Yeah, what she said. Took careful note of how underlings are treated, because you’re going to be one. (Hey, every position is somebody’s underling.) Besides, people who treat the support staff badly are assholes, and nobody wants to work with a bunch of assholes.
Given my experiences with various co-workers, I’d say you also need to watch how much time people seem to spend just standing around flapping their yaps. Someone who’s chitchatting ain’t working, and ime the more chatting your coworkers do, the more work you wind up doing.
The managers have slogans on their desks/around the office like “It’s not cheating if you don’t get caught.”
Any place where the HR people have any influence over anything. E.g., the previously mentioned “everybody knows this is a waste of time” orientations. Another big one is where all job applications have to go thru HR and they decide which ones get passed onto the managers for further consideration. Basically, HR people have no idea what the right person’s resume looks like and only pass on the worst of the bunch.
Wow, rjung, have you been hanging out with cynical twenty-somethings who don’t dream of ever retiring? Friends and I also see there only being jobs in service industries in the not-too-distant future as inevitable…job security seems like a fairytale. Of course things will turn around when business culture ships off so many jobs that they don’t have anyone to sell to. :rolleyes:
Heh, no seminar about it in the company I work for, we just got the book handed out.
The worst one I’ve tried where being hired for a job, then a week later the management called a meeting, informing us that we still hadn’t gotten the venture capital that they had expected, but they were really busy making a brand new powerpoint business plan so it proberly wouldn’t be long now (this was in a dot com in the year 2000 - the company bankrupted a few months later).
A company that I once worked for did something that I could never figure out: they took EVERYBODY off-site for two days, to a seminar run by a crazy guy! This consisted of “feelgood” sessions, and mutual “confessions”-supposedly, this would help uncover your “barriers to success”. The quasi-religious aspect of this was a bit unpleasant to me, and I complained about it.
Anyway, this seminar cost the company a ton of money…and didn’t buy them anything.My rule of thumb: checkout the bathrooms and carpeting…if the place has filthy bathrooms and worn-out carpeting, avoid it!
I am doing something right then. My employees have the nicest cars of any similar business in the area. My hiring manager tells me that a lot of the people coming to see him comment on that.
Very few people in the company who are over 40 years old or have been there 10 years or more. (Caveat: this is fine for start up companies but is a sign of a churn and burn environment in more established corporations.)
All senior managers or department heads are brought in from outside the company and very few are promoted from within.
I get vague answers when I ask why the last person the position I’m interviewing for left.
Sort of related… My manager can be difficult to work for. She doesn’t abuse employees or do anything illegal. But she is an extreme micro-manager with very little tact. On the plus side, she promotes and pays well and does look out for her people. So, if you can handle her bluster, you’ll do well. However, many people can’t deal with her style. So I try to give out subtle hints when interviewing people for our group as well as find out if someone can deal with her before recommending them for a position.
For example, I’ll ask if there are types of management styles a candidate has a hard time dealing with and if working for someone with that style would ruin their job experience. Most people reply that they can work with anyone or that only blatantly illegal things would bother them. I then follow up by asking if they can handle having a lot of supervision in their work and whether they require a lot of positive feedback to get job satisfaction. To me, that’s a pretty big hint that the manager is difficult in that respect.
About the time companies began to try to quantify human interactions. Classic example, the diference between being Jennifer Aniston in Office Space as a pleasent and competant waitress vs Brian, the grinning automoton who at least on the surface lives and breaths Chachkis.
I can tell you what warning signs my company is showing that it might be time to move on:
-75%+ business is with a partner who is also a competitor
-The business case for this partner hiring us is that they get Associate level consultants (MBAs who make ove six figures) at Analyst prices.
-At 31, I am the oldest staff consultant in the organization (compared to say…a big five or McKinsey type company where there are a lot of 30 something Associates)
-We were ACQUIRED by a dot com last year.
-There are few if any managers who have ever worked at another company (read no industry experience, no experience managing a team larger than 1 or 2 people).
-The best reason given to work there is “the people” (every company has people…all consulting firms have the same people).
-a single line mentioned in an obscure trade journal is reason enough for a company-wide announcement (when the CEO is on Bloomberg TV, then I might be interested)
-The former CEO lives in a crappy one-bedroom in the East Village.
-The new CEO talks in terms of “burn rate” and we are a 10 year old company (I prefer not to think of my company in terms of "how much money we have left).
:rolleyes: