[HN Gopher] Forgotten Employee (2002)
___________________________________________________________________
Forgotten Employee (2002)
Author : tosh
Score : 162 points
Date : 2022-10-19 08:40 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (sites.google.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (sites.google.com)
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Forgotten Employee - The American Dream (2002)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31255298 - May 2022 (2
| comments)
|
| _Forgotten Employee (2002)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17332440 - June 2018 (166
| comments)
|
| _Forgotten Employee (2002)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6087935 - July 2013 (291
| comments)
|
| _The Life of a Forgotten employee_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1320310 - May 2010 (28
| comments)
|
| Others?
| piyh wrote:
| 404 for me, archive mirror:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20221019160545/https://sites.goo...
| geocrasher wrote:
| This reminds me, for some reason, of When Sysadmins Ruled The
| Earth:
|
| https://craphound.com/overclocked/Cory_Doctorow_-_Overclocke...
| Lammy wrote:
| For history's sake, here are 3 of 5 parts of the original story
| preserved in the SA Goldmine for anyone who wants to read 2002
| forum comments:
|
| Part 1:
| https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=18...
| (dead link)
|
| Part 2:
| https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=20...
| (dead link)
|
| Part 3:
| https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=26...
|
| Part 4:
| https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=30...
|
| Part 5:
| https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=33...
|
| Disclaimer: The word "sir" seems to have been edited into the
| f-slur at some point on part 5.
| sirmarksalot wrote:
| I remember when that happened. "Sir" or "kind sir" had become a
| cliche, and the mods added a replacement filter to discourage
| people from using it. Understand that SA at the time lived by
| the edgelord ethos, "if I don't mean it literally, it's not
| offensive," so this kind of thing wasn't seen as homophobic,
| even though it totally was.
| acchow wrote:
| "kind sir" was a homophobic slur? I must have been too young
| to see this.
| sirmarksalot wrote:
| "kind sir" was auto-replaced with "kind f**"
| thinkcontext wrote:
| There was a variation of this theme that I thought was better
| written. Its about a guy who finds himself in a similar situation
| due to multiple rounds of mergers and layoffs and he is kept
| employed for some compliance reason which gets forgotten by the
| company. They at some point ship him a cellphone, so he travels
| and other stuff. This goes on for years.
|
| Can't find this anymore, anyone know what I'm referring to?
| artec wrote:
| Reads like a Chuck Palahniuk novel
| lifefeed wrote:
| There was another story like this on Reddit, that is more likely
| to have actually happened.
|
| "I have become a forgotten employee for a few months at my job. I
| want to start a new job and wondering legal ramifications."
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/xzq4...
| teddyh wrote:
| Two years earlier: https://crzysdrs.net/dv/victim/23-why-yes-my-
| new-job-title-i...
|
| Continued: https://crzysdrs.net/dv/victim/41-careful-career-
| maneuvering...
| Aloha wrote:
| I remember reading this for the first time in like... 2005? I
| think.
|
| It was as good then as it now.
| miqueturner wrote:
| I did have something similar happen. I was "laid off", but my
| girlfriend kept throwing out the timepunch card with my name on
| it. Boss used the timepunch card to terminate employees. So,
| while I didnt recieve a paycheck, my 401k vested because I was
| never terminated. Came to a nice lump.
| shubhamjain wrote:
| I read it a while back. The story is probably fiction, but I have
| no trouble believing there must be shitload of people who must
| have worked an arrangement like that for themselves--taking
| paychecks without work. What surprises me is that almost always
| these people don't use their free time to do something productive
| --like picking up a hobby or up-skilling, they squander most of
| it. Ex: a programmer who outsourced his job to China and used his
| free time to watch cat videos and Reddit[1].
|
| I am not deriding that choice, just that it's a curious thing. We
| all blame our day jobs for eating most of our time. But when we
| do get total freedom, we hardly remain as productive as we
| imagined ourselves to be. I thought I was different. But no!
| Recently, I took a career-break and I thought I would use the
| newfound free time to learn all the things I was putting on the
| back-burner. Instead, I found myself to be dramatically less
| productive compared to when I was working. Lacking objective, or
| structure in the day, I found myself playing video games or
| surfing web pretty much all day.
