Job and General Employment Thread

[tifosi77]

I'm gonna quietly bask in this one for a bit. As a work-in-person advocate I feel like this may have been ever so slight of a win, or at least a proof of concept, and it feels kinda good.

[count2infinity]

This isn’t a work-in-person advocacy story… it’s a “have a little, tiny, itty bitty amount of patience and/or foresight” story.

Also we use teams… you can see my computer isn’t active on there, so the same could have been done from his computer.

[tifosi77]

I'm leaning very hard into the "had he simply gotten up and come to my desk" part of the yarn. And you can't talk me out of this.

[NTP66]

Shut up you on-site whore.

[count2infinity]

It’s kind of funny…

Me: “here’s a situation that happened while both parties were working on-site…”

Tif: “just goes to show you the necessity of on-site working”

[meow]

yeaaaah I also didn't quite understand that one

[King Colby]

25 minutes... he could have been taking a ****, eating lunch, in a meeting, any number of things. No concepts were proved here ya goomba

[meow]

although....if someone stopped at my office within 10 minutes of sending me an email, I wouldn't be able to punch them in the **** head if we were remote. quite the dilemma

[meecrofilm]

Indeed.

[shafnutz05]

That reminds me of a post the other day where the guy got an email at 445 on a Friday, and the person sent a follow email Monday morning at 830 that they had emailed them "three days ago" and were still waiting for a reply.

I would add them to my spam list and delete.

[tifosi77]

"From a business hours perspective, you emailed me 45 minutes ago, choopster. Now go back to your seat and reevaluate your life."

[King Colby]

Never would have happened if they had been in person

[NTP66]

That reminds me of a post the other day where the guy got an email at 445 on a Friday, and the person sent a follow email Monday morning at 830 that they had emailed them "three days ago" and were still waiting for a reply.

I would add them to my spam list and delete.

I would purposely wait another full day before responding.

[mamaemeritus]

Advice welcomed:

After 7 months of waiting on hearing on a federal gov't job I applied to, I got an interview (which I was convinced I'd bombed - wasn't at all what I expected), and subsequent tentative job offer. The salary is what I was hoping for (knowing I'm taking a $10k paycut - in straight salary, not including annual bonus). However, I didn't realize the PTO was hot garbage and it doesn't seem there is negotiation. Basically I'm given - rather, I accrue - 4 hours per pay cycle, which on a bi-weekly pay is 13 days a year. That's complete crap. Putting aside I'm currently at a place where I get "unlimited" PTO (I generally take 20 days) - I've been in the workforce over 25 years. I mean JFC, that's what inexperienced kids coming out of college get. And I'm stuck with that for 3 years at which point I'll start accruing at 6 hours a pay = 20 days. I do get 4 hours of sick accrued per pay which does not cap out apparently - and can use sick time for taking my (elderly) parents to doctor's appointments (I believe anyway, per the OPM website).

Not to mention, this is not a full remote role - I'm permitted to WFH no more than 80 hours per month. Sooo...that means commuting downtown to the federal building. This less of a concern to me - as, although I'm fully remote now, the writing is on the wall that we will be going to a hybrid model in the not so distant future.

The upside to all of this is much less stress and government pension. I'm really, REALLY unhappy where I'm at now. The long and short of it is I'm doing the work of 3 people (minimum) and I have boss that has less than zero appreciation for the amount of work I do and just keeps piling more on. Not to mention coddling severe underperformers that by rights should have been canned long ago and likely wouldn't be kept on at other places.

This PTO thing is what's really holding me back. I emailed the contact person on the TJO and asked if the amount of leave was negotiable based on relevant work experience and he replied back with "We are not offering leave that deviates from this."

I'm already taking a paycut, giving up full remote, giving up annual bonus - and now I have to give up a **** ton of PTO also? But....that reduced stress level. I don't know what to do. I know the rational person will say, tell the fed gov't to pound sand and apply somewhere else. Problem is - I feel like my issues at my current place (bad managers, overworking, high stress) are everywhere. They were there at the job before this which is why I left - I came to my current job because the manager was someone I had worked with before. But she retired and now here I am with this yutz who is in another city and treats me like crap.

