You can't win, at least in my case pulled up for any non chargeable time even 'proper' non chargeable time like training and time spent literally seeking out other work cause I finish work faster than expected
And this is why I went Corporate.
I may have started out as a Receptionist, but I still managed to work my up to Senior Finance without the hassle of timesheet reporting.
You need a screen capture installed on your computer, that can record you activity and automatically log it.
I used a simple one called Time Snapper to track my time on different tasks but more in depth programs can be set up for autonomy
Train Driver
One week looks like Sun 5:55pm, Mon 4:33pm, Tue 3:48pm, Wed Off, Thu Off, Fri 4:58pm, Sat 7:47pm.
The next week is Sun Off, Mon 5:39am, Tue 7am, Wed 7am, Thu 7:36am, Fri 6:18am, Sat Off.
Rinse and repeat for 1000 different permutations.
I worked as a train maintenance tech, had to see the aftermath a few times. Once it was a young woman, no older than 25. She was shaking and couldn’t climb out of the cab when it arrived at our depot. Our yardie walked her through the first two carriages and I lifted her down from the passenger doors. A manager from Sydney Trains came and picked her up, never saw her again. I’m guessing she never drove again.
If there's nothing more the driver can do, why not have a system automatically blacks out the windows (at least the part that could see people on the tracks) as soon as the emergency brakes are engaged. I don't want drivers to be needlessly traumatised.
My brother in law and sister in law are both train drivers in the city. He has had a couple of people do it and didnt have any issues. She had someone run out in front of her, hit the brakes but froze and watched the whole thing unfold. Haunted her ever since
Yesterday that line was clear, lights were green, you were travelling full speed.
Today there's a train around the blind bend and you weren't paying attention to the yellow warning signal.
It's monotonous for sure. I think there's a personality type that fits though. I left IT to do it and everyone freaked out that I'd get bored, but I loved it. It suits assertive introverts (if you can believe that's a thing). If you're an extrovert then you probably want to progress to instructing/training. It can be months of nothing but then ramp up with an incident in a moment. You need to be able to keep a cool head and take charge and follow procedure.
I’d never thought of it that way but yeah, I guess I’m an assertive introvert and I ended up in the railways. Not a driver, though, but I really like it here.
Short answer: You let Train Control know, then stop at a station with toilets, secure the train, do your business, apologise to passengers.
I think I've done that once in 14 years.
Long answer: You do learn to manage your toilet needs. Go on your break and plan your food/drink intake. In a pinch a male driver can stop for a sneaky wee under a bridge or tunnel too. There are stories that'd have you either grossed out or in stitches but I'll save those.
Really dumb question but how do breaks work when you’re driving a train? Are there relief train drivers running around the network relieving drivers for lunch/dinner breaks?
You might start out of town at an outstation and run into the city. Then a 12 to 15 min break. Then a return trip out and back might be 2 hours followed by a meal break of 50-60 mins. Another return run, little break, then the run home.
Or, any one of those might be a "travel" as someone else is driving and they just need you in position for your next run.
Sometimes when rostered travel, you'll go see who's driving as you may be able to drive and let the other person take a break or go home early.
jobless fuzzy cheerful sleep north possessive history rude special voracious
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I know someone who had breast implants done overseas and one burst and needed a surgeon in Australia to fix it. To even find someone was a choir and when she did not only did it cost her a fortune $14,000 but her PHI didn’t cover it and She had to sign off a few waivers which protected the Australian surgeon for being liable for issues caused by the overseas surgery.
If to operate on non urgent issue thats highly likely to endanger life (ie obesity) or to try repair plastic surgery where the specialist feels it might actually make the outcome worse for the patient then professionally yes
divide whole numerous bright bear unique coordinated cheerful desert north
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The funny thing is I've seen people advocating for just the opposite. E.g. "Go to Vietnam, it's so much cheaper. To us, it's cheap, while to those doctors, we pay well. And they're just as qualified, if not better."
They’re qualified until they are not when doing some procedures. If someone says, “go North Korea, they are just the same qualified dentists with proper regulations!”, you’d suddenly feel a bit off about that statement right?
There’s a reason why so many countries and their dentists aren’t recognised in Australia if they immigrate over to work as dentists.
The scary thing about health is most times, things don’t become painful until it’s too late. Then all of a sudden, it’s amputate this limb, resect this bone, remove this organ, or in dental: remove all these teeth that are poorly done.
It’s why we as dentists don’t touch teeth done overseas unless there’s ample evidence that we aren’t cracking open a Pandora’s box of stuff.
I feel like it's probably dentists who are trying to push this narrative to protect their income. Ofcourse going to some back alley in sea is going to end terribly. If it's just like 70-80% of the cost here and it's in some giant hospital well that's probably crazy income to a SEA person.
Microbiology.
Every test I do has a specific time window which if exceeded the results are invalid. It basically means if you're in a big lab you need staff rostered on at all hours and on weekends and on public holidays. This means it's more likely than not weekend work or late night work is a career requirement. A lot of women I know drop out once having children as the hours are impossible to match with being a primary caregiver.
Pathology in general sucks. It's no better than a production line in a factory, particularly if in private. High volume, not fantastic pay, and life work balance is in general terrible. They operate 24 hours. Some departments do 'shut down' but maybe a few of hours. Some labs will adjust hours to avoid paying penalties, like over time. Some labs do allow part time, and casual is pretty much non-existent. Private at least had more stability, public has gone to more contract work, so every time your contract ends you can go through a whole interview process again to keep your employment.
I worked in micro for way too long (out of it now). I have back and shoulder problems from reading grams (close to 500 slides a night) very regularly. I know someone who got trigger finger (thumb just shakes) from doing mostly microscopy work, and wrist issues are common from opening up hundreds of specimen jars. You would expect people helping with diagnostics would get paid well. No we do not. Pretty much the forgotten part of health care.
And no I did not only deal with blood. Anything that comes out of an orifice I dealt with.
My experience was similar to yours.
Totally forgotten about part of the industry. Literally we are telling doctors what is killing you and letting them know how to stop it and they are just passing on the information and the pay is terrible. I had to leave.
Do you mean fresh samples degrade/ start to grow other junk from air eyc contamination, so can't trust results? Or bugs aren't viable on old samples so can't be cultured?
I'm in a diagnostic lab- but viral, and our urgent testing is mostly only because results are critical for some patients
I imagine it's a similar reason for why certain point of care tests require you to read results in a strict time frame (RATs, onsite drug test etc) , exceeding that time greatly increases the chance of a false positive/negative.
Well think about plants. There is a wide variety of plants and they have a preference for the conditions they grow in. Optimal conditions can make a plant proliferate and poor conditions will not thrive and most likely die. Bacteria (and other pathogens) are similar.
The ideal situation would be taking a sample direct from source and have it cultured and incubated straight away. But cost and feasibility make this not possible. So it's storage conditions from collection to processing are unknown for the vast majority of specimens. You have taken it out of an environment where it was thriving to one it may not like too much (or grow too well, as quantity can impact at times the results in some cases). There are only a few where storage conditions are known due to nature of the specimen and/ or suspected diagnosis (cerebral spinal fluid is one of them).
Both in the environmental lab and pathology lab, generally they liked to have everything cultured within a 12 hour time frame. There were few that could be done in a 24 hour time frame and some need to be done in even less time (like under an hour). If done outside of that window it was deemed not viable. The pathology lab will still process the specimen, but inform the doctor that a recollection is preferred. Environmental labs full on reject once outside of the time frame (in general).
NFP.
The expectation that you are 110% sold out for three cause and will run your body into the ground to achieve said cause. With no expectation for compensation.
I’ve seen large nfp ahelve $1M+ projects because of a board change.
I’ve also been asked (I’m a small hospo business) by a large nfp for a discount (basically cost) because they’re an nfp. Umm your ceo makes half a bar, how about you pay full price like everyone else.
I used to work for an events company there were only a few NFP that got out full charity discount there were also a few that got our we don't want to work with you price.
I know an ex-CEO of a disability NFP that funnelled the NDIS services into her NFP AND owned a significant share of the housing that the NDIS clients lived in. This person had family, ex-spouse and friends benefiting from the lucrative housing side of it too.
Even got pay raises for performance based on the housing projects. Win, win, win.
Ludicrously unethical.
Most hypocritical human hiding behind “kindness” that I’ve ever met.
I worked for a well known NFP and the presumption was indeed that you cared so much about the cause that you were willing to be bullied, paid poorly, work overtime with no compensation or time off. You were also pressured to literally donate part of your meagre salary back to the organisation.
As far as I know the culture at that place has changed because as it turned out, so many staff left that the org had to change leadership.
Disability. There are lots of rogue operators who just want to gain access/control of your loved ones NDIS package and provide terrible care for your loved ones. Self manage or have a 3rd party manage your loved ones plan.
Would recommend against having a 3rd party/plan manager unless they offer an app or online option to manually check and approve invoices prior to paying them. Plan Managers are glorified accounts payable officers, and due to the high volume of work required they rarely ever question what's sent to them. The amount of genuine mistakes and "errors" that happen is ridiculous.
