@jestdotty Today, we have a normal workshop & 4 hours of my boss copying motivational guru Tony Robbins.

He does a session like once every 3 months where he copies a speach of him since I started nearly 4 years ago.

To be fair, the activity was not that bad except we had no place to wash our hands after. They decided on sandwiches (without plates) with our dirty hands and now i have stomach today :')

Also was fun to see our spanish & kenyan colleagues suffer from freezing temperatures outside temperatures

To be fair, his flight got cancelled. He will arrive tomorrow. We are not racist

@retoor So far in my 4 years of working there, we had one work trip that was more for fun than work. We had a very exceptional year so the owners paid for a 3-day holiday to Croatia for all 30-ish employees (same city as one of our devs). But that ended up more expensive than they expected & ended up with drama between the C-levels & managers.

So for my ex-CTO went with an other Belgian developer to croatia multiple times that I was not invited to. My current manager already went once to Spain that I was also not invited to.

Hard to say if I would like a work holiday but I would love to move to a different country for a few years. I guess I would like it.

@retoor Belgian. They are from Croatia (2), Italy, Spain & Kenya.

Sadly their b&b is a bit too far (+ too far from the old city) for giving them bikes but we have 2 company cars that they can. We have 2 more on our parking but they have a major problem with mold. I'll upload pictures later after I can be bothered to blur out the company logo on it :D

I've met 3 out of the 5 already. It was fun the last time. But we got a new manager that wants to make it a lot more coorporate/organised. Our previous CTO was less professional and it evolved into a drinking party most of the time & we barely worked haha

Now the manager wants to make it a lot more efficient with multiple workshops, prototyping and we even have a teambuilding with horses. I'm not really looking forward to that tbh.

So yeah... I just have no idea how to prepare for it when I don't even know the time limitation.

@Lensflare Oh, 3h is painful. Mine is only 1h - 90 min.

At least my workplace introduced an exception for anyone that lives more than 60min away (one-way). And for the sales & technicians.

So like more than the half of our employees have an exception.

@Lensflare Nah, it's because the CEO is mindlessly following trends from big companies like amazon.

They are forcing people to go back to the office so now my CEO copied it. He ignores the reasons why the big companies are doing it.

@retoor To be fair, The person who was fired was hired during Covid and her work can be done fully remotely. She promised that it would not be a problem and it was the reason she chose for this company (the salary aint great)

And yes, they had problems with her and I believe this was just an excuse to fire her legally.

@AlgoRythm Unsure, that is what the COO told us. He got that email forwarded so not sure if he was exaggerating or really the case (hashed or not). Maybe the password manager was compromised or an exploit was found to bypass the authentication. IDK at this point. They have not yet made a public statement.

@antigermanist We have also detected hacking attempts earlier this week but my colleagues have determined that their attempt was not successfull.

Since we are a direct competitor of them, i assume they have been hacked by the same party and on a very similar way like they attacked us.

@antigermanist Their product does not use HTTP or HTTPS but a whole different protocol. I'm not sure how their authentication is done for their devices. Maybe their admin platform that probably uses HTTPS has been hacked. I have no idea about how it happened (yet).

@PappyHans For sure. It's an EU company and not a multinational. I hope they play by the rules.

@retoor There are enough red flags but my position as a front-end developer was never really affected that much. Hence why i sticked around and this is my first job so I thought it might look better to my future employees to be here for 3 or 3+ years.

Then there are so many red flags in the sales department, technicians, support, finance, ... Logistics / admin department has no drama yet.

It honestly feels more that I'm a background character for a sitcom. I have no idea how this company is making a profit each year. It baffles me.

@wojtek322

One coworker was extremely competent but he acted careless (which his work was not) and was very extroverted. The COO disliked him & fired him when he was on holiday (and called him during his holiday & ruining his holiday)

Other colleague was fired by the same COO because she was disliked because she did not meet the deadline. The deadline was not her issue but very unrealistic. it was a major rewrite of our apps logic, not something you can do in a month but 4 months at least. She went on holiday and was fired after she came back.

The other colleague was this one: https://devrant.com/rants/6445422/...

@retoor

financial reasons: 1

Left on his own accord: 5

bullied: 3

Left because else left: 4

Left because the CEO: 3

fired for incompetence: 7

Too junior / financial reasons: 2

Stopped showing up: 2

I forgot about 3 ex-colleagues hahaha

@retoor For sure. But it feels I did not a lot in my time at the job. I've written a lot of code, threw away a lot code

I'm soon starting my fourth year at this company and i've already had:

4 different COO

6 different project managers

6 different redesigns

24 ex-colleagues in the dev team alone. (team size now is 9)

etc

Still no idea how this company stays afloat.

@retoor Enjoy!

My company sadly didn't grow too much. We went from 25 people to 35 then back to 30 and we stabilized around here...

Depending on the month because we have a high turnover

@wojtek322

- Our office policy was "i dont care", now 2 days mandatory work in the office

- 38 work week, now 40

- removed unlimited PTO

- removed the perk that you could get a part of your sport costs paid back (gym membership, sport clothing, ...)

- monthly fuel cap for company car

- not allowing car to be driven outside of my country

- removal of alcohol on work events- monthly

-lunchmeetings with the devops teams was removed*

- ...

\* friday was often just working in the morning. Lunch for 2 hours (or 3). Then sprint review/meeting (aka, drinking beer/soda with remote team). Then people stayed in the office till 19:00 and have multiple drinks and then drive home drunk (very very safe)

It's just an other perk that is being taken away... While it is not that big of a deal, it adds up quickly.

@retoor my work is already being a PITA for the remaining of my annual leave (20 days) and that is not yet being approved.

But it is not the only thing they are taking away in 3 years... Let's see...

Before i started, they worked at a coworking space including free lunches for the colleagues

The company grew & they moved out. I then joined them (3y+ ago). Since then:

- removed free beer & free soda at workplace

- company-wide meetings used to include free lunch

- company-wide meetings now is the afternoon & usually runs longer than our workign hours. They however fix dinner (usually sandwiches) but that is optional

- company events is now in the evening instead during office time

Also, we are now officialy one month later since I requested time off for end of December.

It still has to be approved or rejected.

@Lensflare Oh no, i'm already past that point in this company and simply don't care what happens to this company. I'm at this point baffled how this company still stays afloat

This company waves so many red flags you would assume it is part of the USSR.

@Lensflare Well, this is not a big company. We don't even have 50 employees :')

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Not enough to pay my senior colleague monthly salary

@cprn nope

@Lensflare Not really. They did end up discussing a more polite way of getting the same results before having a meeting with the CEO.

I guess that remains as plan C

@electrineer yes, my bad. You learn something new every day

@electrineer no, we are a local VoIP company that only targets one country in the EU.

I do assume it is because of a weak wifi signal on his boat since we can see that the call is indeed happening. His other SIM card from a different provider also does not work. But that is all I know since I'm not assigned this ticket

It will probably be fine if he arrives at a research facility or gets back to Chili(?)

@Demolishun there is imo a big difference between showing it to your team and everyone in the company + investors

@retoor

yes, I do have a speech impediment that is currently quite fine but it does fluctuate quite a lot. That is what scares me especially talking in front of 50 people.

The added stress would surely make it a lot worse

I'm a FE dev & designer at my local company and our designs are just terrible. Every time, the designs goes to the CEO and he suggest things to be changed for the worse & a lot of worse. :D