r/todayilearned • u/EtOHMartini • 13d ago
TIL that philanthropist and engineer Avery Fisher was motivated to start his own company after, identifying a way to save his employer $10,000 a year, was immediately denied a $5/week raise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avery_Fisher6.7k
u/Justin-N-Case 13d ago
He also subtly pointed out that his boss was an idiot.
2.8k
u/acathode 12d ago
Read the full quote - he's not very subtle at all about his former boss Ed Dodd being an asshole:
Fisher continued "In 1937, I noticed that the advertising department of Dodd, Mead was buying their photo engravings from one source and their book manufacturing department was buying from another. If they combined both those purchases and bought from one source, their quantity discount would save them just under $10,000 a year. I went to my superior, Ed Dodd, and told him about it. He said, "That's a great idea, Fisher." He never called me by my first name – always by my last, you know, like a deckhand. He said, "I think I'll do something about it." And they did. And I said, "By the way, I'd be very grateful if I could have a five dollar raise."
He could have said, "Well, not right now." But instead he said, "Well, no. We probably could get some young Yale boy in here to do your work for less than we're paying you." That day, I said to myself, "I've got to get out of here one way or another," and I started putting [radio-phonograph] sets together for friends. I was moonlighting, and I did that for a number of years before I was in a position to get out and really spend full time on this. By 1943, I'd built up my company, Philharmonic Radio, to the point where I could draw enough money from it to earn a living. By that time I had a wife and child.
So I owe them [Dodd, Mead] everything. Because I really loved my work as a book designer, and I turned out some very fine stuff, which won prizes. One of the books I turned out was called Grassroot Jungles, which became one of the 50 best books of the year for graphic design—this is out of 40,000 titles—and Ed Dodd never let me put my name in a book for credit as the designer. Now this is a long answer to your simple question, what got me into hi-fi. It was an act of desperation—and also of love, because I really enjoyed hearing good equipment.
695
u/MoreTrifeLife 12d ago
If they combined both those purchases and bought from one source, their quantity discount would save them just under $10,000 a year.
$10,000 in 1937 is $216,897 today. He was also denied $108.45 translated to today.
365
u/mandy009 12d ago
multiply the raise he was denied by 50 weeks in a year. About $5,500 a year equivalent today out of that $215,000 a year savings in today's dollars.
240
u/rW0HgFyxoJhYka 12d ago
This story is similar to the blue LED story where that Japanese engineer worked on solving the blue LED invention for years, while his boss kept cutting his budget and treating him like shit. Then when he finally did it, his boss was like "nice" and gave him a $180 bonus, when the invention itself was easily worth billions.
88
u/PresumedSapient 12d ago
the blue LED story
Relevant Veritasium video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF8d72mA41M
19
38
u/MadeByTango 12d ago
There is a story from the early days of "User Experience" as a career, when a dude talked about the "million dollar button." He meant to be positive, explaining about how he noticed that a certain button was poorly labeled and they were losing tons of customers to confusion, so he fixed the label. Later his client came back and told him that he had earned an extra million dollars through the fixing of the button. It was a story about how valuable UX was and why companies should spend on it.
In practice it became an expectation that UX was about maximizing the value as a job, so any ability to argue for raises based on output became a matter of the expected status quo for UX designers. Meanwhile if you can't make a UI earn a million by changing a single label you're seen as worthless.
5
→ More replies (2)63
841
u/CORN___BREAD 12d ago
Moral of the story, treat your employees like shit to encourage them. /s
407
u/_nobody_else_ 12d ago
I see the moral being, do not share money saving strategy ideas with the company.
For free.
116
u/fivepie 12d ago
This is the correct response.
Many years ago, when I was working in architectural design, wrote a script which automated the documentation and design of utilitarian spaces in public buildings - think bathrooms, end of trip facilities, etc.
What you’d input the room dimensions, the number of toilets, urinals, and basins you needed in that space, confirm if you needed any of the cubicles to be ambulant access compliant, which wall you wanted the entry door on, if you needed an air-lock, and then hit enter.
It would present you with an efficient layout that could be accommodated in that room.
If you didn’t like that layout then you can hit enter again and you’d get another layout.
There are only so many bathroom layouts you can do, so after two or three goes it would just give you the same results repeating.
Anyway, I gave this script to a handful of my colleagues. They’d been using it for a couple of months. No dramas.
My boss found out that I wrote the script and accused me of cheating at my work by “having the computer do it” for me. I tried explaining what I did and why I did it - because almost every building we work on has bathrooms in it, this speeds up the documentation process.
He wouldn’t have it. He said “real architects design every space in the building. Even the toilets.” Well yeah, but this tool just gives us the layout. We’re still confirming it’s compliant, we’re still making the selections for tile, lighting, laminate, and everything else that goes in there. This just gives us an efficient layout quickly.
