A Great Place to Work?

As a former employee, I was interested in the article the KNS ran today about Denso Manufacturing Tennessee’s expansion. It was about what I would expect from a local paper writing about a local company expanding–lots of talk about new jobs, complimentary remarks about the people of the region, and a few standard corporate-type comments from top management–nothing really remarkable or controversial. The comments posted by readers, however, are very interesting. Some comments came from employees and former employees who actually know what it’s like to work there, while others commented only on what they’ve heard.

So what’s it really like to work there? Well…

Decision--To Denso or Not to DensoThe comments from current and former employees are not that far off. But to be fair, I suspect Denso is not much different than any other large corporations in many respects. I’d say that it’s better in some ways and worse in others, but all-in-all the good and bad average out for most of their employees. Sure, there are people there who think it’s really bad, but it always seemed to me that the real reason they don’t like their jobs is that they feel stuck there. Some probably feel stuck because they have been dead ended in their career by the powers that be and can’t move up, while others feel stuck in that they don’t have the skills (or at least don’t think they had the skills) to move out. Others may not even realize that they are stuck by their own comfort and fear of change. I’m sure some feel stuck for a combination of these reasons.

There are people who love working at Denso, and they have their reasons as well. It’s been a very stable company traditionally, and for someone who is worried about layoffs or job shortages it’s a very compelling reason for working there. In my mind, that sort of falls into the fear (real or imagined) that they don’t have the skill set to go elsewhere. But hey, if you’re happy I’m happy, right? There are others who are basically coasting, but I think that’s probably common at most big companies as well.

For me, the good outweighed the bad for most of the time I was there. Were there things I didn’t like? Most definitely. For instance, you can forget about anything like this ever happening there. They (whoever “they” are) would never allow it. The performance evaluation system is a mirage for the most part, and I doubt that will ever change. But I really enjoyed the work I was doing, and I hated leaving my co-workers. Loving what you do and liking the people you spend your days with is not something you can find just anywhere, and it kept me around for a long time. However, I was ultimately placed in a situation that was going to make my relationship with the company much more lopsided than I was comfortable with. I’m not one to stay around and complain, especially knowing that change, if it does come, is slow for Denso. I’m no victim either, and besides, I have confidence in my skills. The only immediate way to resolve the problem was with compensation. How did that discussion go? Well, I’m a former employee. 🙂

I always found it a little ironic that Denso spends a great amount of resources trying to figure out how to recruit engineers out of college but doesn’t seem to find much value in retention of engineers and technical staff. HR held regular meetings with engineers on how to recruit from colleges, and they usually ended in engineers expressing that exact sentiment. It may be that Denso has a reputation on campuses as the type of company that isn’t attractive to today’s college students. Is that reputation based on what they hear from Denso employees and on the web? Does it come from fellow students who do co-ops at Denso? I can’t say for sure.

I don’t know the numbers or stats, but it seems like replacing good people would be much more expensive than retaining them. However, they make billions, and I make not-billions, so who am I to second guess them? Maybe they’ve calculated all the factors and decided that paying competitive salaries for years of experience would put them in a situation where no one would ever leave. Would zero turnover be as bad as high turnover? Dunno.

So the point of this post–is Denso a great place to work? I guess it depends on what you want from a job. It was great for me for a long time. As I said before, I enjoyed the work I did at Denso and the people I worked with, although I must say there were very few jobs or departments there I would have enjoyed as much as I enjoyed mine. Jobs that provide opportunities to develop skills that are universally marketable are somewhat limited there. If stability is a major factor for you, then by all means it is a great place to work. As with almost everything else, you’ll probably have to compromise a few things that you’d like to have in exchange for this stability, but it’s worth it for a lot of people.

LOSTer’n’a Easter Egg

Last week’s episode of LOST (“The Constant”) answered a lot of questions for me–I thought.  My idea was that the island is the nexus for all possible universes.  This would explain why Jack’s father is alive in the future and Kate is so protective of Aaron.  I think that in the universe they return to Jack’s dad never went to Australia, so Claire was never born, therefore Aaron couldn’t exist.  But Claire came to the island from a universe where she does exist, and Aaron was born there.  Via the island he was able to move from a universe where he does exist to one where he doesn’t, or at least isn’t supposed to.

I was really looking forward to getting more answers this week.

No items matching your keywords were found.

