The Water Cooler - 2012-05-03

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12:24 PM

9

Q: Why would managers want to keep it top secret that an employee is leaving?

Since I started to work for my first employer, I have seen two employees quit the organization. What surprised me was that news of their exit was broken by team managers' only a week before the actual exit happened. Until then, even the closest of their friends were unaware of the developments. ...

management ethics resignation

Not constructive :* I found out that they were strictly instructed by their manager*

we do not know there is an actual policy it could be a few corner cases or it could be the other employees just did not want to tell.

and used their manager as an excuse.

If it is allowed to stay then I intend to post me too answers :)

12:46 PM

I have always seen that generally notice periods are formally anything from 30 days to 60 days. But in reality, people buyout or request and reduced it to 20 odd days. Of this 20 days sometime also goes away in trying hard to save the guy - so really speaking only by last week you are all confirmed that he/she is finally going!

this is quite regular.

Anyway, may be that manager knew, he didn't have to negotiate - but didn't tell other colleagues. This is also quite a norm. This is not a very rare /localized problem.

NOR is it an unnecessary broad question.

Why do you think it is NC ?

1:04 PM

There is nothing to be solved

no problem exists

If we want to allow it that is fine and I will pile on with the rest of the me ttos

toos

I think downvotes should penalize the last editor too

The question is clearly asking "WHY" - and i don't quite see too many me-too's yet.

okie

1 hour later…

2:15 PM

@Chad About this comment, I apologize if I implied you were a liar, would you mind pointing out where you see that so I can correct it?

My comment about your non-existent experience was based on the line "In all of my positions in the past 20 years of IT work I have never been asked not to share the news of my imminent departure with my coworkers."

2:43 PM

@Rachel What you meant was that @Chad hadn't experienced that very specific situation, correct? Not that he was generally inexperienced?

@YannisRizos Yes, we generally like our answers to be backed up with references or personal experience to maintain high quality answers. We want to discourage people posting "I haven't been in this situation, but here is what I would do if I were"

@Rachel It was a poor choice of words, I read it twice to get it.

However keep in mind that saying "I've been around 20 years, and I haven't seen this happen" can be a valid answer.

Not a perfect answer, but still an answer.

@YannisRizos I would think it's only a valid answer if the person posting it works in a career-related field such as Human Resources, and has experienced the situation in which the question would have occurred in a large number of times

@Rachel Well, I don't get that from the other answers to the question.

Lot's of speculation going around in that question...

Which is why I voted to close it ;)

Well the other answers actually answer the question. Chad's answer (that it's possible in the OP's specific situation that his information is wrong) should probably be a comment

2:51 PM

@Rachel Nope, to me none of the answers actually answers the question, because the question is unanswerable. But I'm not getting further involved in this, I voted to close, didn't vote on any of the answers, and that's about it...

@Rachel (don't tell anyone but I really want the Workplace to find a working formula for NC questions, I love NC questions ;)

I have been through this regularly - and more on being on the manager side, i find it mostly often that i would tell people only before last couple of days - that someone is leaving.

Yet, i know that usually the friends (or close colleagues) would know the fact.

@YannisRizos Np, thanks for chiming in anyways. You might be right about the reason he thinks I'm calling him a liar, in which case it's just a misunderstanding

@YannisRizos I agree, NC questions that are actually constructive to the users are quite interesting :) (I'm not such a big fan of real not-constructive questions, like "Gorilla VS Shark")

Oh yes I meant not constructive in the strict SE sense, not the real life sense...

@Atif Hello :) I hope you don't mind, but I edited one of your answers quite a bit and hope to do some more edits in the future to make it a good reference answer

@Rachel I based it on my very real experience having worked for 20 years in IT Contracting.

2:57 PM

It's always a shame when I have to close a borderline question because it's getting extremely crap answers... And always fun when the first couple answers are exemplary and we can keep it open... The problem is that in the first case people don't down vote the crap answers, while in the second case were they have a template of what a good answer to the question is, no problem, down votes take out the crap naturally.

@Chad I didn't mean to call your 20 years of experience into question, but rather your lack of experience in having employers ask you not to disclose the fact you're leaving

And I pointed out that his experience was with other employees saying they were told not that he personally was told.

My answer was and is valid

@Rachel @Rachel Hi. Can we move that answer to the duplicated question? And change the question as well? I felt this question was better than the duplicated one

his question on the other hand... begs answers like mine.