Didn’t accept it. Still said we were cheating at our jobs and “how long before you automate the design of the whole building?! You’re writing yourself out of a job”
I quit soon after that. This old man couldn’t see the benefit in automating basic parts of a building which rarely change in layout.
My former colleagues still use the script. They just don’t tell the boss.
67
u/Hargbarglin 12d ago
The weird thing about this story is the guy saying, "you'll automate yourself out of a job" and not seeing dollar signs in his eyes to try to do exactly that.
→ More replies (1)52
→ More replies (2)52
u/_nobody_else_ 12d ago edited 12d ago
In IT, laziness is one of the marks of great engineers. Your sys admin doesn't seem to ever work anything? You can bet that his network is running better than atomic clock. That thing is probably so fucking automated it could be legally classified as AI.
Your boss limiting your productive output is worrying.
→ More replies (2)80
u/CosmoKing2 12d ago edited 12d ago
The moral is - companies and corporations are, by design, emotionless. If you you give them free advise on ways to save money, sell more product, please more customers? They are going to take it and reward shareholders and executives that get bonuses.
If you aren't part of that group, you need to negotiate (and get the deal in writing) before telling them expressly how the can do it. Otherwise, they will just steal the idea.
→ More replies (5)11
u/_nobody_else_ 12d ago
I bet that when he walked back to his desk he regretted not asking for a raise before revealing a $180k company savings.
39
u/tlst9999 12d ago edited 12d ago
I've seen an HR manager who wanted to verify if site employees were actually doing overtime for 5 bucks an hour. She drove to the site an hour away after work on her own time. She holds no shares in the company.
19
u/Cospo 12d ago
My work told everybody that if they submitted an idea that saved the company a bunch of money, they would be compensated with paid time off. So a bunch of people submitted ideas, they took them all, picked a "winner" of best idea, and they got a "certificate" acknowledging their good idea and that's it. No paid time off, not even a gift card or anything. Literally a piece of paper. Wasn't even laminated.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (3)6
65
→ More replies (2)141
u/alphawimp731 12d ago
He never called me by my first name – always by my last, you know, like a dickhead.
Did anyone else initially read it that way?
89
→ More replies (3)20
u/Magnedon 12d ago
I did, and even though deckhand/dickhead changes who he was referring to, I like to think dickhead was in the true spirit of the sentiment.
16
u/Basic_Bichette 12d ago
Probably, if you remember that in his day they had more slang terms for "penis" than most people realize - probably more than we have, in fact - but "dick" wasn't one of them. A dick was a detective.
Fifty years earlier a dick was an idiot.
965
u/healthybowl 13d ago
Most bosses are closed minded idiots. Not a soul on the planet knows how most made it to their position. What a brave man to state the obvious
508
u/betrayed1234 12d ago
Wait, the boss rejected his request for $250 spread out over a year in exchange for saving the company $10,000? What a fool.
185
u/Mist_Rising 12d ago
Nope. The boss rejected 250 over a year and still got the 10k savings.
→ More replies (1)88
u/CitizenPremier 12d ago
Yes, the lesson is to not help your boss, instead you need to set up your position so that it's blindingly obvious that it will collapse without you. Do this by taking responsibility for tasks but hiding how you handle them.
53
u/Lou_C_Fer 12d ago
I got laid of with zero notice and they called about passwords for various things I had set up. But I "couldn't" remember them even though they are all a password I use for stuff where I don't care if it's hacked.
Mother fucker decided on the spot he couldn't afford to keep me on. If he had given me reasonable notice, I would have set things up so that the info was left behind. As is, I was told on Saturday (i did not work saturdays or sundays) that I did not need to show up on Monday. That I could go in and get my things on Sunday so I did not have to see anyone.
→ More replies (4)56
u/Smash_4dams 12d ago edited 12d ago
Yep. Productivity data don't lie. Take your PTO days!! My boss and team are always soo happy to see me come back after several days or an entire week off. I know things that I keep to myself after several years on the job.
If you pass all your info along, it just becomes expected that productivity/profit goes up while making roughly the same pay.
20
u/SomewhereInternal 12d ago
But this also makes you irreplaceable, so you won't be able to be promoted to another role.
→ More replies (7)24
u/jlharper 12d ago edited 12d ago
This is the way. I’m 29 and been doing this at my IT job. I’m three years in. They just keep giving me more opportunities thinking I am the golden goose. I can already arrive to work late, leave early and get 5 years( weeks* haha ) off work a year. I’ve been given 9 laptops and computers so far worth around $8000 USD.
→ More replies (3)12
54
u/Kurwasaki12 12d ago
If you think that’s galling, there were two dudes who worked in Walmart warehouses who came up with a step stool that increased efficiency in thousands to millions of dollars. All they got was a pat on the back on stage for their idea.