Spoilers coming Continue reading “LOSTer’n’a Easter Egg”

Good Lesson From a Newspaper Guy

From Michael Silence: 

Here’s a rule of thumb: It is not incumbent upon you to prove a document is public. It is incumbent upon a government employee to prove it is not.

*Read the story which prompted that nugget.  Interesting:

Ms. Long again stated that they were not public and would not be public until today. After I insisted that they were public, she finally said she just didn’t care and handed me the bids to review.

*Not Knox County–YAY!

My (sort of) Smoke Free Workplace

The company I work for removed all smoking areas upon our return on Wednesday as the second part of their plan to eliminate smoking on our campus completely.  The State of Tennessee is eventually going to make us do it anyway, right?  As of January 2, employees are only allowed to smoke in their cars.

I bet on the under (2 days) and was unpleasantly pleased to find I’d won with plenty of breathing room when I walked into the restroom yesterday and smelled cigarette smoke less than 12 hours after the ban had been implemented.

Isn’t it funny that treating people like children almost guarantees they will act like children?

The next bet is how long it will take for the company to require management to take turns patroling the restrooms to catch outlaw smokers.

Deputy Fired for Stealing $10 in Gas

From the KNS:

A Knox County sheriff’s deputy was terminated today after being charged with stealing less than $10 worth of gasoline.

I think it is more newsworthy that all of the other incidents involving county employees and greater sums of money haven’t ended in termination. That’s exactly what would happen at my job, and I’m not open to public scrutiny like these jobronis are.

See, it doesn’t matter how much you steal. All that matters is that you are a thief.

Ron Paul is Not Ron Paul Enough

Extreme Mortman has a hilarious list of why Ron Paul is not libertarian enough. It was partly meant as an experiment to see how many Ron Paul supporters would flock to anything said about Ron Paul if his name was in a post, which is pretty dead on–did I mention it was a list about Ron Paul? However, there are some real gems in there, especially if you can take a joke (some of the people who’ve commented on it thusfar obviously can’t). I was actually surprised some of these didn’t make the list. I came up with them, and I’m not all that clever:

* In his years as an OB, Ron Paul never prescribed medicinal marijuana to a patient, despite their frequent complaints of nausea

* Ron Paul’s name has not been released as a customer of the D.C. Madam, therefore he doesn’t support a woman’s right to be a prostitute.

* Ron Paul did not take George Stephanopolous’s action when he said he’d bet every cent that Paul couldn’t win. He may be anti-gaming.

* Ron Paul has yet to utter the phrase “Fv(k the FCC!” in any of the live debates.

* When traveling by air, Ron Paul allows the pilot of the plane to take direction from those commie FAA employees.

to be continued…

Tim Hutchison De-certified

We’ll see how it pans out, but for now this is good news. At least Hutchison and company didn’t insult the intelligence of the citizens of Knox County by sneaking around to get the maximum pension for him in a sneaky, clever way. Nope. They made it obvious, right in front of our faces.

The maneuvering in this situation reminds me of that scene in “Casino” where Robert DeNiro’s character is constantly changing his title at the casino so that his application for a gaming license is perpetually kept at the bottom of queue to be processed. Food and Beverage Manager, VP of Guest Relations, Head Pool Cleaner, or whatever else, the fact is he was running the place.

Look for Hutchison to start his new job on Monday as “Special Guest Referee” in a basketball game between the deputies and the inmates.

And how about this:

Hutchison responded to the decision in a statement posted on the Knox County Sheriff’s Office’s Web site

Is it really okay for County employees to use public assets like the Sheriff Office’s website to make opiniated posts for political and/or financial gain? That seems unethical if not illegal.

Knoxviews has a pretty entertaining take on Knox County Deathmatch 2007.

JL Kirk Situation Hopefully Rectified

Surprise, surprise.

All they really wanted was to not have their company misrepresented by their mentally challenged employee who left a message on Katherine Coble’s blog.

JL Kirk’s main concern at the outset was that we communicate their position – which is different from the information originally told to me by a JL Kirk employee – that JL Kirk is not a continuation of the defunct Bernard Haldane company, either in terms of corporate identity or stock ownership, and that JL Kirk’s principal, Kirk Leipzig, is only a former Bernard Haldane employee but did not buy any assets or stock of Bernard Haldane.

Which is a round about way of saying, “We’re not denying we’re butthooks, we’re just not the butthooks that our butthook employee claimed we are in her post.”

Nice.