@Atif After getting a comprehensive answer together, I was going to see if the mods would reopen that one

2:59 PM

@Chad your answer only says that may be what OP is saying is actually untrue- if that is the case, there is no answer!

@DipanMehta I am saying that the reason for it may be that he is being lied to. It is a valid answer

@Chad We're supposed to provide expert answers to newbie questions. We can't control what people ask, but we can control the quality of our answers

And my answer is very much likely the case.

The OP has no evidence that there is an actual policy other than what those people who left told him.

It may be - that OP was lied, that no manager would extend such instructions. But than it is NARQ. There is no point in answering it. You are not answering - you are saying that question is false.

BTW: i don't use down votes. Didn't use it here.

Even if he was lied to, it's still something that does exists in the workplace world and deserves an answer

I could say that every question here could be a lie

3:04 PM

I upvoted only the Permas answer because, i can correlate with my experience in such matters.

@Chad The original question was ranty, but @jcmeloni's edit fixed it pretty well and called out the core question (What are the business reasons for managers to give these instructions?), which certainly seems valid to me.

Fine.

But there is another option I find most likely that the people leaving were lieing to him

Whether or not the instructions were actually given doesn't change that validity (though if this guy's friends/co-workers are lying to him he should probably pick better friends)

@Chad I agree that's a possibility, I just don't see the possibility as relevant to the core question of "why might they give that instruction?"

I think the amount of debate this question has already generated justifies closing it as not constructive...

> this question will likely solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion.

Generally though I think @Chad is right about questions that are "someone told me X" - they tend to be lousy questions and rejecting the premise of the question ("Why do you believe them?") often leads to better answers

@YannisRizos We're debating the merits of the question, I consider that separate from answers that are a debate/poll/discussion.

If we nuked every question that resulted in a chat/meta discussion I think we'd have about 5 questions on the site (probably all about writing/distributing resumes - those seem to be the least contentious :-)

2

3:17 PM

@voretaq7 We are debating the merits of the question exactly because the question is too open to interpretation and each one of us sees it in a slightly diff way...

Which question is this?

3 hours ago, by Chad

9

Q: Why would managers want to keep it top secret that an employee is leaving?

Since I started to work for my first employer, I have seen two employees quit the organization. What surprised me was that news of their exit was broken by team managers' only a week before the actual exit happened. Until then, even the closest of their friends were unaware of the developments. ...

management ethics resignation

^ that one

@BenBrocka That doesn't concern you evil mod, you don't get a say, the community will decide...

<starts oneboxing stopwatch> I think Safari's javascript engine dislikes the new chat scripts

Ben's not evil... well not very evil... well that one gopher he put through the chipper-shredder...

user image

That gopher was asking for it

3:21 PM

@BenBrocka I should turn my gopher server back on for kicks...

@YannisRizos hmmm... now i got the line i can use in Prog.SE chat. I searched a lot but didn't find it.

@DipanMehta The difference is that we don't have evil mods on ProgSE...

mod == evil

@DipanMehta HEY! I... looks at count of deleted posts on SF... OK I'm a bad example.

yea! I got a plus one for piling on :{

3:29 PM

@DipanMehta A certain amount of evilness is required.

3:40 PM

I don't think I could be an evil mod. I'm the type of guy who upvotes downvoted Qs

3:50 PM

@YannisRizos Ben please beat me with the mod stick... please make an example of me

I edited it 3 times and i still cant get it right :(

@Chad No worries, I'll beat you with the mod stick on Programmers ;P

That place bores me any more all they ever talk about is programming.. I can do that at work :p

That's not true, we get a ton of questions that have nothing to do with programming... ;P

I'd actually agree with Chad here.... Programmers has become boring :p

-1

Q: Improve my programming skills. Advice please

What would you advise someone to read/do who is looking to improve their programming skills. Background: I took Computer Engineering in college and graduated in 2004 (.Net 1.1). We had a horrible instructor so we basically taught ourselves. After graduation I went into computer repair and network...

c# self-improvement

How is that not about programming :p

Sarcasm is "a sharp, bitter, or cutting expression or remark; a bitter jibe or taunt", usually conveyed through irony or understatement. Most authorities distinguish sarcasm from irony; however, others argue that sarcasm may or often does involve irony or employs ambivalence. Origin of the term The word comes from the Greek σαρκασμός (sarkasmos) which is taken from the word σαρκάζειν meaning "to tear flesh, gnash the teeth, speak bitterly". It is first recorded in English in 1579, in an annotation to The Shepheardes Calender: October: Usage Dictionary.com describes the use of sarcas...

