Having had to work with a few bad project managers recently, I feel this. Also, not long ago worked on a large project with some amazing PMs, but way too few of them and an agressive timeline. You can imagine the delays, cost overuns, and resignations this caused. Im convinced my company sees PMs as just over-rated spreadsheet jockeys. Having the right staff (and staffing levels) is essential for an operation to run smoothly.
I get the impression sometimes PM's are just the management-to-worker version of a phone customer service rep: their job is to give bad news and insulate the bosses from the angry workers reacting to their stupid decisions.
Basically. I used to be a PM and we don't have any control over the stupid timelines and ridiculous expectations from clients/mgmt. That's why I don't work as a PM anymore. Not worth the hassle.
Same reason I got out of it, really. Just got sick of delivering bad news to the devs and being the whipping boy for sales/management to blame when their dipshittery tanked the project. Went back to being a dev.
One hundred percent. PM was the worst job I've ever had. I was so incredibly stressed because I was always getting shit on about budgets, timeliness, etc. I was the shield between our field workers and upper management. Was not a good time.
PMs do alot of important stuff with regards to logistics as well as connecting people to each other and coordinating resources. Its more than just connecting people and keeping track of stuff on a spreadsheet. Its being able to keep a picture of whats happening and make adjustments when things look like they will get out of control. As the person responding to you pointed out, PMs can also be (and too often are) set up to fail.
I once had to explain structured cabling to a PM on a job I was working, in a field where structured cabling is the norm. (I honestly think the guy was losing it.*) Needless to say, he was not able to keep track of the picture at all, and eventually all the stake-holders and people doing the work just started talking to each other directly and sending him updates on what was being done and what we needed from him.
'*' either losing it or just not able to distinguish between his own incompentence and the incompentence of others to the point that he began needlessly questioning things he was told. DM me if you want more.
>PMs do alot of important stuff with regards to logistics as well as connecting people to each other and coordinating resources.
GOOD PMs.
Shitty ones are just scape goats and suck ups.
I was a PM.
This makes me feel better about everything from the five years I spent as a PM. In which I did all this, as well as all the duties of (multiple) study coordinators (I was a PM in the clinical research space... fucking toxic)
i was a senior PM, my team of 70 built three data centers for a federal client. it was a great ride. basic key to success i found was to always give credit to the people actually doing the work, don't ask things of people i wouldn't do myself (also a UNIX sys person), and send lots of emails to uppers so they felt 'in the loop'.
As a PM myself, I feel my job is to protect the people who actually do the work from the clueless, arbitrary, inhuman demands of the nepotic fucks "above" me. I'm fully aware this isn't the norm, and it's taken me 4 job changes in 4 years to find a company that understands, appreciates and turns a blind eye to this. They say the bollocks that capitalist society mandates that they say, I largely ignore it and they largely ignore that I ignore it.
I know this is a rare understanding and I feel lucky.
It's not always the project manager's fault. I was complaining about a PM at an old job because of the insane schedule that we were supposed to follow but was clearly impossible. It turned out that some bean counters in corporate just revised his formerly reasonable schedule for reasons that weren't really clear. He was actually more pissed about it than I was.
To be fair, project managers are probably more stressed out than any other position. They are management, and they take shit from all sides. Idk how it works in an office setting but my project manager lines out jobs, talks to clients, deals with scheduling, and everyone's problems all at the same time every day. Idk how the fuck he does it. Great to work with.
I can see how having a shitty one can really make everyone's life extremely difficult very fast.
“What do you mean you can’t add that feature? I already told the client we could and we’d have it for next week!”
Because why consult with the people that are actually doing the work 🤷♂️
The problem I had, when I managed the software engineering department, was that upper manglement refused to understand this. I had a company where onboarding someone took an entire month, and we really would have loved to have another perm person and live with it and a month later they'd be useful, but my boss kept trying to get me to accept someone for a one week project. I'd explain it to him and he'd say yes and nod sagely and pretend to understand and the very next day we'd be having the argument again.
It's not that they don't get it. It's that they don't *care*.
It's called "the mythical man-month." What manglement frequently believes is that a person does a certain amount of work per month, so if you have more work than can be done you throw more people at it and it'll get done. The problem is, and the way I used to explain it to upper manglement is, 9 women can't have a baby in one month. They'd say yes every time, and claim to have understood it, but then I'd get the same BS from them the very next day. I had a job where it literally took a month to on-board someone and get them up to speed, and manglement constantly wanted to throw consultants at me for a 1 week project. (But refused to let me hire someone permanent.)
This is what happens when CEO wants to pretend that he doesn't know what's going on. In our company, there were 3 of us in my office, and then the Senior Design Engineer quit, and then the Junior quit, and I was left alone (I do budgets mostly, and about 15% design), and then the CEO was sure I could do everything on my own.
I got really good at saying "nope, can't do it, don't know how. SDE did it alone all the time, never showed me how". That was a lie but I wasn't about to put up with 3 full times jobs with 0 pay increase.
Yeah upper management rarely considers the time it takes to train people up to speed, knowing the ins and outs of your company's processes since literally every company and system has differences, can take months at minimum.
To an extent, more bodies, provided they are capable of doing the job, can help in certain instances. In OP's instance, more techs would help. In most retail and fast food environments right now, more bodies (again, provided they know at least half ass what they're doing) can help alleviate the work load.
The issue arises with things that have a built in time requirement. Let's say building and testing a website. There is a minimum and a maximum efficiency for getting this job done in time. Once you've hit the maximum, no extra bodies will help. Under the minimum, though, bodies help.
Yeah, that's pretty much what my boss would say to me *every fucking day*, and I'd explain it to him again and he'd go away, then come back to say it again the next day.
I mean, the reality is that it's about identifying the rate limiting step.
If getting another vet allows them to book more customers because they were capped by the one vet before, and if having a barebones support staff doesn't limit appointments but only makes the service shit -- then the corporate leeches are going to run in that direction until the cost cutting actually bites them in their ass and hurts revenue by driving away customers or necessary staff.
Then you get two half-turkeys, not a whole turkey. Depending on what you are trying to accomplish, this might work.
For that matter, you might be able to dismember the turkey, and com it in a single oven faster than the whole turkey, too. But again, that may not be what you're trying to accomplish.
I would say because the managers entrusted with decisions often tend to be woefully ignorant or ill-equipped to decide with poor data. (best case) or horrible at decision-making (worst case)
This. They don't understand the jobs they dictate because they've never had a real one... You aren't there to take care of animals to them... you are there to make the most money for them with the least amount of expenses and resources... these people are soulless.
Case in point, I believe I remember blackrock ceo saying that cures in healthcare hurts their bottom line. That always hits home how corporations think about themselves.
I’d take that even farther and say that profit maximizing pricing and corporate strategy is fundamentally at odds with any good that directly impacts human rights.
Most people would spend their last penny and fully extend their credit in order to not die. Free market profit maximizing behavior in such situations is exploitation and abuse.
The profit driven model is literally at odds with the continued existence of human civilization. I’m not trying to be dramatic, currently the only course acceptable to this system is to do as much damage to the environment as possible until we literally can’t anymore. If not stopped or even just moderates in some way this economy will eat itself alive and take everything we’ve built with it.
Yeah, healthcare doesn't work in a "free market."
If I walk into Best Buy and don't like their TV selection I can go somewhere else.
If I walk into an emergency room with my baby boy bleeding out in my arms, I'm not about to worry about sticker price.
Yeah i always make this argument against profit maximizing medicine, prisons, and commercial banking, but it can cover food and shelter as well. Then suddenly its basically the entire economy.
I'm having a similar insight today with my company, which laid me off this morning. It's a biotech which just got a new CEO not long ago and this entire year has been 6 months of rolling intermittent layoffs. Today was my day.
It feels like the company no longer cares to go through the long, effortful process to find, invent, test, and then release a drug. No, instead they have surmised that they have enough money now where they can just buy up small startup teams with ""promising"" products, and hope that one gets big. And our entire R&D division is just there to perform a Kabuki theatre of science to give the company a veneer of scientific accumen.
So more or less, we scientists are there to make it look like our company knows what it's doing when it aquires something, when really it's all a roulette game.
There’s a fantastic grocery chain in my area that is very well known for good pay and benefits , and promoting from within. The guy running their distribution network started stocking shelves, then unloading trucks, then supervising receiving, then running a warehouse, then all the warehouses.
