this post was submitted on 16 May 2026
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Fuck AI
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My last job did the internal promotion but needed to be "competitive" thing. Long story short i was an operator and ended up working extensively with a staff engineer. A opportunity to become a technician opened up and I applied. I was told I could have the job with pay raise but would need to give up my permanent position for a contractor position(no pto, no paid holidays, no insurance, no 401k etc). I turned it down, this staff engineer heard and agreed it was bs, he made a deal with my supervisor at the time to "borrow" me for 6 months for a project he was doing. I did the project and the paperwork and a bunch of stuff. He then took all the work I did to senior management and argued that I deserved the technician job based on the work I did. He got them to agree to create a full time technician role for me under him. The job was literally created for me, he asked for my resume before creating the job requirements and wrote the requirements so my resume would be a perfect fit.
He was still required to do 4 other interviews with people outside the company. They had 0 chance to get the job. It was a waste of hr, his time, my time, the interviewee time. Literally no benefit to anyone.
I worked for him for about 7 years, one of the best bosses I ever met. He was not liked by some people because he had no problem telling you that you are an idiot if you were being an idiot. That said he got projects done, normally with in time and financial budget and without much technical debt going forward. Yeah things sometimes went wrong but there was also some wiggle room for that stuff within reason. For example writing a report for a study was about 1/2 a day but was on the time line as 3 days. Let's say someone calls out one day during the test or a part is delivered late which is critical for what we were doing. Adjust the time line so now there's 2 days to write the report, still easily enough time and everyone is happy as it was delivered on time.
Yep.
I've see similar situations play out in places where I've worked.
In a non insane world, something like you just moving to that other role for 6 months and then officially getting that role... would just be all you'd need to do.
But nope.
Somehow, the idea of 'everyone deserves a fair shot' results in 'you never even had a chance, the game was rigged from the start' + 'treating employees as investments is somehow the exception to the rule, even in positions requiring very specific knowledge and experience'.
Actually in a non-insane world I would of been given the initial role and not asked to give up all benefits for a medium increase in pay. Company stance was previous technician was a contractor, so replacement should be a contractor. So I was expected to just give up all my benefits and hope they get restored some time in the future.
Speaking of employees as investments, every employee had to have "goals" each year. He added the requirement that one of the goals had to some form of training. No not the regular training you were required but something extra. For example training class from a manufacturer of a system we used or a industry training like a lean manufacturing certification or cqt/cqe certification. Since it was an official "goal" he could get budget for it(with in reason). No other manager in the company to my knowledge did anything similar.
Sorry, I guess I'm not old enough to have any real concept of a sane workplace, I've literally only just heard about how it used to be from various old timers, or attempted to study it, read about it in books and such.
You're right, that would make even more sense.
Believe me that place was not sane... Maybe not as crazy as other places but certainly not sane.