|
| I realized maybe 9-5 isn't as bad as it sounds and early
| retirement isn't as good.
|
| [1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-21043693
| wanderingstan wrote:
| In the dot-com heyday my team had nothing to do. A manager
| explained that they had hired extra developers "just in case
| they needed them later".
|
| I couldn't take the boredom and quit to do a round the world
| backpacking trip.
|
| My co-worker stayed and wrote a novel. It was a perfect setup:
| he got payed to come in and sit at the computer all day typing,
| and always looked busy. I think he played his hand well.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| I'll add that I'm pretty sure reading a novel in a terminal
| looks like work to anyone non-technical (and probably a fair
| amount of technical people who don't look too close).
| antisthenes wrote:
| > What surprises me is that almost always these people don't
| use their free time to do something productive--like picking up
| a hobby or up-skilling, they squander most of it.
|
| Do you actually have any data on this, or is this pure
| conjecture? You seem to have a sample size of 1, and perhaps 2,
| if you include the fictional story. Both indirect sources.
|
| > But when we do get total freedom, we hardly remain as
| productive as we imagined ourselves to be.
|
| Speak for yourself. Please don't lump us into your behavior
| types.
|
| > I realized maybe 9-5 isn't as bad as it sounds and early
| retirement isn't as good.
|
| For you, perhaps.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| Thought the same thing
|
| > I have no trouble believing there must be shitload of
| people who must have worked an arrangement like that for
| themselves--taking paychecks without work. What surprises me
| is that almost always these people don't use their free time
| to do something productive
|
| OP seems to go from being unsure if this group exists
| (thinking it highly likely but having no reference data to
| back it up) to knowing something intrinsic about them
| (everyone who does it has this trait). The two sentences seem
| to be at odds.
|
| Also seems like projecting their personal experience onto
| everyone else.
| agent008t wrote:
| > Lacking objective, or structure in the day, I found myself
| playing video games or surfing web pretty much all day.
|
| I think the key is to identify these timesinks and to eliminate
| them one-by-one. Often these are dopamine-hijacking activities.
|
| So, suppose you decided to yourself that you are not going to
| be surfing the web at all, or limit it to a strictly scheduled
| timeslot, or only use the web when you have a specific purpose
| in mind.
|
| Suppose you did the same with videogames - limit it to a
| specific timeslot in your week, or eliminate it altogether.
|
| What would you do then? What would you find yourself doing if
| you found yourself in living conditions where you do not have
| access to such easy entertainment?
|
| You would probably get very bored at first. That's great! The
| first step is to stop seeing boredom as something to be avoided
| at all costs. It is ok to be bored - in fact it is _good_ to be
| bored. Sit with it and do not allow yourself to fall back onto
| the easy entertainment options.
|
| You will find that after a while you are actually just going to
| pick up that physics textbook you meant to study off the shelf
| - or end up doing whatever interesting project you thought you
| would be doing. It will be easy, interesting and natural. Just
| like it was when you were a child on summer holidays and
| probably didn't have access to unlimited video games, broadband
| internet or other dopamine-hijacking forms of easy
| entertainment!
|
| Just eliminate the timesinks from your life one-by-one and
| allow yourself to become bored.
| kcb wrote:
| And what's the end goal?
| agent008t wrote:
| Eudaimonia
| [deleted]
| virtual_void wrote:
| I noticed the same thing in myself. Free time, especially a
| long block of it can just be wasted. Sometimes that's a sort of
| necessary mental reset but it made me think about what I'd do
| when i retired.
|
| I came to the conclusion, like you, that structure is good.
| Without structure it's really hard to get started on things or
| feel a sense of progress.
|
| Now if i take a long break i treat it like i used to back in
| college days. I have a schedule, high level goals and daily to-
| do lists. Those lists have productive things as well as free
| time or gaps of a fixed length to fill with whatever i want.
|
| Sounds hellish when i write it out but without it I'm all about
| cat videos and noodling around on my guitar. Suddenly a month
| has passed.