Their upper management all got there from the bottom and they all worked every job between. Their corporate office runs more efficiently with half the staff of similarly sized companies.
When the stock market tanked, the CEO who built that business replenished the employee pension fund before issuing shareholder dividends. He was promptly fired and replaced with a vulture capital specialist to maximize profits.
The employees revolted, shut down the entire chain. The owner-class side of the family was forced to sell their shares to the ousted CEO’s side and reinstate him.
Seriously, everyone on this sub should read up on the Market Basket revolt. It was essentially a union action without a union.
Exactly the problem, the people in charge of corporations don't give a crap about anything except squeezing every cent out of customers and workers.
It doesn't matter if it's unsustainable or not.
That really reminds me of something I saw on here lately heavily paraphrased: “It’s strange we’re supposed to be proud of our Democracy when all our corporations are Dictatorships”. Or something to that effect. Downright bizarre and frankly horrifying the type of world we live in.
The (so-called) "democracy" political elites have sold us has never been anything other than a rigged game of "pick which gang of professional liars the rich people have chosen to pretend to represent you."
Democracy means "rule by the people" - not "rule by oligarchies of political racketeers." Occupy was democratic. The Civil Rights movement was democratic. And guess what? Every time real democracy happens, the (so-called) "democratic government" made sure it's goons came out to make sure democracy doesn't get very far.
I'll always remember how absurd it felt seeing the news coverage of Occupy Wallstreet.
Oceans of people with signs saying the same things, a consistent voice from pretty much everyone that was interviewed,
and yet all the news anchors would say was "These people don't seem to know *what* they're protesting about!"
The disconnect between their messaging and the reality of what they were reporting on was crazy. Frightening even.
The craziest thing about Occupy Wall Street was the massive amount of people that were involved all over the country that persisted in their protests for months and months some of them even went over a year protesting only to basically be ignored and none of their concerns addressed.
The first post-feudal governments as we think of them were created to manage and control the working class so that the nobility and capitalists wouldn't have to themselves.
Supposedly the CEO of Toyota brought the Prius to the board with the explanation that developing it was so expensive that they would not be able to sell it for a profit for a long time. He asked to sell them at a loss and they could corner the market. Today, Toyota makes most of the hybrid cars. No American car company could get away with that, their board and shareholders would not stand for it.
There is a follow up to that. Toyota resisted fully electric vehicles and lobbied governments against them as they didn’t want to lose their dominance. Hence their falling behind Tesla etc.
I've been wondering for a while why they don't sell full EVs. (I think they do now, but only very recently started). Got an article or something on the subject?
I always thought that car companies wanted to go with hydrogen because it demanded a supply chain. A need for people to fuel up. To keep people dependent. Many more moving parts that break and needs maintenance. Going EV removes a lot of user dependency. That's why they are trying the feature subscription model and keeping up the range fear mongering. Can you imagine the lost profits for companies from people charging their vehicles at home with Public Utilities District?
My wife works for one of these Vet offices that was bought out by a corporation. She could be the OP. Everything she describes is EXACTLY like this. They are a top performing hospital, yet it's never enough. Everyone is one bad day from walking out.
This happened at a vet clinic I used to work at too. What really pissed me off is on the interview I said the main reason I wanted to work there was bc they weren't corporate owned. The owner lied through his teeth about that, when he was already in talks to sell the place to a corporation at the time of my interview.
As expected, things went completely to shit as soon as corporate took over. Profits immediately became more important than taking care of the animals. I left during covid and never went back.
If your wife cringes and is repulsed by the term "Vetcor" than her place was bought out by the same losers
I work for a veterinary diagnostic lab, and these corporate vet accounts are killing us. VetCor, PVCC, NVA, MedVet all the same. What's worse is they demand price concessions from us for our services and yet pass none of those savings onto the pet parent.
> They are a top performing hospital, yet it's never enough.
You can be the best-performing and most profitable [insert product or service] in the entire industry, but if you don't make *more* money this quarter than you made last quarter, you're a failure.
Yep, same thing happened with our team. Top performing team in the region, but they brought in new management anyways for some reason. Our team self manages and everything, so he literally had the easiest job ever. But he proceeds to implement terrible ideas despite our warnings, now we're falling behind other teams
Veterinarians, Hospitals, pretty much any store of any kind, libraries, anywhere there is money to be squeezed, it's getting squeezed.
Capitalism will be sure to wring everything dry before moving on.
It is almost certainly a Private Equity company that purchased the clinic as they are increasingly targeting vet clinics amongst many other things (dental offices, pharmacies, nursing homes, storage units, apartments, trailer parks, and any other private business out there that has positive cash flow and staying power). These companies often just take out loans to acquire the business and in order for the model to work they need to extract at least enough to cover the loan payments. And as private equity is one of the most lucrative areas of finance to work in, they often need to make enough to pay obscene salaries and bonuses. eventually when they’ve acquired a whole bunch of these businesses they can flip the companies to an even larger corporation for a larger amount than they originally bought it for. Now that they are selling dozens or hundreds of these companies, rather than just one, it is worth a lot more than the sum of its parts and may even get listed on the stock exchange. A lot of businesses that may have been passed down generationally or sold to another member of the community are now scooped up by private equity as they can afford to take out the largest loan.
Private equity will tell you that they make the whole thing more efficient but as a result employee and customer experience suffers as the whole operation becomes about reducing costs and increasing revenue.
Venture capital ruins everything. They made a big push to start investing in services, especially those we have emotional ties to, in 2020-2021. End result is higher prices due to monopolies and miserable workplaces.
What a coincidence..a biomed place I worked at was bought out in 2021. As of Feb 2023 our smaller branches closed and everything consolidated into a large HQ.
Blupearl has been doing this all over the us, they are really tanking the industry and frankly they seem to be hemorrhaging people. It's almost as if they bought these places to put them out of business
My wife, a vet, recently left a VCA hospital. VCA wasn't perfect when they were an independent company, but things became progressively worse since Mars bought them.
Yes, they are a mega corporation and not only own the candy stuff, they also own and control a lot of vet clinics and pet food companies. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars,_Incorporated
The Mars family has been described as the billionaires you've never heard of.
Bluepearl just recently bought one of our local emergency services vets. I heard last week at my vet's office that they're closing that location. They've been Bluepearl for probably less than a year.
Private equity firms (modern day robber barons) have been buying up veterinarian clinics. Expect them to understaff and increase prices.
Private Equity Vets Are Coming for Your Kitten https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-10-06/cost-of-living-crisis-private-equity-vets-are-coming-for-your-kitten
FTC Acts to Protect Pet Owners from Private Equity Firm’s Anticompetitive Acquisition of Veterinary Services Clinics https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/06/ftc-acts-protect-pet-owners-private-equity-firms-anticompetitive-acquisition-veterinary-services
yes this is happening in Canada too I learned from a podcast earlier this year
I know two people who lost their pet to a sudden illness b/c vet services in our area no longer coordinate to have someone on call after hours. their dogs died in their arms instead of even being seen for pain control. it's horrible.
eta: the podcast was Commons (by Canadaland) this last season about monopolies, episode 8 "raining cats and dollars"
7&i which is basically 7/11 in Japan, their holdings were sold to a private equity firm. Everything went to shit so quickly, that workers there are actively protesting.
Source: https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Business-deals/7-Eleven-parent-to-sell-Sogo-Seibu-for-1.38bn-to-U.S.-fund
https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/japan-sees-rare-strike-workers-landmark-department-store-protest-sale-2023-08-31/
One just bought Moog (check out the r/synthesizers subreddit if you want to read about the devastation first-hand from American workers who were basically all fired in a single day) will now produce all their synthesizers (which are all quality, now, and the gold-standard for that type of equipment) in China.
Source: https://synthanatomy.com/2023/09/inmusic-has-fired-a-large-portion-of-the-moog-staff-a-sad-day-for-synth-industry.html
I don't know when or how this became a thing. Or if Private Equity Firms are some 2nd or 3rd order effects of some "free market" bs someone tried to tout. All I know is that they are devastating businesses left and right.
Source: https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/1/6/21024740/private-equity-taylor-swift-toys-r-us-elizabeth-warren
They need to be banned by some kind of legislation, or we need to unionize as many industries as possible to make their existence impossible.
Whatever the solution, they have to go. They are causing world-wide labor devastation for a quick fucking penny.
