This Business and Moment...

[t2na]

I had the conversation with my company last week regarding the option of moving to a contract or adjusting my existing contract to drop the weekly office requirement as part of me relocating.

We've all agreed on adjusting my existing contract to only having a single mandatory day in the office once a month and a few other tweaks to make it more appealing and work better for both of us. I'm not usually one to set ultimatums but it really was the option of either my existing contract is adjusted or I accept this other job - so it was dependent on how much the company wanted to keep me.

I'm happy with how it all went, and it seemed like it was in everyone's interest considering we were all pretty happy at the end of the session! I think fundamentally I wasn't looking to move jobs if I wasn't relocating so it matched up to what I initially wanted - and everyone here was spot on about the contract being absolutely inside IR35 so not being a real benefit to me at all and the company didn't seem overly keen to go down that route either.

Just everything else to sort with relocating now!

 

[Lopéz]

Feeling thoroughly cheesed off with work at the moment.

TL;DR:
2019 joined a small company with a start-up feel.
2020 joined the leadership team and helped grow the organisation from 20 FTE to 45.
2021 I move to Austria. Company supports this by moving me to an outsourced payroll but to all intents and purposes I remain a "real" employee.
2022 company gets sold to a larger (2500 people) multinational. During this transition it is clear I've been positioned as "just a contractor". I'm treated by the new company as an actual contractor; excluded from company pulse surveys, excluded from company benefits, excluded from the acquisition retention bonus scheme (despite being told I would receive said bonus)

Thoroughly disengaged and feeling like an ostracised team member, so I've been interviewing this week and hopefully found a place in a bona fide Austrian company. Let's see how next week's technical interview goes!

 

[Lopéz]

I'm torn because I'm incredibly grateful that the legacy small company supported my move to Austria 100% - paying me via an Employer of Record costs them in excess of 500 Euros a month, and whilst I've been there I've had my salary increased from £45,000 to £72,000. I honestly could not ask for more.

But the transition/takeover has been handled really clumsily, I've gone from key employee to what feels like an afterthought. Other, normal, employees also feel disenfranchised but for me it feels magnified by this whole "Oh he's a contractor" thing.

Bleurgh. Not felt like this in years tbh.

 

[Throrik]

I'm torn because I'm incredibly grateful that the legacy small company supported my move to Austria 100% - paying me via an Employer of Record costs them in excess of 500 Euros a month, and whilst I've been there I've had my salary increased from £45,000 to £72,000. I honestly could not ask for more.

But the transition/takeover has been handled really clumsily, I've gone from key employee to what feels like an afterthought. Other, normal, employees also feel disenfranchised but for me it feels magnified by this whole "Oh he's a contractor" thing.

Bleurgh. Not felt like this in years tbh.

Continue to feel grateful to the old company, and the people who are still there - make sure they know you are grateful to those. Loyalty isn't really a thing these days, as the new M&A has shown you. M&As are always difficult to go through, been quite a fair few and it's always tough to retain that smaller company feeling.

 

[Freefaller]

I'm torn because I'm incredibly grateful that the legacy small company supported my move to Austria 100% - paying me via an Employer of Record costs them in excess of 500 Euros a month, and whilst I've been there I've had my salary increased from £45,000 to £72,000. I honestly could not ask for more.

But the transition/takeover has been handled really clumsily, I've gone from key employee to what feels like an afterthought. Other, normal, employees also feel disenfranchised but for me it feels magnified by this whole "Oh he's a contractor" thing.

Bleurgh. Not felt like this in years tbh.

Have you brought it up and explained how you feel?

 

[LuckyBenski]

But the transition/takeover has been handled really clumsily, I've gone from key employee to what feels like an afterthought. Other, normal, employees also feel disenfranchised but for me it feels magnified by this whole "Oh he's a contractor" thing.

Bleurgh. Not felt like this in years tbh.

Can very much relate to this, my company merged with a very similar one. We were about 60 and them about 45, parallel firms in a semi-public sector. Was sold it as a positive, uniting goals etc, but 2 years in it's really just been messy, slow, painful and we've bled talent all the way. We're neither both companies together, not the company I was in but bigger. Feel very sidelined by it as I've been WFH too so have essentially missed any opportunities to really integrate and get to know my new team.

We've had a temporary office space hire setup too, Monday we open our new office and it'll be the first time since Nov 2020 we have a central place to gather. I'm just incredibly demotivated and disconnected from the mission or the progress in the company. Likewise grateful for how well I've been treated over the 3 years of disruption and home working, but ultimately just think I've run out of enthusiasm as the company isn't what it once was. It was made up of exclusively brilliant people with a lot of drive, no dead weight. And now I don't actually know more than half of them.

