Conference 7.286::digital

The 2-year commitment idea seems like a good guideline for new employees
to the company especially, just to set expectations that they may have to
work through some difficult situations to prove their worth to the company.
It also has the effect of keeping people who have signed up for specific
projects from bailing out without meeting at least some of their commitments.

There are numerous ways this can be abused though.  If the content of a job
changes radically from what the employee committed to, isn't it unfair to
try to hold them to the original commitment?  If the employee is not new to
the company and has proved their worth elsewhere, do you really want to
hold them to a commitment that is not working out for either them or you,
when they might be able to again perform at a high level in another group?
And how much performance can you expect from an employee who is deeply
unhappy with their present job?  If you value your employee as an asset to
Digital, is it goodness for the company to keep them from moving into a
role where they could benefit the company even more?

My experience is that most of the managers who stress this as a hard-and-fast
rule are rarely around 2 years later when your commitment expires.  On the
other hand, I as a manager like to be able to set some expectations for
people that I hire.  So I think it is a reasonable guideline, but not
something you want to go overboard on.

What's more insidious (and maybe deserving of a separate topic) is the concept
of holding up an employee's move into another job by 3 months or more because
you have designated them as a "critical" resource, irrespective of whether
they have met their 2 year commitment or not.  I think there's a lot more
potential for abuse in this, even though it is true that you sometimes have a
project that seems critical to you that requires that employee to finish up
certain project commitments.  But in many cases the extent of your dependency
on a single employee is more reflective of the weakness of your management
abilities (in putting the right resources in place) than it is of the
employee's suddenly deciding to walk out on your hot project.

Any manager worth calling by that name should be exercising extreme caution
in hiring a candidate with a history of job-hopping.  And a manager should
be wary of prying away a worker in another group if the end effect will be
detrimental to our common employer.  So I think this is a case where the
80/20 rule applies once again: 80% of these problems probably arise from
poor management practices.
								paul

    I tend to agree with .1, don't go overboard on your interpretation of
    the 2-year rule. It is also there to protect the person who makes a
    move within the company. It would not be in your best interest to ei.
    relocate, and then be told that your services would longer be of use 
    to the company. I look at it, as a way to protect both parties.
    

    I suspect the '2-year' rule is a local thing.  When I joined Digital I
    was told simply that I could no apply for another job in my first
    twelve months.  That seemed fair enough (re ramping up), but otherwise
    I know of no such restriction.

  Time in Job 

 Time in job is expected to include several stages:

   o   A learning period, the length of which is dependent on the
       employee's skill level and on the complexity of the work.

   o   A period in which the employee is fully knowledgeable about
       the job and is able to contribute to the department's over-
       all performance.

 In addition, once fully knowledgeable, an employee may assume
 broadening assignments which assist the employee in preparing for
 the next job or level of responsibility.

 In all cases, the hiring manager must communicate time-in-job
 expectations to the employee before the employee is offered a
�position.  Non-exempt employees must remain on an assignment at
�least twelve months and exempt employees must complete at least
�twenty-four months before transferring.  There may be situations
 (e.g., Assembler I moving to Assembler II) in which job family
 progression is involved or when business conditions justify where
 these minimums would not be appropriate.  Normally, it is expected
 that a manager will request that an employee remain in a job beyond
 the minimum requirements.  Length of time will vary depending on
 the nature of the business, the complexity of the job and the
 amount of time required to fully learn the job and to contribute to
 the department's performance.

 It is considered advantageous for the employee to remain in a job
 for the period of time which includes the above stages.

  Date of Transfer 

 In most circumstances the transfer date should be no longer than
 two weeks from job acceptance for non-exempt employees and four
 weeks for exempt employees, unless all parties agree.