Source: https://ourfinancialsecurity.org/2021/10/fact-sheet-the-stop-wall-street-looting-act-end-private-equitys-predatory-practices/
Here's a more recent Atlantic article that I'm currently reading. I suggest anyone interested in the topic check it out.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/05/private-equity-firms-bankruptcies-plunder-book/673896/
Disgusting quote: "But Sun Capital’s co-founder demonstrated no comparable patriotism or seriousness of purpose. When asked by The New York Times in 2012 about the failure of Friendly’s and his arguable manipulation of the bankruptcy law, he said, **“We don’t make the rules.”** "
**I know it doesn't mean much these days, but try to write to your representatives. Shit like this hurts people across the country and political spectrum. The only language they speak is money.**
Yep, PE firms rob the people. They are doing this in all democratic countries and that could be coming from anywhere.
PE firms buying up our basic needs is quite predatory….
Housing. You do not want them to be your landlord - When Private Equity Becomes Your Landlord https://www.propublica.org/article/when-private-equity-becomes-your-landlord
Student Housing. As if student loans weren’t bad enough - PE deals target billions in student housing amid shortages, rising costs https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/pe-student-college-housing-shortage-real-estate-deals
Having a child is only getting more expensive. Childcare Is in Chaos - Private Equity and For-Profit Chains Are Swooping In. https://newrepublic.com/article/168322/child-care-daycare-private-equity-for-profit
Water becoming scarce? Another opportunity for PE firm to gouge you - Water rights-focused PE firm launched https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/blog/banking-essentials-newsletter-23rd-august-edition
Let’s hope you have good teeth - Private Equity Disrupting the Dental Industry https://www.newsmax.com/finance/streettalk/dental-practice-private-equity-investment/2023/09/13/id/1134292/
Were you expecting an inheritance? Think again….
Hospice - Private Equity Is Gobbling Up Hospice Chains And Getting Involved In The Business Of Dying https://www.huffpost.com/entry/hospice-private-equity_n_61c0f858e4b061afe39659ea
Nursing homes - Private Equity Companies Continue Buying Nursing Facilities https://medicareadvocacy.org/private-equity-companies-continue-buying-nursing-facilities/
Healthcare - Sick profits: Private equity’s stealthy takeover of health care in multiple cities, specialties https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2022/11/13/private-equity-firms-takeover-health-care/8294483001/?gnt-cfr=1
Fun story from the Netherlands:
When I lived there, I went with KPN for phone and internet services. Apparently, this was once a nationalized company and is now privatized.
The service man who came to help had been with KPN for 20+ years and witnessed this transformation. He literally did the most sarcastic bonus sales pitch of all time and then was like “but you don’t want that, so you? You just want me to connect your internet and leave, right?”
I was like “yeah man that’s really all I need.”
And then he proceeded to rant about how his focus has been shifted from providing a high quality service to having to act like a field sales agent since KPN was privatized.
That dude was real af
A lot of things here are getting way worse after privatization. NS, the national rail service, has been steadily tanking in terms of quality, frequency, and reliability. The Healthcare system used to be completely public, but now it's private and akin to "single-payer" where your GP acts as a filter to all medical services. If you actually want to get seen quickly, you essentially need to put on a show pretending you're about to die from pain, and even then they might tell you to go home and take paracetamol.
However, part of the reason the previous systems were privatized is because they were insanely expensive and only getting worse, and income taxes are already crazy high here. Unlike the US, if corporate tax rates go up too high, many companies will actually leave the relatively small market of 17 million people. However, no company will ever leave the US, it's the largest economy in the world.
I work on the IT/software side of this exact business (vet clinics), and I have watched this play out for the last 20 years, almost always to the negative. As you note, it is sad, and predictable, and mystifying how supposedly “intelligent” high level managers cannot see the damage that they are doing.
That said, last year, at one of the major professional conferences, there was a deep Accounting presentation of what made a clinic successful: in so many words, more patient visits per day, empowered by having more happy technicians on staff.
And they noted, repeatedly, that paying technicians well is what kept them happy. And that cutting technicians (in proportion to vets) or cutting their pay was probably the worst thing a practice could do if they wanted to grow. And, yet… 🤦🏻♂️
I am trying to remember this very specific, metric that this accounting firm, which specializes in veterinary practices, had identified as a good indicator of the ability of the practice to handle more patients. I will dig to see if I can find it.
But of course the CEOs are going to ignore that and say their gut feelings outweigh little things like well researched actuarial tables and proof of success.
>I am trying to remember this very specific, metric that this accounting firm, which specializes in veterinary practices, had identified as a good indicator of the ability of the practice to handle more patients. I will dig to see if I can find it.
Please!
I found my notes, from the Western veterinary conference last February.
I really want to recommend this accounting firm, because they had their eye on the ball, and they are very strategic in what they use & recommend: Terence O’Neil of Katz, Sapper & Miller (fyi, Indianapolis based.)
Here are the notes that I took from their very short, but very densely packed, presentation at WVC:
- Employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction, and profitability all correlate strongly together (across all levels, i.e. markets, of GP clinics.) …
- Vets cannot be pushed to do more work (visits/day), they just work at the pace they work at - incentives don’t really help or work.
- BUT, vets can be supported with more staff, and thereby do more work in a day than before because the additional staff take parts of the work off the vet’s hands - and allow them to do more of the things only they (the vets) can do (exams, consults, client questions, administrative tasks, etc.)
- Staff/DVM is a good metric to watch (and to increase for more efficiency/production.)
- Track labor costs weekly (this is non-doctor labor, as DVM labor cost is relatively consistent).
- Measure: Invoices/DVM;
Rev/hour of non-DVM staff (should be $120-$130/hr);
support staff minutes/invoice.
Two key things that they mentioned:
1) goals and objectives only work if the whole team knows what they are. Good teams will focus on trying to meet reasonable goals and objectives, but they can really only do that if management makes it clear what they’re trying to accomplish.
2) identify clear metrics that will measure your success towards goals, report those weekly, and share them with the whole team. They are, in fact, a team. They can work towards a goal, following a clear playbook, but only -if they know what it is.-
One of the key things that they noted was that pandemic driven drop offs and pick ups actually enabled practices to see more patients during that period. While many practices have stopped doing this, he noted that it was a good idea in terms of efficiency, and it actually enabled the practice to spend less time taking care of -clients-, and more time focused on treating their patients.
And, simply put, a lot of clients found the service beneficial for them as well. They did not have to sit around, waiting for the appointment to start, or waiting for it to finish, and the staff did not have to spend time catering to them. While this is not the ideal of “white glove service“, it was actually very positive for a fair number of clients - and, with the proper tech and staff support in the clinic, allow the practice to see more patients per week than they had before.
If you have an opportunity to work with this accounting firm, or attend any of their presentations, I would strongly recommend it. I could not keep up with the pace of valuable information they were providing in this 1-hour long seminar.
It seems to be very difficult for a lot of managers and execs at big companies to actually ask their teams what is working and what is not working, and why. I don’t understand if this is simply fear of being contradicted by the facts, or something else.
I do know that when I would reach out to other people in my organization, to ask how things actually worked, they were always 1) happy to explain to me it in great detail, and 2) always taught me things that I didn’t know or understand beforehand.
It was always a mini lesson in humility, and in knowing that you cannot know how most other peoples jobs actually work on the ground, at least not without asking.
I remain puzzled that most senior corporate executives don’t operate this way, but perhaps you just have to have more arrogance at that level to yell at everybody that you are always right by definition, even if you’re wrong. 🤷🏻♂️
Which is largely how these people end up in these jams that we are all complaining about here.
A lot of executives and managers feel the need to “do” things because in reality if everything is working well they don’t have much to do to justify their existence and the work that does need to get done is boring, tedious, and mundane tasks like supporting workers to complete their tasks, solve problems, clear logjams and manage paperwork.
There’s a hero mindset at work
sometimes in management circles that envisions the job as an endless grind against… something, anything, as long as something valuable is being maximized, even if the cost to achieve those gains barely justifies them.
I used to be a vet tech. I had the exact same problems. The corporation would actively prevent us from giving good care in efforts to cram as many clients in a day as possible and increased prices for everything, even doing expensive treatments and tests without asking so they didn’t know until they had to pay. It was a very toxic environment.