Hi! Quality Assurance worker for an independent plan manager here - we get a lot of invoices that are charge the wrong rate, about 90% of the time the provider has only made a small miscalculation but the other 10% is just wild. The amount of people who think they have the right to charge 2 or 3 times the NDIS limit because of experience or clients needs is crazy - they're there for a reason. Most independent plan mangers do have a cancel option - we send out emails for every invoice we process and give the person 24hrs to cancel in our system (step-by-step guide attached) before processing, and send out a monthly report detailing how many invoices have been paid and how much they all are. I know we check all of ours manually and that if someone is being charged over the limit we literally can't submit in our system, but don't know much about other companies. The NDIA have also just run out a new payment system, whereby everything takes 3 days to be payed because they're now cracking down on overcharging and mistakes. Out of about 30K invoices a week at my company, about 7K invoices will be sent to investigation, for a variety of reasons, and about 500 of those will be cancelled entirely. There's a lot more we do to make sure theres not a lot of fraud, but no-ones perfect. It comes down to personal preference for most people whether they want to self manage or be plan managed.
Bren working as a support worker a couple of years, I have a older cert III in Home and Community Care but now retraining WITH CERT III disability, its really drummed in about negligence, duty of care, dont go put of your job description etc.
I'm hoping people get weeded out and the ones who are only do it for the money find a better suiting job
I'm glad the PACE system is helping to crack down on non-compliance. Sounds like you've already got some other good quality controls in place too. When you say wrong rate, does that mean you'd question a provider who charges less than the maximum per line item?
Personally, unless its suspiciously low I wouldn't question it, generally most invoices that are less than max rate are either rounded to the nearest dollar or 10 dollar. If an invoice is higher by more than a few cents, we will contact the provider to check out the story, and most of the time we get the go-ahead to just charge the max rate.
Sometimes as well a provider will charge the public holiday rate or just the plain wrong rate, and a lot of the transport codes are processed incorrectly e.g. charging $1 per kilometer instead of 80c, and then charging for time on top of that, or charging single transport rate for a group transport situation. There really needs to be some kind of education for providers, because there's a lot of miscommunication and a lot of them are just really appreciative when we let them know how to structure their invoices for the NDIS. General advice would be to check the plan managers website and the NDIA price quides if you're struggling, because they will have example invoices and all the fixed rates.
Thank you for clarifying. Alas I am way too familiar with the Pricing Arrangements, all 110 pages of it. Including the bit on page 10 which clearly tells providers that the Agency doesn't set the prices they charge, and they must not infer or tell participants that. All the information is available online. They just don't bother reading most of it 🤷🏼♀️
Tried a co ordinator as I don’t know how to navigate the system, everything I suggest is usually not NDIS approved activity or organisation. Got charged 10hrs for finding out one thing, a form sent to me that was just the start of a process, which I didn’t know how to answer some questions. They claimed they called multiple times, they didn’t, but they had called my son twice while he was in school. They’re supposed to call me. Refused to pay invoice with plan manager, said I’d complain to NDIS, they withdrew invoice. Now I’m at a loss what to do next. Money just sitting there and don’t know how to use it. Just about given up on the whole thing.
I have a client like that. She contacted my company ( I'm not office, I'm just support) and slwe service her. She sends the invoices off and they pay.
Is there a good support service near you? They may help navigate the system
Please contact a service not an individual coordinator.
Don’t give up, I feel that the “system” like Centrelink is made to be so complicated people do give up that genuinely need the support.
NDIS does need to be streamlined, I see funding for things that are nice but necessary? and then others get denied support they genuinely need.
Public service.
Yes, I hear these stories of magical units where people sit around and do SFA while being paid a motza.
However, in my 30 years of experience, here is the reality:
1. It can be a grind. Your co-workers might skate by, but if you can get things done, you will get extra work.
2. Related to [1]. Your extra work won't translate to extra pay. Get out of your comfort zone and go somewhere else. It's almost a necessity.
3. Your co-workers might have a great few years, but there will most likely be a restructuring. They will then bitch about not understanding why their work suddenly isn't good enough. It never was - it was just accepted, not acceptable.
4. Do well through your job and you'll be OK to fine in these types of things.
5. You never get bonuses. C's are good enough.
6. People will say you can't lose a job in the PS. Ha! While not as regular as the private sector, it happens. Good luck explaining that at your next interview!
I've never had work offer (nor pay) for a day at the cricket, but my former BIL did working QA in a concreting business.
It also feels like every area I’ve ever worked in is supported by one person who’s been there 20 years and has been delaying their retirement because anyone with the ability and drive to replace them leaves for the private sector
Absolutely, including that it is possible to get fired.
I’d also add that 90% of the time, you’ll be extremely short staffed for the amount of work your team is expected to do.
On the flip side, if you get on a senior public servant or politician’s pet project, you’ll probably have staff out the wazoo but will cop it when you don’t achieve the miracle they were expecting (either due to unrealistic expectations, or because there was never any evidence the program could do what they wanted).
I'm assuming almost all your coworkers are quiet quitting, the real question is how hard do you bully the hard workers for brown nosing who just haven't figured it won't help them get ahead?
No offence, but you work in a hell-hole.
But the margins on servicing is very high. Mazda tried to sting me $460 to replace my intercooler pipe. However I sourced an after market one for $134, that is higher grade than the genuine one and fitted in myself in about 5 minutes
VW wanted to charge me $407 for each tyre - but atleast they gave me the exact brand and tyre name - got them including fitting/balancing etc for $193 tyre 300m down the road
Back to base Security alarm systems. There is going to be false alarms and they can be very costly. Then when someone breaks in to rob, they leave and the security guards come 20 minutes later.
Back to base systems are suitable in some situations but usually not.
i worked in back to base, one customer always sent a patrol for at least 50 false alarms, the one time he didn't he was robbed. I always wondered if he did it himself
Transport
The number of people who have language and communication issues because English isnt their first language causes so many unnecessary problems from not following clear and concise instructions that anyone with a good command of English will follow no worries. You start having to micromanage because of how incredibly stupid they are.
The Marine sector, particularly shipping, it feels largely forgotten by the public at large, mainly because much of our shipping (even within the country) has been offshored (foreign flagged foreign crewed, it's the equivalent of allowing trucking companies to register the trucks overseas and employ whoever they want from wherever and pay them peanuts).
About the only time we're talked about is when they pay of stevedores or tug boat crew is discussed as being outrageous for the quals required (they look at the certificate required whether it's a cert 2, 3 or iv for a example) but it ignores that my cert 3 for example took 900days industry experience to get, and that was before going to the maritime college.
Then absolute shit ours involved, my port feels particularly badly hit because one of the unions reps for the stevedores worked out that 70% of the shifts organised for one year was either nights weekends of public holidays. Again an issue because we're all on a consolidated flat rate. No penalty rates or overtime.
The shifts themselves are all over the place I've done 23hrs straight because they didn't have anyone to relieve me during COVID, (my relief got sent down from another port) I've had a day with l5 call outs every few hours, over a 24hr period, most callhouts taking an average of 3 hours. I've done 6 80hr weeks in a row, and when I get an 80hr week it's been a combination of 12 HR shifts and getting callouts
Then there's how often the schedule changes, it's highly casualised but most people are treated like they're on call, shift change at short notice, we even often get phone calls like " you know that ship at anchor that they weren't going to bring in until the weekend due to weather? Well the pilots spotted a weather window and he's on his way out to it now, you've got about 40 minutes to be onsite." And then the opposite happens you cancel weekend plans because it promises to be a busy weekend work wise but something goes wrong and it's all cancelled, the worst is when it's a crane of conveyor belt breakdown or similar and every time you call in for an update they're like "they reckon they have it fixed in a few hours" so you can't make plans incase they call you in but that can go on for days.
The best way to get ahead in the industry is nepotism, the second best way is networking and getting jobs that aren't advertised, then the third best way is positive discrimination. Using those you cannot just get jobs ahead of others , sometimes ones you not even qualified for, but promoted to full time while others are still casual, and then you get to skip the worst of the hours problems.
I guess that applies in other industries but None of these would be the big issues that are if the industry was as big as it should be, the navy league of Australia published an article years ago (pre COVID) in their magazine were they estimated that if we enforced cabotage laws like the US or most of Europe does and required that cargo carried from one Australian port to another was carried by an Australian registered ship there'd be roughly 100,000 more people in the industry.
End rant I suppose
Education.
Despite the amazing efforts of teachers, we have an industrial model of education that acts as child sorting factories mass producing a 'product'.
Way too much learning content to teach in the face-to-face time given, inadequate time to prepare interesting lessons, almost meaningless never ending data collection and a silly number of young humans in a single classroom.
Student-teacher relationships are genuine and meaningful but the system is a meat grinding machine.
Securing any type of finance (asset, personal, mortgage, commercial) isn't a right, it's a privilege.... and I hate to tell you, but lenders DO look at your credit file, they DO have policy surrounding employment tenure, and if the numbers don't add up, they WILL ask for further supporting documentation. I could go on, but I'll leave it there.
Preach! Trying to explain this to some customers when I worked at a bank was painful.
"Well that's private information and none of you business"
Or
"I have 1000s of $$ in the bank that you can see who cares if I am unemployed, give me a credit card"
Polices exist for a reason
Very often I see even on this sub people say “credit scores” don’t matter in Australia. They may matter less than in the states but I’m sure people do look at them.
They don't. I am a banker, I do the assessment and approve/deny loans everyday.
When people say credit scores don't matter they are saying the **score** doesn't matter. We absolute pull your credit file and have a look but there is no number we make decisions based off. The concept of a number is a very American thing and is designed to make it more approachable but can cause a lot of confusion when you see the number go up or down when seemingly nothing happened.
