What is up with people?

[kurtrules]

Talk about hiring, working from home, especially in IT, has opened up avenues into fraud. Working with my manager into hiring a front end developer was a painful experience which nearly cost us the client. We were finally able to hire and onboard UI devs this week.

The biggest issue - Impersonation during interviews.

 

[Jampy00]

The biggest issue - Impersonation during interviews.

That is disturbing. I just found out that one of the people we hired left for another job. Never bothered to tell us, just walked out at the end of the day, never to return. I think this is a problem as well. People say yes to every job then juggle start days to see which one suits their needs (is the easiest..)

 

[nobbie48]

Five pages in five hours. Something hit a nerve.

Firstly Jampy00's company probably can't afford a HR department and is likely dependant on a lot of gut feel. I've lost touch with the head hunter market but they used to charge six months salary and if it didn't work out there was a discount for the next applicant. Small companies often have other problems like nepotism and no room to grow upwardly. Benefits etc.

Ages ago I worked for a company that depended on low end labour. The work was so menial that paying more didn't get better employees. The company was dependent on the downtrodden who could eke out an existence on the minimal wages. The product was not open to raising prices. In reality we got orders from our customers saying "We're paying $XX this week for your product"

There are a lot of "Me too" products and services with little hope of becoming market leaders.

There are product markets that have no little hope of becoming leaders. What's happened to printing companies now that catalogues are online and invoicing is done by email? Products still need packages so maybe some hope.

It's hard to incentivize people with jobs that won't pay a mortgage. How can a responsible person envision buying a new car, a house or taking a foreign vacation, all things he / she sees in advertising every day many times a day and portrayed as the norm?

Losers act like losers. How does one turn that around? With the exception of paying unsustainable wages how does a company get a reliable employee?

Loyalty: What does employee John Doe get from his job at GTA Widget Inc. that he couldn't get somewhere else?

Hint: The Americans are good at this.The employee gets to brag that his boss has a bigger yacht and paycheque than the boss down the street.

An electrician I worked with was trying to help a friend get a factory job that paid better but the friend wanted to keep his low income airport job because he got to wear yellow badge that made him feel important.

McDonald's "You deserve a break today" campaign is typical of attitude development. Why does a person deserve a break? If they did something like finding a cure for cancer I'm OK with it but I think that deserves more than a cheeseburger.

it's a tough problem. If we raise minimum wages we lose more jobs to the Pacific Rim. With those jobs gone where do students get the coin for post secondary school education to get us out of the rut?

Want to spread the good jobs? Give people longer vacations to match some European countries. Does that make us lose jobs to the Pacific Rim?

What party has the ability to come up with legislation to correct the above?

 

[nobbie48]

No more free government training. You want employees who can do the job? Train them yourself. Trucking companies are the worst offenders, getting immigrant labour that is poorly trained and wage-exploited.

If the employer pays to train a new man the competition can lure him away and get a trained employee without the cost. You can write all the non competition rules you want but don't hold your breath waiting to win in court.

 

[Roadghost]

If the employer pays to train a new man the competition can lure him away and get a trained employee without the cost. You can write all the non competition rules you want but don't hold your breath waiting to win in court.

They won't lure him away if you're paying competitive wages. That's the real free market. This whole corporate welfare scam has to end, with CEO and business owners paying no tax and pocketing outrageous profits, government subsidies, foreign worker programs - the list of corrupt programs we have whose sole purpose is to keep wages down against the free market is outrageous. Supply and demand should be the rule. Right now it's capitalism for the poor and socialism for the rich.

 

[GreyGhost]

They won't lure him away if you're paying competitive wages.

I agree with the second half of your statement, the logic on the first part is flawed. If company A is training everybody and Company B is only stealing trained employees, Company B is able to pay employees more than A as they have avoided a significant expense.

 

[Roadghost]

Five pages in five hours. Something hit a nerve.



What party has the ability to come up with legislation to correct the above?

If the job is too difficult to do, too labour intensive, perhaps the employer should look at a way to make it more sustainable as a job? Doing a line job for 8 hours a day is going to have a high turnover, but break it down to 2-3 hours a day and rotate your employees with other jobs might make them want to stay.

Look, my company has the same problem - high turnover, high risk of injury, difficult working conditions - and the losers who do it get paid $70,000/yr. A reasonable wage but guys call in sick, don't show up, or disappear mid-shift and never come back. You get in the boardroom to solve the problem and the one thing that the execs won't move on is working conditions. Cost is too high, cheaper to just turn 'em over. Both are expensive, because a high degree of training is required. Why is cost an issue? Because ABC down the street is getting government help that undercuts pricing and the agency is full of exploitable people who don't understand the risks.