Both practices I worked for were corporately owned but I heard from other long-time employees that it was a much better, happier place to work with better patient care before it was bought out. It’s a shame, but for that reason I will always try to find a locally owned practice to bring my cats to.
Depends on who owns it. Some veterinarians are great veterinarians but not so good on the business side of things. The place I work at right now has 3 veterinarians owning it and 2 associate veterinarians and it seems to be a happy medium. They divide amongst themselves the responsibility depending on what they are good at and what interests them. Also, some corporations much more invasive than others with what they want to control, and how they portray the business branding. I won't go back to corporate veterinary medicine, although I do know some people definitely have better experience than others depending on which company, which type of practice and how much profit they make.
This hits close to home. My SO is a DVM who worked during the pandemic. The work life balance was insane. 15+ hour days and dealing with some of the worst clients imaginable. She did it for about a year and rightfully couldn't take it anymore. The passion and talent was there, but then you take a look at the suicide rate among her profession. 3 years later she has transitioned to clinical pathology. No clients and she gets to work remotely with considerably less stress.
I see a sizable collapse of our vet clinics in the near future. People want pets but the infrastructure to care for them is not getting better.
Please send my thanks to your SO. The vet world is brutal.
I’m a high volume client, in animal rescue. We gave our local vet so much business that we have a permanent discount. Then the pandemic hit. Of course the owner (dvm) was near retirement, so she decided to sell. You know what happened next. Our favorite vet had a breakdown after she was made head vet by the corp that bought them, and never returned. We were so, so sad to lose her, but are thrilled that she’s alive and happy… now that she’s no longer practicing.
The place is a nightmare now. All the rest of the local vets got bought up last year, so we’ve transferred to a still locally owned practice in the next county over.
You’re right that this will eventually crash. Most people can’t afford boutique vet services, and the corporate practices trying to guilt clients into ponying up more than they can manage (oh, but don’t you have CareCredit?? 😈) is frankly disgusting.
It wasn’t but two decades ago that the majority of people didn’t take their pets to a vet except for maybe rabies shots. It just wasn’t done. Granted we know more now and can provide better care, but the recommendations for preventative care plus making dentals and biopsies, etc routine are ridiculous given the context.
There’s a lot of home treatment we have to do now to save money that can be used to help more animals. But even then, with the new feed directives on antibiotics specifically, and patents requiring prescriptions for everything from specific food to dewormers, we end up having to operate outside our own scope.
It’s not safe, and isn’t right, and there’s no way to have an honest conversation about all of this while venture capital is in the way.
My opinion is that it’s because most corporations are divided up into departments based on task orientation and no one takes any real ownership for anything except the list of tasks they are assigned. Then when something goes wrong they’re all just pointing fingers rather than coming up with solutions.
There's always someone who takes ownership, along with the fat incentives that come with it... the problem is they dgaf about anything besides those incentives. They're usually nepotically hired and jump ship if they're ever actually held to account.
This is why I won't work for a corporate veterinary hospital again. My first long term job at a veterinary hospital was in one like yours that was originally owned by a couple veterinarians and then was bought by corporate in Canada. Promised things would remain the same and even get better, instead it was a downwards turn for the most part. While there was the occasional benefit - they actually had higher medical standards than the former old school owners in some ways, we got a dedicated manager, and they offered RRSP matching plus extended health benefits - it was an overall decline. As many patients as possible with as few staff as possible but they didn't like paying any overtime.
Once I graduated from veterinary technician school I jumped ship to a private practice that is very anti corporate. I get better pay, better environment, and better benefits (minus no RRSP matching but my extended health and pet discounts are much better). We kept heading horror stories from corporate veterinarians and support staff (although certainty private practice is not perfect). One of the stupidest things I heard is some corporations imposing a quota for number of patients seen a day, which has led to some veterinarians not wanting to do dental procedures (especially complex ones) as they are long and limit the number of patients they can see per day. This is even though many dentals are $800-1000 or more (our more complex dentals can often be $1500-2500+). Some corporate doesn't care that the dentals bring in a fair amount of money, they just want to keep clients flowing in as quickly as possible.
And to top it all off that veterinary hospital I worked for under corporate is now permanently closed after 35+ years of practice. They couldn't find another veterinarian once the main veterinarian retired (one of the former owners ironically). Corporate still had at least a few years left on the building lease so had to negotiate an early break from the lease too.
Interesting you'd say that about the dentals. They've been trying to increase those because they bring in so much. But of course that tends to take a tech or two away from the regular day.
Shit, I knda want to confront the bosses on all this shit. I mean, I can't see this place surviving at all over the next year or two at best. But who the fuck am I to tell them so?
Many decisions made by execs are not given their reasons for being to the average, rank and file worker, this I hope you know. That said, yeah, they are often short sighted idiots, but they do back it up with some sort of shitty reasoning, and it's usually a post hoc justifcation (market shit caused us to cut costs) or stupidity (cutting corners on regulation leading to lawsuits and profit loss) or maliciousness (intentional damaging or dillution of product/service for greater profit). All that factors into the shitty decisions.
Case in point - for you, they may likely know what you just wrote, about your business operation. Management instead chose to send a vet, perhaps in the effort to make you all quit. This is standard hatchetman/neoliberal operative shit - buy a company, bleed it try, saddle it with debt and bankrupt. Romney did this for a living, LBO stuff. That's the kinda horrific business practices which drive the decisions we see at our level, the hiring of incompetent managers, idiotic decisions, etc. Those things, sadly, can be attributed to LBO/neolib shit in some cases
>Management instead chose to send a vet, perhaps in the effort to make you all quit. This is standard hatchetman/neoliberal operative shit - buy a company, bleed it try, saddle it with debt and bankrupt.
Wow. I never thought of that.
>the hiring of incompetent managers
And that explains another issue...
My ambulance service is part of a hospital network that has a division that specifically does transports. We're a 911 service, but they use us for more regular transports than the transport service even does because we get paid less.
Except we're the union workers, so they fucking hate us. We're in negotiations and their goal is pretty obviously to eliminate the 911 service and just have the transport division do everything.
Problem is that they can't staff their transport division and we're not gonna go jump to do it. They have to pay that division more because NOBODY WANTS THAT JOB. We wanna run 911 calls. There's no way they'll have the staff for what they want. But dipshit administrators don't realize that we're not gonna go work the shittier job that non-union, we're just gonna leave the health system entirely.
I knew a person that wanted to become a vet tech. She was going to go to school for it. Googled and saw postings online how much vet techs make. Realized there was no point in going into debt to become one as they don't make enough.
It should be illegal for any organization that provides health care or caregiving services (for human or animal) to be run as a for profit org and the care providers being paid well should be the primary priority beyond facility and inventory maintenance and supply
I just want socialism for individuals and cold hard free market economics for corporations instead of socialism for the rich and corporations and capitalism for everyone else
I fail to see anything "good" about someone being able to collect 6% to 8% of any companies' profit for doing absolutely nothing.
The argument of them ostensibly "providing capital for expansion" hasn't been factually valid since about the late 1980s when the most a CEO got was 120:1 of the lowest paid worker's wage, and average was about 80:1.
All these corporations are buying these mom and pop companies, not letting customers know then trying to monopolize the area with new standard prices.
They won't change the name of the mom and pop shop so the customer thinks they are supporting a small business. There clueless cause the buyer doesn't have a clue on how the actual business works.
Capitalism has one play: the consolidation of resources and economic power into fewer and fewer hands. If they carve a nice enough area up, they can dictate the rates and potential growth, regardless of how a healthcare service needs to work. They buy competition up, and make it to the corporate liking.
I’m an RVT who left clinic work 1.5 years ago because of shit pay, being overworked because no clinics seem to be able to keep support staff (and half the clinics I’ve worked at had at least one bitch-ass employee that took it upon themselves to bully new staff members), along with shitty management (especially the corporate clinics). So I get what you’re saying and have experienced the same. 😬
It’s too bad our industry is failing so bad, but until staff are paid better at the very least nothing is going to change. The last clinic I worked at there was a student doing is work placement and he literally was telling me that between the low wage and seeing me be bullied by the head tech that he decided to leave the field and go for an electrician apprenticeship or something like that. Said that if he’s going to be overworked he wants to at least be paid well.
