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Does this count as getting fired? (pg. 4)
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| Moral Hazard |
| quote: | Originally posted by Joss Weatherby
I worked at a small design/advertising firm in a medium sized city who when I started had most of the large businesses in the city as their clients. It was run by three partners, two of them had a falling out, and one of them left. The one who left was the main project manager and also the main account man. In the year and a half I was there when he was still part of the company he ran a tight ship and we were growing our client base and we set record profits every year. After his departure we steadily lost clients as the two other partners failed to pick up any of the slack and demonstrated no business sense whatsoever. At the time that I left we had two clients, granted they were our largest clients from the get go, but still, we had lost almost all of our smaller clients, clients who picked up the slack between big campaigns from the major companies. Furthermore these big companies knew we were dependent on them entirely and they ran us hard on rates that for the start of the two fiscal years I was there after the third partner left, never increased, not even to cover new work on top of existing work. Also one of the clients was family of one of the still existing partners, which was hilarious. Citric is right, don't work for family, they have no problem ing you.
So yea, I know a little bit. It was a small company, everything was out in front of the employees. |
I'm not trying to be a dick here, Joss, but working for a business (no matter how open the management team is) and running it are two very different things. Until you are actually doing the job you cannot really understand it. |
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| Joss Weatherby |
| quote: | Originally posted by Moral Hazard
I'm not trying to be a dick here, Joss, but working for a business (no matter how open the management team is) and running it are two very different things. Until you are actually doing the job you cannot really understand it. |
The management at this company was incredibly flat. I was involved in both getting accounts, client relations, and all sorts of after the first partner left because basically the other two partners asked us to start doing a huge portion of running the business. By the time I left it felt like a co-op but with none of the benefits, just all of the responsibilities. The amount of stress was incredibly high.
I really don't see how there is anything to separate the two for all intents and purposes when you are essentially running the day to day operations, and furthermore cleaning up the messes of your "bosses", especially the ones where they throw you under the bus (which is why I was fired, I was a sacrificial lamb because my boss, one of the partners was an incompetent who constantly ed up, thought he could code, but couldn't, and anytime the client asked why something was broken that he touched he blamed me or the other guy on the team, and this isn't paranoia, he had the gall [or the stupidity] to do it right in front of me on conference calls).
I was glad to get out of there, I wasn't making 40k a year (didn't get a pay raise the last two fiscal years I was there because after the first partner left the two remaining ones froze salaries instantly) to run a business and still do three entirely different job descriptions that my normal day to day required. The owners were incompetent and I am glad I dicked them out of nearly a year and a half of unemployment for how they handled the situation (and the fact that they thought they could ignore the unemployment board).
For the record the guy who left actually had a business degree, the two remaining partners were the art director and the "server guy" who did nothing. Neither of them knew what the running a business constituted. The art director spent 3 weeks on the phone with Samsung, EVERYDAY, yelling, because 2 monitors showed up DOA. In the end he declared victory because he got two bigger monitors for free, but someone asked him "how much do you charge per hour for your time and skill?" and he got all pissed off because he realized it was a waste. He was also the type that if you had to stay late to work on he'd be there too, but instead of working he'd just be talking your ear off. We had to plan to make sure the boss wasn't staying late to actually get done.
They were idiots. There is no doubt about it. |
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| Dykes_on_Jay |
Nou...if you knew how to run a business, you would never have to be subjected to that. I'm not trying to be mean either. You can't truly comprehend the mechanics behind it until you know what it is like to finance, grow, and make executive decisions on your own. Work responsibilities and the responsibilities are completely different. If you lose your job, you get another one; if your business goes bust, you lose everything. I don't think you grasp the concept of life without a safety net. You can't grasp how volatile things can be with everything on the line. Even the most successful business can be a bad decision away from catastrophy.
I am no Warren Buffet, however i have managed to turn nothing into something. Success, stability, reputation have all come at the price of grey hairs and constantly second guessing decisions. It is a house of cards; all this work can be for nothing if you take your foot off of the gas and allow yourself to be complacent . Running a business is not about being a nice guy, it is not about making friends...it is about satisfying your clients needs while doing your best to provide an adequate work environment for your employees. I only have 6, i treat them well, if they rock the boat or put my in a situation that is inconvenient i will terminate them faster than you can imagine.
Your responsibilty as a salaried employee is to make me money or perform a task that aides me in doing so. I'm not UNICEF; nothing is free. If i can allow you time for a holiday, by all means i will do my best to make an employee happy i will comply, that being said, barring an emergency or death of a loved one, if the request is inconvenient for me i will drop them faster than a load at a fleshlight convention.