| dinosaurdynasty wrote:
| Time enjoyed is not time wasted
| CodeSgt wrote:
| I disagree. I might enjoy 2 months of sitting on my couch,
| smoking weed, and playing video games stoned out my gourd.
|
| That time would still be very much wasted.
| nebulousthree wrote:
| That's just because you limit your view to 2 months and
| look at it in a vacuum.
|
| If you extend your timeline, you may find that you get
| bored or restless and want to change things up. That
| "wasted time" is necessary in order to get into a
| different headspace. It's the equivalent of riding an
| elevator for your brain... It takes you to a different
| stage of life.
| harryvederci wrote:
| Not sure if you meant it as a pun, but if so: _slow
| clap_.
| [deleted]
| virtual_void wrote:
| I think you're right. There is a heck of a lot to be said
| for enjoyment regardless of productivity.
|
| It becomes problematic, for me at least, when the thing i
| enjoyed becomes a sort of default mode. No longer for
| enjoyment, more of a reflex. Then it feels like it might be
| wasted.
| nebulousthree wrote:
| That's exactly the point where you become able to decide
| for yourself what you'd like to do. I would say that
| seeing that point negatively and reflexively going back
| to work your standard job is what makes that period a
| waste.
| ema wrote:
| While this is true it's also easy to do things you're not
| really enjoying just because they require low activation
| energy.
| jvm___ wrote:
| "The water in your body is just visiting. It was a thunderstorm
| a week ago. It will be the ocean soon enough. Most of your
| cells come and go like morning dew. We are more weather pattern
| than stone monument. Sunlight on mist. Summer lightning. Your
| choices outweigh your substance." - The CryptoNaturalist
|
| We think ourselves as a stone monument "I'm productive" "I'm
| this or that", but the truth is what we do daily defines who we
| are, without the forcing procedure of work we lose our daily
| rituals and just become something else. People see this at
| retirement as well when they lose the structure of a regular
| job and need to manage their own time.
|
| You are what you eat, and you are what you do regularly.
| scarby2 wrote:
| i do the same thing work or not. Think.
|
| Right now i think about how to re-define technical processes
| and patterns to reduce CFR, increase deploys etc.
|
| When i was off work for a while i think about cooking, video
| games, restoring a car, emerging tech, how i can help others,
| refining social patterns etc.
|
| There's not that long that I'm not thinking about something,
| just usually people pay me to think about something.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Saw a comic recently (xkcd? old one?) where a person was
| visited by a muse, who said "Working hard and slacking are not
| the only two things there are in life"
|
| Reminded me to make plans for some of my personal time, not
| just piss it away.
| filoleg wrote:
| I have been experiencing the same thing you are describing in
| terms of procrastination/free time being spent in the less
| productive ways than one wants to or imagines them, as well as
| productivity being inverse correlated with free time.
|
| I think it is definitely psychological. Probably something to
| do with subconsciously feeling guilt for not doing what one is
| "supposed to", so they feel too guilty to embark on something
| else that's productive or educational (like reading that one
| textbook they planned for a while). And instead just go "ok,
| that one educational thing i wanted to do is gonna take a
| while, and i am already wasting a lot of my free time, so
| instead i will just check out a few cat videos and then get
| back to productive stuff". And then it just becomes a positive
| (aka self-reinforcing) feedback loop that keeps on feeding onto
| itself.
|
| As for being productive with the least amount of tree time, I
| can confirm that my best GPA in college was during semesters
| when i had the heaviest workloads on top of a part-time job.
| Reminds me a lot of what many parents on HN say in the
| comments, how they became way more productive in their efforts
| and focus after having kids (as soon as they get to about 1-2
| years old). No experience with that one myself, but seems very
| similar.
| WheelNoHamster wrote:
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| Is it really that strange people would squander it?
|
| Look how kids are raised. The majority of them have decisions
| made for them all the way to the grave, no wonder so many
| 'squander' their free time. It takes most people _years_ to
| deprogram themselves to a significant point. First year is
| mostly recovering from something akin to burnout.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| We like to believe ourselves capable of anything if we just
| tried. If we never try, we die thinking we may have squandered
| our potential. If we give ourselves space to try and succeed,
| we die knowing what was on the other side of trying. If we give
| ourselves space to try and we fail, we die knowing there wasn't
| any potential to squander.