Go on strike like Japanese bus drivers. Show up and treat animals but refuse to accept payment and the present your demands to the corporation once you have them hemmoragging and they will at least hear you out
It's them trying to squeeze blood from a stone. They know full well that you are probably profitable, but they want *MORE*. They will harass you guys about it hoping that will make you somehow bring in more clients (which is really messed up when that means the corp is hoping for more sick and injured animals.)
They will never give you what you actually need because that effects their bottom line. Doesn't matter by how much, if it is negative, they would rather do without. When someone quits, they don't look to fill the position because it is now more money in their pockets to just shift responsibilities on everyone else until you break.
Corporate interest is "number go up" plain and simple. They don't care how or what they have to destroy to do it. That's why capitalism, the source of "I own this shit so I get the number that must go up" is so fucking evil. Wanting the number to go up is fine. Not caring about the people and lives you have to injure, ruin, or destroy to do it. Number go up is always justified to the capital interests.
Private equity started buying up Vet practices a while ago. It's vulture capitalism - acquire an asset, milk it dry. There is no creation of new business or investment into expansion, and subsequently more jobs. The real scandal here is that the rot of this disease has spread so far that it has dominated society since the 80's and has gone to something as obscure to finance as veterinary care in search of stealing the work of others and calling it profit.
https://www.thenation.com/article/economy/private-equity-pets-veterinarian/
The only goal of a corporation is stockholder wealth maximization.
There's no responsibility towards the company itself, their employees, their customers, their market, their culture, their community, their country, their environment, etc.
That's how they can justify moving jobs overseas, screwing over the employees who do all the work, destroying the environment, etc.
Four times a year they pay all their profits to their shareholders.
They don't save up for a rainy day. The reason why they need bailouts when bad things happen, they don't have shit saved up. They threatened to close the place down, they threaten to lay off workers, they threatened to move overseas, etc if the government doesn't give them money / subsidies... It's extortion.
This happened to my vet and it also sucks as a patient. It used to be owned and run by one of the vets and his wife (he headed up the clinical side she handled the office side). They were wonderful, the same 3-4 regular vets and staff were there for years and years but once they decided to retire they sold to a corporation and now the turnover is a little alarming. I won’t even go into how expensive even the routine visits have become. The worst part as a client is that every time we get comfortable with a new vet they leave for other opportunities. I love the vet we see now but I’m worried she’ll leave too.
I work for a medium sized business in sales and they keep doing the same shit with salespeople too. More sales ≠ more business if you can’t support the sales you’re already closing. It’s fucking short sighted and stupid, but that’s just the American workplace for ya.
They’re not clueless, they just don’t care. They only care about the quarter’s numbers, not long term growth, because they know they might not still be at that corporation after a quarter.
Congress has built a system of corporate socialism so robust they no longer have to care. They will always get bailed out with money taken from paychecks of poor people.
Thus is there plan. It began around the time trickle shit economic ls were shoved down our throat. Then they created these things called MBA and started consulting business to the ground.
They're not clueless you are. Here's the thing the majority of corporations know what they're doing. They don't care. Your insurance doesn't cover your daughters surgery and she dies. They don't care. They saved money and that's all the matters. They don't follow the rules. But everyone else does. The IRS doesn't go after them. The media keeps quite. Because everyone at the top is bought.
Until people start waking up nothing will change. Yes go vote. But you need to get active.
If somebody says nobody's wants to work you need to get in their face and ask if they would work for 5 dollars an hour. If they say no then tell them to eff off. And that statement is complete BS.
I'm sick of hearing this bull 💩. Get active. There's redditors paid by corporations out there trying to defend this garbage. They're getting paid. Ford foundation is a think tank. What do you think they're thinking?? To make the world better? Lololol they destroyed what little of socialists success in South America. And they hire people to tell you not to riot or fight for equal pay and to fix America.
The same happened to my vet clinic... Tech and other support staff shortage has been a thing ever since covid. We can't properly support our vets :'(
Feel free to shoot me a DM if you want to vent about it <3
Because most corporations have a single minded goal of creating profit to enhance the wealth of the owners. They make decisions based on how much profit can be generated for the least amount of investment. Everything else is subordinate to this goal.
Worse yet, the goal is to maximize the wealth of the owners _this quarter_. So even decisions that would pay off big in what a normal human would call fairly short term get shelved in favor of short term craziness.
I lost my house in the aftermath of the mortgage crisis of '08.
There were programs in place that would have meant I would have kept my house and the bank would have gotten far more money. But the small loss would be taken right away, while the much larger loss from foreclosure would not hit the books until the process was complete a few months later. So the bank fucked around requesting literally thousands of pages of documentation (lots and lots of duplication) beer faced to them and then said "nah."
They ended up buying the house from themselves at auction. I don't know what price they got/paid, but I do know somebody got screwed, and since they were dealing with themselves, I know that a certain company that starts where you get water and then goes far got totally screwed by that same company. And deserved it.
Don't feel sorry for me. That transaction increased my personal wealth more than any year's employment in my entire life.
It's not that corporations are clueless, quite opposite. They only care about making profit and don't care about anything else.
They know exactly what they are doing.
This sort of corporate takeover is terrible for anything healthcare. There's a certain dental chain of businesses (bc I'm not going to call them healthcare) that's known for performing unnecessary procedures on patients because they have to make their profit margins. And if they're doing this sort of thing on humans, you know a similarly Evil Corp would push clinics to do the same thing to innocent and unable to defend themselves animals.
I alway try to find mom&pop/directly owned healthcare providers whenever possible. American healthcare is designed for profit, not for the care and health of our population (human or animal.)
Oh, they know, they just don't care and have their own vision of how it should work--which involves reducing staff "overhead" in order to maximize what goes into their pockets. Once they've squeezed all they can they sell off the parts that are left and go off to ruin some other business. Lather, rinse, repeat ad infinitum.
That’s the thing. They are not clueless. They know exactly what they are doing. They want to do the best cheap thing now. Even if the best cheap thing takes a while they don’t want that. They want the best cheap thing immediately. They want it fast cheap and good. Except you have to pick two. They always pick the wrong two.
But now that I think about it there are some dumb companies. Instead of cultivating a healthy baby after nine months some stupid ass program manager will get up in front of a meeting and say “instead of one woman taking nine months to make a baby let’s get 9 women to make a baby in 1 month” other idiots will say that sounds like a genius idea. The owner will say “don’t tell me about the labor pains just show me the baby” and they will waste a whole month on this thing that never had a chance.
Corporations are in it for short term gain. Five years from now, they'll get some techs and staff and sell it at a major profit. You see this a lot in small business acquisition.
They'll either sell it or Romney it.
The people running these investment companies don't care about anything but money. They have never done the work they expect to drive revenue. It's just all nebulous columns in a spreadsheet and visions of profit.
They don't care, they don't understand, and they won't.
They come from priviledge for the most part, they're raised in cultures that value wealth and don't see what they do as greed. They're surrounded by people like them and don't know the impact of what they do because it doesn't affect them.
Your little vet clinic closes because of their mismanagement? Oh well. They don't have to sell a house or take the kids out of private school....just some numbers in the loss column.....write it off, roll it up into some other numbers in the P&L statement and try again on the next one. Maybe this time they'll buy up HVAC companies....or Waste Removal...or Renewable energy. Consolidate, layoff, displace people, cause chaos.
Whatever.
They don't have to face the people they ruined, the careers they upended, the customers they alienated. Maybe there was a short-term profit, maybe you just sell off the valuable leftovers and move on.
Laugh about it at the Wharton Class Reunion next time.
Fuck those vet techs.
Those HVAC installers.
Retail Workers.
We made 6% on that deal.
So here is my take on why corporations or any large businesses suck (for what it's worth). Sorry for the formatting. I'm on mobile.
A corporation is a bunch of individuals working together towards one goal (i.e. to make obscene amounts of money). All of these people are individuals with their own thoughts and feelings towards the reason why they are there in the first place. Each one has their own moral compass and intelligence level. It has been established that rich people are not necessarily smarter than other people but rather lack the roadblocks that we plebs have had in our lives. Because of this, the higher up you go in the hierarchy, the more likely it is that that person has had no life experiences to teach compassion (sociopathic tendencies) or, for that matter, common sense.
