The downside to hiring internally

[Exterous]

If its a good company to work for people lose sight of that. Every year in the last week of June the company does an annual employee appreciation party. Free food, games and prizes (Usually $20-40 gift cards) but the catering hasn't even been announced yet and people are already complaining about free food. Now its not the most expensive food out there but its not Domino's pizza either. They usually get 2-3 local restaurants together to do it. Last year it was an above average BBQ place and a higher end deli place serving sandwiches and panninis

Just the free food complaints wouldn't be noteworthy but the accumulation of all the things people here complain about can be. The company always tries to hire\promote internally first so a good chunk of the people here have never worked anywhere else. I've seen more 10, 20, 30 year anniversaries than anywhere else I've worked so I feel like most of the employees are out of touch with today's workplace.

Here are a few of the things that people complain about:
-Complaints about free team lunches where teams of 5-10 get together once a month and decide where they want to go for free food (Must be <$25 pp which covers a lot in Michigan)
-Not enough time off. Under 8 years gets 27 vacation\sick days a year + holidays + all the days between Xmas and Jan 2. 8+ years gets 39 days a year
-The company "only" does a 2:1 retirement match after your first year. As in you put in 5% and the company puts in 10%

The few of us newcomers sometimes try to tell them those things are pretty darn good but it never seems to sink in

 

[purbeast0]

Those benefits sound really good. Do the salaries suck or something? Are you all worked 50+ hours a week? Something doesn't add up.

 

[ImpulsE69]

It's work. People will complain. Contrary to what people try to pretend, most people do not like to 'work' and only do it because it's kind of necessary.

 

[gorcorps]

Yeah, those benefits do sound pretty good. Vacation time is about what I get which isn't great, but I'd say average to above average talking to others.

I agree with the greater point that if people don't know any different, it's easy to become jaded. That happens here as well, and the people that pull their weight around here seem to be the ones that have worked elsewhere and recognize it as something worth working for.

 

[ponyo]

Sounds like college or university admin job from the description. They usually get Christmas to New Year's off and all the holidays.

 

[NesuD]

Being a lifelong resident of Michigan I can say that those attitudes are fairly common. It is traditional to complain about your workplace no matter how good it is. I think it stems from Michigan's long history of unionization. Even though unions have long been on the decline in Michigan union babies were raised with those narrow union created stereotypes of employers = evil and are never treating you fairly. If the employer doesn't actively discourage that kind of attitude it has a tendency to spread. Those people are toxic to me and I do my best to keep them isolated from my team.

 

[RockinZ28]

I'd fucking love those benefits.

Get a paltry 5 days vacation, 10 after 2 years. No retirement at all.

Get paid pretty damn well tho, although not until I was about to walk out the door...

 

[ultimatebob]

Yeah, it sounds like these guys are getting double the 401k match that I'm getting, and twice the vacation time.

Where is this place? We should apply for these jobs so they can kick out the whiners

 

[Exterous]

Those benefits sound really good. Do the salaries suck or something? Are you all worked 50+ hours a week? Something doesn't add up.

The salary is pretty good for the Michigan and considering our pretty low cost of living and I rarely work over 40 hours a week but do get over time if I do. Some of my friends in the same sort of field make more but they are working 50+ hour weeks and don't get over time.

Sounds like college or university admin job from the description. They usually get Christmas to New Year's off and all the holidays.

No although we do have contracts with Universities for IT work though. We have other contracts with the Big 3 auto companies and they shut down quite a bit for 1-3 weeks depending on demand. It probably stems from 3/4 of our customers being out of contact during that time. They don't even want to do upgrade projects then

 

[Exterous]

Yeah, it sounds like these guys are getting double the 401k match that I'm getting, and twice the vacation time.

Where is this place? We should apply for these jobs so they can kick out the whiners

Sounds like I came from a company with similar benefits. It's tough to get into unfortunately since they almost always hire internally. Positions above entry level rarely show up. I got lucky and they formed a new team so they had more openings than they could fill. It was a step down in pay and responsibility but I was fortunate and only spent 10 months in that role

 

[Murloc]

honestly that's pretty good, better than some European standards (which have minimums forced by law).

4 weeks holiday is normal and compulsory here so you have nothing less. 40 hours work week is shorter than average.

 

[Scarpozzi]

Sounds like they're living in a bubble and don't realize it. The problem with staying somewhere 30 years is that you don't know how bad things got after 1999 when the economy started its backslide.....and even worse after the meltdown of 2008/2009. Corporate benefits keep taking a hit because company healthcare expenses are shooting up and the company is paying more and more....don't thank Obama. The problem started way before him.

 

[Yakk]

Sounds like a really sweet deal overall. If people don't know anything else of coarse they will want better, the fact that the company has so many long term employees tells me people are overall satisfied.