| MrVandemar wrote:
| See also: "I am taking a year off to write a novel". Seldom
| successful.
| planetsprite wrote:
| >probably fiction it's literally a fictional story isn't it?
| Why the "probably"?
| lovich wrote:
| Being productive all the time isn't a goal shared by everyone.
| I'd honestly be surprised if it was even a majority view.
| Hedonism has been a goal of the financially independent since
| antiquity
| nebulousthree wrote:
| You say you don't deride it but you just made a judgement call
| by calling it "squandering".
|
| I guess time spent relearning to walk after a traumatic injury
| is also squandered time as well then?
| sneak wrote:
| Time spent the way someone freely chooses to spend it is not
| squandered. Each of us is the authority on the best use of our
| time.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _The story is probably fiction_
|
| I can believe it is real, if possibly embellished or
| simplified. Crazy things happen in larger organizations,
| especially before every department's computers were all tied
| together.
|
| I was once the subject of a dispute between three departments
| in a large company, and ended up spending several months at
| work with nothing to do but browse lolcats. I had to put on a
| suit and come to the office every day, but I was prohibited
| from doing any work.
|
| I was NOT popular among the people who knew that I was
| collecting a paycheck all that time.
| golergka wrote:
| If they would be the kind of person to always thrive to do
| something productive, they probably wouldn't end up with such a
| job in the first place.
|
| (Clarification, just in case: I'm not saying that this kind of
| person is better or worse than the other.)
| k__ wrote:
| I had a year long break in 2014. I did many different things in
| that time.
|
| Learned to play the bass guitar, found a partner, contributed
| to Firefox, took a few CS courses, etc.
| dinosaurdynasty wrote:
| What's the point of productivity? What if I just want to enjoy
| myself as much as I can? Spending my time playing games and
| reading stories and learning new things and such sounds pretty
| great.
|
| And as someone who is trying to do early retirement, the main
| reason is so I can own myself... I'll never have enough energy
| to do everything I want, even without a day job taking a
| tremendous amount of it.
|
| And just to add another anecdote: I quit my job for 9 months
| (for burnout). I never felt the need to "go back to work" other
| than the bank account running out.
| throwaway1022 wrote:
| > What surprises me is that almost always these people don't
| use their free time to do something productive
|
| Relatable.
|
| I am at a job currently where I can get past by working 3 hours
| a day. But what do I do with rest of time...well not much.
|
| And I felt the same way during Covid when WFH started. If you
| had told me a month prior to that that I'll be able to save 3
| hours extra every day from mindless commute, in office chatter
| etc I'd have told you about my grand plans of how I'd make the
| best use of those 3 hours taking that course I have been
| meaning to take or reading that book that's lying unread. BUT
| when I did have those extra 3 hours, I didn't really do much of
| it.
|
| I guess it's some version of Murphy's law - aimless surfing
| expands to take the time available for it? Not sure.
| bee_rider wrote:
| We're very social animals, I wonder if the aimless surfing is
| the "interact with people" instinct misfiring.
|
| I've noticed that when I have a choice, the tasks that I pick
| first are the ones that somebody else will see the results
| of. It'd be interesting to hear the experience of a couple
| friends who'd taken a couple months off and worked together
| on a project. I bet they'd be pretty productive. Although it
| would be hard to coordinate.
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| I guess people are different. I know a few people who are
| extremely productive and do not seem like they need someone
| to discuss it with. But for me, it is exactly as you
| describe. Taking a few months off and working together with
| a friend seems like a perfect plan.
|
| I wonder if this might be related to ADHD. I mean,
| difficulty to focus on the task, unless there is someone
| else who you know will want to see the results.
| ghaff wrote:
| Parkinson's Law actually--although the original version was a
| little different. (Expansion of British Admiralty staff even
| as the navy was shrinking.)
| iamjackg wrote:
| I'm curious: how long were your breaks? I've had two rather
| long (>6 months) breaks in my career, and I've enjoyed them
| immensely and have been very productive: finished personal
| projects, made music, YouTube videos, learned new skills.