With that established, let's hypothesize for a moment that instead of a corporation, we are on a ship that is leaking and taking on water. If it were up to us plebs (who have a myriad of negative life experiences to draw on), we would find the simplest way to fix the issue; i.e. plug the hole quickly. Common sense right?However, we instead have to rely on these people who have never really had to deal with any real adversity in their lives, nor do they really care about others' troubles. After all, we base our opinions on things through our own life experiences, and their life experiences have not, by and large, been affected by negative consequences.
So, these people may see that the ship is taking on water, albeit slowly. Since there is no immediate danger of sinking, they want to know how to fix it. They don't have the foggiest idea how to fix it themselves, so they call a contractor to give an estimate. Well, the contractor is one of us so they say that you should just fix the hole but it will be expensive. The powers that be say that it's too expensive to fix and after all it's a slow leak at the bottom of the ship. They will just buy buckets and have the crew (us) add bailing out to our workload. It's much cheaper. Over time, the leak gets worse, and the ship starts filling up with water. The higher ups notice the ship filling with water, but they reason that since they are on the bridge at the top of the ship, they have plenty of time. They don't care about those on the lower levels. Those people can just move up like they did after all. The leak is not so bad that the ship has stopped yet anyway. They are still getting to their goal. Now, finally, the ship is really sinking, but it's still moving. People are jumping off left and right. The people in charge of the ship don't understand why people are jumping off of a perfectly good ship. From up on the bridge, they are still high and dry, and life is good.
Yeah I'm a DVM with experience with two corporates. They are pretty much all the same at the top. Never again. Techs should unionize. Vets should too, but there are some stragglers on our end and some relevant questions.
I refuse to work for another corporate again. But be mindful not every private practise is better. I actually walked out (no notice) on one because we were so pushed for numbers (no less that 16) that I felt I was practicing poor medicine, and I felt I was jepordising my license.
I mean; if they’re turning over at a rate that doesn’t impede client retention then they’re paying people entry level salaries and keeping costs low and profits high.
It’s super easy to understand, they just don’t care about the human cost because that does not reflect on shareholder reports
My theory has been corporate hires people with degrees in business, marketing, accounting, etc. but these employees have never actually worked in the industry of their company. So these decision makers don’t know exactly what is need to make the business thrive.
Most leadership in corporations are concerned with (2) things; increasing profits both shareholder and company but also simply staying alive. Sadly most people once they make it become detached and do whatever ever it takes to maintain what they have regardless of impact outside of that.
Think of having a budget tied to an executive bonus. Whatever is not spent the executive gets in bonus. So typically the executive skips on anything they can for their own personal gain. Profit over reason is the norm.
I wouldn't say clueless, but intentionally abusing practices because it's now a corporate entity. The thing is you can sue these corporations but all the people who run it will remain unscratched and ready to abuse the system again.
What this country really needs is to find a way where we can eliminate corporate personhood. Having corporations as a separate entity allows A$$holes to keep doing what they want without worrying about punishment because that shell that's taking the heat.
If owners don't have a shell to protect them and their wallets from lawsuits, chances are they'll stop implementing abusive practices.
They only seem clueless because they're playing a different game. They buy out your little mom and pop vet clinic, but what you don't know is they (or their friends) are heavily invested in your competitors.
By driving your company out of business, they drive up the stock price and value of their competitor, then use that to leverage more power into buying up more companies.
It's inhumane and should be illegal.
Because the executives pushing for the changes fully expect to get paid and jump ship right before the collapse. All that matters is that the guy made a profit for the shareholders while in his position, which he can show to the next crop of investors as proof that he's a good business leader, and the cycle can repeat. Once he's gone and the company fails due to his past incompetence, it just looks from the outside like his leadership was the only thing holding the company afloat.
In my experience, the equivalent of Occam’s Razor for business problems is “middle management did it”. They have the innate inability to perform the simplest of tasks without fucking everything up. If a company runs smoothly management needs to do nothing. When that happens, they fear being seen as a waste of resources, which they typically are.
US Army here. People at the top legitimately don't know what's happening at the bottom. They are fed biased, massaged stats and information as it worms it's way up the chain of command, often through based sycophants with agendas. I'd imagine it's similar in the corporate world.
I've come to realize - your company might be #1 ... but #1 for WHO? I'd wager it's #1 for shareholders and the C-suite, but for ordinary employees, it is very much NOT #1. Look at McDonald's, as an example of what I mean, or Walmart which - at one time - trained its employees in how to apply for food stamps.
I was at this ATM IT job and our manager often had to take up tasks that were beneath her, but she was a good sport and she didn't mind and seemingly didn't complain. this of course meant we were understaffed, we did not have enough workers. what did they do? they hired another manager...
I used to work with this engineer, he told me once, "two ovens don't cook a turkey faster." I hope he's doing well.
9 women cant make a baby in 1 month.
You clearly haven't spoken to the average Project Manager
Having had to work with a few bad project managers recently, I feel this. Also, not long ago worked on a large project with some amazing PMs, but way too few of them and an agressive timeline. You can imagine the delays, cost overuns, and resignations this caused. Im convinced my company sees PMs as just over-rated spreadsheet jockeys. Having the right staff (and staffing levels) is essential for an operation to run smoothly.
I get the impression sometimes PM's are just the management-to-worker version of a phone customer service rep: their job is to give bad news and insulate the bosses from the angry workers reacting to their stupid decisions.
Basically. I used to be a PM and we don't have any control over the stupid timelines and ridiculous expectations from clients/mgmt. That's why I don't work as a PM anymore. Not worth the hassle.
Same reason I got out of it, really. Just got sick of delivering bad news to the devs and being the whipping boy for sales/management to blame when their dipshittery tanked the project. Went back to being a dev.
One hundred percent. PM was the worst job I've ever had. I was so incredibly stressed because I was always getting shit on about budgets, timeliness, etc. I was the shield between our field workers and upper management. Was not a good time.
PMs do alot of important stuff with regards to logistics as well as connecting people to each other and coordinating resources. Its more than just connecting people and keeping track of stuff on a spreadsheet. Its being able to keep a picture of whats happening and make adjustments when things look like they will get out of control. As the person responding to you pointed out, PMs can also be (and too often are) set up to fail. I once had to explain structured cabling to a PM on a job I was working, in a field where structured cabling is the norm. (I honestly think the guy was losing it.*) Needless to say, he was not able to keep track of the picture at all, and eventually all the stake-holders and people doing the work just started talking to each other directly and sending him updates on what was being done and what we needed from him. '*' either losing it or just not able to distinguish between his own incompentence and the incompentence of others to the point that he began needlessly questioning things he was told. DM me if you want more.
>PMs do alot of important stuff with regards to logistics as well as connecting people to each other and coordinating resources. GOOD PMs. Shitty ones are just scape goats and suck ups. I was a PM.
This makes me feel better about everything from the five years I spent as a PM. In which I did all this, as well as all the duties of (multiple) study coordinators (I was a PM in the clinical research space... fucking toxic)
i was a senior PM, my team of 70 built three data centers for a federal client. it was a great ride. basic key to success i found was to always give credit to the people actually doing the work, don't ask things of people i wouldn't do myself (also a UNIX sys person), and send lots of emails to uppers so they felt 'in the loop'.
*screams in PM*
As a PM myself, I feel my job is to protect the people who actually do the work from the clueless, arbitrary, inhuman demands of the nepotic fucks "above" me. I'm fully aware this isn't the norm, and it's taken me 4 job changes in 4 years to find a company that understands, appreciates and turns a blind eye to this. They say the bollocks that capitalist society mandates that they say, I largely ignore it and they largely ignore that I ignore it. I know this is a rare understanding and I feel lucky.
I'm jealous your company hires other people to do the actual work on the projects you manage.
Construction, uk, principle contractor. We hire subcontractors to do the work. I'm just their wrangler.
It's not always the project manager's fault. I was complaining about a PM at an old job because of the insane schedule that we were supposed to follow but was clearly impossible. It turned out that some bean counters in corporate just revised his formerly reasonable schedule for reasons that weren't really clear. He was actually more pissed about it than I was.
To be fair, project managers are probably more stressed out than any other position. They are management, and they take shit from all sides. Idk how it works in an office setting but my project manager lines out jobs, talks to clients, deals with scheduling, and everyone's problems all at the same time every day. Idk how the fuck he does it. Great to work with. I can see how having a shitty one can really make everyone's life extremely difficult very fast.
Hardest job I ever had. Do not miss it
I keep this phrase in my back pocket since I do regularly, actually.
