So basically act like you need the best and only the best workstation or laptop money can buy, don’t be anywhere available when operations really needs you, and know how to nitpick cad’s and drawings like nobody’s business. Bonus points if you bitch about the availability of designs across your very slow WAN connection. Most importantly, remember that engineering is one step below Jesus in the org chart.
All joking aside though, I would have bitched at my supervisor after that. It’s pretty obvious that either you’re doing more than needed, or he’s not placing you correctly in the HR job descriptions, which means a big pay difference.
Funny thing is, there was no difference in pay or in title. Well, except for the sick hours, which were cut in half for the year, and pro-rated instead of available. I had been there for about 15 months when the conversion happened.
I agree that’s quit-on-the-spot level bullshit, and had I known better, I would have, right then and there. HR told me if I don’t like the arrangement, I can seek other employment. So I did.
Incidentally, the engineering department lost 100% of its women over a 4-month period. There were 5 of us when I started; one transferred to another group (and quit after a year); two quit before me; two quit after me.
It was a pretty awful place to be as a woman, and also as a new engineer (first Real Job In Industry, etc). My direct supervisor was nowhere to be found (he had opposite hours from everyone else), and yet expected senior-level work from me, sans guidance. I was confused into a dumb stupor half the time, and the other half… not sure what happened to the other half…
Is there a BBB I can report these guys to? Strangely, their stock has been skyrocketing. Went up almost 20 points since I sold it.
On the surface I think it’s the right thing to do. You get paid for the work that you do. The devil is of course in the details. Since you’re no longer exempt from the labor laws there’s a lot of rules and regulations to abide by. You increase your risk (as a company) for being sued under those labor laws, which feeds back into conservative interpretations. That interpretation of said rules is when you get into weird territory like the bullshit that happened to fire.
We’re trying not to do that here. We’re trying to treat everyone equally (some positions could have been argued as exempt, but we changes classification on all of them). We’re continuing to treat everyone like professionals. We’re going to continue with current schedules and make adjustments gradually (eating the overtime in the mean time). And it’s very doubtful we’ll be outsourcing any time in the future.
Of course that’s my management opinion 2 days into the new way of doing things, but I’m going to do my best to protect my team and make sure they get what they deserve.
I’d think a company could pretty successfully argue that being a head IT guy, whether or not you manage others, is at least technically demanding as being an intro code-monkey. I wonder what bizarre motivation the government has for such distinctions.
I always assumed the professional/non-professional distinction had to do with the difference between skilled/unskilled labor. These laws exist to keep Wal-Mart from being able to declare their checkers as exempt employees and the like, yes?
