worklifebalance

I understand very well that being unkind to staff and there being a shortage of 106,000 IT Professionals and increasing (CIC figures for 2014) are somehow linked. I also understand that both previous companies that employed me have not been able to replace me so they are running out of willing bodies for some roles. Other places I've been for interview are still advertising up to a year later. Plenty bodies for the programming jobs but not the other roles. At both jobs I was told extremely unlikely to work more than 50 hours per week so the employers broke the agreement.

I thought it was 2 weeks. Employers can be disposable too if employee's have enough to tell them to stick it - works both ways. It was obvious by their comments of "how can you pay your mortgage if you don't do as we say" that they want you to be poor to get their own way. We have zero debt and enough savings so I'm less likely to accept bullying and it kind of took their power away and gives me another option.

..and the 106,000 shortage of IT Professionals will get bigger and bigger but at least I'm not part of it. Just think it is a really strange way to encourage IT Professionals to immigrate with such standards.

dbd33

8 weeks is the worst case, from the employer's perspective. 2 is the common case. I'm not sure how many decades of slogging away is needed to reach the 8 week mark.

Incidentally, I saw someone get hoofed yesterday. The person had negotiated to take two weeks off, one after the other. This request had been grudgingly granted but what he had done was to book two weeks including a bank holiday and a day of the following week. He said it was two weeks, ie 10 regular days, the boss said it spanned three work weeks and was beyond the special agreement. Tensions escalated. The boss said he didn't need the hassle and terminated the slacker.

I thought that illustrated a difference between Europe and here. In Europe taking holidays, even as long as a fortnight all at once, isn't considered a career limiting move.

worklifebalance

Europe it is normal to easily get 5 days but special permission is required for 10 days - and that is generally in the contract. A lot of European jobs go further than that - you have to complete all work before you go. In affect you don't really get a holiday using that method as you have to work overtime in previous weeks. For holidays China was the best place I ever worked. Including public holidays I had a total of 6 weeks - more than Europe and North America combined

dbd33

Well by Europe I was thinking of Amsterdam and Milton Keynes, employees of clients there routinely take two weeks off at once. I suppose they could be islands of employer indulgence.

AllyS

worklifebalance - you have my sympathy.

christmasoompa

That is very unusual for the UK though - I've never worked anywhere with less than 5 weeks hols, neither has hubby (he's currently on 6 weeks), and most people take 2 week hols. Perhaps it's an IT industry thing?

Hubby has just booked 3 weeks off for next year, which is following him being away on a 2 week study module for his MBA (that the company are funding). So he'll be out of the office for 5 weeks in total - absolutely no problem.

Steve_

It's not abuse legally speaking, same deal in Alberta with the Employment Standards Code, it may be worse in Ontario because there's even more of a shortage I think with system administrators than there is here.

So there's a reason for the shortage - no-one will put up with this nonsense, you're not the only one.

Anyway the solution is to be self-employed or start your own company. It doesn't completely solve it but you can hide how much work is involved in doing whatever it is, ergo you get paid for doing the same thing but taking less time to do it.

Not that I ever do that of course. Depends on whether they have a clue about whatever it is.

Steve_

Alberta also. I thought it was all provinces actually, I had a poke through the employment standards in various jurisdictions, BC, Alberta, and Ontario for sure, I thought I checked Québec as well.

Steve_

When I stayed in a hotel in Markham once there was a promotional guide for the city sitting in the hotel room that actually pointed out that IT people got paid less in Canada than in the US and the labour code didn't provide for overtime. So not exactly a secret.

Steve_

Years ago I knew this guy who told me he was treated really badly in his job by his employer. Comment to me: "do these people know how vital I am to the company and they treat me like shit, ask me to come in all kinds of stupid hours, etc." So anyway when he finally did get a vacation, he set up a scheduled task on a DC that opened a .reg file and inserted something nasty into the registry on that DC and replicated it to all the other DCs in the domain (this was back on NT4) and completely buggered the LAN, can't remember off-hand what it was now but it was quite a clever registry change that made NTLM unstable. (Bear in mind on NT4 you could only do scheduled tasks from a command prompt, so it's not something that could be easily discovered unless you knew where to look).

So anyway he gets this panicked phone call from HQ and dials in to the RAS (yes it was this long ago) overnight, fixes it in a couple of seconds and manages to wangle several hours overtime for it.

Strangely he got a lot more respect after that.

I always think about that incident when some numbskull is complaining to me about "how long" it is taking to complete something incredibly complicated. There's even some management textbook some f---wit wrote that I've had quoted to me various times that says that IT people don't have the same "concept of time" as other people in a company, to which my response is always, "and the dickhead that wrote that book doesn't know anything about IT".

So anyway one time I had that book quoted to me by someone and the guy in question ended up getting roped into running an IT project some time later. He literally took over a year to finish it and when I mentioned that book to him, he says to me: "yeah, that was just f---ing bullshit wasn't it".

Steve_

I think you're arguing the same thing from different ends. IT workers are covered by employment standards and those employment standards say IT workers are largely exempt from those standards. There are some very basic protections but overtime and rest breaks are not included.

It's getting so bad now there's going to be a rollback I reckon. It's such a common complaint.

worklifebalance

Thanks

worklifebalance

Certainly people take 2 weeks hols in the UK - but most contracts do say the company can say no. I think the company just cover themselves but rarely enforce it. Vast majority of people in UK get only 4 weeks + public holidays. 5 weeks is more for long term employees or senior managers.

worklifebalance

I can believe it. A US company gave me a brochure attached to their offer of employment that basically boasted what little rights an IT Professional has. The brochure is available from Service Ontario and printed by Ministry of Labour. The entire contract just met the minimum requirements in the brochure.

Steve_

Yes I think that was what was being quoted iirc.

I notice you mention that employers ask about immigration status - I thought that was illegal in Ontario under a provincial law?

I was told specifically by the human rights people in Alberta that I couldn't ask, but now they've put up a website that says the complete opposite: ALIS - Tip Sheets

Anyway, you can't ask for ID, unless the job requires it (e.g. driving, so they need a DL), you can only ask for their SIN and you're only allowed to verify the SIN via the CRA/Service Canada: The Social Insurance Number Code of Practice - Section 3 - Employers' Responsibilities - Service Canada - which obviously is no protection against a stolen SIN.