Been there, done that! (re: job classification)

[Patrick O'Connell <titanide -at- MICRO -dot- ORG>]

Salaries for tech. writers at (I shall refer to it as E. Tech.), where I
used to work, were so far below the Canadian STC figures for so long that
several senior people had to quit before the necessity of
across-the-board, bring-in-line raises became apparent to management.

In fact, this was not localized to technical writers. There was quite the
ongoing exodus from R&D for a good eight months and steadily decreasing
morale because, among other reasons, senior, familiar faces kept
disappearing -- the ones people had gotten used to seeing every day for at
least 5 years. However, the programmers's salaries were typically much
more in keeping with industry averages, so below-average salary was
obviously not the most important issue for everyone who was unhappy.

Management did something very similar to what management at Doug's
employer did -- brought in an external HR firm to ask people candidly what
was wrong with the company, then announced with much pomp and circumstance
what were supposedly sweeping changes in corporate culture, the most
concrete of which were comparison-to-industry-standard salary reviews for
pretty much everybody.

From what I saw before I got the axe, and from what I've heard since,
though, plus ca change plus c'est la meme chose. I'm quite happy to no
longer be there. And I hope Doug's employer doesn't make the mistake of
thinking they can take one-time major action to resolve long-standing
issues(*), and keep the masses happy by throwing out a bone once in a
while.
(*) not to say that there were long-standing issues at Doug's company, but
    something must have motivated the global salary review?


PatO'