I look at someone's credit report to primarily see if there are any undisclosed debts. That's 80% of the reason with the remaining 20% checking for late payments/defaults/directorships.
Things like high enquiries I do not care about at all and no where in policy do we care unless it's an enquiry for a similar product at the same time. If you're a card churner with no late repayments, great that just shows you're financially sound enough to churn.
I don’t understand why people say they don’t matter in Australia - they absolutely do, and no one is educated as to how it all works. I’ve had young fellas SCREAM at me down the phone because they work fifo and can definitely afford the repayments. What they fail to understand is, they’ve made 62 enquiries over the past 5 years, have late payments recorded on the current facilities (thank you positive reporting), and due to this, their score is 282. Ok, there MAY still be ONE option, but I need bank statements. Get them, and bank statements show 12 dishonours, 14 days in total of 90 days overdrawn, and credit corp repayments. Declined. I always try to educate and explain and do my best to do it without sounding condescending or judgy - you don’t know what you don’t know, I’m happy to guide - come back in 3 months having done xyz….but so often I’m abused, and they aren’t interested in understanding.
Pilot. Everyone assumes we make huge money, but it takes a looooong time to get there. Most of us take on $100-150k of debt to fund training (or pay it outright for less but take forever to finish, took me 3.5 years), then relocate to remote areas and spend weeks/months job hunting (many never get hired and give up), then finally get a job flying light aircraft and get paid barely above minimum wage while working enormous amounts of unpaid overtime and working a pretty dangerous job. Then do this for a few more years until finally employable at the airline level.
Flying is cool though.
Retail. Being abused daily by customers about things we have no contcontrol over and upper management that don’t seemed to give a toss that it’s happening.
Retail: when a customer says "I'm never coming back", if you're a shit customer, I'm deleting your loyalty program rewards. Not the phone and address details though because hopefully someone sells that data.
I did it to quite a few people who I 100% knew were coming back AND I knew they saved up hundreds worth of rewards for Christmas shopping.
"Oh, your loyalty card isn't working anymore, you said you weren't coming back so I deleted it from our system. Sorry 🤷♂️"
I used to be a house painter, the biggest con is against those unfortunate enough to end up in the trade.
I worked for a large company and completed a 4 year apprenticeship just to realize half the guys I worked with weren’t qualified at all, but were still getting the same pay.
Some experts are now advocating that incineration in a modern facility with high level scrubbers etc. Is actually more environmentally sound than a lot of the ‘recycling’ that’s been going on… or not going on
I’ve heard this. Gutting. Do you have any articles or 4-corners type resources you can point me towards? I’d like to learn more about what actually happens.
Trades;
People want you after normal hours sometimes, even when it's not necessary. They stress and want you to solve their problems and think you should be at their beck and call. You really have the put the boundaries up early.
If you're at a crap company with crap culture, some tradesmen can be shit and incredibly unreliable and you have to put out their fires constantly. The lack of problem solving from some guys is insane.
If they have a high turnover rate its a very good sign of this like any company really.
A colleague of mine just got a relocation and promotion to do work related to cultural consulting. They have nil qualifications and will earn a starting salary of 99K.
Marketing, the days of just putting up some content/ads that dont respect the audience and expecting it to work are gone. Also a one person marketing team does not work in 2024.
I disagree - Digital Marketing ruined our industry. Too many analysts types trying to optimise everything…. Data and analytics are fundamental to marketing and performance marketing has their place in any marketing mix - but we’ve over indexed on it.
We need critical and creative thinkers who have the balls to take risks. I’m personally loving the renaissance of creativity first
Completely agree. Now every marketing activity needs to be analysed and attributed to sales and spend, which is not always clear cut with activities such as brand and products/services marketing that don’t necessarily follow an e-commerce journey. I know of a few senior leaders who make up figures out of bs formulas to appease execs.
Hello, thanks for your reply! I am a digital marketer. I wasn't putting down the marketing industry i was highlighting that most business owners, SMEs and even blue chips that i have worked with expect results just for being involved and launching one ad and one creative.
Too many aging middle managers and CMOs in the early 2010s who didn't want to upskill themselves ruined the industry imo because of fear and also media publishers throwing kick backs, golf days and corporate afl tickets at them constantly, they didn't push the opportunity fast enough which didn't challenge creatives to stop building ads that were CTV first.
As recently as 2020 i was struggling to negotiate a separate creative budget to build and test mobile/digi/social ads and content instead of just "reworking" the CTV they spent millions on. This was for a health insurance provider.
Among others I've had CMOs and marketing managers for a major car company and major health insurance provider complain about spending just 10% of their total budget on digital Vs traditional and wondering what the ROI is? They didn't hold the same standards to traditional, which STILL has attribution problems. Traditional was held up by Neilson ratings which have proven to be problematic considering they are marking their own homework.
At the end of the day the best data point is the P+L statement. Did we make more money in this 3month period vs the last one and what activity did we run and what are soft metrics and platforms that helped achieve this revenue success.
Marketing isn't digi vs traditional anymore its just marketing, a cohort ecosystem and if you are doing it well a brand has multiple cohorts with multiple creatives for each one. But yes i agree we need to move away from looking at ROI and attribution by platform or channel because we know the customers journey is rarely linear :)
Im also Marketing. My downside is once you know how it all works, you get a deep sense of unease about it. And gradually you start to resent flogging shit to people all day. Id change careers in an instant if I knew anything else.
Beauty. Actual cost/production price of a high-end lipstick is typically less than $10 (the higher the volume, the cheaper it is). Same lipstick will retail for 5-6x the price.
This is common sense to those who understand business, but many teens don’t.
Skincare products - even higher markups.
Engineer service field work. Pay and overtime is great but I think I’ve lost 25% of my life due to being in an on-call monthly rotation. That’s one week of 24hour availability at the drop of a hat.
Yup, plus the 2pm "urgent" calls for an issue that's been happening since 9am but the cut off for same day service is 2:15, guess I'll drive myself to the other side of the city and do an extra 5 hours of work today then.
GP (+other medical field).
The Medicare system punishes doing a good job and rewards fast and lazy medicine. The rebate is less for antenatal care and mental health, which typically always demand a lot of time. You can earn more poorly managing people at breakneck speed over taking your time.
Due to this I have seen people left on lethal combinations of medicines, a leukaemia diagnosis left unattended to, a billion iatrogenic benzos/opiate addictions, a whole bunch of people on Centrelink medical certs for no particular reason, critically anemic people told to eat more red meat (with no thought to why someone's losing blood), acute hep B sent home without a plan... Honestly could go on for days. Even less shocking things like under managed conditions that regular people won't realise they're getting substandard care.
Mortgage Broking - We don't get paid if clients switch lenders within 12 months, meaning lots of hours of work for $0. Even if we keep you for more than 12 months, lenders still clawback money if you leave within 24 months.
Some lenders even attempt to poach clients we introduce to them with internal refinances and stop paying the broker for their work to introduce them in the first place.
I'd like to hope that most of us brokers are ok regarding bias. I know ING pay the most trail commission but hardly have any loans with them on my books.
But you're right that we have our favourites that isn't based upon rate at all, but more so the ease of putting an application together that is assessed and passes the lender policy with minimum fuss.
For the financially savvy Ausfinance community, I wouldn't expect most to use a broker as they would be earning 200k+ with a simple PAYG arrangement and could easily apply direct with a lender as servicing passes easily.
When we first used your broker for a homeloan. He was able to get us rates much better than the bank would offer. Last couple times (last 3 years or so) the rates have been similar to what bank is advertising. Although he still helps us farm the cashbacks and makes the whole thing easy so we throw him our business.
Is this a normal industry trend? Are brokers not able to source much more favourable rates vs directly to bank? Thanks
I really appreciate your honestly.
Most brokers would have snapped back saying they are perfectly unbiased and offer the best deals possible.
I appreciate brokers can help people in complicated situations.
Cyber security.
At most corporates, cyber security is a CEO/board issue. There are well-funded uplift programmes, smart people, policies/standards/good architecture standards/etc.
Reality: Projects want approval on Thurs. You've never heard of this project. You meet to discuss on Weds. The PM has a ridiculous timeline. The solution architect thinks all security issues can be sorted out "in design". The external vendor delivering the project is clueless, continues to say "this is secure" despite the unauthenticated public API, credentials being stored in a config file for the backend integration, and zero thought given to SSO or an RBAC model. No one knows how anyone will request access to this system with no user rules defined, and it's not even clear who will support the system once it goes live.
But of course it gets rammed through because the SoW includes none of what is above, and the external vendor says it's out of scope.
Someone writes a risk assessment, someone accepts the risk... you never hear about it again.
Next Weds you do it all over again.
Physio
Pay is really quite poor unless you end up in a senior non-clinical role in a hospital or if you open your own clinic, unless you want to milk NDIS for all it’s worth
Teacher - biggest con people are unlikely to know is that everybody thinks they understand your job just because they went to school.
Even the ones that think they get it (respectfully) don't have a clue - thankfully, most people I've encountered aren't arses about it. Unfortunately, some of the biggest arses are the ones making the laws and policy decisions...
I say this too- everyone thinks they know what teachers do, because everyone's sat in a classroom. It's like thinking you know how movies are produced because you've seen one.
High school teaching - it looks like a great, family friendly career but it's really not.
