What's the longest you've worked anywhere or at somegthing?

In my twenties I had 5 jobs in 10 years, longest stint anywhere 3 years. Moving was the only way to keep getting more money, promotion etc. That ended when I moved to the Midlands and I basically spent 27 years working the same gig or derivations thereof under four different corporate owners. The last company for 17 years.

I should have moved after about 10 years as I got more and more responsibility but little extra cash (ah, that US culture...) but that would almost certainly have meant a move geographically and I didn't want to do that.

Good luck with the job Rodge.

It was Politicians inaction that allowed all the tech to be sent to China in the first place and got us in to this mess we now find ourselves in. I could never understand why tech was allowed to go to China in the first place because they just steal it, reverse engineer it and use it to give them a hostile advantage over the West.

Over the years I have had several clients involved in manufacturing in China for things as varied as fork lift trucks and designer sanitary wear. They all have stories of factories being built across the road or next door where the Chinese effectively start up a copycat factory and start producing the same items which they then sell as their own. The sanitary wear items created a real problem because they were exact copies and no-one knew whether the shipments were real or fake. That was well over 10 years ago now but I consider western companies made a rod for their own backs by moving manufacture to China.

Hopefully it won't be too long before manufacture of chips etc can be moved back to more friendly areas of the world and although we might have to pay more, at least it will be reliable. I just hope that all the eggs aren't placed in the Taiwan basket because that might just give the Chinese even more reason to start hostilities and God knows where that might end.

The Chinese military would never have grown so quickly or become so technologically advanced without all the tech they suddenly found Western companies bringing in to China to make all manner of items.

Good luck Rodge.

I've been made redundant twice. Once when I'd just finished my apprenticeship but back then it was pretty common to be laid off when you'd just qualified and from my last job in computers but to be fair I pushed for that one. My last place had a round of redundancies and the first I knew of it was people queueing just outside my office to be given the news further down the corridor. Thankfully a lot of the people who went got taken on again when things picked up.

Hope you get good news sooner rather than later.

Thanks all.
The company I work for is quite large and has a turnover of about $30B per year with a very good margin.
The CEO has frozen increases for everyone at VP or above and pushed everyone else’s out by a quarter.

I turned down a role I was head hunted for to take this job last year so I’m not concerned right now.
I would like to be with the company long term as there is plenty of opportunity here, even in this climate.

Part of the problem with China is they’ve been manufacturing for so long that they can copy complicated equipment very easily and have been doing this in the semiconductor market, often copying multi million dollar machines and parts.

The good news is that all of the major companies in the industry are moving to Europe now because of the need to grow and the desire to be in the west again. Even TSMC who are Taiwan based are doing this now to stay in the market worldwide.

Still waiting to hear about what’s happening in work. The people in the US have all been told as they don’t have employee rights the same as they are over here.
Had a bizarre thing happen today.
There’s an ex military guy working for us and he’s very difficult to get on with. He treats people poorly and is very bossy.
Today, after me asking him for resources (people) to help on a number of occasions and him refusing every time, one of the guys was walking past me at 9:30 this morning and asked if I needed a hand. He was going home as he had nothing to do.
I said yes and we worked this morning, making good progress and after lunch, he got another guy to help who was also sitting around with nothing to do.
The military guy found out and reported this to his boss, who contacted their boss who told them to not work with me, because the military guy had said they shouldn’t.

So when I was finished, I went to his office and he was on a call. 2 others were there and they were aware of this guy escalating the storm in a teacup and they watched me as I discussed an issue with this guy.
In fairness, I’m about 6’1 and I stood up to my full height when I spoke to him.
I was calm, professional and courteous and the guy couldn’t even look me in the eye.

I then contacted my manager about his behaviour and pointed out that me actually giving people work and moving the project along was actually making the other guy look good and this is the thanks I got.

He was aware of the situation and is following up for me.

I don’t need crap like this in a job I like and will hopefully have for much longer when we are all waiting to hear what our futures look like.

The interesting thing is the rest of the staff who are aware of this situation are all in my side. They are tired of this guys tantrums and don’t want to work with him any longer.

 Yes good luck there Rodge. 

Agreed re China. I went to China in 2007 for my employer's global business unit managers meeting in Shanghai. Like a lot of companies then, especially US ones, my employer thought that the sun shone out of China's arse. I hated the place. A huge R&D and programming office had been opened there and staff numbers were expanding rapidly, with people in "high wage" countries being laid off. But the people "in the know" said that the quality was never there - you needed way more people than in a proper economy as the re-work rate was so high for coding issues and slack quality control.

Plus every week the staff demanded pay rises. And staff left all the time  - taking their US tech knowledge with them.  

Western companies had $$ signs in their eyes and their governments let them follow them. And they forgot the old proverb - if you are going to sup with the devil make sure to use a very long spoon.   

I don't know if this will happen at your place Rodge but I've only once had to select anyone for redundancy and the one who went was the biggest PITA I had.

Fingers crossed

The garage I worked at in 2013/4 took on a Great Wall franchise, at that time GW only sold their pickups over here.
Despite it being a fairly basic pickup - think late 90s era L200 at best - it was utter shite. Sure there was a comprehensive 5 year warranty but all that meant was farmers buying a cheap brand new vehicle, driving it in their usual manner and it spending a LOT of time back at the garage getting fixed under warranty.

It was awful to drive as well.
I'm sure later iterations might be better.

We couldn't actually get many of them due to massive domestic demand in China but the product was so crap I expect that either they canned it very quickly due to the warranty levels or simply didn't offer a warranty in the home market.


Anyway, good luck Rodge.

I've been away for 4 days and as usual have come back to a load of emails.
However the tone of some of them, from the higher echelons, make me think that 8 and a bit years is now plenty

Sounds like a good plan. Someone else can manage his neediness.