After all the worrying I did about the meeting that I posted about in Ominous…, it turns out that the meeting was called to address some whinging about the company bonus.
For various reasons, the people who work on the project fall into three groups:
- Employees of the business unit
- Employees of another business unit that supplies “loaners’ to other business units that need temporary employees.
- Outside contract labour.
Evidently people in the first category got bonuses, but people in the second category didn’t. People like me in the third category didn’t either, but we’re not eligible for bonuses. On the other hand we also get paid overtime, so who the hell cares if we don’t get a piddly 6% bonus when you can work for 60 hours for a couple of weeks and make far more?
Anyway, the meeting was called because people in the second category thought they were hard done by, and so the boss’s boss felt a need to explain why. God only knows why they invited us hourly contractors, though. That was thoroughly waste of time.
The only “entertaining” thing for me was watching the boss’s boss mix subtle threats in amongst the explanations. First he talks about how if the project takes off, the business unit will be hiring people, both the second and third category people. And then he slips in a few remarks about how “you make career decisions every day”. Then when he decides that ‘s not subtle enough, he comes right out and warns against “making waves” and impacting management’s “perception of you”. At least he didn’t refer to “team players”.
In my field, the phrase is “You have to think like an owner.” Any associate with any complaints or just hard questions is told, “You’re not thinking like an owner.” The threat being, “We’ll remember this when you’re up for partner.”
Hrm, did the hourly contractors at least get paid for the hour y’all were at the meeting? That can’t be totally sucky. I get yearly salary, and I’ve no consolation when a meeting’s a waste of time – ‘cos I still have to bill out hours, and most meetings are non-billable. 🙁 (I don’t get paid directly for the hours I bill out, but profs are, more or less, billed directly for them, and if we don’t cause enough of those bills then we can’t justify hiring anybody else.)
I don’t think my contract exactly defines what’s a billable hour or not. Personally, I consider any hour that I’m somewhere where I don’t want to be but my boss does want me to be there billable, as well as any hour when I’m doing work for them. I billed for the time I spent on airplanes travelling to a customer site and they paid. I never quite had the nerve to bill for the time I spent sitting in hotel rooms on their behest, though. I also billed for the manadatory Health, Safety and Environment lecture I had to attend before starting work (and which has to be renewed this month because I’ve been here two years). And I bill when they call me at home to get me to log into customer sites to figure out what they screwed up this time.
Ahh, that makes sense. I don’t think I’d have the nerve to bill for sitting in a hotel room either, although I hope they pay for your food as well.