Volk
Email: bvolk@youworkit.com
Date: Sat Jun 16 22:49:41 2001
Comment: Broken Record Time...
You were just a pawn in the game of building worthless companies designed to extract as much money from clueless investors via. a dubious I.P.O..
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Name: Puppet on a String
Email:
Date: Sat Jun 16 19:25:35 2001
Comment: Whining?
You folks are scaring the hell out of me! Did you actually read all the words? He said he FOUND A JOB already. And, get this, he's telling a story about having been a netslave.
Is this not relevent to the namesake of this web site? Kudos to Chris for comprehension.
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Name: Flashman
Email:
Date: Sat Jun 16 16:14:47 2001
Comment: Nice fantasy, child, but you forgot ythre kinky sex and the expensive, fast cars and women.
Feh.
Flashy
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Name: Amos Nandy
Email:
Date: Sat Jun 16 16:02:19 2001
Comment: Boo hoo hoo. You greedy fuck, you got what you deserve.
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Name: Chris
Email: chris@rashmagazine.com
Date: Sat Jun 16 13:47:25 2001
Comment: this guy isn't really whining, is he? i mean, beyond the fact of him submitting his story. and that's all it is, the oft-told tale of what happened to a lotta people in the past year. i don't think he was trying to teach anybody a lesson, just adding his story to the pile. maybe people are just sick of hearing these stories, tho i still find them fascinating somehow. at least he's not giving us a laundry list of what he can no longer afford, or complaining about the price of lattes at starbucks. and at least he's not giving us a preachy i-told-you-so line, ex post facto, like so many are wont to do. for that i am grateful.
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Name:
Email:
Date: Sat Jun 16 10:24:43 2001
Comment:
Aaron is, like 99% of the other people who contribute to this site, just pissed off because his stock options didn't make him a millionaire. Since he's not going to be vacationing in St. Tropez any time soon, he's now a born-again leftie decrying the evils of capitalism. Loser.
He's not like those Dotcom Scoop people. Having dead dot-com updates sent to your cell phone---now that's a winning idea! They already have over 900 people signed up! It goes to show there is no stopping a good idea.
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Name:
Email:
Date: Sat Jun 16 08:20:36 2001
Comment: the starship trooper's movie reminded me of 1984 than heinlen's excellent book.
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Name: eudas
Email:
Date: Sat Jun 16 02:40:14 2001
Comment: Heh that was what I was thinking... if he's a Payroll/Accounting monkey, then he can find a job almost anywhere. Better than most of the other tech layoff people you read about...
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Name: (OT) Harvard MBA
Email: umadeabadchoice
Date: Sat Jun 16 02:10:28 2001
Comment: I'm seeing your recant on the other page, and since there's nothing of value to be gained by chatting about whatever BS this loser blew chunks on, I gotta thank you:
I just watched Starship Troopers today (blockbuster rewards something gave me a second DVD free), and there's this one scene where the dude, you know, is talking about how, um, maybe the bugs hit Argentina because we're visiting their colony first w/out permission, and then like the authority guy turns...
And it's a Total Fucking Orson Welles Citizen Kane moment.
Truly two-faced.
Thanks again for returning this small joy to my life.
Oh yeah, my college also beat Harvard at debate.
(not that you care, you techie you).
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Name: steve gilliard
Email: sgilliard@netslaves.com
Date: Sat Jun 16 01:49:54 2001
Comment: Nick,
Let's not be too hard on the poor guy. I also studied history and can build a box with my bare hands and parts.
The problem is that he's seen the small picture and not the big. Food is cheap, it's bought in bulk for pennies. See Costco.
The cruises and company apartments are also a drain, but not horrid. If the company can lay off 80 people, then they hired 80 too many people to begin with.
That is where the real drain comes in. Payroll is the nightmare which people have to deal with, not food or apartments. Payroll is met or you're going to be sued, maybe even be arrested.
Unlike most techies, accountants have transferable skills. So you should be looking for work and finding it soon.
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Name: Harvard MBA
Email:
Date: Sat Jun 16 01:31:53 2001
Comment: If you had been adding value to the company, you would not have been laid off. It's as simple as that.
If you were adding value and you superiors did not recognize it, then it is still largely your fault for not making your contributions known.
You can't just sit in your cubicle and expect your superiors to go out of their way to see what you are doing.
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Name: nick
Email:
Date: Sat Jun 16 01:30:46 2001
Comment: So what exactly are you whining about ?
Your main complaint seems to be that many employees got a lot of free snacks and drinks.
So that's maybe 2-5 per employee per day, less
than 100 per month. Most of the people with actual technical skills get paid around 8000/month, so what's another 100 on top of that ? It's worth spending a few dollars on snacks, ping-pong tables etc if it keeps people happy and productive. That's better than paying 8000/month for some disgruntled folks who spend half their day running to a convenience store whenever they want a snack.
You keep saying "I'm different from you" -- the difference seems to be that you spent your time in college doing what seemed fashionable or fun (reading about history). So much better than spending hours in some computer lab with those nerdy engineers. So don't whine too much that you find yourself without any useful skills beyond doing trivial pencil-pushing HR work.
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Name:
Email:
Date: Sat Jun 16 00:36:52 2001
Comment: yeah we are
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Read the Book
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High-Bandwidth Bit Rot!
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