Conference 7.286::digital

  I suspect the argument in favor reads as follows:

    If you commit to a new position within your group,, you 
    are still committing for the minimum 're-up' time of 1
    or 2 years.

    By definition, a technician who becomes an engineer is 
    going to a new position within the group, thus the 
    supposed requirement.

  Even assuming this is a policy, like all DEC policies I 
  suspect it is negotiable.  Plus, if the candidate has an 
  immediate transfer in mind, they might approach the incoming 
  CC manager to see if the new manager will put them in front 
  of the review board.  If the transferee were willing to play 
  'you bet your job, this would probably work fine.  If the 
  candidate were on good terms with the outgoing CC manager, 
  you probably wouldn't even need to pledge the big stakes.

                                   Atlant

    I have a side question, that I hope has not been discussed elsewhere in
    this file.  Regarding the new policy of requiring a 2 year stay on a
    particular job before someone can transfer; is that a reasonable policy
    given that the LRP process is for 1 year?   Even if you forget about
    the specifics of LRP, the point is that many groups have no idea what
    they will be doing in two years.  I can understand the desire to
    distribute the cost of relocating someone over a longer period, but
    when someone hasn't been relocated.. is this reasonable?
    
    - M

< Note 88.2 by TBD::ZAHAREE "TheTeflonHacker" >
                           -< digression, sort of. >-

    I have a side question, that I hope has not been discussed elsewhere in
    this file.  Regarding the new policy of requiring a 2 year stay on a
    particular job before someone can transfer; is that a reasonable policy
    given that the LRP process is for 1 year?   Even if you forget about
    the specifics of LRP, the point is that many groups have no idea what
    they will be doing in two years.  I can understand the desire to
    distribute the cost of relocating someone over a longer period, but
    when someone hasn't been relocated.. is this reasonable?
    
    - M

  There was an earlier note on the two-year commitment, but it's
OK to discuss it in these replies. I assume LRP means "long range
plan". Is that the same an an LRDP (long-range development plan)?
  The previous reply brought up a good point, that reorganizations
occur so often that it's hard to predict what the job will be like
in two years. I would have preferred it if they had put some guide-
lines in the policy for releasing someone from a commitment in case
of a major reorganization instead of leaving it up to the good will
of one's supervisor and personnel rep. 
  The earlier note said the main reason for a longer time commit-
ment was due to the expense of training for a new position. I'm
sure the cost of paid relocation was a consideration too.

I was involved in a situation where I wanted to change jobs a few
months before the two-year time period expired.  My original cost
center prevented this, holding on for the "legal" time period;
which left a fair amount of bad blood on all sides.

They motivated this by pointing to the expensive relocation (Sweden
to Maynard).  Later, I found out that my new cost center would have
happily picked up their pro-rata share of the relocation, but the
old cost center said no.

The moral of the story is that, if your old center wants to be
nice, they can be nice; and if they want to be nasty, they
can be nasty, too.

Martin.

    RE: .4
    
    Interesting that you were just a few months short of the two year
    period as this policy went into effect on last July. Must be some
    thing about coming from Sweden to Maynard.
    
    RE: TIG (time in grade)
    
    I believe there was a statistic generated concerning how long it
    took for the average WC4 employee to become productive in their
    new job.  I don't remember the specifics but it was something on
    the order or 15 - 19 months.  This was my understanding of why the
    2 year TIG policy. It was felt that it was costing DEC mucho dollars
    moving employess around, but the return was very low.

    15 - 19 months is not an unreasonable period to expect for complete
    re-training in an area in which the employee has little or no prior
    experience.
    
    I'd be surprised if such a situation exists in the typical WC4
    transfer, however.  In engineering, the average time-to-contribute
    (at a reasonable level) is likely around 3 - 6 months, though
    further increases can be expected over a longer period.
    
    That assumes an internal transfer rather than a new-hire unfamiliar
    with DEC - but that's what we're talking about, isn't it?
    
    It still makes sense to ask for more than a year's commitment, so
    that the start-up (3 months or so) training overhead can be paid
    back.  Also, many if not most DEC projects take over a year to
    complete, and continuity is important.
    
    But circumstances should always be allowed to alter specific cases.
    There's no excuse for inflexibility (and likely little to be gained
    by holding onto someone who would rather be elsewhere).
    
    		- Bill
    

In my case, a 24 month committment was requested because it was
an international relocation.  This seems reasonable, given the
expense involved.

Martin

    it seems that 15 - 19 months to become productive would be for a
    new-hire (from outside the company) to learn our somewhat idiosyncratic
    environment, OR for an internal transfer into a significantly different
    position, but it seems longer than intuitively expected for transfers
    within a familar job environment.
    
    however, I did recently (within the past couple of weeks) hear that
    someone had discovered that the average tenure was around 12 - 14
    months, I'm not sure if that was for promotions or transfers since
    it was mentioned secondhand in a different context.  In either case
    it might be that the 2-year commitment is intended to slow down
    job mobility in order to increase the typical tenure period.
    

    If we need lawyers to draft legal definitions for terms that are
    used for discussing personnel matters, then we might as well get
    lawyers who will advocate a definition favorable to Digital's
    management, and a few to advocate a definition favorable to the
    employees, then we ought to negotiate it all, and then as employees
    we ought to be all able to vote on whether collectively all employees
    agree with the negotiated definitions...
    
    Look folks, if we've descended to picking nits over what the "same
    job" means, that means we're no longer able to solve these little
    problems without assuming the roles of adversarial worker-manager.
    
    We won't have to worry about being acquired by AT&T, we'll corrupt
    ourselves from within and become indistinguishable from AT&T.

Re .9: This is one of my major concerns about a two-year commitment.
It seems like there is no limit on how often a job situation can
change IF the change is initiated by management, not the employee.
   Has anyone been in a situation where he deliberately held back
his performance to "prove" that his manager would be better off
to let him go before his two years were up? I think there are some
people who would be too conscientious to do this and therefore 
their managers might decide that it would be more cost-effective to
lock them in for the full two years.

    Whatever my feelings about the two-year commitment, I couldn't bring
    myself to intentionally lower my performance to get out of it. 
    I take my obligation to Ken too seriously for that.  Besides, I
    believe something like that will inevitably come back to bite you
    in the end.
    
    No, I believe the employee survey (if we ever have another one)
    would be a good forum to address this.  Or even making our views
    known to the Personnel organization.  The NEW Digital may be different,
    but there are still ways to solve things like this within the system.

    
    Speaking as a manager, decreasing your performance to get a transfer
    wouldn't work with me. Unless you wanted a transfer out. I don't
    believe in transfering a "problem" within the company.
    
    On the other hand, I also don't believe in keeping a person in a
    job that they don't want. Takes up more time than it is worth and
    I would much rather end any employee relationship on good terms.
    
    							Mark
    

    	Speaking not as an "employee", but as an "individual contributor",
    I think there is a little more room for formalization in terms of actual
    commitments made between an individual contributor and their manager: it
    might make a nice VAX utility if it were on-line (how about ELB -
    Electronic Review Board).  All anyone really wants is a fair trial,
    right?

    	Fortunately, most problems settle "out of court", but it might be
    nice to have something to fall back on.  A program could negotiate
    contracts, but the rest is up to the people involved.  George Paquin
    says it best "The first thing you want to look for is a good company.
    Once you've found it, you want to shop for two things: (1) A good job.
    (2) A good manager."  To that you might add (3) A good group.

    						-DAV0