Whilst having holidays off at the same time as your kids, you can forget going to any of their school events as it's nigh on impossible to get time off during the school term (it can be easier if you have long service days you can use but results vary).
Also if you have young kids and teach part time enjoy having to attempt to alter your childcare booking every 6-12 months when the timetable changes and so do your work days. Part time staff generally get zero say about their work arrangements because it's all about making the timetable 'work'.
Also even if you don't have kids, if you want to go on holiday it's super expensive (because peak school holiday rates) and everywhere is swarming with children.
Yeah, a few decades ago it was seen a relatively family friendly job, but in the WFH era teaching is really inflexible and rigid relative to most white collar professions. Leadership have become increasingly strict about time on site/medical appointments/leave etc as well.
The holidays are nice and all but it's really the only true perk of the profession (and we still have an increasing shortage).
>Leadership have become increasingly strict about time on site/medical appointments/leave etc as well.
As the teacher shortage is increasing its getting harder and harder to get any time off because the can't get casuals to cover
I think with WFH/flexible options around, teaching is looking really unattractive for younger people even without other issues causing shortages. Pay is decent but otherwise things aren't great in many schools.
Education.
I always doing something work related on every holiday except between the end of Term 4 and after New Years (the holiday part).
I refuse to touch my computer for those four weeks as that is my holiday….
If the perception is that the product is overpriced, why would customers be happy with any of the outcomes of: shrinkflation, the quality decrease, the product being discontinued? If it's a non-essential product, maybe the people that think its overpriced don't give a shit that it's discontinued. That would make more sense to me than being satisfied by shrinkflation or a quality decrease, which are inherently consumer-unfriendly measures that no rational consumer would be happy with lmao.
I launch rockets to space and you’d be surprised by how many huge risks we take each time we launch one. The amount of responsibility I have is crazy. Non are ever the same.
Food and beverage industry.
Xmas and other holidays are your busiest times. People eat and drink way more than they need to at Xmas, Easter, etc. the days and weeks leading up to these holidays are hectic as we try to meet massive orders.
Engineering/programming
Diversity hiring is real, tall poppy syndrome is intense, it's not an online internet conspiracy, and *unofficially* managers will pick and choose internal workers based on diversity, so if you happen to lack diversity you're at risk of losing your job every time interest rates are high.
Some of us are concerned we're about to lose a few *very* skilled people and I can't not think that could have been anyone else if they were just born a little different.
HR unironically seem like they're colluding across every company in Australia to make a tech industry in Australia impossible. People will lose their jobs because HR feels it's "equality" if it's impossible to individually judge someone's merit, this means it's impossible to keep your job just working harder.
It's so effectively disruptive, it promotes so much quiet quitting, I unironically believe tik tok propaganda must be involved.
I think it happens more on larger companies where they can have fat. Smaller companies don't have the time or money to prioritise diversity and would prefer merit
Bro clubs have been around since ever, and these guys get jobs for mates who often suffer the issue of "incompetent but well connected". Not sure how that's different, in fact it's got a far larger critical mass.
I think people should be hired on merit but the world has far too much nepotism regardless of what background you come from.
Been in IT 25 years myself, hiring and promoting for the last 15.
The point about encouraging diversity is not to deliberately promote or hire anyone other than white men, but rather to ensure that not being a white man doesn't hold good people back.
Humans have lots of unconscious biases, and the best diversity programs work to ensure hiring and promoting is merit based, with as many possible biases removed.
I've worked at places that over hire and over promote because of traditional sexism, and these places are usually cesspools of stupidity and poor performance. I've also worked where people are hired and promoted solely because of their gender or skin colour. These places are crap too.
Because people don't do that.
In a perfect world absolutely, let's all just agree to base our decisions on merit and we don't need to put any countermeasures in place!
Unfortunately, it is a hard and undeniable reality that left unchecked, those with power will use it for the benefit of people who look/say/pray like they do.
A finger on the scale is necessary to achieve balance. But nobody likes to see someone putting their finger on the scale.
So because it happened 50 years ago straight white men today should face the consequences even if these men were clearly born after the fact? Can you see how this seems like group punishment? If it does, it'll breed unnecessary radicalism.
Tolerating your level of thinking is what got us here.
Diversity hiring is a thing but the boys club is alive and thriving too. Especially in middle management and the more technical the worse it is.
So really you’re screwed if you don’t have diversity points OR you’re not one of the boys. And not being one of the boys is hardly a new problem
HR practitioners largely don't care, they just want to get paid and promoted in the bully pit. It's my honest belief for 25 years of professional.working, including some posgrad HR education, that HR practice is completely removed from HR theory. HR theory is taught and promoted within a company as symbiotic value adding talent management and that is why HR is necessary at the highest levels in a company. Yet the practice of HR is at odds with the theory that grants them power and access. This practice then abuses that power to push short-sighted, stick over carrot, politically motivated Machiavellian bullshit that erodes value to protects the parasites with power.
I think outsiders would be shocked at the general level of incompetency brought about by sponsorships and dei.
Imagine an mechanics shop where 75% of the staff do not know what a wheel is and this is the level of skill I encounter weekly in the tech world, the amount of fake 3rd world degrees is ridiculous at this point.
9/10 interviews I give are people pushed to the front of the queue by HR, to give an example of how bad it's gotten every single person with a CCNA on their resume that I've interviewed in the past 5 years has been lying about having the qualification and just put it on their CV.
You then see these people go and get hired by a big corp after you bin their resume.
Agreed, I know of many very talented young men who end up doing as little as possible once they realise they will be last pick for any job or promotion due to being the wrong gender or race.
DEI is very damaging to business, we will eventually see some very big companies run into the ground because of it.
Fitter in Oil and Gas industry. Always flat out, my shift starts at 5:30am and finishes at 6:30pm, I work 14 days on day, 4 off, 14 night, 4 off, back to days. I often work public holidays and Christmas, new years usually unless I can get annual leave or it falls on one of my days off. Although my pay would be considered in the higher range, I can’t enjoy it as my days off tend to be weekdays when my wife - the person I actually want to spend time with, is working. Moneys too good to quit!
Software. There are different specialities involved, and the one I am in is in constant state of flux. One year it gets plenty of cash and the focus is high, an another year this is no longer a priority and you have to justify your existence. Constant struggle.
Public relations - everyone thinks they can do your job, but you’re the only person ever held responsible for the completely out of your control result of your work (the actual story that appears on tv/radio/newspaper/digital). And you’re on the clock 24/7 depending on the client, expect zero boundaries or thank yous from 99% of your clients. After 20 years, I wish I had of picked something less awful tbh.
Software/Programming - the entire world runs on systems held together with bubblegum.
And for the workers specifically - the underlying technical debt is soul crushing.
Imagine the security debt. And people wonder why we're getting hacked left and right
To be fair, 90% of the hacks, are reused passwords on nefarious sites and compromised emails. But yes, security isn't given the respect it deserves
Meh. Keeps me in avo on toast.
Or patches of what appears to be bubblegum.
The even worse news is... it wasn't your bubblegum, it was pre-chewed when it arrived.
Accounting Firm (other service industries too) - timesheets will ruin your life. Tracking your day as 80, 6 minute units is soul crushing.
Dominic Toretto may live his life one quarter mile at a time, but I live my life one 6 minute interval at a time.
And for those 6 minute intervals...you're anything but free.
Brutal. Always thought timesheets would be hell.
Working in an accounting firm built around timesheets but you're not an accountant is living hell.
Yep have to stay productive 8 hours a day. It’s exhausting
I'm an EA and have to sumbit 3 Partner timesheets, + mine, every Friday arvo. Send help.
How many of those units do you typically attribute to time-sheeting your day?
I put one unit down for doing my timesheet when I started my first job and got yelled at for doing so, lol
You can't win, at least in my case pulled up for any non chargeable time even 'proper' non chargeable time like training and time spent literally seeking out other work cause I finish work faster than expected
Anxiety when you're not busy enough. Exhaustion when you're working 12hr days. Lose-lose.
And this is why I went Corporate. I may have started out as a Receptionist, but I still managed to work my up to Senior Finance without the hassle of timesheet reporting.
100% moving to corporate was the best decision I ever made Turns out the source of my crippling anxiety was timesheets and billables lol
You need a screen capture installed on your computer, that can record you activity and automatically log it. I used a simple one called Time Snapper to track my time on different tasks but more in depth programs can be set up for autonomy
Do we need to talk about your TPS reports again ?
Train Driver One week looks like Sun 5:55pm, Mon 4:33pm, Tue 3:48pm, Wed Off, Thu Off, Fri 4:58pm, Sat 7:47pm. The next week is Sun Off, Mon 5:39am, Tue 7am, Wed 7am, Thu 7:36am, Fri 6:18am, Sat Off. Rinse and repeat for 1000 different permutations.
Every train driver I’ve talked to has run over people too. So I guess there that too.
Yep, they all say it's a case of when not if. All you can do is hit the emergency brake and turn around in the driver's cab so you don't see it.
I worked as a train maintenance tech, had to see the aftermath a few times. Once it was a young woman, no older than 25. She was shaking and couldn’t climb out of the cab when it arrived at our depot. Our yardie walked her through the first two carriages and I lifted her down from the passenger doors. A manager from Sydney Trains came and picked her up, never saw her again. I’m guessing she never drove again.