3:57 PM

@Chad Well it is, which is why I send it back to Stack Overflow ;P

@YannisRizos Can you migrate your crap questions over there?

@Chad That one originally came from SO, I just send it back... For crap questions that are originally asked on ProgSE, well, I send them here ;P

Piling on in your own way I like it :)

Dammit I think I lost my corner

Well now that we have mods here, we kinda have to ask them before migrating questions... Takes away all the fun...

@Atif It's easier being a not-evil mod :D

4:01 PM

my star was more about I'm the type of guy who upvotes downvoted Qs

-1

A: Protecting your resume - recruiters, double-presentation, and Microsoft Word

I'm not sure whether this is even possible to implement (without having the recruiters - and later, the employers - PDF reader spitting out every security warning in the book), but what about a beacon, some artifact in the file that allows you to track when your file has been opened? That way you...

If you have to qualify your answer with I'm not sure whether this is even possible to implement...

Someone should probably be nicer to him that I would in the comment though

I'm not sure if we have a policy on deleting incredibly stupid answers but we probably should

@BenBrocka I agree, it would make the rest of the answers more relevant and bring more value to the site

I'm impressed by their creatively terrible ideas, but disappointed at their lack of follow through and practical application of the idea

4:21 PM

@BenBrocka I'd be down with that.

@jcmeloni I have no problem deleting abject crap regardless though. Plus it wasn't really an answer

4:36 PM

That is bs my answer was vaild

@BenBrocka I have updated my answer it now directly answers the question please undelete.

4:54 PM

@BenBrocka True!

2 hours later…

6:28 PM

@Atif You know you see a lot more really utterly shit questions as a mod when you're watching the flag queue -- I got a lot meaner after my first week of trying to coach all the not-good-but-not-awful questions along :P

@BenBrocka the unofficial policy on Server Fault is to downvote them into the molten core of the planet and leave copious comments on why sticking your tongue into a wall socket is not a good idea

it works pretty well as they get to stand as a shining example of what NOT to do

@voretaq7 there' still the question of what purpose it serves to leave the worst of the worst on there even if it has downvotes...unlike on Reddit they're still quite visible

@BenBrocka well on here I'm more in favor of deleting because our crap tends to be pile-ons

if it's genuinely bad/wrong sometimes seeing it buried at the bottom with a bunch of comments saying "NO! DON'T DO THAT! Here's why!" can be educational

Yeah, if there's valuable comments I'd consider leaving it

But the macro-tracking PDF one was rather absurd

@BenBrocka it's an option, albeit a bad one. It's the high-tech version of my watermark footers (or the active version of "put it in the (digital)signature")

Of course if my PDF viewer ever said "HEY! IT LOOKS LIKE THIS PDF WANTS TO SEND SOME EMAILS!" I'd close it and blackball the applicant

It still doesn't actually solve the control problem

6:43 PM

@BenBrocka nothing does.... well short of electroshock implants on the recruiter's genitals and a clicky button

Unless you program them to format C: if the recruiter forwards them or something

but they tell me that's "cruel and unusual"

(and the rest of them tell me "the recruiters would probably like it")

@voretaq7 That's ridiculous, clicky buttons aren't cruel

@BenBrocka well sometimes they trigger traumatic memories of catholic school...

The nuns liked to press your buttons?

6:47 PM

@BenBrocka It was a mutual aggravation society…

2 hours later…

8:44 PM

@voretaq7 Sadly a signifigant number of HR types just click ok to those warnings

@Chad Frabjous Woe - The IT department is never allowed to properly discipline those folks (they won't even let us take their PCs away for gross stupidity).

@voretaq7 - It would be cheaper to get permanent IT intern positions that their sole role is to operate the computer for them I think :p

@Chad but I want to HIT SOMEONE!

Consider employee satisfaction!
Consider also that if I beat them severely enough they'll go stupid(er) and be unable to complain - My immense satisfaction plus their inability to whine will get us into the Forbes Top 10 Places To Work!

Logical Conclusion: Beatings are good for the company!

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