 

[Roadghost]

I agree with the second half of your statement, the logic on the first part is flawed. If company A is training everybody and Company B is only stealing trained employees, Company B is able to pay employees more than A as they have avoided a significant expense.

It's never that simple. Company B is usually bigger, with more opportunity and it's quite frankly better run. Just try and pass a law saying all companies have to pay X amount of dollars and produce X number of trainees for every (1) they hire. They scream bloody murder. They would rather have the government (taxpayer) foot the bill.

 

[Katatonic]

They won't lure him away if you're paying competitive wages. That's the real free market. This whole corporate welfare scam has to end, with CEO and business owners paying no tax and pocketing outrageous profits, government subsidies, foreign worker programs - the list of corrupt programs we have whose sole purpose is to keep wages down against the free market is outrageous. Supply and demand should be the rule. Right now it's capitalism for the poor and socialism for the rich.

Wait wait wait…. I can pay no tax, pocket outrageous profits AND take advantage of government subsidies?!! Please, tell me how! Seriously. Tell me how.
If that’s really your view of business owners then you don’t have a clue about running a profitable company. Seems like all I do is pay. Payroll, payroll tax, import tax, government reporting fees, WSIB, benefits, commercial insurance, inflated bank fees for a “business account”…..the costs involved with running a business are endless.
To paint business owners as people who just sit back and rake in money is a joke.

 

[bigpoppa]

Talk about hiring, working from home, especially in IT, has opened up avenues into fraud. Working with my manager into hiring a front end developer was a painful experience which nearly cost us the client. We were finally able to hire and onboard UI devs this week.

The biggest issue - Impersonation during interviews.

How exactly was someone impersonating?

do ya'll just hire someone without seeing their previous work? Or doing code tests?

 

[GreyGhost]

How exactly was someone impersonating?

do ya'll just hire someone without seeing their previous work? Or doing code tests?

If they are doing a remote interview, how do I know that I am interviewing the same person that will be doing the work? I have no idea what they are supposed to look like. An enterprising soul that interviewed well and knew what they were doing could interview for lots of positions and build an army of sub employees working for cash. Sure the system is unlikely to function long-term but if you can keep each one going for a few months, it could be quite lucrative.

 

[Freddy F]

Responding to the OP, you have those (like me) who grew up in a home where the parents worked their ***** off, maybe European immigrants who came here 50 years ago, 37 bucks in their pocket stepping off the boat, maybe not even knowing English, scraping by, buying beer was an absolute luxury, and their offspring grew up not knowing anything else than a strong work ethic. And now my generation has had kids who got coddled and never had a fire lit under their ass...and here we are.....my point is, it all begins at home, and good parenting, and some luck. And lazy parents produce lazy kids.

 

[mimico_polak]

I don’t think it matters how much you pay….you still get losers.

Ive been on job sites where the common labourer swinging a shovel was making 150k/year, the foremen close to 200k and in each case we had idiots that wouldn’t show up, or would come in coked up because the money was there. Funny part is they felt it’s their right to make that type of money.

Losers will always be losers. Some are just luckier / more fortunate to be rich losers than others.

 

[kurtrules]

How exactly was someone impersonating?

do ya'll just hire someone without seeing their previous work? Or doing code tests?

It's impersonation when the person giving the phone interview is different from the one on the zoom call in the rounds thereafter. Happens quite often. Sometimes candidates have friends on conference that listen in silently and communicate via messenger.

 

[nobbie48]

They won't lure him away if you're paying competitive wages. That's the real free market. This whole corporate welfare scam has to end, with CEO and business owners paying no tax and pocketing outrageous profits, government subsidies, foreign worker programs - the list of corrupt programs we have whose sole purpose is to keep wages down against the free market is outrageous. Supply and demand should be the rule. Right now it's capitalism for the poor and socialism for the rich.

A lot depends on the product or service. Once hired, a 10% raise is hard to come by but is available by switching teams. Then you drop back to lower raises and probably five or ten years later you're making what you would have been at your former company. However in the short term it might mean being able to get a mortgage.

It's not without risk for the employee. He left his old job so no severance pay. If the new job doesn't work out the chances of getting anything there is low. If he can get back with his old company he's a new hire so won't have seniority. If he later gets canned there for any reason severance won't be generous.

Decades ago I worked for a specialty company, they had about ten techies across Canada and they were generous with their time. They could afford to because they had little competition. Then as new companies came in price competition resulted in a drop to two technicians and they charged an arm and a leg.

