Quote:
Originally Posted by Yosh01
I was in a similar situation, until things changed. Never trust an employer. They do not have your best interests at heart.
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Normally, I would agree with you. But I think this company is a special case. No, I wouldn't go as far as say they have my best interest in mind. But I trust this company a lot more than I would trust other companies. Here are a few reasons why.
About 15 years ago a group of engineers working for a large firm decided to split up and start their own engineering firm. In other words, all the current corporate leaders are engineers. Unlike other companies where corporate leaders make a disproportionate amount of money than everyone else, our CEO makes a top engineer's salary.
I'm a liberal in that I don't believe that CEO's should make millions while everyone else makes so much less. My company currently partners with another company for a major project. Because right now in the winter months there is no construction going on, all their engineers are sitting at home without pay. It is my company's policy never to do that. We are all still here working on other things while the engineers from the other company are staying at home without pay. Their CEO gets paid millions. Our CEO gets paid an engineer's salary.
I work directly with 2 of the original founders of my company. During down time, they've told me a lot about our company's history. A few years ago when the company became very profitable when it won many major contracts, instead of the corporate leaders voting themselves a raise, everyone gets a company car and gas allowance.
Now, compare this to a company like Caterpillar. My brother in law works for it. Last year, their corporate leaders voted themselves a 300% pay raise while demanding that everyone else takes an 8% pay cut and 18% cut in benefits. And this was at a time when they were having record high profits.
But the main reason why I would trust this company more than others is this. Back when my business had just failed and I was looking for a job, I had an interview with one of this company's RE (resident engineer... it's the top dog in a group of engineers). It was a very informal interview. In fact, it took place at a Starbucks. In that interview, he told me about his beloved dog he found as a stray at a construction site. The next day, he called me and said he wanted to hire me and that I needed to go through some formalities.
Unfortunately, the following week he told me they were having trouble getting the state permit to access the work site because an environmental group was blocking it. In my head, I was having doubts. Were they giving me the go-around? A couple weeks went by and still nothing. Almost a month went by when I had just given up hope I got a call from him asking me if I was still available. Their lawyers finally won out. I said hell yes (not literally). He said someone from the corporate office will contact me the next day. Sure enough, someone did call me the next day to schedule for me to go to their corporate office in downtown Chicago to do some paperwork.
The point is they reached out to me. There was a hiccup in the road, but they were apologetic about it and kept reaching out to me. I just never experienced such a level of care from any other corporate entity before.
And now I got a brand new car from the company. It's pretty much their way of saying you're one of us now.
Of course I could be completely wrong on my interpretation of what I've observed. Time will tell, I guess.
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