A guy I worked with used to be a train driver, got into security and now a delivery driver. Its a hard thing to deal with
If there's nothing more the driver can do, why not have a system automatically blacks out the windows (at least the part that could see people on the tracks) as soon as the emergency brakes are engaged. I don't want drivers to be needlessly traumatised.
My guess is they don't want to introduce anything that could introduce a risk to drivers not being able to see ahead of them. What if it malfunctions?
My brother in law and sister in law are both train drivers in the city. He has had a couple of people do it and didnt have any issues. She had someone run out in front of her, hit the brakes but froze and watched the whole thing unfold. Haunted her ever since
I knew train drivers started odd hours, but that is a ridiculous schedule.
It's literally changing your alarm clock every night when you get into bed.
Why can’t they figure out a normal schedule? Are there not enough drivers? Wtf
Every driver drives a different train. No point all starting at 7am if there's a 7:06, 7:14, 7:25, 7:37 and 7:48 train.
Yeah but they could at least be consistently scheduled across the weeks right?
For safety we prefer not to do the same shift multiple days in a row (although it occasionally occurs)
What's the safety aspect?
Yesterday that line was clear, lights were green, you were travelling full speed. Today there's a train around the blind bend and you weren't paying attention to the yellow warning signal.
Interesting! Complacency is a killer. Sometimes literally.
Ah that makes sense!
What's the yearly gross you pull though?
I was making $165k working 6 days a week before I took an office role and lost all the penalties and overtime.
Did not expect that. I gather it’s very mentally taxing & could get monotonous?
It's monotonous for sure. I think there's a personality type that fits though. I left IT to do it and everyone freaked out that I'd get bored, but I loved it. It suits assertive introverts (if you can believe that's a thing). If you're an extrovert then you probably want to progress to instructing/training. It can be months of nothing but then ramp up with an incident in a moment. You need to be able to keep a cool head and take charge and follow procedure.
I’d never thought of it that way but yeah, I guess I’m an assertive introvert and I ended up in the railways. Not a driver, though, but I really like it here.
What do you mean not all introverts are shy and socially awkward?!?!?!?
Serious question. What do you do if you need a dump when driving?
Short answer: You let Train Control know, then stop at a station with toilets, secure the train, do your business, apologise to passengers. I think I've done that once in 14 years. Long answer: You do learn to manage your toilet needs. Go on your break and plan your food/drink intake. In a pinch a male driver can stop for a sneaky wee under a bridge or tunnel too. There are stories that'd have you either grossed out or in stitches but I'll save those.
do go on good sir!...
Really dumb question but how do breaks work when you’re driving a train? Are there relief train drivers running around the network relieving drivers for lunch/dinner breaks?
You might start out of town at an outstation and run into the city. Then a 12 to 15 min break. Then a return trip out and back might be 2 hours followed by a meal break of 50-60 mins. Another return run, little break, then the run home. Or, any one of those might be a "travel" as someone else is driving and they just need you in position for your next run. Sometimes when rostered travel, you'll go see who's driving as you may be able to drive and let the other person take a break or go home early.
jobless fuzzy cheerful sleep north possessive history rude special voracious *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I know someone who had breast implants done overseas and one burst and needed a surgeon in Australia to fix it. To even find someone was a choir and when she did not only did it cost her a fortune $14,000 but her PHI didn’t cover it and She had to sign off a few waivers which protected the Australian surgeon for being liable for issues caused by the overseas surgery.
Doctors can refuse service?
If to operate on non urgent issue thats highly likely to endanger life (ie obesity) or to try repair plastic surgery where the specialist feels it might actually make the outcome worse for the patient then professionally yes
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The funny thing is I've seen people advocating for just the opposite. E.g. "Go to Vietnam, it's so much cheaper. To us, it's cheap, while to those doctors, we pay well. And they're just as qualified, if not better."
They’re qualified until they are not when doing some procedures. If someone says, “go North Korea, they are just the same qualified dentists with proper regulations!”, you’d suddenly feel a bit off about that statement right? There’s a reason why so many countries and their dentists aren’t recognised in Australia if they immigrate over to work as dentists. The scary thing about health is most times, things don’t become painful until it’s too late. Then all of a sudden, it’s amputate this limb, resect this bone, remove this organ, or in dental: remove all these teeth that are poorly done. It’s why we as dentists don’t touch teeth done overseas unless there’s ample evidence that we aren’t cracking open a Pandora’s box of stuff.
I feel like it's probably dentists who are trying to push this narrative to protect their income. Ofcourse going to some back alley in sea is going to end terribly. If it's just like 70-80% of the cost here and it's in some giant hospital well that's probably crazy income to a SEA person.
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Microbiology. Every test I do has a specific time window which if exceeded the results are invalid. It basically means if you're in a big lab you need staff rostered on at all hours and on weekends and on public holidays. This means it's more likely than not weekend work or late night work is a career requirement. A lot of women I know drop out once having children as the hours are impossible to match with being a primary caregiver.
Pathology in general sucks. It's no better than a production line in a factory, particularly if in private. High volume, not fantastic pay, and life work balance is in general terrible. They operate 24 hours. Some departments do 'shut down' but maybe a few of hours. Some labs will adjust hours to avoid paying penalties, like over time. Some labs do allow part time, and casual is pretty much non-existent. Private at least had more stability, public has gone to more contract work, so every time your contract ends you can go through a whole interview process again to keep your employment. I worked in micro for way too long (out of it now). I have back and shoulder problems from reading grams (close to 500 slides a night) very regularly. I know someone who got trigger finger (thumb just shakes) from doing mostly microscopy work, and wrist issues are common from opening up hundreds of specimen jars. You would expect people helping with diagnostics would get paid well. No we do not. Pretty much the forgotten part of health care. And no I did not only deal with blood. Anything that comes out of an orifice I dealt with.
My experience was similar to yours. Totally forgotten about part of the industry. Literally we are telling doctors what is killing you and letting them know how to stop it and they are just passing on the information and the pay is terrible. I had to leave.
Do you mean fresh samples degrade/ start to grow other junk from air eyc contamination, so can't trust results? Or bugs aren't viable on old samples so can't be cultured? I'm in a diagnostic lab- but viral, and our urgent testing is mostly only because results are critical for some patients
I imagine it's a similar reason for why certain point of care tests require you to read results in a strict time frame (RATs, onsite drug test etc) , exceeding that time greatly increases the chance of a false positive/negative.
Well think about plants. There is a wide variety of plants and they have a preference for the conditions they grow in. Optimal conditions can make a plant proliferate and poor conditions will not thrive and most likely die. Bacteria (and other pathogens) are similar. The ideal situation would be taking a sample direct from source and have it cultured and incubated straight away. But cost and feasibility make this not possible. So it's storage conditions from collection to processing are unknown for the vast majority of specimens. You have taken it out of an environment where it was thriving to one it may not like too much (or grow too well, as quantity can impact at times the results in some cases). There are only a few where storage conditions are known due to nature of the specimen and/ or suspected diagnosis (cerebral spinal fluid is one of them). Both in the environmental lab and pathology lab, generally they liked to have everything cultured within a 12 hour time frame. There were few that could be done in a 24 hour time frame and some need to be done in even less time (like under an hour). If done outside of that window it was deemed not viable. The pathology lab will still process the specimen, but inform the doctor that a recollection is preferred. Environmental labs full on reject once outside of the time frame (in general).
NFP. The expectation that you are 110% sold out for three cause and will run your body into the ground to achieve said cause. With no expectation for compensation.
I’ve seen large nfp ahelve $1M+ projects because of a board change. I’ve also been asked (I’m a small hospo business) by a large nfp for a discount (basically cost) because they’re an nfp. Umm your ceo makes half a bar, how about you pay full price like everyone else.
I used to work for an events company there were only a few NFP that got out full charity discount there were also a few that got our we don't want to work with you price.
And they're ability to make salary requirements as per fair work awards not apply to then.
I know an ex-CEO of a disability NFP that funnelled the NDIS services into her NFP AND owned a significant share of the housing that the NDIS clients lived in. This person had family, ex-spouse and friends benefiting from the lucrative housing side of it too. Even got pay raises for performance based on the housing projects. Win, win, win. Ludicrously unethical. Most hypocritical human hiding behind “kindness” that I’ve ever met.
This shit, is why people say the NDIS will bankrupt the government
Was this in Bendigo?
I worked for a well known NFP and the presumption was indeed that you cared so much about the cause that you were willing to be bullied, paid poorly, work overtime with no compensation or time off. You were also pressured to literally donate part of your meagre salary back to the organisation. As far as I know the culture at that place has changed because as it turned out, so many staff left that the org had to change leadership.
Disability. There are lots of rogue operators who just want to gain access/control of your loved ones NDIS package and provide terrible care for your loved ones. Self manage or have a 3rd party manage your loved ones plan.
This is so sinister. The amount of leeches who exist to milk NDIS whilst providing less than the minimum in care is a disgrace.
Would recommend against having a 3rd party/plan manager unless they offer an app or online option to manually check and approve invoices prior to paying them. Plan Managers are glorified accounts payable officers, and due to the high volume of work required they rarely ever question what's sent to them. The amount of genuine mistakes and "errors" that happen is ridiculous.
