Big job changes

[Ava]

We had our Christmas party last week.

The company went all out and paid for a lunch (during work hours) for all of us. Fancy restaurant, fancy food, open bar.

Lunch started at 1:30, and we could go home afterwards, giving us the rest of the day off.

It was such a great treat and we were enjoying it.

In the middle of lunch the President starts a speech. He informed us that the contract for the rental place where we work is expiring in January. Headquarters are located one hour away. Well, headquarters have told him the rental contract won't be renewed in order to save money. Headquarters has plenty of empty office space and decided we'll have to move there.

I switched from headquarters to this division last March because the commute was killing me. It was an hour commute with good weather, no accidents and no snow. It went to four hours coming back home if it snowed. I left an awesome team and a good manager to work in this division just because of the commute.

There are people in our division that live around 30 minutes north of our work location. Well, now there job is moving 1 hour south of current location, so now their commute is 1 1/2 hours each way. Most of the folk in this division live nearby.

People were upset after that announcement. Some of them started crying. I was in shock. The most positive thing I can come up with is that we are still employed. But our quality of life will go significantly down. I know because I did that commute for almost 2 years and it's a killer, it really is.

I can't go back to my old division in headquarters because it was disbanded a couple of weeks ago, also to save money.

Profits way over people. The company is doing well but wants more money.

Our health insurance deductible has jumped for 2015.

I want to leave, I don't see a future for me here. I'm not a martyr and I don't want a horrible commute on top of working for a boss I don't feel comfortable with.

I also don't want to start looking for a new job right now because I plan to move in 2015. So I guess I'll have to suck it up, smile and pretend I like it for now. This also puts a fire under me to make sure I finish the MBA in May, so I can get out of this company by May-June.

Sorry, long rant. I needed to vent.

What a way to ruin our Christmas lunch.

[Bonny]

I see this as a half-full thing for you Ava.

Yes, in the short term this will be a PITA but you were planning to leave anyway. It actually gives you a gracious way out. While your company that you work for isn't a perfect fit, they seem to have gone out of their way to accommodate your school schedule.

Now you can use the relocation as an excuse to your management that you had to "review your options" including relocating out of state.

Upward and onward!

[plugginaway22]

Do you own or rent?  could you move closer to help with the commute? and for the record, I work in HR and everyone I know has a worse health benefit this year.

[Ava]

Dec 21, 2014 11:50:41 GMT -5 Bonny said:

I see this as a half-full thing for you Ava.

Yes, in the short term this will be a PITA but you were planning to leave anyway. It actually gives you a gracious way out. While your company that you work for isn't a perfect fit, they seem to have gone out of their way to accommodate your school schedule.

Now you can use the relocation as an excuse to your management that you had to "review your options" including relocating out of state.

Upward and onward!

Thanks, very good advice.

[Ava]

Dec 21, 2014 14:08:07 GMT -5 plugginaway22 said:

Do you own or rent?  could you move closer to help with the commute? and for the record, I work in HR and everyone I know has a worse health benefit this year.

Own.

But that's not the issue since I want to move from this area. Several condos are rented out and they rent within the day.

The problem is that I plan to move out of this geographic area to another state in mid-2015. So I am not going to move now and then move again in six months.

About the health benefit being worse for everyone, that doesn't make me feel better. It actually makes me feel worse.

We have people in our team who have an spouse/significant other and dependent children in their insurance. The cost has almost doubled for them.

It has also almost doubled for me. I'm going on vacation on Tuesday and I already have appointments in the old country to do all my checkups while there. Our insurance is crazy and we get charged through the nose, and besides that it denies almost any claim you can make.

Once I had a horrible skin rush so I went to the walk-in clinic of a major hospital. The insurance denied the claim because they consider the walk-in clinic of a major hospital visiting the emergency. I explained I had not set foot at their emergency room, but they went ahead and denied the claim. Then the walk in couldn't fix my problem, so I had to go to the doctor. They also denied that. I ended up paying around 1k for that skin rush.

Imagine what it's like for families with children. And now our insurance is even worse than last year.

[Ava]

Dec 21, 2014 15:42:07 GMT -5 @tbird said:

Dec 21, 2014 11:29:45 GMT -5 Ava said:

We had our Christmas party last week.

The company went all out and paid for a lunch (during work hours) for all of us. Fancy restaurant, fancy food, open bar.

Lunch started at 1:30, and we could go home afterwards, giving us the rest of the day off.

It was such a great treat and we were enjoying it.

In the middle of lunch the President starts a speech. He informed us that the contract for the rental place where we work is expiring in January. Headquarters are located one hour away. Well, headquarters have told him the rental contract won't be renewed in order to save money. Headquarters has plenty of empty office space and decided we'll have to move there.

I switched from headquarters to this division last March because the commute was killing me. It was an hour commute with good weather, no accidents and no snow. It went to four hours coming back home if it snowed. I left an awesome team and a good manager to work in this division just because of the commute.

There are people in our division that live around 30 minutes north of our work location. Well, now there job is moving 1 hour south of current location, so now their commute is 1 1/2 hours each way. Most of the folk in this division live nearby.

People were upset after that announcement. Some of them started crying. I was in shock. The most positive thing I can come up with is that we are still employed. But our quality of life will go significantly down. I know because I did that commute for almost 2 years and it's a killer, it really is.

I can't go back to my old division in headquarters because it was disbanded a couple of weeks ago, also to save money.

Profits way over people. The company is doing well but wants more money.

Our health insurance deductible has jumped for 2015.

I want to leave, I don't see a future for me here. I'm not a martyr and I don't want a horrible commute on top of working for a boss I don't feel comfortable with.

