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If you think you must leave your company because of the idiots, think again. In fact, think twice as we work through this.
Sick as I am over
this Y2K hype and the argument over whether January first started a new century or a new millennium, landmarks such as this are useful. When you're
facing a career change, self-assessment becomes critically necessary. What better than a New Century Resolution?
Do you want to start the next
century the same way you ended the last one? If not, you have two choices: go to a new company, or fix your situation in your current company. Do you
let the idiots win, and leave, or do you have other options? Summary: Idiots are everywhere, including the new company that now looks so inviting.
The job market, especially for those in any type of technical field, is hot hot hot right now. It will speed up even more, because all the nervous
preparations for Y2K are over. Managers now yell at techies to turn the company into an e-company.
But let's look at the other possibility:
staying at your current company. I know it's painful where you are right now, which is why you're here at MyJobSearch.com, looking for help. Yet you
can greatly improve your situation through one of two options.
First, you can change your job, but stay in the same company. This works in
larger companies, obviously, because you have choices of other jobs in other departments. Those of you in small companies may just be out of luck;
sorry.
Those in larger companies have a chance to switch departments, which may be enough of a difference to keep you happy in the same
company. You can keep up with your current friends and make new ones.
In the past, changing jobs within the same company deprived you of all
the advantages of moving to a new company. Primarily, staying put meant no salary increase. Bummer.
Things are changing, however. Manpower
International, Inc., reported in their December news report that Silicon Valley firms are finding it more cost effective to move employees within the
company to fill jobs rather than hire from outside. Quote Homer (Simpson), "D'OH!" Perhaps these managers now know that fire is hot.
Yet the declining stupidity of Silicon Valley managers will play to your advantage: managers will have to start paying employees to stay, rather than
pay three times that much to hire their replacement. Manpower reports that managers are happy with retaining employees in new assignments, because they
get people who are "fully functional" and know how to use e-mail. E-mail is hard to use within a company? Maybe the managers aren't the only
stupid ones running loose.
If your company does not pay more for transferring employees, talk to them. Go to the highest Human Resources person
you can find and ask them to explain their reasoning. If you make $60,000 now, and the new job has a range from $60,000 to $72,000, they will have to
pay at least $70,000 to fill the job, plus all the time and trouble and new-hire fees. Why not give you $6,000 to $8,000 more and save all the trouble
and extra hassle? That argument may even be successful, if the HR person has brains. If not, go ahead and take a new job in the new company.
Second, you can change your boss. Manpower reported that "People do not leave companies, they usually leave bosses." Boy, is that true. They
also reported in their January issue that supervisors with bad manners pushed 14 percent of surveyed employees out the door. 22 percent deliberately
reduced their productivity, and half wasted time worrying about their rude supervisors.
Bosses with any sense at all know that replacing
employees takes time and trouble, and keeping employees is smarter than retraining new ones. Yet few bosses seem to have any sense any more. You can
learn to ignore your boss when he or she wanders off business topics (like you did your parents as a teenager). You can complain to those above your
boss, especially if you're one who understands e-mail. You can warn Human Resources to up their recruiting budget to replace most of your department
unless the boss changes.
Don't stay at your company, in your current job, because management makes you a counteroffer. That rarely works. Stay
because you have a new boss, a new position, or a new set of responsibilities. Stay for the right reasons, which is a better situation.
Idiocy
transcends location. This means if you change jobs to get away from idiots, you will just find new idiots. Idiots are everywhere. Stay with the current
idiots, if you can upgrade your situation to your satisfaction. If not, never mind. Go to a new company and a new set of idiots, and hope the new
idiots are more entertaining than the current idiots.
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