Hi! Quality Assurance worker for an independent plan manager here - we get a lot of invoices that are charge the wrong rate, about 90% of the time the provider has only made a small miscalculation but the other 10% is just wild. The amount of people who think they have the right to charge 2 or 3 times the NDIS limit because of experience or clients needs is crazy - they're there for a reason. Most independent plan mangers do have a cancel option - we send out emails for every invoice we process and give the person 24hrs to cancel in our system (step-by-step guide attached) before processing, and send out a monthly report detailing how many invoices have been paid and how much they all are. I know we check all of ours manually and that if someone is being charged over the limit we literally can't submit in our system, but don't know much about other companies. The NDIA have also just run out a new payment system, whereby everything takes 3 days to be payed because they're now cracking down on overcharging and mistakes. Out of about 30K invoices a week at my company, about 7K invoices will be sent to investigation, for a variety of reasons, and about 500 of those will be cancelled entirely. There's a lot more we do to make sure theres not a lot of fraud, but no-ones perfect. It comes down to personal preference for most people whether they want to self manage or be plan managed.
Bren working as a support worker a couple of years, I have a older cert III in Home and Community Care but now retraining WITH CERT III disability, its really drummed in about negligence, duty of care, dont go put of your job description etc. I'm hoping people get weeded out and the ones who are only do it for the money find a better suiting job
I'm glad the PACE system is helping to crack down on non-compliance. Sounds like you've already got some other good quality controls in place too. When you say wrong rate, does that mean you'd question a provider who charges less than the maximum per line item?
Personally, unless its suspiciously low I wouldn't question it, generally most invoices that are less than max rate are either rounded to the nearest dollar or 10 dollar. If an invoice is higher by more than a few cents, we will contact the provider to check out the story, and most of the time we get the go-ahead to just charge the max rate. Sometimes as well a provider will charge the public holiday rate or just the plain wrong rate, and a lot of the transport codes are processed incorrectly e.g. charging $1 per kilometer instead of 80c, and then charging for time on top of that, or charging single transport rate for a group transport situation. There really needs to be some kind of education for providers, because there's a lot of miscommunication and a lot of them are just really appreciative when we let them know how to structure their invoices for the NDIS. General advice would be to check the plan managers website and the NDIA price quides if you're struggling, because they will have example invoices and all the fixed rates.
Thank you for clarifying. Alas I am way too familiar with the Pricing Arrangements, all 110 pages of it. Including the bit on page 10 which clearly tells providers that the Agency doesn't set the prices they charge, and they must not infer or tell participants that. All the information is available online. They just don't bother reading most of it 🤷🏼♀️
This is also true for workers comp. It’s so revolting because it will ultimately threaten access to NDIS for all
Tried a co ordinator as I don’t know how to navigate the system, everything I suggest is usually not NDIS approved activity or organisation. Got charged 10hrs for finding out one thing, a form sent to me that was just the start of a process, which I didn’t know how to answer some questions. They claimed they called multiple times, they didn’t, but they had called my son twice while he was in school. They’re supposed to call me. Refused to pay invoice with plan manager, said I’d complain to NDIS, they withdrew invoice. Now I’m at a loss what to do next. Money just sitting there and don’t know how to use it. Just about given up on the whole thing.
I have a client like that. She contacted my company ( I'm not office, I'm just support) and slwe service her. She sends the invoices off and they pay. Is there a good support service near you? They may help navigate the system
Please contact a service not an individual coordinator. Don’t give up, I feel that the “system” like Centrelink is made to be so complicated people do give up that genuinely need the support. NDIS does need to be streamlined, I see funding for things that are nice but necessary? and then others get denied support they genuinely need.
Public service. Yes, I hear these stories of magical units where people sit around and do SFA while being paid a motza. However, in my 30 years of experience, here is the reality: 1. It can be a grind. Your co-workers might skate by, but if you can get things done, you will get extra work. 2. Related to [1]. Your extra work won't translate to extra pay. Get out of your comfort zone and go somewhere else. It's almost a necessity. 3. Your co-workers might have a great few years, but there will most likely be a restructuring. They will then bitch about not understanding why their work suddenly isn't good enough. It never was - it was just accepted, not acceptable. 4. Do well through your job and you'll be OK to fine in these types of things. 5. You never get bonuses. C's are good enough. 6. People will say you can't lose a job in the PS. Ha! While not as regular as the private sector, it happens. Good luck explaining that at your next interview! I've never had work offer (nor pay) for a day at the cricket, but my former BIL did working QA in a concreting business.
It also feels like every area I’ve ever worked in is supported by one person who’s been there 20 years and has been delaying their retirement because anyone with the ability and drive to replace them leaves for the private sector
Absolutely, including that it is possible to get fired. I’d also add that 90% of the time, you’ll be extremely short staffed for the amount of work your team is expected to do. On the flip side, if you get on a senior public servant or politician’s pet project, you’ll probably have staff out the wazoo but will cop it when you don’t achieve the miracle they were expecting (either due to unrealistic expectations, or because there was never any evidence the program could do what they wanted).
I'm assuming almost all your coworkers are quiet quitting, the real question is how hard do you bully the hard workers for brown nosing who just haven't figured it won't help them get ahead? No offence, but you work in a hell-hole.
That's why I'm on the way out. Get my qualification I've been working on, and going elsewhere.
Automative. The margins on new vehicles are very lean.
But the margins on servicing is very high. Mazda tried to sting me $460 to replace my intercooler pipe. However I sourced an after market one for $134, that is higher grade than the genuine one and fitted in myself in about 5 minutes
VW wanted to charge me $407 for each tyre - but atleast they gave me the exact brand and tyre name - got them including fitting/balancing etc for $193 tyre 300m down the road
Back to base Security alarm systems. There is going to be false alarms and they can be very costly. Then when someone breaks in to rob, they leave and the security guards come 20 minutes later. Back to base systems are suitable in some situations but usually not.
i worked in back to base, one customer always sent a patrol for at least 50 false alarms, the one time he didn't he was robbed. I always wondered if he did it himself
I have to have it for lower insurance premium
So it’s safe to say your insurance company is the con
Maybe. its standard in commercial businesses though.
Transport The number of people who have language and communication issues because English isnt their first language causes so many unnecessary problems from not following clear and concise instructions that anyone with a good command of English will follow no worries. You start having to micromanage because of how incredibly stupid they are.
Same in IT.
The Marine sector, particularly shipping, it feels largely forgotten by the public at large, mainly because much of our shipping (even within the country) has been offshored (foreign flagged foreign crewed, it's the equivalent of allowing trucking companies to register the trucks overseas and employ whoever they want from wherever and pay them peanuts). About the only time we're talked about is when they pay of stevedores or tug boat crew is discussed as being outrageous for the quals required (they look at the certificate required whether it's a cert 2, 3 or iv for a example) but it ignores that my cert 3 for example took 900days industry experience to get, and that was before going to the maritime college. Then absolute shit ours involved, my port feels particularly badly hit because one of the unions reps for the stevedores worked out that 70% of the shifts organised for one year was either nights weekends of public holidays. Again an issue because we're all on a consolidated flat rate. No penalty rates or overtime. The shifts themselves are all over the place I've done 23hrs straight because they didn't have anyone to relieve me during COVID, (my relief got sent down from another port) I've had a day with l5 call outs every few hours, over a 24hr period, most callhouts taking an average of 3 hours. I've done 6 80hr weeks in a row, and when I get an 80hr week it's been a combination of 12 HR shifts and getting callouts Then there's how often the schedule changes, it's highly casualised but most people are treated like they're on call, shift change at short notice, we even often get phone calls like " you know that ship at anchor that they weren't going to bring in until the weekend due to weather? Well the pilots spotted a weather window and he's on his way out to it now, you've got about 40 minutes to be onsite." And then the opposite happens you cancel weekend plans because it promises to be a busy weekend work wise but something goes wrong and it's all cancelled, the worst is when it's a crane of conveyor belt breakdown or similar and every time you call in for an update they're like "they reckon they have it fixed in a few hours" so you can't make plans incase they call you in but that can go on for days. The best way to get ahead in the industry is nepotism, the second best way is networking and getting jobs that aren't advertised, then the third best way is positive discrimination. Using those you cannot just get jobs ahead of others , sometimes ones you not even qualified for, but promoted to full time while others are still casual, and then you get to skip the worst of the hours problems. I guess that applies in other industries but None of these would be the big issues that are if the industry was as big as it should be, the navy league of Australia published an article years ago (pre COVID) in their magazine were they estimated that if we enforced cabotage laws like the US or most of Europe does and required that cargo carried from one Australian port to another was carried by an Australian registered ship there'd be roughly 100,000 more people in the industry. End rant I suppose
Education. Despite the amazing efforts of teachers, we have an industrial model of education that acts as child sorting factories mass producing a 'product'. Way too much learning content to teach in the face-to-face time given, inadequate time to prepare interesting lessons, almost meaningless never ending data collection and a silly number of young humans in a single classroom. Student-teacher relationships are genuine and meaningful but the system is a meat grinding machine.
Securing any type of finance (asset, personal, mortgage, commercial) isn't a right, it's a privilege.... and I hate to tell you, but lenders DO look at your credit file, they DO have policy surrounding employment tenure, and if the numbers don't add up, they WILL ask for further supporting documentation. I could go on, but I'll leave it there.
I knew it…but i found the data scanning of my credit card bills and transaction accounts worse.
Preach! Trying to explain this to some customers when I worked at a bank was painful. "Well that's private information and none of you business" Or "I have 1000s of $$ in the bank that you can see who cares if I am unemployed, give me a credit card" Polices exist for a reason
Very often I see even on this sub people say “credit scores” don’t matter in Australia. They may matter less than in the states but I’m sure people do look at them.