|
| _However,_ both times it took at least a couple months of
| passive life before I could do anything productive at all: I
| just slept, cooked, read, played video games, and scrolled
| Reddit. Almost as if I had to first flush out all the
| accumulated stress and get rid of the "muscle memory" around
| work.
| shubhamjain wrote:
| My break was almost 5-6 months. It's not like I didn't do
| anything. I revamped my website, shipped a puzzle game, wrote
| articles. But I had months where I basically didn't do
| anything. And it was hard to climb out of the stretch of
| unproductivity. The main issue was that I didn't have any
| concrete goals. And while theoretically I could have done
| anything, my mind was digressing everywhere and ended up
| doing nothing.
|
| It was a good experience for sure and would definitely do it
| again. But I would keep my goals concrete and ideally have
| one project to dedicate myself to.
| colechristensen wrote:
| I think it's basically that a lifetime of being told what
| to do with your time atrophied your ability to direct your
| time when you had control.
|
| I have experienced similar things over shorter periods.
| scarby2 wrote:
| > I think it's basically that a lifetime of being told
| what to do with your time atrophied your ability to
| direct your time when you had control.
|
| I also think humans need to do nothing occasionally and
| that it's actually extremely valuable. If you look at the
| entirety of human history this whole 5 days of work 48
| weeks of the year is very new. For most of human history
| we would have had intense bursts of activity (hunting,
| harvesting, planting etc.) followed by quite a bit of
| nothing. I think even as recently as the middle ages the
| average person was working about 150 days a year (though
| often in bursts from sun-up to sun-down 6 days a week
| until the work was done).
|
| I took a year off of work, i traveled some, spent time
| with my now ex-wife, kept up on the latest skills and did
| a couple personal projects. But most of the time i
| rested, had a lie-in every morning, worked on my cooking
| skills, and played video games.
|
| At some point i aim to do a similar thing again and spend
| a year slowly re-modeling a house (this has the dual
| benefit of being fun, gaining me new skills and not being
| anything close to a year of full time labor)
| jrumbut wrote:
| I had the good fortune of being able to work that
| schedule once, and there is a lot to be said for it.
|
| I believe that a lot of our current employment
| arrangements revolve around the primitive data management
| and "ERP" technologies of 100-200 years ago. Anything but
| the simplest arrangement (everyone works 40 hours every
| week with very limited exceptions) was hard enough at
| scale.
| vikingerik wrote:
| What were you actually doing during the periods of nothing?
| Just internet browsing, watching TV, sleeping? Any offline
| non-tech hobbies?
| tenpoundhammer wrote:
| It makes me wonder if humans are aligned much more to
| primitive life than we believe. I wonder if our ancestors
| spent long stretches of time living off reserves and
| waiting for spring to come. Then in spring they started
| working hard to replenish store. Maybe it's natural or
| instinctual to do very little when we aren't motivated by
| the need to provide for ourselves?
| ericmcer wrote:
| It is interesting that you approach time off as a way to
| prevent burnout so you can ultimately be productive. I have
| done it a handful of times and struggle with what the overall
| goal of a >6mo break is.
|
| Traveling and having experiences is great but it is stressful
| to burn cash that fast, sitting around the house is cheap but
| leads to ennui, working hard on projects makes me wonder why
| I don't just go back to work. I usually end up just rotating
| between those three things which is a nice freedom to have.
| iamjackg wrote:
| Ahh yeah, I guess I should specify that these were not
| breaks I took "on purpose": one was while waiting for some
| documentation to go through, and the other one was parental
| leave, and at least one of them was partially paid.
| bademployeetoss wrote:
| kbenson wrote:
| I wonder how much of it is because people start out wanting to
| not do anything too big because they feel like they could be
| confronted about it at any second and that just becomes the
| norm. Random screwing around is easier to justify as a
| temporary thing you were caught in than some other activities.
| If you had a work area and it's been turned into a study area
| for your BAR exam prep with books and papers spread all around,
| that's a bit harder to explain away as them just coming at a
| bad time than you watching cat videos would be.
| thebigspacefuck wrote:
| He's Penske material.
