Bonkers

[Peter Corlett]

On 6 May 2007, at 09:00, Jonathan Stowe wrote:
[...]
> I think part of the thing is that it is not clear that the intangibles
> *are* covered and that the salaries being quoted are not sufficient to
> compensate for (doing web development|maintaining an awful code base|
> putting up with crap management) which seems to be the perception that
> people have of most of the jobs we are seeing and something no-one  
> seems
> to be stepping forward to counter.

It doesn't help that some of the claimed benefits are taking the piss.

The "pension schemes" I've seen often are nothing more than the  
employer doing a bit of paperwork to deduct pension payments at  
source from your income. So it's not actually a perk at all, unless  
you find filling in some forms somehow tricky.

Another place seemed to suggest that long hours was some sort of  
perk, because you could willy-wave with the rest of the staff as to  
how hard-working you were. They also offered me a 10% pay cut because  
it's so great to work there. The sweet irony there was that their  
core business was IT recruitment.

Another taking-the-piss perk: free pizza if you stay back late.  
Because sharing twenty quid of pizza with three other people is fair  
compensation for four hour's work. I have heard people complain that  
when they were starving after a late one, we found that the pizza  
place wouldn't deliver because the employer hadn't bothered paying  
them from the last time, so they would have to do without.

My latest "perk" appears to be that I'm going to be getting a  
Blackberry. That can sit on my desk, and if they've got a problem on  
a Friday evening, they should page it and I'll get right onto it with  
top priority when I get into work on Monday morning.

The current wheeze I'm discovering when looking around is that  
they'll put 2-3k onto my existing salary. They do however seem to  
miss the point that I'm on a 35 hour week, and they want 40. And  
they're in the arse end of nowehere. Yay for longer hours and a  
poorer hourly rate, so I can work to give TFL more money!

Really, the only worthwhile figures to look at are the hours and the  
salary. Everything else is just smoke and mirrors to make long hours  
and poor pay not look so bad.