You don't put me in a situation where my pocket will take a hit. Not only could it affect me, but also the others who work for me. I am happy to help people provide for themselves, however one bad apple will sink your ship if you let it affecting more than management.
Take money from me, you are only taking it out of one of your coworker's mouthes. There is a fine line between success and failure. Until you have everything you own on the line, it is simply impossible to grasp the ever changing logistics of having to constantly monitor everything from the bottom up.
Having responsibility, and having people's livelyhoods depending on your decisions are 2 very different things.
Your mom is a whore. |
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| OrangestO |
| I want Jay to dad me. |
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| Joss Weatherby |
| quote: | Originally posted by Dykes_on_Jay
Nou...if you knew how to run a business, you would never have to be subjected to that. |
Yes, which is why I was happy to leave, and within a year of my departure two of the other people that were handling a huge part of the day to day left. We knew that wasn't how you ran a business. Most of the employees discussed it every single day. We wondered why/how the the two remaining owners could leave so much in the hands of people with out a vested interest in the survival of the company.
I understand fully what it takes to run a business, and that is not saying that I would be good at it, or make all the right decisions, but I know at least for the sector that I was working in that was NOT how to do it. Our local competitor started eating us alive, and we started shrinking till we only had clients that couldn't easily move elsewhere, and they dicked us left and right knowing we couldn't get anyone else too.
Bad management is easy to see, so is good. It isn't some ivory tower where the worker plebs have no idea what is going on, when the king isn't wearing any clothes everyone knows.
Also are you workers skilled workers, are you workers invested in projects where their departure would cause a serious setback to your clients needs? I was in that position, so were most people there, and it is a common place to be in the tech industry, especially in a small firm where only one or two people might know a project. |
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| wotyzoid |
| Nou, why are you back in full force, dude? Please... |
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| Joss Weatherby |
| quote: | Originally posted by wotyzoid
Nou, why are you back in full force, dude? Please... |
Because Jay is an idiot and sounding like a libertarian corporate apologist. I think his time in China has ed his head. He is making out management to sound like some sort of Übermensch. |
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| Dykes_on_Jay |
To be brutally honest, without knowing you on a personal level, you can't even be a good employee. If you don't change, you are truly ed. One day the momma/dadda well will dry up . For a guy that likes photography so much, it is astounding how much you are unable to see the big picture.
You are retarded, not an idiot. Being so anti-social is not an end all. The more quickly you realize this, the more quickly you can salvage your meager existence.
Man up. You are too old for this man. |
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| wotyzoid |
| Simple fact is he obviously knows more about business management than you, why do you always have to be an arrogant little prick? Just keep you trap shut and listen sometimes. Go get a girlfriend, good luck. |
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| citric_acid |
so i decided to not attempt to seek unemployment from my family (really not a fight i want to hear about for the next 10+ years)
instead i got a job up in alaska for a month that will cover my 3 months of wages and still allow me to take my fishing trip, although now its basically a 5 week fishing trip :) When I come back from AK i can enjoy doing what ever i want for 2 months. Thankfully its during hunting season so i wont be too bored. |
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| Joss Weatherby |
| quote: | Originally posted by Dykes_on_Jay
To be brutally honest, without knowing you on a personal level, you can't even be a good employee. If you don't change, you are truly ed. One day the momma/dadda well will dry up . For a guy that likes photography so much, it is astounding how much you are unable to see the big picture.
You are retarded, not an idiot. Being so anti-social is not an end all. The more quickly you realize this, the more quickly you can salvage your meager existence.
Man up. You are too old for this man. |
You honestly don't know all about me Jay.
You are some sort of business god now because you moved to China and basically exploit an emerging market full of people who have some sort of perverse obsession with white people? off, seriously. You probably run a ing house cleaning service with no-skills labor, and knowing you, which you make pretty easy with your insanely attitude and behavior on this site, not to mention a history of (hilarious) mental illness probably literally your employees.
You seriously are making yourself out to be some sort of management defending who can't understand that oh, someone who works in a field YOU HAVE NEVER EVEN STEPPED FOOT IN might know something about it. You talk about me not seeing the big picture? Yea, you are the one demonstrating it right now in this thread.
Kill yourself, for real this time (and leave the cheesy poems for someone with talent). |
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| Joss Weatherby |
| quote: | Originally posted by citric_acid
now its basically a 5 week fishing trip :) |
So you're working on a fishing trawler? |
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