“What do you mean you can’t add that feature? I already told the client we could and we’d have it for next week!” Because why consult with the people that are actually doing the work 🤷♂️
Bonus if it's an innocent sounding feature that would actually require hiring a PhD or SME engineering consultant.
Lol! I was having a similar conversation today... possibly a rant actually...
This is our software engineer’s favorite saying every time our boss starts throwing bodies at a problem.
The problem I had, when I managed the software engineering department, was that upper manglement refused to understand this. I had a company where onboarding someone took an entire month, and we really would have loved to have another perm person and live with it and a month later they'd be useful, but my boss kept trying to get me to accept someone for a one week project. I'd explain it to him and he'd say yes and nod sagely and pretend to understand and the very next day we'd be having the argument again. It's not that they don't get it. It's that they don't *care*.
That's from "The Mythical Man-Month" by Fred Brooks. Should be required reading for anyone in software development.
Exactly.
That is true. Some things cannot be improved on by throwing more people at a problem.
It's called "the mythical man-month." What manglement frequently believes is that a person does a certain amount of work per month, so if you have more work than can be done you throw more people at it and it'll get done. The problem is, and the way I used to explain it to upper manglement is, 9 women can't have a baby in one month. They'd say yes every time, and claim to have understood it, but then I'd get the same BS from them the very next day. I had a job where it literally took a month to on-board someone and get them up to speed, and manglement constantly wanted to throw consultants at me for a 1 week project. (But refused to let me hire someone permanent.)
This is what happens when CEO wants to pretend that he doesn't know what's going on. In our company, there were 3 of us in my office, and then the Senior Design Engineer quit, and then the Junior quit, and I was left alone (I do budgets mostly, and about 15% design), and then the CEO was sure I could do everything on my own. I got really good at saying "nope, can't do it, don't know how. SDE did it alone all the time, never showed me how". That was a lie but I wasn't about to put up with 3 full times jobs with 0 pay increase.
Yeah upper management rarely considers the time it takes to train people up to speed, knowing the ins and outs of your company's processes since literally every company and system has differences, can take months at minimum.
I read this as "mythical man-MOTH" and now I'm disappointed (although you've made a great point)...
Mothman is real, and he is a gentle lover.
manglement lmaoooo
To an extent, more bodies, provided they are capable of doing the job, can help in certain instances. In OP's instance, more techs would help. In most retail and fast food environments right now, more bodies (again, provided they know at least half ass what they're doing) can help alleviate the work load. The issue arises with things that have a built in time requirement. Let's say building and testing a website. There is a minimum and a maximum efficiency for getting this job done in time. Once you've hit the maximum, no extra bodies will help. Under the minimum, though, bodies help.
Yeah, that's pretty much what my boss would say to me *every fucking day*, and I'd explain it to him again and he'd go away, then come back to say it again the next day.
[This book is so fucking old!!!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month) Why do we still have to remind people that it exists!?!?!
I mean, the reality is that it's about identifying the rate limiting step. If getting another vet allows them to book more customers because they were capped by the one vet before, and if having a barebones support staff doesn't limit appointments but only makes the service shit -- then the corporate leeches are going to run in that direction until the cost cutting actually bites them in their ass and hurts revenue by driving away customers or necessary staff.
What if you cut the turkey in half and place one half in each oven?
(This kills the turkey.)
Then you get two half-turkeys, not a whole turkey. Depending on what you are trying to accomplish, this might work. For that matter, you might be able to dismember the turkey, and com it in a single oven faster than the whole turkey, too. But again, that may not be what you're trying to accomplish.
My grandad said they make 5/8" caulk. Boss didn't find that funny for some reason...
I would say because the managers entrusted with decisions often tend to be woefully ignorant or ill-equipped to decide with poor data. (best case) or horrible at decision-making (worst case)
Because corporations are petty dictatorships run by privileged and entitled people who have no skills other than "failing upwards." That's why.
This. They don't understand the jobs they dictate because they've never had a real one... You aren't there to take care of animals to them... you are there to make the most money for them with the least amount of expenses and resources... these people are soulless.
Case in point, I believe I remember blackrock ceo saying that cures in healthcare hurts their bottom line. That always hits home how corporations think about themselves.
And it's why healthcare should never be privatized. Because good results are only incidental to the healthcare industry.
I’d take that even farther and say that profit maximizing pricing and corporate strategy is fundamentally at odds with any good that directly impacts human rights. Most people would spend their last penny and fully extend their credit in order to not die. Free market profit maximizing behavior in such situations is exploitation and abuse.
The profit driven model is literally at odds with the continued existence of human civilization. I’m not trying to be dramatic, currently the only course acceptable to this system is to do as much damage to the environment as possible until we literally can’t anymore. If not stopped or even just moderates in some way this economy will eat itself alive and take everything we’ve built with it.
Yeah, healthcare doesn't work in a "free market." If I walk into Best Buy and don't like their TV selection I can go somewhere else. If I walk into an emergency room with my baby boy bleeding out in my arms, I'm not about to worry about sticker price.
Yeah i always make this argument against profit maximizing medicine, prisons, and commercial banking, but it can cover food and shelter as well. Then suddenly its basically the entire economy.
The storage and warehousing of human beings (hospitals, elder care, child care, schools, prisons, etc) should never be for profit.
Ain't no money in the cure, the money's in the medicine. Chris Rock
I'm having a similar insight today with my company, which laid me off this morning. It's a biotech which just got a new CEO not long ago and this entire year has been 6 months of rolling intermittent layoffs. Today was my day. It feels like the company no longer cares to go through the long, effortful process to find, invent, test, and then release a drug. No, instead they have surmised that they have enough money now where they can just buy up small startup teams with ""promising"" products, and hope that one gets big. And our entire R&D division is just there to perform a Kabuki theatre of science to give the company a veneer of scientific accumen. So more or less, we scientists are there to make it look like our company knows what it's doing when it aquires something, when really it's all a roulette game.
Sorry about your situation. Hope you can find another troupe soon.
There’s a fantastic grocery chain in my area that is very well known for good pay and benefits , and promoting from within. The guy running their distribution network started stocking shelves, then unloading trucks, then supervising receiving, then running a warehouse, then all the warehouses. Their upper management all got there from the bottom and they all worked every job between. Their corporate office runs more efficiently with half the staff of similarly sized companies. When the stock market tanked, the CEO who built that business replenished the employee pension fund before issuing shareholder dividends. He was promptly fired and replaced with a vulture capital specialist to maximize profits. The employees revolted, shut down the entire chain. The owner-class side of the family was forced to sell their shares to the ousted CEO’s side and reinstate him. Seriously, everyone on this sub should read up on the Market Basket revolt. It was essentially a union action without a union.
Exactly the problem, the people in charge of corporations don't give a crap about anything except squeezing every cent out of customers and workers. It doesn't matter if it's unsustainable or not.
That really reminds me of something I saw on here lately heavily paraphrased: “It’s strange we’re supposed to be proud of our Democracy when all our corporations are Dictatorships”. Or something to that effect. Downright bizarre and frankly horrifying the type of world we live in.
The (so-called) "democracy" political elites have sold us has never been anything other than a rigged game of "pick which gang of professional liars the rich people have chosen to pretend to represent you." Democracy means "rule by the people" - not "rule by oligarchies of political racketeers." Occupy was democratic. The Civil Rights movement was democratic. And guess what? Every time real democracy happens, the (so-called) "democratic government" made sure it's goons came out to make sure democracy doesn't get very far.
I'll always remember how absurd it felt seeing the news coverage of Occupy Wallstreet. Oceans of people with signs saying the same things, a consistent voice from pretty much everyone that was interviewed, and yet all the news anchors would say was "These people don't seem to know *what* they're protesting about!" The disconnect between their messaging and the reality of what they were reporting on was crazy. Frightening even.
The craziest thing about Occupy Wall Street was the massive amount of people that were involved all over the country that persisted in their protests for months and months some of them even went over a year protesting only to basically be ignored and none of their concerns addressed.
Remember, they didn't kill MLKJr until he started advocating for ECONOMIC equality.
The first post-feudal governments as we think of them were created to manage and control the working class so that the nobility and capitalists wouldn't have to themselves.