[I'm in a corporate finance role - very similar to what @NAN does (I think), in industry not a public firm if that helps.]

Seriously. I need opinions here.

[NAN]

Sorry to hear about your situation. If you are in a finance role for a large company, then you could be doing something similar to me. We have a ton of different finance positions where I work, and I've touched upon a lot of them, from Corporate, to SBU, to supply chain, to external reporting, etc. I can sympathize with the stress some of those jobs can bring. Especially if you are part of monthly closing and/or annual budgeting and stratetgic reviews.

That said, I know a lot of places (and it seems the government too) are not really negotiating things like vacation, sick days, etc for experienced hires. I know we'll negotiate some on the money, but we are sticking to our policies recently. Not sure if it's because employers are starting to feel they have the leverage vs a few years ago employees did. But it just doesn't seem as fexible as before. And I've seen and heard this from other similar sized companies.

I guess ultimately though, only you can make the decision. I don't know how stressed you are, both at home and at work. It can be a difficult decision. Like you mentioned, you are already taking reduced money and time off, but the trade off is what may be less stress. The only thing I'd caution is the new job, if you accept it, may offer that now, but it can 100% change in the future depending on management or a change in direction.

If you want to PM me with more specifics, I'm more than happy to give you additional advice. Heck, maybe if I get more of what you are looking for, there may be something where I work. Just let me know.

But best of luck. It is a tough decision. I know you've talked about this for a while on here, so it's not a knee jerk reaction, which is good. But change is always hard.

[NTP66]

I can’t speak to government work, so I’ll leave that to the few people here who likely can (paging @dodint).

How much vacation time do you generally take off every year? If your time time is divided into buckets like you describe, you could always use sick time for times where you’d use a random PTO day here and there. That’s how I’ve handled low vacation accrual at previous jobs, though it’s not exactly… honest? The only time you’d really have an issue is if you wanted to take a specific set of days off and didn’t have enough PTO. Most places I’ve worked at prohibited you from using PTO immediately after using sick time, but that was more of a policy thing that most managers didn’t really observe unless they were pricks.

As for the WFH thing, are you certain that it’s headed towards hybrid? If so, perhaps that cancels out with the new job unless the office is in a worse location for commuting. Work/life balance is more important to me, so I’d sacrifice a few PTO days for that. I assume you can take unpaid time off if you ran out of PTO?

[mamaemeritus]

I usually take around 20 days. Only some of which is consecutive. Other than a true vacation, which I haven't taken since 2020, the most I've taken consecutively recently is 3 days (other than Christmas, when I usually take 1.5 weeks including holiday days.)

I was thinking the same re: taking sick days here and there to compensate, but not sure how that will be viewed - and can only really get a feel for that after I'm there, obviously.

Not sure about unpaid time off. Also not sure what the policy is regarding accrued hours - meaning, do I only get to take time if I have it accrued? vs. You have x days a year and you can take them starting on day 1, as long as you don't go over by the end of the year.

Should I even bother going back to the guy and saying, and I'm paraphrasing - really? There's nothing you can do? You won't negotiate at all?

As for WFH, yes, I'm fairly confident that's how the current place is trending. They've already pulled certain departments back to 3 days in office. So far, we've managed to avoid that, but we had an internal results call that blamed less than optimal results (i.e. less than forecast) on people being "distracted at home" and were explicitly told that it's management's opinion that we'd have better financial results if we were in the office. YET - we just had our earnings call and everything was RECORD this and RECORD that. It's a complete joke.

The upside on that front w/r/t the gov't job is that the 80 hr WFH/month is for the first year - after that, I'm able to work with my manager to determine a telework schedule.