| natural20s wrote:
| This happened to someone I knew back in 2014 or so. We were hired
| together at C** Consulting and I was immediately shipped off to
| Dallas to help with an eCommerce program at a famous Watch &
| Accessory brand. My buddy from orientation in NJ kept in touch
| and was jealous I was on a project so quickly. He went back to
| his home and went into the C** office dutifully for the first
| month and just did training, enablement and finally surfed the
| web and got bored.
|
| It seems his manager LEFT C** right as he joined. The ORG had not
| changed to reflect this status and my friend now reported to a
| ghost. He joked with me about it but was also baffled that such a
| large company could let this happen. His humor turned dark and he
| started to stay at home - do nothing - and collect his check.
|
| Last I heard he applied to Ac** Consulting - got a role and
| started up with them... collecting two checks for a while until
| C** figured out what was up and reassigned him - he put in his 2
| weeks notice at that time. :shrug emoji: True story.
| stevage wrote:
| That's dangerous. Working two full time jobs at the same time
| may cross over into fraud territory.
| gs17 wrote:
| My dad had a friend who did similar at an even larger company.
| The way the story was passed down to me, his whole floor was
| laid off while he was on some sort of leave/vacation and so the
| paperwork didn't get filed right, leaving him disconnected from
| the organizational tree but still in payroll. It's amazing the
| mistakes bureaucracy can make.
| tra3 wrote:
| Come on. That's Milton's plot line from Office Space.
| jiggliemon wrote:
| Does anyone have the "Bob code" story? Where some guy renamed PHP
| to BOB and proceeded to pretend that he was unfirable with much
| success?
| mkehrt wrote:
| I'm pretty sure it's on the Daily WTF, FWIW.
| kragen wrote:
| https://thedailywtf.com/articles/We-Use-BobX
| [deleted]
| deanmen wrote:
| https://thedailywtf.com/articles/We-Use-bobX
| xivzgrev wrote:
| Brian sounds like the drag on the company, not Bob.
|
| Bob is simply offering a deal that is in his best interests.
| Brian is the enabler, and I'm surprised HE wasn't fired.
|
| Developers are expensive to recruit and train. If your
| department keeps losing them, because of the environment,
| then maybe you need a different environment.
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| Bob isn't just "offering a deal", he abused his position to
| try to get an employee fired and is blackmailing the
| company to force them to stay with BobX.
| Georgelemental wrote:
| https://thedailywtf.com/articles/We-Use-BobX
| soneca wrote:
| Off-topic
|
| > _" In outlook, an EMail appeared with my name in the "Courtesy
| Copy" field"_
|
| I always thought CC was for Carbon Copy.
| rendall wrote:
| It is Carbon Copy. "Courtesy Copy" is incorrect
| 5555624 wrote:
| > I always thought CC was for Carbon Copy.
|
| Originally, it did. Back when we didn't have computers in the
| office, it was a copy made using carbon paper, as the original
| was being typed on a typewriter. ("BCC" was Blind Carbon Copy.)
|
| I had always thought a "Courtesy Copy" had specific legal
| meaning and was a copy of a filing sent to the judge and/or
| other parties when a case was filed.
| kragen wrote:
| In Argentina the term is "noqui", which means "gnocchi". There's
| a tradition of eating gnocchi on the 29th of the month, and
| "noquis" traditionally showed up at the office only on the 29th
| of the month to receive their paycheck. Nowadays I assume most of
| them do direct deposit, but I don't know any noquis personally,
| so I can't ask.
|
| Normally noquis are a result of corruption, though, not
| bureaucratic mixups. The boss is in on the plan; the point is to
| funnel an apparently legitimate flow of money to someone in
| exchange for some kind of favor that has nothing to do with the
| job they are supposedly hired for. (Hoping this isn't a spoiler:
| that does eventually happen in the story.)
| stevage wrote:
| I remember seeing a graffiti in Buenos Aires once, "no somos
| noquis". It took me years before I had any idea what it meant.