    As you can see from the previous note the whole thing is
    pretty losely said even the part that is pointed out by me 
    is followed by an escape mechanism.  Ultimately it all depends
    on your manager.  And what good manager would want an employee
    on their team who does not want to be in the team anyway.
    I'd just write the employee of and let the employee go on
    with their career.  (Of course I ain't a manager too. :-)

    Re: .2 
    
    The two year lock is NOT protection against relocation.  I know a new
    employee who's been with the company less than a year and has moved 3
    times so far.  For that matter, two weeks after I was hired, I was sent
    away for 9 months to another city with no warning.  Certainly something
    my hiring manager was aware of when hiring, but choose not to tell me
    about.  But that's the life of a SWS PSS person.  Which is one reason I
    got out.
    
    Re: many
    
    The two year lock is NOT just a local discretion.  I believe it is
    somewhere in the policy manual.  I've seen it used many times, always
    for the company's advantage, not for the employee's.  In other words,
    you can switch to a new job in under two years if the company wants it
    so.  But if you do, it's not likely unless there's a definite business
    need.  I don't really fault this, that's what Digital pays us all the
    big bucks for .... :-)  (yeah, we're all keeping ahead of the cost of
    living curve, right?)
    
    Steve

       As with all 'Policies' it has its good and bad points;
    
       Good
         It discourages people from job hopping.
    	 It keeps people in place long enough to realise a
    return-on-investment.
      	 It enables a person to broaden his/her base of knowledge and
    experience.
    
    	Bad
    	 It keeps people in jobs that didn't work out to expectations.
    	 A manager might just be saddled with someone they do not like.
    	 
    Of coarse people can move if it is agreeable to all parties.  I
    personally do not have any issue with the policy.  I see it as one of
    those tongue-in-cheek policies that can be broken if necessary.

re: .4,

> There may be situations
> (e.g., Assembler I moving to Assembler II) in which job family
> progression is involved or when business conditions justify where
> these minimums would not be appropriate.  

	I wonder if this was the clause used recently in a local case to
    prevent a person from leaving for an additional two years (a total of a
    four-year committment).  In this case, the employee (who has been at DEC
    a total of close to 8 years total) had been with a particular group for
    over 2 years.  Then, the employee was given a promotion.  The employee
    then continued to work for the same group for another 6 months or so,
    and recently learned of a new job nearer to home and much more convenient.

	When the employee approached the current managers about the new job
    prospect, they informed the employee of an additional 2-year committment
    which went along with the promotion of sixth months prior (surprise!).
    Therefore, even after working with the same group for over 2 and a half
    years, the employee was stuck with the same group until yet another 2-year
    committment period expired from the date of the promotion.  On top of that,
    The potential hiring manager persued the matter with personnel, but ran
    into some sort of loophole with the 2-year committment which supposedly
    justifies this action and was forced to abandon the job offer.
    
	It should be noted that this employee is not the first employee to
    encounter such problems leaving that particular group.  It turns out that
    the entire organization that this employee works for is notorious for such
    practices.  There are many more such cases of what could be considered
    abuse of the 2-year committment rule within said organization.  The local
    personnel group appears to lean towards management in most cases (possibly
    due to what appears to be an established working relationship between
    personnel and the group management).

				    -davo

Re: .-1

Very interesting! I'm sure many top-level managers job hop without being
in a specific position/assignment for two years... sounds like a bit of a
double standard to me.

Lee

The clause in the policy about job progression is clearly supposed to be
used to allow promotions within a "job family" without requiring the
clock to reset.

The "loophole" the hiring manager hit with personnel was clearly the
other manager claiming "business requirements" wouldn't allow him to
let the employee go.

The two-year requirement can also be waived.  My previous position was
entered with the hiring manager fully aware that I wasn't sure I wanted
to stay in his group for a long time.  When offering the job he specifically
stated that he would only require me to stay one year.  I had intended to
stay at least two anyway (job hopping doesn't look good on your resume),
but after 18 months _the_right_job_for_me_ came along and it was clear
to all involved that it was in the interests of the company for many
reasons (good time in the project for me to turn completed work over
to someone to maintain, happier employee, etc.) for me to transfer then.

/john

re: .8

>	When the employee approached the current managers about the new job
>    prospect, they informed the employee of an additional 2-year committment
>    which went along with the promotion of sixth months prior (surprise!).