The situation in the marketplace became like a customer going to a brick and mortar store to pick brains and then ordering from the cheapest outlet. Owners and contractors shopped prices so the cake stopped getting icing. I hear people complaining about service and I ask them if they like it when their stock portfolios go up. The profits went up because the companies they held cut services. The other edge of the sword.

I totally agree on the subsidies but that can of worms got kicked around the world ages ago. How does Canada compete with other countries that have bigger subsidies than we do. My daughter orders craft supplies from China for six or seven dollars, shipping included. She gets the stuff she ordered and often a gift included in the package. If she wanted to order the same stuff from Canada the postage would be six or seven dollars.

Check out US farm subsidies.

USDA – Farm Subsidies at Highest Level in 20 Years - Taxpayers for Common Sense

Direct government payments in 2020 are forecast to be $37.2 billion, constituting 36.2% of net farm income, the highest level since 2001.

www.taxpayer.net

The public gets sucked into the poor farmer bit thinking the farm owner is some guy named Jeb driving a rusty pickup. I gather that the big government money goes to the mega farms owned by mega food companies.

How do we compete without having our own government interventions? In some countries gifts to buyers are the norm. I call them bribes and they're totally illegal as SNC would know.

The bottom line is don't look a gift horse in the mouth. What bugs me is that the government actually advertises the giveaways.

The foreign worker scams are exactly that but without them we end up paying more for our stuff and we love buying stuff.

It will come to an end as all Ponzi schemes do. Just hope you're a survivor.

 

[AllistonGT]

It's not about the pay. It's about pride and professionalism. Some people have it. Some don't, and never will.

This 100%

 

[Roadghost]

Wait wait wait…. I can pay no tax, pocket outrageous profits AND take advantage of government subsidies?!! Please, tell me how! Seriously. Tell me how.
If that’s really your view of business owners then you don’t have a clue about running a profitable company. Seems like all I do is pay. Payroll, payroll tax, import tax, government reporting fees, WSIB, benefits, commercial insurance, inflated bank fees for a “business account”…..the costs involved with running a business are endless.
To paint business owners as people who just sit back and rake in money is a joke.

LOL. I've owned a business and I paid almost no real tax. You just close it after three years and start another. Your payroll tax is not a tax on you, it's a tax on your workers. Your choice to have a business account with one of the Canadian banks (the ultimate rip-off artists) is a choice, you can go elsewhere. Unhappy about WSIB? Perhaps you'd like to get rid of it and let the courts make you pay when your workers get injured? WSIB is a scam to protect companies from legal liability, it pays no better than UI. Commercial insurance is not a tax, it's a cost.

All this crying by fast food restaurant owners who won't do the work themselves, but hire exploited foreign workers at less than minimum wage with no benefits and whine about not having enough people to do the job. Their 'businesses' do nothing for the economy. Why is it the taxpayer's job to make sure you have enough low wage workers? If your business is worth a damn it would support itself.

 

[nobbie48]

Pay is definitely not the issue.

I've held extremely high-paying positions with peers who have had terrible work ethic, and my reaction to that was: "They are clearly over-paying us for the work that we do. Why on earth would you risk losing such a gravy-train job?"

And, sure enough, their laziness and I-Don't-Care attitude eventually gets them canned.

Right now I'm "working" at a job that I'm just barely making minimum wage, more like getting an honorarium for volunteering my time. My co-workers, who are also getting paid in peanut shells (not even the peanuts), are the hardest-working people I've ever worked with.

It's not about the pay. It's about pride and professionalism. Some people have it. Some don't, and never will.

You're right but it isn't that simple.

A responsible person has to be responsible to their employer but also to his / her family. It is unrealistic to expect children to be unphased by hand-me-down clothes, food bank menus and no prospect for higher education. It can grind a kid or spouse down.

When I was working on my pilot's license I had to change schools because my instructor was so financially frustrated that he couldn't instruct. Cessna 150's don't have much room for baggage. Flight instructors got paid around minimum wage for instruction time. A rainy week sucked.

Do you respect the input of your spouse? A cousin had a Molly Maid franchise and would get a call from an older guy whose wife had died. The house was a pig sty and when told what a regular cleaning would cost he'd say "But my wife just did it..."

In some ways I'd rather work for nothing than be underpaid. Working for free, the expectations of what gets done and when is under my control. Some people have no idea how much money people with dirt under their fingernails can make.

It can rock a company if employees work for less than market rates or don't log overtime. If employees retire or get sick and the boss has quoted jobs based on unrealistic wages it won't look good on the books. The employer needs an appropriate strategy for when the situation changes.