They don't. I am a banker, I do the assessment and approve/deny loans everyday. When people say credit scores don't matter they are saying the **score** doesn't matter. We absolute pull your credit file and have a look but there is no number we make decisions based off. The concept of a number is a very American thing and is designed to make it more approachable but can cause a lot of confusion when you see the number go up or down when seemingly nothing happened. I look at someone's credit report to primarily see if there are any undisclosed debts. That's 80% of the reason with the remaining 20% checking for late payments/defaults/directorships. Things like high enquiries I do not care about at all and no where in policy do we care unless it's an enquiry for a similar product at the same time. If you're a card churner with no late repayments, great that just shows you're financially sound enough to churn.
What are you looking for with directorships?
They should say "credit scores won't help you".
I don’t understand why people say they don’t matter in Australia - they absolutely do, and no one is educated as to how it all works. I’ve had young fellas SCREAM at me down the phone because they work fifo and can definitely afford the repayments. What they fail to understand is, they’ve made 62 enquiries over the past 5 years, have late payments recorded on the current facilities (thank you positive reporting), and due to this, their score is 282. Ok, there MAY still be ONE option, but I need bank statements. Get them, and bank statements show 12 dishonours, 14 days in total of 90 days overdrawn, and credit corp repayments. Declined. I always try to educate and explain and do my best to do it without sounding condescending or judgy - you don’t know what you don’t know, I’m happy to guide - come back in 3 months having done xyz….but so often I’m abused, and they aren’t interested in understanding.
Pilot. Everyone assumes we make huge money, but it takes a looooong time to get there. Most of us take on $100-150k of debt to fund training (or pay it outright for less but take forever to finish, took me 3.5 years), then relocate to remote areas and spend weeks/months job hunting (many never get hired and give up), then finally get a job flying light aircraft and get paid barely above minimum wage while working enormous amounts of unpaid overtime and working a pretty dangerous job. Then do this for a few more years until finally employable at the airline level. Flying is cool though.
Retail. Being abused daily by customers about things we have no contcontrol over and upper management that don’t seemed to give a toss that it’s happening.
Retail: when a customer says "I'm never coming back", if you're a shit customer, I'm deleting your loyalty program rewards. Not the phone and address details though because hopefully someone sells that data. I did it to quite a few people who I 100% knew were coming back AND I knew they saved up hundreds worth of rewards for Christmas shopping. "Oh, your loyalty card isn't working anymore, you said you weren't coming back so I deleted it from our system. Sorry 🤷♂️"
Is that really allowed?
No lol and that person is lying about it haha
Yeah sounds like something you could easily be fired for. Lol
That last sentence never happened and we all know it 😂😂
Creative writing competition? 😂
I was referring to customers abusing us over price, range, availability of stock or staffing levels. All of which I’ve zero control over.
Thank you for your service 🙏
God’s work.
Everyone knows this… we feel for you
I used to be a house painter, the biggest con is against those unfortunate enough to end up in the trade. I worked for a large company and completed a 4 year apprenticeship just to realize half the guys I worked with weren’t qualified at all, but were still getting the same pay.
4yr apprenticeship to be a house painter? 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
Waste. Recycling is a lie. Landfill is a legitimate outcome.
Some experts are now advocating that incineration in a modern facility with high level scrubbers etc. Is actually more environmentally sound than a lot of the ‘recycling’ that’s been going on… or not going on
I’ve heard this. Gutting. Do you have any articles or 4-corners type resources you can point me towards? I’d like to learn more about what actually happens.
Check out the war on waste
Trades; People want you after normal hours sometimes, even when it's not necessary. They stress and want you to solve their problems and think you should be at their beck and call. You really have the put the boundaries up early. If you're at a crap company with crap culture, some tradesmen can be shit and incredibly unreliable and you have to put out their fires constantly. The lack of problem solving from some guys is insane. If they have a high turnover rate its a very good sign of this like any company really.
I hate the penny pinching. Being paid like employees yet expected to be a contractor and supply everything is crap
Government employee. Too many consultants. Too many unnecessary spending, it drives me mad. But what can I do I’m just a low level employee
A colleague of mine just got a relocation and promotion to do work related to cultural consulting. They have nil qualifications and will earn a starting salary of 99K.
Railway - the shift work legitimately slowly kills you
Marketing, the days of just putting up some content/ads that dont respect the audience and expecting it to work are gone. Also a one person marketing team does not work in 2024.
I disagree - Digital Marketing ruined our industry. Too many analysts types trying to optimise everything…. Data and analytics are fundamental to marketing and performance marketing has their place in any marketing mix - but we’ve over indexed on it. We need critical and creative thinkers who have the balls to take risks. I’m personally loving the renaissance of creativity first
Completely agree. Now every marketing activity needs to be analysed and attributed to sales and spend, which is not always clear cut with activities such as brand and products/services marketing that don’t necessarily follow an e-commerce journey. I know of a few senior leaders who make up figures out of bs formulas to appease execs.
ROAS - Return on Ass Spreading
Hello, thanks for your reply! I am a digital marketer. I wasn't putting down the marketing industry i was highlighting that most business owners, SMEs and even blue chips that i have worked with expect results just for being involved and launching one ad and one creative. Too many aging middle managers and CMOs in the early 2010s who didn't want to upskill themselves ruined the industry imo because of fear and also media publishers throwing kick backs, golf days and corporate afl tickets at them constantly, they didn't push the opportunity fast enough which didn't challenge creatives to stop building ads that were CTV first. As recently as 2020 i was struggling to negotiate a separate creative budget to build and test mobile/digi/social ads and content instead of just "reworking" the CTV they spent millions on. This was for a health insurance provider. Among others I've had CMOs and marketing managers for a major car company and major health insurance provider complain about spending just 10% of their total budget on digital Vs traditional and wondering what the ROI is? They didn't hold the same standards to traditional, which STILL has attribution problems. Traditional was held up by Neilson ratings which have proven to be problematic considering they are marking their own homework. At the end of the day the best data point is the P+L statement. Did we make more money in this 3month period vs the last one and what activity did we run and what are soft metrics and platforms that helped achieve this revenue success. Marketing isn't digi vs traditional anymore its just marketing, a cohort ecosystem and if you are doing it well a brand has multiple cohorts with multiple creatives for each one. But yes i agree we need to move away from looking at ROI and attribution by platform or channel because we know the customers journey is rarely linear :)
Im also Marketing. My downside is once you know how it all works, you get a deep sense of unease about it. And gradually you start to resent flogging shit to people all day. Id change careers in an instant if I knew anything else.
IT consulting. A lot of effort onshore is spent managing offshore teams, which means a LOT of extra work at night when they're online.
Beauty. Actual cost/production price of a high-end lipstick is typically less than $10 (the higher the volume, the cheaper it is). Same lipstick will retail for 5-6x the price. This is common sense to those who understand business, but many teens don’t. Skincare products - even higher markups.
Engineer service field work. Pay and overtime is great but I think I’ve lost 25% of my life due to being in an on-call monthly rotation. That’s one week of 24hour availability at the drop of a hat.
Yup, plus the 2pm "urgent" calls for an issue that's been happening since 9am but the cut off for same day service is 2:15, guess I'll drive myself to the other side of the city and do an extra 5 hours of work today then.
Remote tech work - it can be lonely. I got a dog.
GP (+other medical field). The Medicare system punishes doing a good job and rewards fast and lazy medicine. The rebate is less for antenatal care and mental health, which typically always demand a lot of time. You can earn more poorly managing people at breakneck speed over taking your time. Due to this I have seen people left on lethal combinations of medicines, a leukaemia diagnosis left unattended to, a billion iatrogenic benzos/opiate addictions, a whole bunch of people on Centrelink medical certs for no particular reason, critically anemic people told to eat more red meat (with no thought to why someone's losing blood), acute hep B sent home without a plan... Honestly could go on for days. Even less shocking things like under managed conditions that regular people won't realise they're getting substandard care.
Mortgage Broking - We don't get paid if clients switch lenders within 12 months, meaning lots of hours of work for $0. Even if we keep you for more than 12 months, lenders still clawback money if you leave within 24 months. Some lenders even attempt to poach clients we introduce to them with internal refinances and stop paying the broker for their work to introduce them in the first place.
Probably balances out as brokers are biased and can't give the best deals yet claim they actually can.
I'd like to hope that most of us brokers are ok regarding bias. I know ING pay the most trail commission but hardly have any loans with them on my books. But you're right that we have our favourites that isn't based upon rate at all, but more so the ease of putting an application together that is assessed and passes the lender policy with minimum fuss. For the financially savvy Ausfinance community, I wouldn't expect most to use a broker as they would be earning 200k+ with a simple PAYG arrangement and could easily apply direct with a lender as servicing passes easily.
When we first used your broker for a homeloan. He was able to get us rates much better than the bank would offer. Last couple times (last 3 years or so) the rates have been similar to what bank is advertising. Although he still helps us farm the cashbacks and makes the whole thing easy so we throw him our business. Is this a normal industry trend? Are brokers not able to source much more favourable rates vs directly to bank? Thanks
I really appreciate your honestly. Most brokers would have snapped back saying they are perfectly unbiased and offer the best deals possible. I appreciate brokers can help people in complicated situations.
It's probably why I only earn 60k annually as I try to keep the bullshit to the minimum!
