Hey all,
Been mostly passive poster here, viewing various posts but i figured I'd share my recent lay off.
Six Months ago I got a job in automation, I loved everything about it except for, wait for it, management. Their concept was that I was doing well, but they did not want to say i was doing well. If i was doing well I would then ask for a raise. So they never told me i was doing good.
In the interview they mention something about 'being a good enough talker' might give you one week of vacation. But then upon getting hired I had no vacation. They mentioned they would start at 21 an hour, then work up to 30 an hour IF i seemed to be at the level they needed me to be. They never discussed what that level was but just said “You would know.”
They were friendly to me the first month. It was looking pretty good, I was picking up the skills needed to perform my job. They only had 1 electrical guy outside of me, and had 1 programmer guy outside of me. So, upon competing my initial programming waiting for the devices to be built i asked them okay, what is next. Then they said “Stop playing and get to work.” and I go huh, what is going on? They then go “we are doing this for your own good” and i go huh, okay.
So from that I learned how to do the electrical work that was needed. So I go awesome, lets learn something new. While learning this new skill they asked me to add something onto a device, asked to make a 'rotating register' so that they can test the good/bad values. I also made it so it didn't lock down when receiving a bad value. This results in the customer getting upset, and complaining about the only mistake i made which was downloading instead of uploading the program they sent in. This resulted in me having to program the screen from scratch and them being noticibly upset at that.
Long story short, customer got pissy, complained to all management, got to me, told me 'you talk too much.' Followed by “you will never work on that customer ever again” monday. Then by friday i am handed….a job for that customer.
This job is so out of left field and poorly designed that it is difficult to get 100% completed. Also apparently said customer has a key to the place and can waltz on in whenever they want to run a machine even if the machine hasn't gone through rigorous testing. I was told to work with the other programmer, but that programmer ignored my calls and didn't help at all. Then they explained “Relax you won't lose your job over this.” And now here I am, got laid off on thursday with these statements:
“We don't have enough work for you, you are not at the level we need you to be, you over sold yourself in the interview, and you are terrible at customer service.”
Job never said customer service was required, I said to them in interview “I have not programmed professionally for 11 years and I have not programmed hobby-wise for 8.” They still hired me expecting….what exactly? I was clear that I have 'never done this before'.
Here I am with experience in a booming field, wondering if it was me or just terrible management that lead to the collapse of my opportunity there.