A company I dealt with had everyone on salary for a 37-1/2 hour week. Then they hired a union electrician as a techie. He was in the office Wednesday afternoon and the manager told him to go to a job the next morning. The guy pointed out that he put in 14 hours on the Monday driving to an out of town job and 12 hours Tuesday for another similar one. He was on site early that morning resolving a problem in Scarborough and would have his hours in by quitting time. "See you Monday". There were a lot of deer-in-the-headlights looks around the office. They soon agreed to disagree.

That said, people should honour their commitments to work to the best of their ability. When necessity mandates a change make the transition as smooth as possible for everyone. My daughter worked part time as a medical receptionist and was so good at it other doctors would try to recruit her to the point of offering to pay for her education.

Pay is an issue when the employee is being exploited to the point that they can never become self sufficient and responsible to themselves.

When the worker doesn't like the job but needs the money for a car payment it eventually goes sour. They demand a raise or they quit. If you give them the raise they get used to it in a few months and they need another bribe to come in. It never works out well.

 

[Katatonic]

LOL. I've owned a business and I paid almost no real tax. You just close it after three years and start another. Your payroll tax is not a tax on you, it's a tax on your workers. Your choice to have a business account with one of the Canadian banks (the ultimate rip-off artists) is a choice, you can go elsewhere. Unhappy about WSIB? Perhaps you'd like to get rid of it and let the courts make you pay when your workers get injured? WSIB is a scam to protect companies from legal liability, it pays no better than UI. Commercial insurance is not a tax, it's a cost.

All this crying by fast food restaurant owners who won't do the work themselves, but hire exploited foreign workers at less than minimum wage with no benefits and whine about not having enough people to do the job. Their 'businesses' do nothing for the economy. Why is it the taxpayer's job to make sure you have enough low wage workers? If your business is worth a damn it would support itself.

Let’s break down your points:

“I owned a business and paid almost no real tax”
- Then it wasn’t a profitable company. My corporate tax at the end of our fiscal year is a decent chunk, and that’s after our overpriced accountants have had their way with the numbers. They keep everything above board just in case there is ever an audit, and I realize this is costing me more than getting creative with the books, but I’d rather play by the rules than run the risk of having the cra come down on me.
“Close it after 3 years and start another one”
- Why? Why would I work so hard to create a solid customer base, promote a business, to just shutter it and open something else? People/businesses that do that come across as very sketchy to me. We have people we wholesale to that do that and those are the people that don’t get terms (pay up front) and don’t get preferred pricing either. They are also the ones, generally, who are more of a pain is the ass.
“Payroll tax is not a tax on you it’s a tax on your employees”
- You should know (you know, seeing as how you’ve run a business before….) that there are employee deductions and employer matched deductions. The fact that you lack this very basic payroll knowledge throws a lot of doubt in you ever running a business with employees.
“Your choice to have a business account with one of the Canadian banks…”
- Laughable at best. I’m not trusting hundreds of thousands of dollars to some no-name entity to protect me if something goes sideways. We are in a small town and the bank manager will call me personally if something looks fishy. They have saved me a lot of headaches. The fees are hefty, but it’s worth it. Just because something is expensive doesn’t mean it’s a waste of money.
“Unhappy with WSIB? Perhaps you’d like to get rid of it….”
- Never said I was unhappy. I was simply listing an expense. Again, just because it’s an expense doesn’t mean it’s not worth it.
“Commercial insurance is not a tax”
- I’m aware of this. But this is an expense which is part of running a business and falls under my point of ‘it’s expensive to run a business’ and ‘business owners don’t just sit back collecting piles of money’

Is it expensive to run a profitable company? It sure is. And there are a lot of expenses that most employees are clueless about.
Do I sit back and take in piles of money? HA! Not even close! Sure, I live comfortably, but I’m not retiring any time soon and I still play the lottery every once in a while.

So to summarize, based on your responses, I don’t think you have the first clue about running a profitable business and I doubt you’ve ever owned a business aside from maybe something run out of your house that was a “business” for tax purposes only.

Now, I’ve spent enough time on this. Time to go into the office and get caught up on paperwork while my employees enjoy their weekend and spending time with their families.

 

[Jampy00]

"Work" is finding a common ground between expectations and reality for both the employer and the employee. If one is lucky enough to find that balance they are very fortunate.

It has been my experience that communication is key, even better knowing when it needs to be verbal and when it needs to be in writing. People often forget what they openly and freely agree to. I hold people to the same level of accountability that I expect to be held to.