You know people get all sorts of existential dread thinking about an AI maximizing for paperclip production, but what scares me the most is jerks maximing for money and how they will not stop at anything. And theyâre not even AIs yet. Mr. Burns embodied.
However this company has been well established since the 90s and are a major television company in the country I live in. Basically we had large organization changes that made no sense and we later found out that there were disputes between upper management and that as soon as one of them leaves their job, the rest take the company and steer it into a whole new direction. Meanwhile the entire staff is trying to manage under all the stress and weâve had all kinds of bugs and problems with our ânew launchâ.
They made us build the pyramids then laid off the excess.
I appreciate that my manager needed to tell me ASAP because others are nervously waiting in the line to know whether or not they are being laid off and he had to inform us (people being laid off) first. However, what I didnât appreciate is that that vacation should have been sick leave to recover from burnout but my manager kept thinking that âburnoutâ meant âstressâ, when what it actually means is âthe job I used to love and cherish now feels like lifting tons of bricks up a steep slope then rolling down in defeat and cryingâ.
That sounds awful. Maybe one day will dawn on this world when companies will just listen to the professionals doing the work. My managerâs manager (the one resisting docs) seems to be on some kind of power trip. Heâs an exceptionally bad listener who treats us like chess pieces in a game he is playing in his own head. I thought he just annoyed me, but after having a chat with my manager about him, it turns out that everyone is having problems with him and heâs unwilling to be flexible.
My manager wanted me to come to the office daily because the laptop I had couldnât handle the company VPN, which we were suddenly using in our systems.
He gave me some crap about it and reminded me of the âoffice firstâ policy at my workplace.
I looked him dead in the face and said, âYou canât force anyone back to the office. You know that itâs not going to fly with the employees. You can try but it wonât workâ.
He didnât look too happy about that, but he knows itâs reality.
Ended up finally getting an new old laptop for the VPN issue, which some other employee left behind, because the budget was âtoo tightâ even though I couldnât do my work efficiently. And a few days ago I was told Iâd be laid off. Also because of the budget.
For me this read differently. Probably because at my company we had one jerk like this. I spent a good year fixing his poorly written code. His only goal was to always make dazzling things that work for a few weeks, enough for him to pitch them, but no focus on clean and sustainable work.
But I do agree, there is a fine line, and lots of places do not give enough recognition to employees.
Not a coincidence that this company and team Iâm being laid off from has one manager who resisted (and continues to resist) technical documentation. Everything is just to make things work NOW with a big middle finger to sustainability.
