Are you characterized as a troublemaker or are you wise enough to keep quiet?
The first thing I learned here is that you should never be too engaged in your job. Just like someone said, as soon as you start, albeit very subtly pointing out some small things that can be changed for both us and our clients, and eventually BNY Mellon - they will label you a troublemaker and try to make your job harder in every way.
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Id--t managers protecting themselves
For BNYM managers, trouble makers are the once who works the hardest, honest, and loyal to them. Guys trash these so called directors and managers, enjoy while it last. These classless animal doesn’t deserve none of what you think they do.
Agreed, @1etx. My last boss had no business being in a leadership role. Was the worst in all the years of my time there and I had some real beauties that this one made them look like the boss of the year.
Yet, I was laid off and now living my best life while my former co workers and that boss work 18 hour days 7 days a week sending e mails on TPS reports.
I found many of my coworker were just "yes men" and were always in fear of losing their job. There were many times that I spoke up to point out that a deadline would not be met and I was always right. I wouldn't say I was a troublemaker since I was able to convey my concerns in a fairly positive way and it was obvious we were doing everything reasonable to get things done as soon as possible. Or we would find ways for the things that mattered to meet the deadline with less important things being rolled out later. (I didn't work on the MS Teams rollout, lol).
I was a troublemaker on my team too. Normally a quiet, shy, heads down hard at work person, when I saw injustices occurring on and to my team and I had become miserable working there in an environment afraid of change and knowing I had nothing to loose, I decided to become the troublemaker and speak up on behalf of myself and others when managers were being morally corrupt to people. It was the best decision I ever made. I’ve never disliked any boss in any company with exception of my last boss. I became a thorn in his side giving him bad reviews, protesting his assessment of me. I got my job done and done well through it all but thankfully made the layoff list. It’s been wonderful not being in that miserable place. The place is like a haunted house full of monsters. Good riddance to it. The world is more beautiful on the other side. Many places offer health insurance. Don’t let that stop you from looking. Engineering a layoff isn’t so bad either. There are benefits to leaving no matter which route you choose.
At BNY Mellon I WAS the troublemaker!!!!!! No characterization needed. I rocked that boat so hard!!! Seriously I had nothing to loose. I actually had a good attitude going into BNYM, but once I realized I was in a dead end job, and that management was unfair, and that I couldn't trust a single person at that company, I became the troublemaker.
My biggest claims to fame being the BNYM Troublemaker was criticizing management on Mysource Social for everyone to read. They said I wasnt using MySS enough, sooooooo.......
They put me on BE for that. So when my end of the year review came up and it was time for me to do the self assessment, I wrote the self assessment as if I was the manager instead of the employee. I wrote a negative critical review of my immediate supervisor so that the higher ups would read it.
I was gonna be out the door regardless of what I did so why not???
Well it turns out I didnt get fired for doing that.....but it DID engineer my layoff. I was eventually out the door with full sub payments and benefits. I couldnt be happier. I wanted to be gone and they gave me what I wanted. I was honestly pleased. It all worked out.
When I first came into BNYM shortly after the financial crisis of 2008, I had been out of work for going on two years and was just thankful to find something steady that wasn't flipping burgers. My very first supervisor told me, "just keep your head down and do the work" and I'd get by just fine.
Well, flash forward to going on 12 years now....9 of them after I was made a full-time BNYM employee. That advice has kept me in place just fine, and until recently I felt grateful to have employment that paid decent, not great, but decent wages. Those wages were a lot better in 2009 than they seem to be now, though, due to every year since then getting under-compensated on salary merit increases (only once in 9 years a 2% increase, every other time a 1 to 1.9 increase). Like a frog sitting in a p-t of water starting to boil...you don't notice the danger of this early in the process, but over time you realize the temperature of the water getting a lot hotter as time goes by.
Only within the past few years have I raised some issues about what is expected of me, and this only because the amount of tasks I'm expected to do have increased whereas my pay has not. My feeling is that if the company wants me to take on more duties and responsibility, then there should be a corresponding increase in my salary, too. Yet I and others in my team (the few that I've privately discussed this matter with anyway, but usually where there are some in a large group, there are more also) have received no monetary recognition of these added responsibilites. I requested a meeting with my team leader and our overall supervisor where I tried to make a point of how much our job responsibilites had increased and was basically met with an attitude of, well, that's the job now, what's the problem?
I'm not ungrateful, but then again I also know when I'm being taken of advantage of. If it wasn't for the simple fact that this job provides health coverage I would have quit a couple of years ago. It's sad that America is one of the few 1st world countries that bind employees to jobs simply because they would be left vulnerable for any medical problems if they wished to leave them. As much of a tragedy that the Covid pandemic has been, at the same time I feel positive that a national catastrophe like this may have been just what this country needed to shake a lot of people out of their lethargy and realize that going forward things need to change and what we had as a status quo before wasn't all that great anyway.