A local biotech, where my husband worked for two years, just laid him off. A very high-ranking officer there made some rotten business decisions and a bunch of people were let go as a cost-cutting measure to make up for his lack of judgment.
Mr. brown bought and implemented the program Archibus there, and it proved a very valuable tool in space planning. He’s the only one with the skill to do the work on the program. The company’s about to do a massive move, and space planning will be vital to the company. His boss, although she’s a dolt, probably convinced management that she could learn it in a day or two. Of course, that wasn’t possible, because she’s too stupid, and it’s a very complex application.
The morning of his first day of unemployment, Mr. brown heard from the application salesman that dolt boss called him in a panic, asking to be bailed out of the pit she had dug for herself. Har! I hope the whole place goes down the toilet.
This is the perfect opportunity for your husband to fax them his new independent contractor hourly labor prices. You know, the ones that start at $75 an hour.
Hah! My FIL kinda did that. When he worked at Westinghouse as an electrical engineer, he designed lots of nifty gadgets for in-house use. Six months after he retired, they called to beg him to come in as a contractor to train someone on how to use the nifty gadgets. They asked him how much he wanted, and he said “$50.00 an hour”. They said “yes” so fast that it made him think he should have asked for $100.00. It was a nice 4-week stint that made him more than twice as much as he made in a month as an actual employee!
If they’re dumb enough to fire the only guy who knows how to make things work, they’re probably too dumb to hire him back, even if it would save them umpteen thousands of dollars, net. The boss who fired him can’t admit that they need to hire him back without admitting she made a mistake firing him. Better to blame it all on some third employee, and fire THEM for screwing up.
It’s true that they’ll probably cobble some error-laden jury-rigged solution together. But the application salesman/trainee assures Mr. brown that there are very, very few Archibus operators out there. I doubt anyone will figure out how to run this valuable and expensive program just by scratching their heads and pushing buttons . Mr. brown has been working as a designer and CAD operator for decades.
This is exactly what my husband is doing: the same job for the same company, except that he now does it from home as a contractor. At US $165/hour (yeah, we’re in Silicon Valley). Oh, and he takes NO crap at all from them either.
Mr. Brown’s boss may think she can learn the stuff real quick, but of course she won’t be able to. And they really need to use the software for the move; it’s not like they have the money and time to buy a different package and get it up and running. Eventually Stupid Boss will get told by her boss to “make it happen”. And Mr. Brown will magically get a call asking him to go 1099. Be ready for it with a big opening bid on the hourly rate.
Somebody please help me to understand HR corporatethink.
Mr. brown called to let me know that he got another call from the application salesman/instructor, who just got back from trying to teach dolt boss this application. He says she’s unteachable due to the fact that she doesn’t have the brains that God gave gravel. He has nicknamed her “Shrek”, due to a resemblance, and says that there’s regular time, there’s overtime, and there’s “Shrek time”, and that they’re not going to be able to afford to pay him “Shrek time” anymore.
Actually, they’re not surviving. It looks like I have the ability to call down a curse. People are leaving the place in droves, both resignations and firings, and all signs point toward its being bought out by a mega-biotech. Mr. brown was just in the first wave of folks being dumped.
My husband learned in his time as a contractor that, whatever amount you’re making, the recruiting company is billing you out for 4-5 times as much. One of his coworkers was making about $25/hour (very low for the work) but was being billed out at $125/hour. Those companies don’t seem to even blink at anything under $100/hour.
Yes, thank goodness. He got several offers - it’s a good time to be looking for a job! Not like five years ago, yuck.
He starts this Monday with a contracting company working for a well-regarded, long-established local medical facility. I’m glad he’s getting away from biotechs, as the places are just too flighty. They’re climbing the stock charts one year and hiring an assload of people, and the next year they’re absorbed into another company and everyone’s laid off.
My mother was laid off in one of the (name of big Canadian telecommunications corp here) downsizing waves. Her manager decided that, since she wasn’t providing any direct services to his area, she could safely be let go. All the managers who she was working with (she provided some important centralized technical services) screamed to no avail, and she was finally offered a job by one of the other managers. However, by then she’d gone over her options and took the severence package, then came right back as a contractor doing exactly the same thing. She not only got almost twice as much pay, but was able to do most of her work by telecommuting, which let her split her time between Ontario in the summer and Florida in the winter while working.
