Being Retained
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"My managerial tact was treat them all differntly under the same rules."
Wow... that sums it up good
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at my previous job, i used to enter about 5minutes each day as timesheet entering into my timesheet...i think its fair enough. and if it took longer i let them know through that too...
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Life is far too important to be taken seriously -
You have said something that is blindingly obvious but only after you have said it.
A subtle change in management style can have a big influence on morale.
I was asked to be staff rep in my last job. The idea was to provide a conduit to encourage staff to talk to through me and managers and mangers to provide a generic response back to staff. In theory any employee could talk directly to management but in practice many wanted to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals.
I saw managers getting despondent because staff wouldn't talk to them and staff getting thoroughly p%$£ed off because management wouldn't listen. A lot of people said "don't stick your neck out, there is no point" and I thought "I will not subscribe to that negative attitude". Eventually though I got worn down and got so exasperated that I had to leave for the sake of my sanity.
An employee has to feel that if they have a genuine concern the manager will listen. A boss has to be a boss but you catch more flies with a dab of honey than you do with a bucket of vinegar.
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Well David - you too have said everything that is blindingly obvious but only after you have said it.
And everything you list is as old as the oldest profession...the bottom line is that it wore you down - so nothing changed right ?! That's the depressing part - we can thrash this topic to death and naught will come of it except for some well-needed venting...like world peace...may well remain a pipe dream!
TGIF & Ta!
**ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI !!!** -
The mother of most employee unhappiness in the IT field is becoming stagnate. It's just my opinion but I don't know too many techies that came into this field saying "I want to work on the same thing for the next 20 years, no matter what the rest of the tech world is doing."
- ...you have said everything that is blindingly obvious but only after you have said it
That's what i call the power of observation, and thinking quietly! By the way, why the post date is 2005 not 2006? somebody figured how to use the time machine
Security is a good thing to have in a job but i think Security is a sub query (sorry, it comes with the job) off recognition, appreciation, bonus, merits, etc... If the employee was recognized for his work (in any way and in so many different ways); this will make him feel secure, and appreciated. It will also, build his confidence, so in the worse case scenario, if the employee have to leave the company - for one reason or another - he will be okay because he knows he can do it again. He had done it before and he can do it again.
I personally, have an equation to help me in deciding should i continue in this job or move on. More Money + More work load (less work life balance - bad choice for me) or Less/Same Money + Work life balance. If i can get More money + Work life balance, that would be great, but unfortunately, it doesn't work this way except when you get your annual increase if any exists. The problem here is; once you reached certain number; you can't get anymore unless you changed your career by moving to management levels which is most of the time is a bad choice according to my equation as i'm very time sensitive person
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Ayman,
The article was posted a year ago. If you look at the sqlservercentral.com homepage you'll see the link for it in a section titled, "One Year Ago".
Greg
Greg
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Thanks Greg for bringing this to my attention. I didn't know that the article was under "One Year Ago" section. I followed the link i get on my daily email notification from SQL central which directed me to the article directly.gush, and i thought that finally somebody got the time machine working
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I really look for an enjoyable work environment.
I realise that I'm in an unusual position, but being single, and without dependants, I really don't have that much requirement in the way of salary. More is nice, but to be honest my material needs are relatively light and any decent developer salary is going to cut it just fine. More important to me is the workplace, and I'll explain what I mean by way of an illustration.
I've been in my current job for a year and a half, and it was initially a lot of fun. The projects were interesting and challenging, I was working with two other developers, we often worked late and then had LAN sessions at night, and I actively looked forward to coming in to work every day. The management gave us projects and focussed on the results. Given that the guy supposedly heading up the IT department was a chartered accountant by training, it was good that he didn't take too much of a hand in trying to influence the development process.
Over time, management became far more focussed on appearance. Dress code and punctuality seemed to be more important than the code that we were producing. The LAN sessions were banned. Internet access was clamped down on with the threat of dismissal for even opening any non-work sites (including things like e-mail or checking the news). Frustrated, the other two developers started looking for new jobs, and within six months of the changes they had both left. Neither one was looking for more in salary, they just both decided that they couldn't stand another day working for our bosses.
I persevered, mostly because I needed a solid chunk of development experience on my CV, and I didn't want anything less than a year, preferably two. And also, the offices moved close to my home, so I had a 3-minute commute. Most important to me was that this allowed me to use my evenings to the fullest, as I didn't have to waste time sitting in traffic after work. Compared to that, the nit-picking bosses and tedious timesheet requirements were pretty minor, and some of the work was still interesting enough. I was still learning.
Well, two weeks ago they banned listening to music on headphones at work. I don't know how they actually think that coding happens, but as far as I'm concerned the two essential components are caffeine and piped music. The next day, I sent off an email to a few developer friends to see if anyone had openings in a company near me. And I'm officially back in the search for my next position, despite the fact that my salary has almost doubled in the last 18 months here.
So what can we conclude? Three things from my experience:
1) Money really ISN'T everything.
2) People join companies, but they leave managers.
3) Most people would much rather stay in a job than change, but everyone has deal-breaking requirements in their expectaions of a job, and a good manager needs identify those and work around them to keep his staff happy and retained.
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C8H10N4O2
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