Background complaining noise is unfortunately normal. Anybody in charge always has some, like trolls in forums.

I had one manufacturing company I worked with where the union strong-armed management too much and the costs didn't make sense anymore and they couldn't compete anymore. 8 months later had to come for bankruptcy. These same complaining people now work at less than half the salary they had for years.

It's a delicate balance.

 

[Ajay]

2:1 401K match - that's awesome! Never had more than 3:2. How the health insurance?

 

[Scarpozzi]

Sounds like a really sweet deal overall. If people don't know anything else of coarse they will want better, the fact that the company has so many long term employees tells me people are overall satisfied.

Background complaining noise is unfortunately normal. Anybody in charge always has some, like trolls in forums.

I had one manufacturing company I worked with where the union strong-armed management too much and the costs didn't make sense anymore and they couldn't compete anymore. 8 months later had to come for bankruptcy. These same complaining people now work at less than half the salary they had for years.

It's a delicate balance.

Unions have destroyed quite a few companies that way and have even been known to convince business owners to shut their doors simply so they wouldn't have to deal with the nonsense. After the creation of OSHA, unions have probably done more damage to industries generally speaking and only increased the cost of goods sold in the US. It's one of the driving factors of the auto industry leaving Detroit for a more laid back workforce in places like MS, AL, and TN...

 

[Ajay]

Can we save the bullshit for P&N please

 

[gorb]

My company provides food MAYBE once a year.

4% 401k matching as of last year. Prior to that they gave you $400 a year.

1-5 years = 80 hours vacation
5-10 years = 120 hours
10+ years 160 hours

No sick time. We accrue 0.47 hours a week of PTO (~24 hours a year).

All standard federal holidays are paid.

if the facility closes due to weather or any other reason we do not get paid.

 

[Exterous]

2:1 401K match - that's awesome! Never had more than 3:2. How the health insurance?

Pretty good. $20 co pays for most visits until we reach $2k each person then everything is 100% covered except prescriptions (which top out at $25). The cost of the plan is pretty fair

Unions have destroyed quite a few companies that way and have even been known to convince business owners to shut their doors simply so they wouldn't have to deal with the nonsense. After the creation of OSHA, unions have probably done more damage to industries generally speaking and only increased the cost of goods sold in the US. It's one of the driving factors of the auto industry leaving Detroit for a more laid back workforce in places like MS, AL, and TN...

I have a few good friends who work for the Big 3 and the stories they tell are....crazy. Supervisor catches you smoking pot on lunch break? No worries - it wasn't part of an announced investigation into your conduct so no discipline will be handed out. Squeeze a female coworkers boob on the clock? You'll get told not to do it again. Do it again? Well I guess we'll just transfer you to another department...

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Some people just like to complain.

 

[ra1nman]

At my place of work we have:

100% match but requires a min of contribution 4%.
After 5yrs of service 120hrs + 8 sick days + holidays
- After 15yrs we get an extra day per year and max out at 20 days given per year.

 

[Pantoot]

We cater lunch every day for the company.
The complaints are endless.
"Pizza too often", "Not enough vegetarian food", "it arrived too late", "we ran out of meatball subs".
I am about ready to cancel it.
This is why we can't have nice things.

 

[sm625]

Sounds like my company. Wait... you're in Michigan? Is that you, Chuck? Quit complaining and get back to work. BTW you left a stack of paper at the copier. Really, why'd you print out a 50 page manual anyway, when you have 3 monitors and a tablet? We're trying to save paper here.

 

[Exterous]

We cater lunch every day for the company.
The complaints are endless.
"Pizza too often", "Not enough vegetarian food", "it arrived too late", "we ran out of meatball subs".
I am about ready to cancel it.
This is why we can't have nice things.

There was some open source guy who said he was done providing his open source stuff because he was fed up with all the people complaining about his free software

Sounds like my company. Wait... you're in Michigan? Is that you, Chuck?

No but I work with a Chuck...

 

[Yakk]

Unions have destroyed quite a few companies that way and have even been known to convince business owners to shut their doors simply so they wouldn't have to deal with the nonsense. After the creation of OSHA, unions have probably done more damage to industries generally speaking and only increased the cost of goods sold in the US. It's one of the driving factors of the auto industry leaving Detroit for a more laid back workforce in places like MS, AL, and TN...

I'm not for or against unions, I've seen both sides. Like anything in excess, too much of something isn't good. Unions and can be the same. They can improve the lives of workers in the beginning to a more balanced workload/compensation. It's keeping that balance which seems near impossible as both sides struggle to get the better of the other. Just because, human nature I guess.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Lol my company won't even pay into Christmas party let alone appreciation party. What do they have to appreciate, we're only an expense on a spreadsheet. The only reason we're still there is because we don't show up on the top 10 expenses yet. We'll get there.