303
u/healthybowl 12d ago
You want $250/yr raise for $10k in savings? I don’t have $150/yr for $10k in savings. What do you need $50/yr raise for $10k in savings? Best I can do is you keep your job for $10k in savings. Please leave my office but leave your findings. Help yourself to a hot cookie! It’s employee appreciation month!
368
u/schmuber 12d ago
Once upon a time I saved one small company about $200K/year, which promptly got me fired. Apparently the COO didn't like it when someone dared to be smarter than him. The end result? Now they regularly request my services as a contractor, so I charge them $350/hr consulting fee.
69
u/unfnknblvbl 12d ago
I was responsible for my organisation saving the taxpayer $9M/year. All I got was a cheap plastic statue, a laminated certificate, and constant questions about why I spent more than a couple of minutes in the toilet each day.
→ More replies (3)103
u/healthybowl 12d ago
Your blunder became your thunder! Nice
36
u/Arrow156 12d ago
I would say that's their blunder considering they now have to pay him far more to do far less.
13
u/Dijkztra 12d ago
The company think OP blundered a Knight, but capturing the Knight means the company blundered a Queen instead.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (1)78
u/Visinvictus 12d ago
$350/hr to consult? How can that company afford to pay you $400/hr? I can't imagine the COO is happy about that $500/hr consultation fee.
48
24
u/tragiktimes 12d ago
Between 250-400/hr is not outside the normal range for IT and finance consultation.
30
u/CORN___BREAD 12d ago
They’re just doing the same increasing number joke that someone else did above.
19
u/314159265358979326 12d ago
Best I can do is you keep your job for $10k in savings.
That is literally what the boss said.
"Well, no. We probably could get some young Yale boy in here to do your work for less than we're paying you."
42
u/HornedDiggitoe 12d ago
It never works out like that. There is a reason employers don’t want their employees knowing how profitable their labour actually is.
I had saved a company hundreds of thousands of dollars, on top of my regular labour duties. Even with a good boss, my raises and bonuses were far above what my coworkers received, but it still didn’t even come close to how much money I was saving my company.
→ More replies (1)8
u/Smash_4dams 12d ago
That's what you call a resume entry!
Future employers offering more $$$ love to hear stories like that.
→ More replies (4)12
u/Longjumping-Claim783 12d ago
The boss probably brought it up to the higher ups and took credit for it himself.
→ More replies (1)63
u/ButWhatAboutisms 12d ago
My experience tells me that bosses are just really smooth talkers. They're fast on their feet when it comes to speechcraft. They're able to present things in a really smooth way, bad or good. Whoever hired them just really likes being around them, find them good company or they're friends.
But this doesn't mean they're really actually the best fit for the specific job at hand.
23
u/mrfrownieface 12d ago
Some of them are just decent paid assholes who will be sacrificed when their presence begins to do more harm than good. They they pack up and get a job as resident productivity asshole in another institution.
5
u/No_Information_6166 12d ago
One of the worst bosses I had was pretty bad at his job. He did, however, know how to tell the CEO yes.
21
u/multiarmform 12d ago
true story, old boss of mine wanted to charge me to wear a uniform for his company (shirt, hat) and was all around a massive piece of shit. there was a big incident that happened and in the end i ended up testifying against him in federal court for the plaintiffs who were awarded something like 2.5mil.
the little gesture if you want to call it that of charging his employees to wear his uniforms was like a sign of things to come. he also insisted that i put one of his cheap quality company logo magnets on the side of my car door and when it blew off on the road somewhere, he took $50 out of my check for it. the thing was already bent on the corner because he stored them in his trunk full of random bullshit where he practically lived out of his car.
19
u/MrDLTE3 12d ago
I once designed a replica of my office building/workshop in Garry's Mod as a training tool for my company as a proof of concept learning tool circa 2010 or so, so new hires get to know the layout from their computer instead of needing to walk up and down the entire premises.
I spent a lot of time on the details and what not and I thought it turned out great. It was pretty much a virtual 'playground' of the workplace.
My manager loved it. My bigger boss, not so much. Never used it and it just kinda died somewhere in a HDD.
112
u/Ivanthevanman 12d ago
People are promoted to their level of incompetence.
135
u/libury 12d ago
If only. That way people would at least be only marginally inept at their jobs. Positions of power are given out to social circles.
13
u/CressCrowbits 12d ago
Yeah I'd say its far worse than that.
I worked for a few years fairly in deep with a big corp. The upper management were idiots who got lucky once and thought they were geniuses. The lower management were ass kissing morons who genuinely belived upper management actually were geniuses. Upper management would promote them because they would kiss their ass.
Its been 5 years since I left and everyone with any talent has left since. Upper management don't understand why they are in trouble. Sadly they are all so rich since getting bought out they'll be forever rich however hard they fail.