 

[Lopéz]

Have you brought it up and explained how you feel?

Yeah, I report directly to what was the MD so I've made it clear I'm dissatisfied.
He said "Oh, the contractor thing is just how they see it - the top top guys understand you're a real employee"
The problem is, that it was him that orchestrated this deal and positioned me this way, so I feel he's responsible for the way I've been categorised.

I'm usually pretty much the most motivated worker I know, so feeling this way isn't a very common occurrence. We've got a meeting to discuss it further next week but I think a lot of the damage has already been done.

 

[NickK]

It does sound like you’re being treated as a contractor by the larger company, worse still most large companies operate a maximum limit to contractor contract length here on the UK. Lick the wounds and move on.

 

[Rroff]

It does sound like you’re being treated as a contractor by the larger company, worse still most large companies operate a maximum limit to contractor contract length here on the UK. Lick the wounds and move on.

I believe there is a legal aspect to the maximum contract length but I'm not 100% on that - my brother used to do contracting and had to move between stuff every 6 months or whatever.

 

[NickK]

I passed my vetting for the new role.. and 2 weeks left on my current contract, they’re back filling the role but at least the service is stabilised. The delivery lead has gone down with covid so the last two days have been hectic, so I’m not demob happy just yet..

The contract was wfh and accountable for the service, short-medium term to get them off the naughty step with the UK CEO within the main company but also with hands tied with a large consultancy due to being employed through them and having inheriting the FTE hatred for all things not “local”.. usual stuff.
New role is group cloud product management, permanent in the office/wfh and all the fun of optimising existing airline’s IT with, I suspect, all the funding fun that “transformation” pattern brings. Should be fun and hectic, loaded with politics but and being less than the contract.

 

[Lopéz]

Had a third interview with a prospective employer yesterday and struggling to process how it left me feeling, other than exhausted.

I'm 40% technical, 60% business. The interviewer came across to me as 95% technical, 5% business and there were points where I was unsure if he was interviewing me for the wrong position.
He wasn't rude or unpleasant, but after an initial hello and "summarise your career at a very high level" we launched straight into what do you know about this feature, why would you use this, what does this do, what are the limitations of that, etc etc.
Frankly, it was relentless and I hadn't event finished an attempt at formulating a complete answer because the question was so involved and open before he was wanting to move on to the next. After 50 minutes of this he apologized for grilling me non stop and asked if I had any questions in the last few minutes.

After ending the call I realised that other than purely technical knowledge, we did not discuss anything else at all.
Nothing about my failures or successes, nothing about what motivates me, nothing about where I feel I can add value to a team, nothing about what I enjoy, where I want to go, not even a simple "what are your hobbies".

I've not had any feedback yet, but I can't imagine it will be positive, since I felt completely on the hop for almost every single question. To be honest, even if the feedback is positive, I'm not sure how I feel about the company overall now anyway.


Edit

In summary, interview one was with their internal recruiter - great. Interested, two way dialogue, pitched the company really well.

Interview two was with the department director. Less engaging but still a positive pitch of the company and what they are doing and trying to achieve. Not many questions for me, in fact almost none - it was more we do this, we do that, we need this.

Interview three - technical onslaught.

Overall, it's left me with very mixed feelings.

We shall see!

 

[OspreyO]

They might have found previous hires lacking in the technical skills required for the role. If it's a 3rd interview, they might trying to decide between otherwise very closely scoring candidates, from previous interviews. Which is a good thing.

I haven't been asked about hobbies since I started working. It's a very lite question.

 

[dr_volki]

seems my internal new job posting is finally going live in a couple of days. already been splitting my jobs 60/40% so finally can make the move into a full time IT role. also 8% pay increase for april 2022 has been accepted, so that will do nicely in the march pay with it all being back dated.

 

[ChrisD.]

I've had it a few times where the person interviewing seems to have a chip on their shoulder and they grille candidates to make them feel better about themselves. One time, the technical guy I'd be reporting to asked me something to do with a product I knew VERY well, I gave him the answer and he wasn't happy about it and said I was incorrect. I whiteboarded it in front of the panel and then asked him if he'd like to go online and check the documentation when he still argued his case. I was of course correct, I co-authored a white paper on it. He still wasn't happy so I asked for the interview to be terminated and left half way through. They still offered me the role.

 

[HangTime]

I'd say

To be honest, even if the feedback is positive, I'm not sure how I feel about the company overall now anyway.

