Two memorable work life lessons?

[robj20]

Small family owned/run business are worse, doubly so if you’re not part of that family.

You might just be employee #14247 to a big corporation, but that beats being the “odd one out” in a small workplace.

That's not been my experience, maybe I'm on the inside.
My boss gets my children presents for Christmas and knows their names.
They've looked after me way above what I've experienced at bigger places. So much easier to talk to about anything as well. There's about 15 of us at the UK site and we have more out in Malta as well.

 

[Paracelsus]

1 - Be diplomatic, reasonable and friendly to people. This seems really obvious, but I've found in IT a surprising number of people never got the memo. For example, don't engage in trash talk behind people's backs, help people where you can, interpret people's comments charitably and assume good faith unless you have a reason not to.

2 - Always be looking to improve and learn in some way. Don't settle into a rut because your work is easy.

 

[Haggisman]

That's not been my experience, maybe I'm on the inside.
My boss gets my children presents for Christmas and knows their names.
They've looked after me way above what I've experienced at bigger places. So much easier to talk to about anything as well. There's about 15 of us at the UK site and we have more out in Malta as well.

My experience is the same as yours, but I can see how it's more likely to be one of 2 extremes, depending how well you "fit".

I still miss the small (well, relatively, still about 30 employees) family company I used to work for before this one, nice atmosphere, decent Christmas & summer parties organised where partners were also welcome, you could actually speak to the MD just by knocking on her door and asking for a chat. I helped build gaming PCs for her kids and she let us use her holiday home for free etc. Unfortunately my role became pretty much redundant - and while they did everything they could to keep me on, I ended up leaving because the alternative work wasn't really what I wanted to do

Current place is better paid, and I enjoy the work (mostly), but it's very corporate, lists of arbitrary policies and procedures in place for "reasons", and I'm under no illusions I'm anything other than an anonymous cog in the machine.

 

[robj20]

My experience is the same as yours, but I can see how it's more likely to be one of 2 extremes, depending how well you "fit".

I still miss the small (well, relatively, still about 30 employees) family company I used to work for before this one, nice atmosphere, decent Christmas & summer parties organised where partners were also welcome, you could actually speak to the MD just by knocking on her door and asking for a chat. I helped build gaming PCs for her kids and she let us use her holiday home for free etc. Unfortunately my role became pretty much redundant - and while they did everything they could to keep me on, I ended up leaving because the alternative work wasn't really what I wanted to do

Current place is better paid, and I enjoy the work (mostly), but it's very corporate, lists of arbitrary policies and procedures in place for "reasons", and I'm under no illusions I'm anything other than an anonymous cog in the machine.

Only yesterday it removed me how good it is.
My son will need to go into hospital soon with the wife for around 7 days.
I was planning on either booking the week off or using a couple of days holiday and come in later each day so I could take my daughter to school.
Boss just said don't worry about it, let me know when you know and come in when you can and go when you need to. Then asked how he is.

 

[Haggisman]

Only yesterday it removed me how good it is.
My son will need to go into hospital soon with the wife for around 7 days.
I was planning on either booking the week off or using a couple of days holiday and come in later each day so I could take my daughter to school.
Boss just said don't worry about it, let me know when you know and come in when you can and go when you need to. Then asked how he is.

100%, I would have had similar from my old place.

Meanwhile in the current place, in August a couple of years ago my 2 year old needed heart surgery - an appointment was available at short notice, but I had no annual leave left due to having to take a lot of time off to look after him earlier in the year; spoke to my team leader, and offered to take it unpaid if necessary, but she said not to worry, she'd speak to our department's director and get it sorted. I heard nothing more, so naively assumed it would be paid as normal.

Middle of November, she messaged me - "Remember those days you had off back in August? We forgot to take it out of your pay, so we'll be taking it out of this month's".

Thanks for that, a couple of weeks warning, right before Christmas .

This has just prompted me to go check if my old company has any positions open!

 

[OspreyO]

Doesn't matter if it's a small place or a big one. I've seen both ruined by bureaucratic micro managers.

Used to be we would get 95% of our dept out to xmas parties and social events. New management micromanage everything, wanted everyone back in the office, complained about the noise when people talked, or were at the tea station. Last Xmas party only about 5% of the dept there. They are now trying to have team building days and such to improve communications. While activitively not sharing information. I've seen the same thing in different place small or large. Its really comes down to the personalities and management culture. Doesn't matter if you are remote working, or in the office. If you create data silos, there is no communication.

There are no miserable places. Only miserable people.

 

[OspreyO]

I'm not sure about co-workers not being friends. The way I see it, once you enter full time employment work is the main place you meet people, the same way when you are a kid the main way you meet people is at school. Blocking out work as a source of potential friendships is blocking out more than half the opportunity. I don't think I've made any friends in the past 15(?) years that wasn't directly or indirectly through work.

Depends on the people. I'm friends with people I worked with years, ago. Current place, even though I've worked with some of them for years I dislike spending any time with them.

 

[D.P.]

Only yesterday it removed me how good it is.
My son will need to go into hospital soon with the wife for around 7 days.
I was planning on either booking the week off or using a couple of days holiday and come in later each day so I could take my daughter to school.
Boss just said don't worry about it, let me know when you know and come in when you can and go when you need to. Then asked how he is.

I have similar experience working in a big tech company. This is relatively normal because decent companies know it is things like this which is the most important at the end of the day.