→ More replies (1)30
u/Partingoways 12d ago
Can’t get stuck on a ladder rung slightly too high when you got catapulted to the top and all your shit is falling hitting the poor intelligent fools just below you
25
→ More replies (15)10
u/Sciencetist 12d ago
My observations are that the most incompetent people are the ones that are promoted, because they want to keep the people who are good at their job in the job that they're good at.
41
u/Dry-Magician1415 12d ago
. Not a soul on the planet knows how most made it to their position.
Yeah we do, one or a combination of a) being buddies with the right people, b) sticking around long enough or c) hitting metrics that upper management value
→ More replies (2)13
u/healthybowl 12d ago
Cue me in on C). Final answer
→ More replies (1)12
u/Arrow156 12d ago
Isn't it the absolute best when suits who've never even set foot in the same building where the work is actually done start fucking with the metrics? I once worked in a call center that did this and I ended up making a log of every single call just so I could show them that their new sale goals were literally impossible to reach.
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (7)13
u/benargee 12d ago
One way of projecting power seems to be unwillingness that sometimes employees know better than their superiors. They shut it down and probably steal the idea much later. It's in a company's best interest to take the best from everybody, rather than just what the top people can come up with.
→ More replies (4)18
1.1k
u/VolkspanzerIsME 13d ago
Ah yes. The Alexander Graham Bell method of managerial encouragement.
623
u/Cuddlyaxe 12d ago
or honestly the whole blue LED light saga
It was literally one dude at a company who kept working at it when everyone was trying to veto him. He managed to do it for his company
His reward? Literally nothing
271
u/asianwaste 12d ago
His original management was really supportive. When the torch was passed, the new management really had it in for him.
138
u/LastFrost 12d ago edited 12d ago
If I remember correctly the new management was led by the son of his previous boss. His first boss was very supportive of his work but his son saw it as a waste of time.
Edit: Son in law
40
u/hewhoamareismyself 12d ago
Son in law, I think.
63
u/SweetPanela 12d ago
Which is why nepotism always leads to decay and inefficiency.
→ More replies (3)14
131
u/Duel_Option 12d ago edited 12d ago
So I don’t have a degree in anything, literally a HS diploma.
My background isn’t in production or manufacturing beyond professional kitchens because i grew up cooking food, not fabrication.
The company I work for makes things in mass quantity, we had some issues with QA, my customer is complaining and I make a stink enough to get invited to go take a plant tour.
Let’s just say the place isn’t the most OSHA friendly and was behind the times to say the least.
Anyways, the item that was causing an issue has some hand driven pieces due to the configuration.
We pass by completed goods and plant mgr says “SEE? NO ISSUE, ITS THE END USER”.
I ask to hear how, when, who is part of the physical parts being made. Base layer is made at night, day crew does finishing and wrapping.
Great, I’ll see you at 10pm for the night shift.
Observations: Minimum wage guys, high turnover rate, spotty training, QA done mid-day almost 18 hours after completed work.
All red flags, but here’s where it gets fucking STUPID.
These guys have a gravity feed system to fill a mold, they do this by hand and it’s done by eye sight for fill.
Meaning there’s no way to verify if they hit the correct fill for the mold.
I am livid, go into the board room the next day and talk about all this and get asked “WELL WHAT YOU DO TO FIX IT???”
Me: are you fucking dumb? How about make a god damn stencil so they can’t make a mistake on the feed and put some kind of laser level to hit the mark?
Essentially they had tried NOTHING and were all out of ideas.
So the plant mgr looks at me in front of the CEO and legit said “We could try that and see how it works”.
They got so efficient they cancelled half the night team and moved them to day, save $500k in a year.
CEO sent me a $100 gift card in the mail.
I had a good chuckle about it, such a slap in the face lol
84
u/soks86 12d ago
I'm at a loss.
This is a recurring story.
Idiot has problem. Smart person fixes it. Idiot profits. Smart person doesn't.
Is the solution... to not help people?
Oh ,shit.
(edit: I think the solution is to predict the value, demand more, then not help them when they say "no," lol)
46
u/Duel_Option 12d ago
People at the top see money only, it’s not that they don’t care or anything, but the drive is purely the quest for cash.
And just because you may net a million dollars for the company doesn’t earn you the right for a %, “that’s why they hired you, to make them 10x your salary.”
That’s word for word what the owner told me and he meant every word of it.
→ More replies (1)12
u/ceelogreenicanth 12d ago
You don't understand. They went to business school. They have vision... /S read Ayn Rand and you'll understand /s
→ More replies (1)8
→ More replies (20)21
u/stempoweredu 12d ago
From the company, correct. They were eventually rewarded with a 2014 Nobel Prize.
