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Today I received an email from my boss letting me know that "Unfortunately, your request to attend the blank conference was turned down. If you would like to discuss it, please see me."
What a surprise! Even though I predicted this months ago, it was still hard to take. This company spews on about how their employees are their number one asset and without us they can't satisfy their customers. The send out PR to the press indicating how great the employee programs are. The programs are decent, but those are the basics. It's the little things that keep the workforce motivated...like education. In the technical field things change fairly rapidly (as most of you likely know). I'm at a level now that courses out of IBM are just not going to cut it. I need the leading edge stuff and user experiences you can only get at a conference. In addition, I actually receive the cost of the conference FREE because I am on another planning committee in the organisation that puts on the conference. All it costs these clowns is travel, hotel, and maybe two or three meals.
Did I tell them that? Ummm, YES! Justifications coming out of my yin yang, but the approval process got to one level above our VP and was squashed. Travel expenses have been limited to customer-facing ventures. There is a brand new release of the software/DB that I support out this year. I need to learn as much as I can to be a leader in the direction our customer wants/needs to take. That is what my employer expects...but they don't mention how I am to do it. Every year it's the same rhetoric, "You need to put a training plan together to further your career, blah blah blah". Well it's the third year now where my request has been rejected at the last minute due to budget cuts.
I also love the part about seeing my boss to discuss things with her if I wish. I had to chuckle over that one. What in the H-E-double hockey sticks is she going to tell me? That she has "no power to grant any of this?" "These are cost-cutting measures we, as a company, need to take." "I know, I know, I don't agree with it either. But at least we tried." -- BITE ME!!!!
Oh, but I do feel so much better that by not going I have helped the company make ends meet, once again. Since we became part of the "family", I have personally put money in the corporate coffers by:
1. Not attending any external training/education that cost the company money for three years.
2. Accepting no pay increases for three years.
3. Essentially taking a pay cut by consolidating a pager so I go on call less and taking all overtime as time off not paid.
4. Cutting back on work from home days because management has a problem with the "optics" of it even though the US arm of the company has a program in place and encourages work and lifestyle values. (again, just rhetoric)
Way to go me!
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