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Work Rolls On
May. 18th, 2016 02:25 pmYes, my Dear Employer is still alive & kicking. And so am I, at Dear Employer.
The management structure is still in flux, but has nearly reached stability and a new norm. In my division, our Corporate IT and Operations groups are merging. We have had a new DevOps group for the past few months but so far, I haven't seen anything devops-y from them, just tinkering with some of our internal apps & monitors.
The COO just mentioned in an off-hand way as he was showing the new org structures in PowerPoint that they're looking at a large investment into our data centers to improve our uptime & stability. This is a relief, not only because it goes a long way to preserving my employment but also because preserving uptime is getting harder as each day goes by because of our aging infrastructure. If nothing else, I'm happy that there is now finally an announced direction.
In other fun news, there's also a proposal --and it's only a proposal-- to replace our existing vacation policy with unlimited vacation since that's what all the cool companies are doing these days. I'm not sure this would really affect me overall: at my level of seniority, I get 20 vacation days, plus national holidays, corp holidays, two flex days and a stack of sick days. Only 23 days may be accrued at any time and may only be cashed out at termination of employment; I know I haven't been using my full vacation allotment but I've been working on that this year with planned trips to Toronto and England. Anyway, the new policy would wipe out this bank, replacing it with vacation when/if my manager approves.
The snag is in the transition between policies. Management could just cash out everyone their outstanding balance so we all start from zero, but that would be a major hit to the finances at a time when management is working hard to fix our cashflows. Alternatively, they're considering a company-wide shutdown across the week of US Thanksgiving, Xmas and next year's July 4: the firm closes for a few days and everyone is compelled to use some vacation days.
I'm fine with this, largely since I have a full bank of vacation and those are the periods when I'm most likely to try taking vacation time. On the flip side, these corp shutdowns would also be the perfect windows for major infrastructure updates so vacation might be contra-indicated for my division. And I'm unsure what the relatively new hires might think since they get fewer vacation days and would now be required to dedicate half of those to the company's schedule rather than their lives.
Update: In a meeting with my new COO and new VP, it was clearly stated that the purchases of some equipment to refresh my data center should proceed immediately, and that the rebuild of the data center as a whole is corporate priority to be initiated as soon as we get refreshed quotes from vendors. Yaaaaassssss!
Update #2: My team is very<./b> opposed to the proposed unlimited vacation policy. They figure we rarely get a chance to use vacation time as is so this change doesn't benefit us at all; in fact, all benefits accrue to the company who no longer needs to carry vacation time as a P/L statement liability or cash out unused vacation time on employment termination. I'm still ambivalent on it: I don't fully exercise my current vacation allotment, and I can live with the new policy. The only impact to me is the cash-out if I left the firm but since I'm not planning to go anywhere yet...
The management structure is still in flux, but has nearly reached stability and a new norm. In my division, our Corporate IT and Operations groups are merging. We have had a new DevOps group for the past few months but so far, I haven't seen anything devops-y from them, just tinkering with some of our internal apps & monitors.
The COO just mentioned in an off-hand way as he was showing the new org structures in PowerPoint that they're looking at a large investment into our data centers to improve our uptime & stability. This is a relief, not only because it goes a long way to preserving my employment but also because preserving uptime is getting harder as each day goes by because of our aging infrastructure. If nothing else, I'm happy that there is now finally an announced direction.
In other fun news, there's also a proposal --and it's only a proposal-- to replace our existing vacation policy with unlimited vacation since that's what all the cool companies are doing these days. I'm not sure this would really affect me overall: at my level of seniority, I get 20 vacation days, plus national holidays, corp holidays, two flex days and a stack of sick days. Only 23 days may be accrued at any time and may only be cashed out at termination of employment; I know I haven't been using my full vacation allotment but I've been working on that this year with planned trips to Toronto and England. Anyway, the new policy would wipe out this bank, replacing it with vacation when/if my manager approves.
The snag is in the transition between policies. Management could just cash out everyone their outstanding balance so we all start from zero, but that would be a major hit to the finances at a time when management is working hard to fix our cashflows. Alternatively, they're considering a company-wide shutdown across the week of US Thanksgiving, Xmas and next year's July 4: the firm closes for a few days and everyone is compelled to use some vacation days.
I'm fine with this, largely since I have a full bank of vacation and those are the periods when I'm most likely to try taking vacation time. On the flip side, these corp shutdowns would also be the perfect windows for major infrastructure updates so vacation might be contra-indicated for my division. And I'm unsure what the relatively new hires might think since they get fewer vacation days and would now be required to dedicate half of those to the company's schedule rather than their lives.
Update: In a meeting with my new COO and new VP, it was clearly stated that the purchases of some equipment to refresh my data center should proceed immediately, and that the rebuild of the data center as a whole is corporate priority to be initiated as soon as we get refreshed quotes from vendors. Yaaaaassssss!
Update #2: My team is very<./b> opposed to the proposed unlimited vacation policy. They figure we rarely get a chance to use vacation time as is so this change doesn't benefit us at all; in fact, all benefits accrue to the company who no longer needs to carry vacation time as a P/L statement liability or cash out unused vacation time on employment termination. I'm still ambivalent on it: I don't fully exercise my current vacation allotment, and I can live with the new policy. The only impact to me is the cash-out if I left the firm but since I'm not planning to go anywhere yet...