13
u/GreasyPeter 12d ago
Keeping narcissists in positions of power just because they "show results" is shot-sighted in the same way that always concentrating on short-term profits to boost stock prices invariably stunts the company eventually and leads to it's demise.
→ More replies (1)6
u/Indian_Dunedain 12d ago
Sorry, I am out of the loop on this one, can someone point me whether Bell was a good or a bad manager? I tried searching online and it didn't turn up anything useful.
→ More replies (2)
595
u/bohemianprime 12d ago
In my early 20s, I saved the company I was working for 10k a year by reprogramming their stacker robot to use 2 less slip sheets a pallet. I got a piece of paper saying, "we caught you begin a superstar!" It even had a spot to put my picture, and they didn't even bother. It was sad and comical at the same time.
I invented devices for that company to save them money and make processes safer. Most of the time I was told, "if you're looking for thanks, you're in the wrong place."
Fuck'em I'm glad I left.
→ More replies (8)115
u/NonMagical 12d ago
But like, was that your job to design and program those things? If that’s what they hired you to do, and you did it, does that one act merit a raise itself?
→ More replies (22)51
u/hawklost 12d ago
And if it wasn't their job, why the hell were they reprogramming a robot like that? Because that could really screw the company over if they messed up because it wasn't part of their job.
→ More replies (6)15
u/LivingWithWhales 12d ago
My job used to be robotics engineer at an assembly plant. The programming system is pretty easy. Ladder logic coding is visual built, like a puzzle, then translates it to code for the machine. You basically program a similation of the code and it converts to code.
It’s the only kind of programming I ever really enjoyed.
→ More replies (1)
473
u/jimmyhoke 12d ago
Keep in mind, that’s $10,000 1937 dollars. This would be around $218,735.46 today.
→ More replies (1)128
u/blender4life 12d ago
What would the $5 be today
→ More replies (6)128
u/jimmyhoke 12d ago
107
u/Refflet 12d ago
That's per week, he was asking for a $260 annual raise at the time, or $5,759.52 today.
62
u/PowerPulser 12d ago
But then those poor executives would only get 212.975,94, what a shame!
10
u/Poles_Uprising 12d ago
Time to eat them I will prepare the pot with boiling water.
→ More replies (1)
2.9k
u/gellenburg 13d ago
I saved my company almost $1,500,000 a year and didn't even get so much as a recognition or thank you.
Word to the wise: don't try to save your company anything.
1.2k
u/Worthyness 13d ago
Found a security glitch for mine. They gave the credit for the find and fix to another team which got a bonus for it. I got jack squat. I just wanted the damn recognition :(
750
u/gellenburg 13d ago
30 years in IT (now retired) has taught me that it doesn't pay to go above and beyond, it doesn't pay to point out mistakes, it doesn't pay to point out ways to save money, it doesn't pay to point out vulnerabilities (and I worked in security!), it doesn't pay to do anything more than the absolute bare minimum that you need to do to keep your job.
And when inevitably people try to argue with me about that maxim I just wrote, I merely need to remind them that the company you work for isn't going to pay you any more than they are legally required to do so.
Sure, I got a bonus just like everyone else did when the company did well. Some years greater than others.
But never put in more than 100% of your effort. The company won't ever pay you 110% of your salary for 110% of your efforts.
66
u/Opheltes 12d ago
it doesn't pay to point out vulnerabilities (and I worked in security!)
I wish I could say this is news to me but I’ve been there myself
29
u/gellenburg 12d ago
I remember that data breach incident! There was a Seagate office near Casselberry, Florida back in the day (like 1996, 1997). Knew some people who worked there.
16
u/Opheltes 12d ago
So the Seagate office I worked in was in Lake Mary FL, circa 2012 -2015.
10
u/gellenburg 12d ago
Was probably the same office then! (I moved from Orlando in 1999 so probably just misremembered it.) Hahaha! I remember there was a art house/ boutique movie theater not too far from there... I think! Might be misremembering that too. Hahaha! It's been 25 years! The Enzian! (just remembered it)
132
u/benargee 12d ago
As an outsider that would depend on these IT companies, this is very concerning that shitty company culture stands in the way of a better and more secure product.
86
u/gellenburg 12d ago
I spent my career in critical infrastructure. Oh the stories I could tell...
38
u/HASHTAGTRASHGAMING 12d ago
Isn't it wonderful how easy it is to access the servers running PLC software at almost every industrial process facility?
→ More replies (4)→ More replies (5)52
u/No-Kitchen-5457 12d ago
You can only begin to imagine how many products are substantitally worse than they could be due to company culture and short term quarterly gains
→ More replies (2)18
76
u/ButtholeQuiver 12d ago
But never put in more than 100% of your effort. The company won't ever pay you 110% of your salary for 110% of your efforts.