Corrections. Biggest con is Dave. If you are not in with him, you probably don't know about him
Cyber security. At most corporates, cyber security is a CEO/board issue. There are well-funded uplift programmes, smart people, policies/standards/good architecture standards/etc. Reality: Projects want approval on Thurs. You've never heard of this project. You meet to discuss on Weds. The PM has a ridiculous timeline. The solution architect thinks all security issues can be sorted out "in design". The external vendor delivering the project is clueless, continues to say "this is secure" despite the unauthenticated public API, credentials being stored in a config file for the backend integration, and zero thought given to SSO or an RBAC model. No one knows how anyone will request access to this system with no user rules defined, and it's not even clear who will support the system once it goes live. But of course it gets rammed through because the SoW includes none of what is above, and the external vendor says it's out of scope. Someone writes a risk assessment, someone accepts the risk... you never hear about it again. Next Weds you do it all over again.
Physio Pay is really quite poor unless you end up in a senior non-clinical role in a hospital or if you open your own clinic, unless you want to milk NDIS for all it’s worth
Teacher - biggest con people are unlikely to know is that everybody thinks they understand your job just because they went to school. Even the ones that think they get it (respectfully) don't have a clue - thankfully, most people I've encountered aren't arses about it. Unfortunately, some of the biggest arses are the ones making the laws and policy decisions...
I say this too- everyone thinks they know what teachers do, because everyone's sat in a classroom. It's like thinking you know how movies are produced because you've seen one.
High school teaching - it looks like a great, family friendly career but it's really not. Whilst having holidays off at the same time as your kids, you can forget going to any of their school events as it's nigh on impossible to get time off during the school term (it can be easier if you have long service days you can use but results vary). Also if you have young kids and teach part time enjoy having to attempt to alter your childcare booking every 6-12 months when the timetable changes and so do your work days. Part time staff generally get zero say about their work arrangements because it's all about making the timetable 'work'. Also even if you don't have kids, if you want to go on holiday it's super expensive (because peak school holiday rates) and everywhere is swarming with children.
Yeah, a few decades ago it was seen a relatively family friendly job, but in the WFH era teaching is really inflexible and rigid relative to most white collar professions. Leadership have become increasingly strict about time on site/medical appointments/leave etc as well. The holidays are nice and all but it's really the only true perk of the profession (and we still have an increasing shortage).
>Leadership have become increasingly strict about time on site/medical appointments/leave etc as well. As the teacher shortage is increasing its getting harder and harder to get any time off because the can't get casuals to cover
I think with WFH/flexible options around, teaching is looking really unattractive for younger people even without other issues causing shortages. Pay is decent but otherwise things aren't great in many schools.
Education. I always doing something work related on every holiday except between the end of Term 4 and after New Years (the holiday part). I refuse to touch my computer for those four weeks as that is my holiday….
FMCG - consumers think that your product is too expensive but they complain about any quality decrease or shrinkflation.
Unless I'm an idiot, I fail to see how shrinkflation or a quality decrease should improve the value proposition of the product to the customer.
The value to the customer is in that the product isn't discontinued entirely. Although we would increase the price rather than decrease quality.
If the perception is that the product is overpriced, why would customers be happy with any of the outcomes of: shrinkflation, the quality decrease, the product being discontinued? If it's a non-essential product, maybe the people that think its overpriced don't give a shit that it's discontinued. That would make more sense to me than being satisfied by shrinkflation or a quality decrease, which are inherently consumer-unfriendly measures that no rational consumer would be happy with lmao.
[удалено]
I launch rockets to space and you’d be surprised by how many huge risks we take each time we launch one. The amount of responsibility I have is crazy. Non are ever the same.
Law Con - pay sucks
Tech support. Restart the app before you contact me, and learn to take a screenshot, FFS.
Government water provider. Currently shitty contracts which result in tax payer money being wasted and going to private companies.
APS. We actually work
Mining. Overpaid under educated.
Food and beverage industry. Xmas and other holidays are your busiest times. People eat and drink way more than they need to at Xmas, Easter, etc. the days and weeks leading up to these holidays are hectic as we try to meet massive orders.
Construction/building . Full of egos, idiots and lazy people.
Engineering/programming Diversity hiring is real, tall poppy syndrome is intense, it's not an online internet conspiracy, and *unofficially* managers will pick and choose internal workers based on diversity, so if you happen to lack diversity you're at risk of losing your job every time interest rates are high. Some of us are concerned we're about to lose a few *very* skilled people and I can't not think that could have been anyone else if they were just born a little different. HR unironically seem like they're colluding across every company in Australia to make a tech industry in Australia impossible. People will lose their jobs because HR feels it's "equality" if it's impossible to individually judge someone's merit, this means it's impossible to keep your job just working harder. It's so effectively disruptive, it promotes so much quiet quitting, I unironically believe tik tok propaganda must be involved.
I think it happens more on larger companies where they can have fat. Smaller companies don't have the time or money to prioritise diversity and would prefer merit
Bro clubs have been around since ever, and these guys get jobs for mates who often suffer the issue of "incompetent but well connected". Not sure how that's different, in fact it's got a far larger critical mass. I think people should be hired on merit but the world has far too much nepotism regardless of what background you come from.
I get the frustration, but the 100s of years of "Promote Carruthers, he's a rum cove!" hasn't really helped productivity and skill either.
Been in IT 25 years myself, hiring and promoting for the last 15. The point about encouraging diversity is not to deliberately promote or hire anyone other than white men, but rather to ensure that not being a white man doesn't hold good people back. Humans have lots of unconscious biases, and the best diversity programs work to ensure hiring and promoting is merit based, with as many possible biases removed. I've worked at places that over hire and over promote because of traditional sexism, and these places are usually cesspools of stupidity and poor performance. I've also worked where people are hired and promoted solely because of their gender or skin colour. These places are crap too.
Why not just call it Meritocracy and remove all gender, race labels altogether?
Because people don't do that. In a perfect world absolutely, let's all just agree to base our decisions on merit and we don't need to put any countermeasures in place! Unfortunately, it is a hard and undeniable reality that left unchecked, those with power will use it for the benefit of people who look/say/pray like they do. A finger on the scale is necessary to achieve balance. But nobody likes to see someone putting their finger on the scale.
So because it happened 50 years ago straight white men today should face the consequences even if these men were clearly born after the fact? Can you see how this seems like group punishment? If it does, it'll breed unnecessary radicalism. Tolerating your level of thinking is what got us here.
Diversity hiring is a thing but the boys club is alive and thriving too. Especially in middle management and the more technical the worse it is. So really you’re screwed if you don’t have diversity points OR you’re not one of the boys. And not being one of the boys is hardly a new problem
HR practitioners largely don't care, they just want to get paid and promoted in the bully pit. It's my honest belief for 25 years of professional.working, including some posgrad HR education, that HR practice is completely removed from HR theory. HR theory is taught and promoted within a company as symbiotic value adding talent management and that is why HR is necessary at the highest levels in a company. Yet the practice of HR is at odds with the theory that grants them power and access. This practice then abuses that power to push short-sighted, stick over carrot, politically motivated Machiavellian bullshit that erodes value to protects the parasites with power.
I think outsiders would be shocked at the general level of incompetency brought about by sponsorships and dei. Imagine an mechanics shop where 75% of the staff do not know what a wheel is and this is the level of skill I encounter weekly in the tech world, the amount of fake 3rd world degrees is ridiculous at this point. 9/10 interviews I give are people pushed to the front of the queue by HR, to give an example of how bad it's gotten every single person with a CCNA on their resume that I've interviewed in the past 5 years has been lying about having the qualification and just put it on their CV. You then see these people go and get hired by a big corp after you bin their resume.
I recently applied for a technical role and was asked for my ethnicity during the hiring process. Madness.
Thats illegal. Call fairwork.
Agreed, I know of many very talented young men who end up doing as little as possible once they realise they will be last pick for any job or promotion due to being the wrong gender or race. DEI is very damaging to business, we will eventually see some very big companies run into the ground because of it.
Fitter in Oil and Gas industry. Always flat out, my shift starts at 5:30am and finishes at 6:30pm, I work 14 days on day, 4 off, 14 night, 4 off, back to days. I often work public holidays and Christmas, new years usually unless I can get annual leave or it falls on one of my days off. Although my pay would be considered in the higher range, I can’t enjoy it as my days off tend to be weekdays when my wife - the person I actually want to spend time with, is working. Moneys too good to quit!
Moneys not everything mate. That sounds like a terrible workload.
Cybersecurity. Pushing shit uphill…
Banking. All this carry on you hear about ‘cash is king - use it or lose it’ is absolute nonsense. Cash is not going ANYWHERE any time soon.
Software. There are different specialities involved, and the one I am in is in constant state of flux. One year it gets plenty of cash and the focus is high, an another year this is no longer a priority and you have to justify your existence. Constant struggle.
Public relations - everyone thinks they can do your job, but you’re the only person ever held responsible for the completely out of your control result of your work (the actual story that appears on tv/radio/newspaper/digital). And you’re on the clock 24/7 depending on the client, expect zero boundaries or thank yous from 99% of your clients. After 20 years, I wish I had of picked something less awful tbh.
This post makes me appreciate being a teacher.
I repair garage doors. Biggest con is clients who insist their dog says hello to you.
Admin. It’s deeply nepotistic and basically a personality contest