| jonah wrote:
| Happened to me to a minor degree. After a couple years at the
| first company I worked for, a number of very senior folks
| resigned - decimating a department which was a key part of the
| co's DNA. I transferred into that department - working under the
| remaining sr. staffer trying to pick up the pieces and keep thing
| moving ahead. Soon afterwards, the company "reorganized", selling
| off all their products, focusing on one "hot new thing" and moved
| the HQ across the country. I had been dutifully attending
| meetings and doing my best to keep existing project moving ahead.
|
| Eventually, the office started emptying out as people either
| left, were laid off, or transferred to the new office. Finally
| after I was practically the only person in a wing of the
| building, I went to HR and asked what was to become of me. They
| said "Oh, we forgot about you. We'll get back to you." A few
| weeks later, I was offered the option of accepting a role in the
| re-orged company or taking a severance package. I took the payout
| and went on my merry way.
| harryvederci wrote:
| Do you regret asking them? Sounds like you missed out on a lot
| of free cash, but I guess this stupid thing called "conscience"
| might have spoiled the fun of that eventually anyway..
| stevage wrote:
| Severance = free cash. You earn more taking the severance and
| immediately getting another job.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Lots of us find that kind of situation completely miserable.
| Not because we love work and just can't stand not being
| productive but because it's living with a Sword of Damocles
| over your head and it threatens future employability. Unless
| you've already got fuck-you money it's very stressful, _even
| if_ you don 't give a shit about ensuring the shareholders
| are getting a good return on their investment (I sure as hell
| don't).
| hotpotamus wrote:
| This sounds like you speak from experience that mirrors my
| own. It was actually a relief to get laid off (helped that
| the severance was pretty fair too).
| jonah wrote:
| I could have possibly milked it for a couple weeks, but that
| was about it. (And, yes, I wouldn't have felt good about
| drawing a paycheck when there was no office to show up at or
| product to work on.)
| matsemann wrote:
| Have a friend this kinda happened to. He joined a company as a
| consultant. Right before starting, the team he was assigned to
| got dismantled. They still wanted him for a new team/project
| about to start. That of course got delayed and delayed, so he had
| no team or tasks assigned to him for months.
|
| And it's not like he was hiding. He never got access cards etc,
| so he had to ask the boss each morning to come and let him in.
| Then said he still didn't have a project or anyone ordering
| access for him. Then sat as his desk all day and went home.
| raincom wrote:
| Just asking your reports to send you a note on what they have
| done the last year, would help to figure out what's going on.
| Some positions are necessary to keep even if they really work two
| months year, due to institutional knowledge and maintenance.
| lampshades wrote:
| Love this story. So nostalgic.
| dwater wrote:
| This was originally a series of posts on the Something Awful
| forums. The first 2 parts are gone but the later parts are still
| available:
|
| https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=26...
|
| The author acknowledged that it's fictional.
| stevage wrote:
| Ahh the whole time I was trying to remember what SA might have
| been in 2002
| tonnydourado wrote:
| Something Awful. That's what SA stands for. Makes much more
| sense then my first thought, Sexual Assault forums.
| IntelMiner wrote:
| With what happened to Lowtax and some of the SA "alumni"
| that's not far off either
| tiahura wrote:
| Happened to me. I was hired for an it position in a legacy siloed
| division that had been an acquisition of a Fortune 50. At my
| office, everyone outside my group was an entirely different
| division of corp.
|
| All 4 of us in my group supported developers in Phoenix. My
| supervisor reported to someone in Chicago who had no idea who we
| were.
|
| Shortly after I was hired, corporate reorg and Phoenix
| eliminated. 2 others in my department left. Boss now reports to
| New Jersey to someone who has even less of idea who we were. Then
| boss had health issues and leaves.
|
| Nobody knows I'm still there. I knew I was heading to grad school
| in a few months so I mostly just slept and played Counterstrike.
| ta94455 wrote:
| My father worked for a large telecommunications provider in the
| late 90's, after their merger he was left as the site manager but
| with no employees. Just him and the custodial staff in the
| building for ~2 years. The site was 7 minutes from our house and
| was mostly defunct. He'd show up at 9am, come home for lunch,
| then back to the office and leave at 3. Occasionally he'd need to
| reboot something or ship back infrastructure but primarily he
| would spend his time watching historical Korean dramas on PBS and
| learned conversational Korean from it.
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