That's not always true. I used to work for a company of about 250 people who had an award for 2-3 people per year where you'd get like 50% of your salary as a bonus for going above and beyond. I got it my second year, but I busted my ass for it.
What actually impressed me about it was that I'd already given notice I was quitting when the CEO called me up to tell me I got it. I assumed they wouldn't give it to me given I was quitting, but he said I'd earned it. I was leaving on an eight-month trip through Europe/Asia and he said enjoy the extra cash, it was solid. Also said I was more than welcome back any time and I ended up in a jam several years later when I was kinda fucked - I was backpacking in South America and ended up broke, living in a tent - so I called them up and said "Hey can I have a job and a work visa and a flight to Australia" and they hooked me up, put me up in a hotel for my first month until I got paid too.
85
u/gellenburg 12d ago
Well you were lucky.
More importantly that's the exception, not the rule.
→ More replies (4)20
u/PyroDesu 12d ago
Small company seems to be the big thing for actually being properly recognized.
17
u/ButtholeQuiver 12d ago
Also being good at your job is a big thing.
There are a lot of people who think they're hot shit but they aren't, if you really are good most companies will jump through hoops to keep you around.
→ More replies (8)→ More replies (3)6
21
u/Rainer206 12d ago edited 12d ago
The people in my B.U who got promoted were the quiet ones who never said anything in meetings and just did the immediate task asked of them and not a single thing more. Those who spoke up, contributed ideas, challenged bad thinking were either ignored or put on performance warnings. The memo young professionals miss is you will do well if you shut up, keep your head down, look busy, do only what’s asked, and make your manager look good if you can. If your manager is a complete idiot though, this will be a challenge since they will be threatened by you and others perception of you.
→ More replies (5)10
u/gellenburg 12d ago
Making your manager look good, and by extension making the executives above them look good is key.
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (42)12
u/Scavenger53 12d ago
as a software engineer and former IT, i will NEVER give 100% lol, 60% on a good day
20
u/QueenNebudchadnezzar 12d ago
Found an issue when I was right out of school. First I was reprimanded for raising it to senior people even after they told me to shut up. Then I was reprimanded again when the issue surfaced because I didn't try hard enough to convince them to pay attention.
Never be a hero.
→ More replies (9)8
27
12d ago
[deleted]
→ More replies (1)14
u/Matasa89 12d ago
You got turned into the golden cog, lol. Boss is like "lock this guy up in a basement and feed him. He's critical infrastructure now."
36
u/mrdannyg21 12d ago edited 12d ago
Yep, I found a very specific error that was costing my old company $50,000/year. Which is a drop in the bucket for the size of company, but raising it up didn’t go anywhere.
My boss was nice about it but doesn’t have any power to do much - when he told the regional boss to at least send one of the monthly recognitions that comes with some catalogue points, he said he’d ’get around to it if he could but usually just let his secretary pick people’.
When I pointed out that the issue impacting this specific account was due to poor controls in one area and could very well be impacting other accounts, I was told if I wanted to carve out time from my day to lead a project, I could dig into it, though I wouldn’t be given any resources.
So I waited until a light time of the year several months later, organized a whole project around it and found dozens of other impacted accounts (mostly much smaller dollar figures). Of course I made sure my spreadsheet showed how much losses had accumulated since I’d initially raised up the error.
Edit: adding a follow up - nothing really happened then neither. The specific errors were fixed, and my project made the individuals who monitor the accounts aware of the gap in policies/process but it’s a high-turnover position and nothing was officially changed so I’m sure the error is still being repeated to this day.
17
174
u/Want_To_Live_To_100 13d ago
I regularly save my company six figures or more on menial tasks and I don’t hear about it… lol it’s just my job I suppose..
→ More replies (21)24
u/doge57 12d ago
I worked in a lab a few years ago and my entire job was to fix and maintain equipment. I saved the lab probably around $1m within a year through fixing things that would have been expensive to replace or to pay a specialist to repair. Why would they have paid me a bonus for doing what they were paying me a salary to do?
→ More replies (2)59
u/theZcuber 12d ago
I just got laid off from Tesla. If I was able to help launch the thing we were working on even one day earlier than it otherwise would, the cost savings to the company would pay for my entire compensation for the next decade. Companies aren't the best at logic.
→ More replies (4)66
u/Malphos101 15 12d ago
They have perfect logic, their goals just arent what you think they are.
The goal is to increase short term profits to attract investors and increase reward bonuses for executives. Everything else is in service of that goal.
17
u/barktothefuture 12d ago
I worked for a company that was not going to meet quarterly revenue targets so they started selling early renewals at a huge discount. So clients that were going to renew in a month renewed early and got a big discount. And a couple execs get big bonus, company loses revenue and increase expenses the best part is half of the companies that renewed early negotiated net60 instead of net 30 lolol. And everybody thst knew, knew exactly what was going on. Made customers happy. Made c suite happy. Hurt the company. Disillusioned me.
