Author: Olivia

I have worked for a certain US federal gov’t agency for a bit under a year. I was hired in at the standard GS-5 pay level for my position. Earlier this week I accepted a position in the private sector for over a $20k/year increase in salary. Today I let coworkers know about my leaving at the end of the month. One coworker, a GS-9 employee with an 11 year tenure asked why I was leaving. When I told him the pay he seemed genuinely hurt and told me that he didn’t make that much until just last year. He discouraged me from openly sharing my pay as he thinks it will cause most employees below the GS-9 level (most of our employees with the same job title) to start looking for new jobs. The coworker I used as a reference to get my new position has already been putting…

I see a lot of interesting posts here, especially about how abhorrent some jobs can be. They seem to be all private sector jobs for a lack of a better term. It kind of makes me wonder…..does anyone here work for a university, academia, or something similar? What kind of benefits do you guys get if any, and what do you like about it? I was simply curious because I figured those kinds of jobs seem to be culturally different than others.

It is an employee rewards program. Every month you can “send” 50 “points” to a different employee who you think is just swell. They can then redeem those points for gift cards and other “rewards” at a rate of 100 points per dollar. The pricing for this scheme is $2.75 per user per month. Unless they're going for the Plus Package. Then it is $4 per user per month. I'd rather this money go to literally anything else.

After searching for a job for nearly 3 months, I started this job on April 26th. It was decent pay, nearby, and the right hours. I thought everything was going OK, it was whole new industry for me and I was learning quickly. I never got any sort of employee handbook or was told any rules about anything, at all. Well after getting my own desk a week in, and having a few accounts to handle, I would sometimes scroll through my phone when I had nothing else to do at the moment. It was never when I had work to be done. I even asked my coworker daily (sometimes multiple times a day) if she had anything that I could help her with, and would do that work for her between mine. Still, sometimes I had a few free minutes, and I would respond to a text or look…

I realized today when my boss was lamenting about a call with his boss: It doesn’t matter if the company is making more then ever or cutting costs. It doesn’t matter if they get the world. All that matters is that you meet managers expectations or find a way to sell them on less and overshoot those. Seems backwards and inefficient but once you get momentum I guess it doesn’t matter. Rant over.

I received news this morning that I landed an exciting job opportunity! (Yay!) However, I’ve only been at my current job for a short time and I’m unsure of how to handle transitioning away from it. No matter what, I’ll need to put in my 2 weeks soon. But I’m trying to sort out a plan where I could still get paid for 3 weeks and only work 2 weeks. I’m unsure if my current job would honor vacation time in the last two weeks because they offer unlimited PTO. I could just put in my two weeks asap but that would mean I’d have to go 3 weeks without pay (1 week of no pay + 2 weeks of waiting for my first paycheck from the new job) Luckily, I’m in good standing with my current job so I’m not afraid to ask for what I need. Though, after…

Went through the entire interview process with a company got the offer and it's $4000 less a year than what I stated was my minimum salary. Why do this? You have wasted both of our time for no reason. I was approached via email by a head hunter a few weeks ago. I told exactly what my lowest salary was and she didn't say anything about the job paying less than that. Went through 3 interviews with the company in which they told me they couldn't discuss salary till after selection. Get selected and the offer comes from the original headhunter I spoke to in the beginning. It's $4000 a year less than what I told her and the benefits are worse than my current job. When I asked “Hey can we bump that number up to what I told you in the beginning?”. She sends back “No that is…