The Moan-About-Work Thread

Is it easy to fire somebody in the UK? I guess if they are on probation it is.

It isnt. Especially when they bring up their mental health as soon as there is a problem.

This is going on what people have been telling me. I havent tried to sack anyone.

Putting probation aside it all depends on the situation and how long they have been working, some things are listed as instant dismissal in your contract, other things get warnings and go through various procedures. but to be honest if you want someone gone you can always find a way.

Not too difficult if they haven’t worked there for 2 years and very easy during a probation period.

I’m terrified of the new labor party because they said they will change this and open up unfair dismissal on day 1. I get the idea to protect workers but the reality is this makes small and medium size businesses uneasy.

There’s lots of firms that take unfair dismissal cases on a no win no fee basis for the worker. Imagine a small to medium size business trying to deal with the legal fees for a crazy worker and there’s definitely those as much as we want to say there are bad employers. There are absolutely bad employees. We’ve all had them as colleagues at some point I think.

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Usually redundancy, that’s always an excuse for redundancy.

Lately it has been more Japanese within larger corporations, where people get relocated or transferred to shit jobs that they hate so that they leave of their own accord. It’s an unwritten tactic because it could be seen as abusive somehow probably.

That can actually work against them in some cases, but it’s a lot of box ticking.

Yeah, they’re anti-business. We’ll just be left with international mega-corps headquartered elsewhere paying for the NHS which is who everyone else will be working for to support our top-heavy aging population

Because the UK has been doing so well under the Tories…

Your career at the place is dead if you mention that, though. You’ll not be promoted, and be considered a burden and generally be avoided. It’s just how it works. Work can be like a battlefield and nobody wants to be paired with a soldier that screams and runs away when a gun goes off.

My perspective isn’t anti-mental health, far from it, I’ve personally got more shit going on than Friday night in Busan, just keep it private!

You can also reduce peoples hours (within limits) due to the needs of the company as long as you don’t replace them directly.

I’m not saying it was. Either government doesn’t change that the productivity of the UK is basically dead in the water, neither party will admit that. The population needs to buck up and get shit done. Can’t vote out of this predicament and it’s not a government issue in my opinion.

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It’s not productivity that is the problem, it’s really stupid trade policies and chaotic govt changes . The UK population isn’t any more work shy than anywhere else. The UK also has less public holidays than most European countries. Getting Joe or Mandy to pack 10% more boxes an hour for the same pay ain’t going to do jack shit.

That’s not the productivity I’m talking about - an example is in my first post, a large amount of man hours goes into meetings and “demonstrations of productivity” rather than actual productivity, which is producing the product that the business is trying to sell. I work in the tech industry, and a very high value appears to be put on scrum ceremonies and shit like that, way more than actually doing the work and implementing the requested features.

Anyway, the policy that the Labour Party about changing the unfair dismissal rules does not help small or medium businesses to shed wasters and liar workers. It might end up being detrimental for the workers because it might result in recruitment processes being extended even further than they already are. I have friends who had to go through nine stages of interviews before being offered the job - none of that time or expense is recuperable by the worker, who may well be unemployed throughout that entire process. So it’s going to make things harder, especially for small businesses who don’t have the time for an extremely over-thorough recruitment process.

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It reminds me of this lol.

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Exactly. And result in less hiring opportunities. SMEs are not going to be as willing to hire if they’re worried about not being able to fire bad workers and cause them legal issues.

Unfortunately politicians often look at soulless large corporations to bash on and policies because it’s an easy target to bash (although it’s often deserving) and people will support it. They don’t think about SMEs because it doesn’t make headlines and get votes.

Why do you think the tech industry culture is different in the UK than elsewhere in the West…my guess is it really isn’t. Therefore productivity or demonstrations of productivity ain’t really an issue specific to the UK. And given that most tech …you mean software I suppose…is dominated by Western countries particularly the US it doesn’t seem to be working too badly. I guess you work for an American company in the UK. Maybe you would prefer to work or an Asian tech or a small company that asks you to do everything for small money ? :face_with_monocle:

It’s not.

The entire tech and software industry is a financial bombshell, held up by dreamer investors who know fuckall about what is really going on, which is nothing for high expense. NVIDIA’s recent surge all related to gimmicks and high promises for AI, already dying off because it’s too complicated for small, medium and large businesses to implement and not actually adding any value to those businesses.

Twitter, Facebook, all that steaming pile of shite basically has never made any money and is being held up by dreamer investors once again.

The attitude is that Google or Facebook uses this or that pattern or structure or do these meetings so smaller software house companies need to do it too is ridiculous and is killing us. Many businesses will die because they cannot deliver what the customer asks for in a respectable period of time because of the extended bullshit gimmick hoops and discussions that they are forced to endure, so people walk away from it.

This is not specific to any company, I’ve been doing software for 15 years now, this happens all of the time. Make great promises, dazzle managers/investors with your wild dreams and fake estimates, and cripple them when it takes years longer or leave before actually implementing and delivering anything. Maybe you get found out and you get fired for being worthless, likely not, because Labour now won’t let that happen.

I don’t get paid a lot, we just got a massive pay cut, because we aren’t delivering stuff on time, due to these fucking meetings and bullshitters who made great promises and then left. I’ve worked in all sizes of companies, it’s the same issue. We have our arms tied behind our backs.

No it’s not.
Let’s get real here and get back to talking about work which you did later on in the post.

Make great promises, dazzle managers/investors with your wild dreams and fake estimates, and cripple them when it takes years longer or leave before actually implementing and delivering anything. Maybe you get found out and you get fired for being worthless, likely not, because Labour now won’t let that happen

here I assume you are talking about whizzkid managers parachuted in with MBAs a stint at Google or whatnot who come in promise the world and bugger off after 3 years of taking a huge salary and doing fuck all. Same in every industry to a degree mate.

Small companies are far more nimble but I feel you are taking about large organisations to an extent here, where layers are added onto layers of strategic programs with funny names.