I also don't want to start looking for a new job right now because I plan to move in 2015. So I guess I'll have to suck it up, smile and pretend I like it for now. This also puts a fire under me to make sure I finish the MBA in May, so I can get out of this company by May-June.

Sorry, long rant. I needed to vent.

What a way to ruin our Christmas lunch.

Yep - sometime the lemons keep coming. Get fired up, stay fired up, and Power through!


Get the degree - and get outta dodge!

Will do

I'll have to check possible employer next time, before even applying for a job. I want to work somewhere where people are not just a commodity.

[Deleted]

May will come very Quickly!!  You can do this!  Pretty soon, after you get that degree, you will be looking back at this!

[Bonny]

Ava said:

I'll have to check possible employer next time, before even applying for a job. I want to work somewhere where people are not just a commodity.

I hate to break it to you but that's what employees are. If you're lucky and very skilled you can experience a workplace environment where you and the employer are symbiotic but things can change over time.

Employers are always going to have the "What have you done for me lately?" perspective. You must provide value at a reasonable cost. Because they aren't going to keep you otherwise even if you're a nice person.

I hope you can find what you want Ava.

[Ava]

Dec 21, 2014 16:13:57 GMT -5 Bonny said:

Ava said:

I'll have to check possible employer next time, before even applying for a job. I want to work somewhere where people are not just a commodity.

I hate to break it to you but that's what employees are. If you're lucky and very skilled you can experience a workplace environment where you and the employer are symbiotic but things can change over time.

Employers are always going to have the "What have you done for me lately?" perspective. You must provide value at a reasonable cost. Because they aren't going to keep you otherwise even if you're a nice person.

I hope you can find what you want Ava.

And I understand that. But some companies don't care at all. If they were smarter they would consider the loss of human capital a move like this will imply. People are unhappy because their commute increased an hour each way, on top of their health insurance being worse and more expensive now. They will go to work feeling stressed and unmotivated.

Some of them are going to leave. In my department, we lost a team member two months ago. We just got someone to start in January. It took multiple interviews and now we get to train someone new. There's a cost of time and money in that.

Are they really saving money moving the division when you take everything into account? Is it worth it?

I hope there are companies out there that value their people a little more.

[Ava]

Dec 21, 2014 16:06:52 GMT -5 @ezzie said:

May will come very Quickly!!  You can do this!  Pretty soon, after you get that degree, you will be looking back at this!

Thanks, ezzie

[justme]

Realistically, the only time one is a little risk of having their office moved is if the company owns the building or you're at their headquarters.

They do weigh it, but sometimes it's cheaper to replace people. The carrying costs for office space is a lot (was actually going through this at my job Thursday). I know my old company kept closing remote offices because the headquarters was within 30-60 minutes of the old offices and there was a ton of empty space. Hell, I was in 3 different offices in my 4 years with the company. 

Sorry you got caught up in it. 6 months isn't too long of a time.

[Bonny]

Dec 21, 2014 16:41:06 GMT -5 Ava said:

Dec 21, 2014 16:13:57 GMT -5 Bonny said:

Ava said:

I hate to break it to you but that's what employees are. If you're lucky and very skilled you can experience a workplace environment where you and the employer are symbiotic but things can change over time.

Employers are always going to have the "What have you done for me lately?" perspective. You must provide value at a reasonable cost. Because they aren't going to keep you otherwise even if you're a nice person.

I hope you can find what you want Ava.

And I understand that. But some companies don't care at all. If they were smarter they would consider the loss of human capital a move like this will imply. People are unhappy because their commute increased an hour each way, on top of their health insurance being worse and more expensive now. They will go to work feeling stressed and unmotivated.

Some of them are going to leave. In my department, we lost a team member two months ago. We just got someone to start in January. It took multiple interviews and now we get to train someone new. There's a cost of time and money in that.

Are they really saving money moving the division when you take everything into account? Is it worth it?

I hope there are companies out there that value their people a little more.

That's certainly not what we saw with DH's career.

The company DH worked for was actually started in the SF Bay Area. They built an expensive building and some corporate person convinced them to do a sale-lease back for 20 years which was all the rage. Of course the lease came up in 2000 at the height of the Dot-com. Rents were actually cheaper in Downtown SF than on the SF Peninsula. They decided to relocate out of CA because it was so expensive yada, yada. So part of the company moved to AZ and the other moved to FL. They were convinced they could find cheaper talent in both locations since wages were so much lower.

Most of the workforce chose not to move. DH said no thanks when he was advised that they wouldn't cut his salary but that he wouldn't have a raise for four years. He asked them what the incentive was to move since his wife had a good job and he didn't have to take just any job.

Whoops, after a year they realized they couldn't find enough qualified folks in the new location. So they came back to DH with a much sweeter offer.  Which was good because the working conditions for my job had gone down rapidly. I had a toxic co-worker who was getting worse and there were only four of us in the department. The department boss was his drinking buddy so it wasn't going to get better anytime soon.

We relocated, were in AZ for six years until the company decided to shut down its U.S. operations. We relocated to Germany for three years and were advised that if DH wanted to stay he'd have to take a "local" package. He decided to retire instead.

DH was very good at finding a special niche for his special skills. But he would advise folks to make decisions based on their own best interest because the company was always going to make decisions on its own best interests.

From my view point I think the company made a really bad decision to relocate from the SF Bay Area. Yeah, it's expensive here in the SF Bay Area but it's also where you're going to find some of the best (especially IT) talent. However most companies seem to be driven by very short term goals that can be quite expensive in the long run.

ETA: And it doesn't matter if I'm right. It's not my company so I don't get to make the decisions!