[MalkinIsMyHomeboy]

did you interview with the manager?


one thing you could do is talk to the manager instead of the recruiter. My company has a pretty cruddy PTO policy but I tell my reports that I don’t really care what days they take off and we’re able to get away with it (no one outside of me “keeps track” of PTO on that granularity). Maybeeee if you have a good rapport with the manager you can chat with him and see if you can work something out


obviously, depends so much on context and is by no means sure fire, but it’s a possibility if you’re stressing out

[DigitalGypsy66]

Don't forget you get all kinds of Federal holidays off like Veteran's Day or Columbus Day, days the private sector usually doesn't get off.

[Nuge]

Pension is a pretty huge incentive. The pto would probably have to be really bad for me to pass. How does the healthcare compare?

[RonnieFranchise]

Pension is a pretty huge incentive. The pto would probably have to be really bad for me to pass. How does the healthcare compare?

This. At 52 every year that goes by, and my 401k stays stagnant, the more I wish I had one.

I guess it comes down to what you put a value on. Any chance of things improving at your current job?

[mamaemeritus]

did you interview with the manager?


one thing you could do is talk to the manager instead of the recruiter. My company has a pretty cruddy PTO policy but I tell my reports that I don’t really care what days they take off and we’re able to get away with it (no one outside of me “keeps track” of PTO on that granularity). Maybeeee if you have a good rapport with the manager you can chat with him and see if you can work something out


obviously, depends so much on context and is by no means sure fire, but it’s a possibility if you’re stressing out

I interviewed with 3 randoms, and the person that told me that they are not offering anything above standard leave is the group manager (though not my direct manager, I don't believe - a level or two up.)

[mamaemeritus]

Pension is a pretty huge incentive. The pto would probably have to be really bad for me to pass. How does the healthcare compare?

I pay (what I think) is a lot for my healthcare at my current place. For me only (single/self), it's $146 per pay (paid 2x/month, equivalent of $135 bi-weekly pay) and the benefits aren't honestly that great - i.e. my PCP copay is $40 which to me is high.

In looking at the gov't health benefits data I can find online, I can get UPMC for $89/pay, Blue Cross for $96/pay, GEHA for $70/pay, a couple of United Healthcare for $80-$90/pay (paid bi-weekly). Assuming I am reading this all correctly. There are lots to choose from. They also have CDHP/HDHP - I usually get the regular insurance though since I am getting older and paranoid-er.

[willeyeam]

Planning for retirement is smart but make sure your time while you know you're here is enjoyable too.

[mamaemeritus]

Any chance of things improving at your current job?

Highly unlikely. I'm in the bad position of being a competent worker that cares (hooray for Gen X) - which is an absolute curse these days. I get everything dumped on me whether it's in my realm/job description or not. My boss sits in Chicago now, and has zero (and I mean zero) clue regarding the VOLUME of work that I do. He's so far removed from the day to day that he has no idea of what all goes into getting things done. So, it's "oh, mamaemeritus is capable, she can do it." Never mind that I am a literal group of 1 (which ordinarily is fine by me, I hate managing, would rather just crank out work) - when there is an equivalent of me at the Chicago office with 3 (soon to be 4) direct reports and never seems to get any work thrown her way. And her work is always late, or wrong, or given to me to figure out with no access to the data required to analyze it because she is a clueless turnip. We also have people who just disappear for hours with no consequence. We have people that somehow have "appointments" every single week (for over a year) - to the point they send my boss their schedule for the week of when they plan on working - "working" less than 30 hours every week. Meanwhile, I tried to take a 4 day weekend in August after not having taken a day off in months and my boss had me on Teams at 8pm the night before when I hadn't even packed yet over something completely inane that could have waited. My Dad had a major health concern in January (like, could have died) and I was coming home from the hospital every night and working and once he was stable was working the weekends to catch up. To be fair, my boss didn't tell me I had to do this - but I felt like I HAD to do it, because I would just be buried and crushed in work if I didn't because he can't appropriately delegate or hold people to any account whatsoever.

His boss, who is the SVP, is someone I have worked with in the past and admire greatly. I have expressed my concerns with him repeatedly - but when you're that high up, and the work is getting done, and you have your own problems, well.....

My best option if I stay is to decide that I don't care and do the bare minimum, but I have tried that before and it's not in my nature.