For me it might depend on whether I'm likely to be interacting with that third panelist if I was appointed. Maybe think about what additional questions you have off the back of it so you can raise these with the recruiter if they come back positively. I've pulled out of a few interview processes where it hasn't felt right (e.g. where I felt they had big ambitions but insufficient team size to deliver) and being very honest about what my reservations are. The way I see it they either can't assuage your reserversation (in which case it's for the best that you withdraw) or they set your mind at rest, explaining where you've got the wrong end of the stick about the role.

In terms of interview content it can be a bit pot luck what slant an interview has, and sometimes you don't even get a good steer from the agent (if there is one).

I remember a few years back interviewing for a role, the recruiter had prepped me a lot, how they wanted good stakeholder management, having solid examples to call on etc. It was basically a senior management role within IT.
The interview basically was very technical, asking for specific details on what tools I'd use for specific jobs, quite niche in cases. They didn't ask me me anything about the broader aspects of the role like stakeholder management, managing a team, budgeting etc etc. IIRC it actually finished early and I didn't need to wait for feedback to figure out they didn't want me.

It's even more nuanced than that at times, sometimes you have technical interviews where you get lucky/unlucky simply based on what questions come up as to whether you have experience of that specific technology they are talking about.

That said having interviewed a lot of people myself there are risks involved with having too many open-ended or non-specific questions, you end up closing the interview and not really having a clear picture of their depth of knowledge. If someone is struggling to answer a question I'll often throw them a lifeline in terms of broadening the scope or simply asking how they would approach finding the answer / what they would do if faced with that situation.

Finally I'd add that whilst you often get a feel after an interview if it went particularly well/badly, it's easy to beat yourself up over 1 or 2 elements you didn't handle well or lacked experience in. I've landed a couple of jobs in the past where I came out of the interview thinking I'd let myself down on something specific. An example was I was once interviewed by a panel of two, one data architect (very forthright and knowledgeable in her field, I ended up managing her a few years later) and one HR lady. It was kind of an awkward combination because I was trying to answer detailed questions about data modelling approaches whilst also trying to stay relevant to the HR person. At one point I pretty much 'mansplained' something to the HR girl and she did this awkward fake smile and nod that I took to mean "thanks for being so patronising, ****head".

 

[Rroff]

I've had it a few times where the person interviewing seems to have a chip on their shoulder and they grille candidates to make them feel better about themselves. One time, the technical guy I'd be reporting to asked me something to do with a product I knew VERY well, I gave him the answer and he wasn't happy about it and said I was incorrect. I whiteboarded it in front of the panel and then asked him if he'd like to go online and check the documentation when he still argued his case. I was of course correct, I co-authored a white paper on it. He still wasn't happy so I asked for the interview to be terminated and left half way through. They still offered me the role.

Been there done that, only didn't get offered the role

Basically, and completely accidentally, showed up the IT manager as incompetent and a fraud in front of various other managers and HR while asking questions about the software they used.

Did not go down well and I was told on the way out I wouldn't be getting the job LOL.

Lucky escape in the end - annoyingly can't remember the name of the company now but it was a big reinsurance company in Tower 42 in the early 2000s - the department I'd have been working in had loads of people arrested for financial fraud resulting in the company being wound up 1-2 years later.

 

[malachi]

Also done the same, left an interview halfway. Not only was the person being rude while interviewing me but he was asking me questions I knew were correct and saying to me "Are you sure?!?!"

I quit early and said this interview isn't going very well, we are wasting each others time and I left.

 

[ChrisD.]

Some people seem to forget that an interview is a two way thing.

 

[Throrik]

Some people seem to forget that an interview is a two way thing.

Said this to the talent team of a company about 18 months ago. The CTO was the most quiet, condescending and vapid man I have ever spoken to. Did not seem to understand that whilst I am selling myself they also need to sell themselves. That role is still open now.

 

[ChrisD.]

Said this to the talent team of a company about 18 months ago. The CTO was the most quiet, condescending and vapid man I have ever spoken to. Did not seem to understand that whilst I am selling myself they also need to sell themselves. That role is still open now.

I'm involved in the technical screening here, including contractors via partners. It's taken about 2 years to get the questions updated from vSphere 5(!) level due to reasons, and they're nearly out of data already. The approval process takes ages and we have to provide questions & answers in our own time effectively, as we are customer billable assets so to speak. Some of them are so quirky you'd never know unless you faced that particular kind scenario. I prefer to be more open to a technical conversation rather than Q&A which seems to work well, I can soon fathom out if someone knows their stuff or is trying to blag me, and if that happens I don't start grilling them, I just thank them for their time and refer to someone else to do a second round, unless they are particularly terrible. We do architecture & delivery and there is no right answer, only different answers with different approaches which stem from experience and the particular solution. Something like that you can't put in a technical Q&A session. Thankfully, new members of the management team are less dinosaur like and are open to suggestions and changes have happened for the better.