→ More replies (1)13
u/My-other-user-name 12d ago
This is one reason why publicly traded companies have five year plans and not 10, 20, etc. year plans. Get rich quick and get out.
→ More replies (1)21
u/sixtninecoug 12d ago
I got us back on good terms with a $1m a year account and saved us from a competitive threat.
I doubt anyone even noticed. lol.
17
u/mucinexmonster 12d ago
I tried to save my company hundreds of thousands a year, got attacked, got belittled, got moved to a new position.
Five years later, and that number having to have reached the seven digits by now, my former boss is talking about the problem.
I really want to go to someone and mention how that boss say on this issue for years.
→ More replies (1)5
→ More replies (34)16
u/Uncle_Rabbit 12d ago
My company denied me a raise even though I pointed out (and had them admit) that I'm the only one on my shift that knew how to run the equipment and that training the others on my shift will take months and not even guarantee they will be competent enough to get the job done. Essentially I had management admit that if I don't show up for work no work can get done, and that's a huge loss of production that will snowball quickly.
Their solution was to have someone else switch shifts instead of giving me a dollar raise. They also can't figure out why nobody is applying anymore. They like to brag about making millions in profit and then give you something like a hat for a bonus.
I foresee a big drop in the quantity and quality of my work.
219
u/efreem01 12d ago
My colleague and I stayed late at work to deploy a computer system in lieu of the company paying a contractor $13k. After, we went out for drinks and spent $80. My company decided $30 is all they were willing to pay of it.
🤷♂️
→ More replies (1)115
u/fivepie 12d ago
I stayed late (until 1130pm) with one of the Directors to finish design documentation for a new library building he was presenting the next morning at 9am.
Two weeks later when I put my overtime sheet in he denied the overtime because I didn’t have prior approval from a Director before doing the hours… even though I was there with him, a Director, doing the overtime. Doesn’t matter, not pre-approved.
I refused to do any overtime after that. He’d ask me infrequently to stay back, I’d ask if it is approved overtime, he’d say “we’ll need to discuss it”, I’d say “ok, let’s discuss it now”, he’d say “it’s not overtime but the work needs to be done”, I’d say “sorry, I have plans I don’t want to cancel for unpaid overtime” and then would leave.
He hated me for the malicious compliance.
→ More replies (3)34
681
u/Whatreallyhappens 13d ago
Hold on, he wanted $250 spread out over a year for saving the company $10,000 and the boss said no? What a moron.
373
→ More replies (22)70
u/kaleb42 12d ago
Yeah he was a moron for asking. It would take 40 years for that to be an unprofitable trade for the business. Completely unsustainable /s
→ More replies (1)33
43
u/WolfsLairAbyss 12d ago
I used to have an old Fisher tube receiver from the 60s. I believe it was made in West(?) Germany. That thing sounded amazing right up until it blew a component and burst into flames. Oddly enough I was playing a record of Mozart's Requiem Mass at the time. A very fitting soundtrack. Lol
10
u/Snazzy21 12d ago
I had a Fisher CR5115, it broke a cog when a cassette got jammed in it and that was the end of it since it was old and parts weren't available.
That deck is the most repairable thing I've ever worked on, they put a removable plate under the PCB and gave the deck open sides (when the cabinet was removed) so you could heat the solder from the bottom while pulling the old capacitor from the other side. It held the PCB while you worked on it, it was nicely designed and it had a great service manual. That is typical of 70s era stuff.
Shame by the 80s most of their stuff was mediocre
→ More replies (1)
41
u/jimofthestoneage 12d ago
Well, I was asked to cut costs in my department as much as possible when COVID hit. I adjusted a few contracts, found better partners, reduced hosting costs and did it all over the course of about a month. 10s of thousands of dollars saved.
I guess it didn't make up for the fact that I made more money than everyone else in the department, because I was laid off just after cutting the costs.
94
32
u/stickylava 12d ago
Here's another undervalued scientist: Shuji Nakamura. This is a half-hour video about the inventor of the blue LED, the one that makes LED screens possible, and that earned a Nobel prize, because everyone thought it couldn't be done. And he got screwed.
134
u/Nascent1 12d ago
37
9
→ More replies (2)5
21
u/chelseablue2004 12d ago
If any of you discover a way to save the company you're working for money...DO NOT I REPEAT DO NOT show them how to do it or how it can be done.
If its a technology you come up with, its better to quit and then come back and offer it as a solution cause most places like poor old Avery here won't give you a dime for it. They'll just say thank you and then prolly turn around and fire you if your idea was too efficient.