IMHO, even being one of the evil manager class, this is still TOTAL horsesh*t!!
There is no way a promotion within the same group should incur an additional 2
year commit.  If the excuse was that the employee was a "critical resource",
then all that they can add on is 3 months (to the best of my knowledge).  The
employee had better be a manager or a high level consultant too, or even this
3 month extension should not stand up to scrutiny in front of Personnel.
								paul

    The clock does not get reset on promotion nor does it get reset on
    reorganization (or nobody would ever leave the virtual group they 
    are in :-)!  It only gets reset when you actually move groups through
    the formal process of changing jobs.

re: .11,

	The employee was also deemed "crucial" because the employee is a
    system manager in a group that is somewhat short on technical resources.
    In my opinion, it is the group's fault for relying too heavily on what
    few techical resources they have, and perhaps even taking them for granted
    in certain instances.

	The employee did take the matter to personnel, and the personnel rep
    went so far as to call a "corporate consultant" of some sort on the phone,
    who then ruled in favor of the employee's management in holding the employee
    for the additional 2 years due to the promotion the employee received (even
    though the employee never asked for the promotion to begin with).  While 
    the employee probably could have pursued the matter further (with whom I'm
    not sure), the resulting friction caused by the enforcement of this
    nebulous rule was just enough to discourage the potential hiring manager
    from bothering to pursue the hiring of the employee any further.  As such,
    the job prospect disappeared.

				     -davo

	One person I knew in a similar situation opted to leave the company.
	I've always wondered how pleased the manager was to have kept to
	person from getting the other job within DEC after they wound up
	losing a good person, not only for himself, but for the whole
	company.

	I guess I'm lucky as no manager has ever stood in my way when an
	opertunity came up for me with in the company. Most of them have
	had the attitude that if an other job would make me happier and
	more productive it was to the companies advantage to let me take
	it. Any other view seems shortsighted to me.

				Alfred

re: .14,

	I feel that managers who abuse this two-year commitment guideline
    as in the case I have outlined here (and believe me, that isn't the only
    case I could mention), obviously do not care about either their employees
    or the rest of the corporation.  They only care about maintaining their
    own little empires within DEC.

				      -davo

    I had a similar problem when I was trying to transfer someone into my
    organization.  It was to be an international relocation.  We offered to
    pay return transfer costs (usually home country pays these).  The
    individual's management still would not agree.  Gave two excuses.  The
    person was promoted (based on passing a coporate board) and the relo.
    was not covered in his job plan. (It has been several years and I don't
    think that the person still has a job plan.)  This person's management
    did not care if the person left the company even though the person was
    being courted by competition.  I understand that there is something
    called a corporate ombudsman that provides arbitration in tough
    situations.  I wish I had known about the corporate ombudsman several
    years ago.

    re .15 A lot of those 'little empires' are crumbling, 
    especially in manufacturing. There simply aren't enough
    (any!) new hires into positions such as Assembler.
    There are production lines with temps building state-of-
    the-art machines. In such instances  the loss of a single
    'real' Deccie is a nightmare. Sales-and-service isn't the
    only shorthanded area in this company.

>    person was promoted (based on passing a coporate board) and the relo.
  Do you mean the Engineering Review Board (ERB)? Six years ago, someone in
authority told me that if you are promoted from WC2 to WC4 thru the E.R.B. while
remaining in the same group, you incur a new 2-year commitment, but if you are
promoted directly, you don't. In the case Dave McClure described, the person
didn't initiate the promotion, so I assume it was not thru the E.R.B.
  At the time, I looked in the Orange Book and couldn't find anything about a
promotion carrying a 2-year commitment. I did see something about a "change in
job status" that could be interpreted to mean the above.
  Does anyone reading this know of another case where someone was promoted from
WC2 to WC4 (not thru the ERB) and was told (before or after looking for another
job) that it carried a new 2-year commitment? I'm concerned about this because
I wouldn't want someone to feel it isn't "safe" to be promoted.