19
u/Mazon_Del 12d ago
At Raytheon when I worked there we had a policy that if you had an idea for a technology, the company would help you spend your unpaid time working on it and would only charge you the bare minimum for resources from their stockpiles, help you file for patents (which they got, not you), and for a technology you invented that got them a billion dollar contract, the following breakdown is your reward.
- $1,000 for getting a patent.
- $2,000 for the patent becoming monetized.
- A plaque commemorating this accomplishment.
- A steak dinner where they present you (and everyone else who earned one) the plaque.
Had two ideas during my time there that got people super excited, started looking into the whole process and realized that I'd have to pay everything myself, I'd spend hundreds of hours of unpaid time, and I'd at best only get a measly $3,000 for my work (which likely wouldn't cover my costs) while the company stood to make obscene amounts of wealth from it?
Yeah no. I immediately stopped.
→ More replies (3)
38
u/Rainer206 12d ago
I pointed out to my business unit that the encryption key to our Salesforce data— without which we could no longer read or access encrypted data on our customers which was a lot since we’re in healthcare — was in a public folder where anyone could delete or corrupt it.
Zero recognition and even harassment from my manager lol.
7
u/Aborticus 12d ago
Holy wow... encryption keys are a nightmare and should be treated like a new born baby with glass bones. I remember our physical keys for our multiplexer would get corrupted if you moved it to fast or had a rapid temp change of over 5 degrees. Renewals were a full time job for a whole office where setting it in the safe had a 30% chance to create a week of work that needs to be fixed yesterday. Software keys were stored on external drives and stored in a safe at a cold site and really shouldn't be on an intranet. There isn't much excuse to not try to emulate and operate like a top secret site.
→ More replies (8)5
13
u/TeknoProasheck 12d ago
Similar story: I implemented a system that saved my team almost $40k a month, and proceeded to receive a 2% raise that year (which was less than inflation)
It's just how it works, it sucks, but it's how it is
25
u/zilchzeronadazip 12d ago
The one company I worked for had a product that was exceptionally expensive and unique. It cost $50-100k per item. The issue was that once it was cut or bent or damaged it was useless, unless the damage was near the ends. Their holy grail was how to extend/patch it.
I spent all my free time at work between jobs designing and testing ideas. One day I cracked it. I tested several samples and all of them performed flawlessly. I set a meeting for 2 weeks later with the department heads and anyone relevant to that product.
I had created several other items for that company over the years which earned me a pat on the back, my name on a patent as inventor, and a small bonus.
As the meeting neared I had a presentation READY. Samples, demo videos, test data. All done on the down time between jobs. This would save the company up to hundreds of thousands of dollars a month and I did it for free as a dedicated employee.
A couple days before the meeting I was called into a meeting with my boss and HR. Due to budget constraints they were not going to renew my contract and instead were keeping 2 younger people with Masters in engineering solely because they had their Masters and I didn't. I was free to leave whenever I wanted and they were paying me until the end of the month out of the goodness of their heart. Thanks!
I walked out into the shop. Disposed of the display items and test samples. All the notes and designs were on paper or my personal phone. Everything gone in 60 seconds.
Waited for my non compete to expire, ordered samples from the company that made that item and re-created it and filed a patent.
That company now pays a license fee and rents the tools to do the process from a small company with one very specific process and the tools to do it. Total work time for that company is about 15 minutes a month.
I also work for their main competition in the same city who doesn't use that product.
Some companies will go out of their way to screw themselves over. Just let it happen.
22
u/therealdilbert 12d ago
I spent all my free time at work between jobs designing and testing ideas.
then never ever again tell anyone about that it again, because that company owns everything you did, so if they hear about it it is probably not going to end well
11
u/Temporary-Prior7451 12d ago
I desperately hope, that every “boss” reading this realises what’s behind this story. And if you don’t, and you’re a boss; you’re the asshole….
6
u/voinageo 12d ago
Let me explain it to you from an Eastern European point of view :) . Boss was not stupid. He was getting kickbacks from both companies :) Fisher just stumbled on his boss side-hussle :)
24
6
u/tamsui_tosspot 13d ago
I initially read this as Amy Fisher and thought "whoah, there was more to that story than I thought . . ."
→ More replies (1)
5
u/Smrtihara 12d ago
Where’s all these employees in the thread saving companies thousands and hundred thousands of dollars a year?!
I run a company and I’d compensate the shit out of anyone saving me money. Where are you hiding!
→ More replies (1)
5.4k
u/BobT21 12d ago
A very large industrial org I worked for made engineers ineligible for beneficial suggestion awards because "engineers are paid to have good ideas." I was an engineer. When I had a good idea I would hand it off to a shop guy who would submit it. It would then come to me for evaluation. I would evaluate it as Great. Shop guy would get the award.
It is a lucky engineer who has friends out on the shop floor.