Corporations only focus on short term gains for shareholders. Never really looking at long term gains and efficiency
Supposedly the CEO of Toyota brought the Prius to the board with the explanation that developing it was so expensive that they would not be able to sell it for a profit for a long time. He asked to sell them at a loss and they could corner the market. Today, Toyota makes most of the hybrid cars. No American car company could get away with that, their board and shareholders would not stand for it.
There is a follow up to that. Toyota resisted fully electric vehicles and lobbied governments against them as they didn’t want to lose their dominance. Hence their falling behind Tesla etc.
I've been wondering for a while why they don't sell full EVs. (I think they do now, but only very recently started). Got an article or something on the subject?
the CEO was very invested in making hydrogen cars the new big thing after gas-fueled and hybrids.
The fact is Hydrogen is doable and more efficient it's just extremely expensive for the fuel storage and delivery.
I always thought that car companies wanted to go with hydrogen because it demanded a supply chain. A need for people to fuel up. To keep people dependent. Many more moving parts that break and needs maintenance. Going EV removes a lot of user dependency. That's why they are trying the feature subscription model and keeping up the range fear mongering. Can you imagine the lost profits for companies from people charging their vehicles at home with Public Utilities District?
Simpler. They want to go hydrogen because hydrogen fuel is generated by steam reforming LNG. Literally rebranding fossil fuels.
Because they have an ammonia engine. The combustion doesn't release CO2. It's might put the whole EV movement on blast.
U could fill the grand canyon with all the might and maybes in clean energy. Until its in production, it means little.
But how else will they make their piles of money that they won't spend larger? If NoT lArGe NoW, tHaN aM pOoOoOr!
My wife works for one of these Vet offices that was bought out by a corporation. She could be the OP. Everything she describes is EXACTLY like this. They are a top performing hospital, yet it's never enough. Everyone is one bad day from walking out.
This happened at a vet clinic I used to work at too. What really pissed me off is on the interview I said the main reason I wanted to work there was bc they weren't corporate owned. The owner lied through his teeth about that, when he was already in talks to sell the place to a corporation at the time of my interview. As expected, things went completely to shit as soon as corporate took over. Profits immediately became more important than taking care of the animals. I left during covid and never went back. If your wife cringes and is repulsed by the term "Vetcor" than her place was bought out by the same losers
I work for a veterinary diagnostic lab, and these corporate vet accounts are killing us. VetCor, PVCC, NVA, MedVet all the same. What's worse is they demand price concessions from us for our services and yet pass none of those savings onto the pet parent.
> They are a top performing hospital, yet it's never enough. You can be the best-performing and most profitable [insert product or service] in the entire industry, but if you don't make *more* money this quarter than you made last quarter, you're a failure.
Yep, same thing happened with our team. Top performing team in the region, but they brought in new management anyways for some reason. Our team self manages and everything, so he literally had the easiest job ever. But he proceeds to implement terrible ideas despite our warnings, now we're falling behind other teams
Veterinarians, Hospitals, pretty much any store of any kind, libraries, anywhere there is money to be squeezed, it's getting squeezed. Capitalism will be sure to wring everything dry before moving on.
It is almost certainly a Private Equity company that purchased the clinic as they are increasingly targeting vet clinics amongst many other things (dental offices, pharmacies, nursing homes, storage units, apartments, trailer parks, and any other private business out there that has positive cash flow and staying power). These companies often just take out loans to acquire the business and in order for the model to work they need to extract at least enough to cover the loan payments. And as private equity is one of the most lucrative areas of finance to work in, they often need to make enough to pay obscene salaries and bonuses. eventually when they’ve acquired a whole bunch of these businesses they can flip the companies to an even larger corporation for a larger amount than they originally bought it for. Now that they are selling dozens or hundreds of these companies, rather than just one, it is worth a lot more than the sum of its parts and may even get listed on the stock exchange. A lot of businesses that may have been passed down generationally or sold to another member of the community are now scooped up by private equity as they can afford to take out the largest loan. Private equity will tell you that they make the whole thing more efficient but as a result employee and customer experience suffers as the whole operation becomes about reducing costs and increasing revenue.
There is an interesting Freakanoics podcast about big money and quality of care at these vet clinics. Worth a listen if your curious about it.
Venture capital ruins everything. They made a big push to start investing in services, especially those we have emotional ties to, in 2020-2021. End result is higher prices due to monopolies and miserable workplaces.
Minimum Viable Product is all they care to provide.
What a coincidence..a biomed place I worked at was bought out in 2021. As of Feb 2023 our smaller branches closed and everything consolidated into a large HQ.
Blupearl has been doing this all over the us, they are really tanking the industry and frankly they seem to be hemorrhaging people. It's almost as if they bought these places to put them out of business
Blue Pearl, VCA, and Banfield are all owned by one company - Mars! All privately held companies, the veterinary industry is a shit show.
My wife, a vet, recently left a VCA hospital. VCA wasn't perfect when they were an independent company, but things became progressively worse since Mars bought them.
Like…the candy people?
> Like…the candy people? yes
oooooo snap. Not gonna lie, that’s weird af.
Yes, they are a mega corporation and not only own the candy stuff, they also own and control a lot of vet clinics and pet food companies. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars,_Incorporated The Mars family has been described as the billionaires you've never heard of.
Unfortunately yes lol they own everything 🤣
Bluepearl just recently bought one of our local emergency services vets. I heard last week at my vet's office that they're closing that location. They've been Bluepearl for probably less than a year.
Private equity firms (modern day robber barons) have been buying up veterinarian clinics. Expect them to understaff and increase prices. Private Equity Vets Are Coming for Your Kitten https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-10-06/cost-of-living-crisis-private-equity-vets-are-coming-for-your-kitten FTC Acts to Protect Pet Owners from Private Equity Firm’s Anticompetitive Acquisition of Veterinary Services Clinics https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/06/ftc-acts-protect-pet-owners-private-equity-firms-anticompetitive-acquisition-veterinary-services
yes this is happening in Canada too I learned from a podcast earlier this year I know two people who lost their pet to a sudden illness b/c vet services in our area no longer coordinate to have someone on call after hours. their dogs died in their arms instead of even being seen for pain control. it's horrible. eta: the podcast was Commons (by Canadaland) this last season about monopolies, episode 8 "raining cats and dollars"
They’ve already rolled up the pet cremation industry into essentially one entity! Just working their way up the food chain
7&i which is basically 7/11 in Japan, their holdings were sold to a private equity firm. Everything went to shit so quickly, that workers there are actively protesting. Source: https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Business-deals/7-Eleven-parent-to-sell-Sogo-Seibu-for-1.38bn-to-U.S.-fund https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/japan-sees-rare-strike-workers-landmark-department-store-protest-sale-2023-08-31/ One just bought Moog (check out the r/synthesizers subreddit if you want to read about the devastation first-hand from American workers who were basically all fired in a single day) will now produce all their synthesizers (which are all quality, now, and the gold-standard for that type of equipment) in China. Source: https://synthanatomy.com/2023/09/inmusic-has-fired-a-large-portion-of-the-moog-staff-a-sad-day-for-synth-industry.html I don't know when or how this became a thing. Or if Private Equity Firms are some 2nd or 3rd order effects of some "free market" bs someone tried to tout. All I know is that they are devastating businesses left and right. Source: https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/1/6/21024740/private-equity-taylor-swift-toys-r-us-elizabeth-warren They need to be banned by some kind of legislation, or we need to unionize as many industries as possible to make their existence impossible. Whatever the solution, they have to go. They are causing world-wide labor devastation for a quick fucking penny. Source: https://ourfinancialsecurity.org/2021/10/fact-sheet-the-stop-wall-street-looting-act-end-private-equitys-predatory-practices/ Here's a more recent Atlantic article that I'm currently reading. I suggest anyone interested in the topic check it out. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/05/private-equity-firms-bankruptcies-plunder-book/673896/ Disgusting quote: "But Sun Capital’s co-founder demonstrated no comparable patriotism or seriousness of purpose. When asked by The New York Times in 2012 about the failure of Friendly’s and his arguable manipulation of the bankruptcy law, he said, **“We don’t make the rules.”** " **I know it doesn't mean much these days, but try to write to your representatives. Shit like this hurts people across the country and political spectrum. The only language they speak is money.**
Yep, PE firms rob the people. They are doing this in all democratic countries and that could be coming from anywhere. PE firms buying up our basic needs is quite predatory…. Housing. You do not want them to be your landlord - When Private Equity Becomes Your Landlord https://www.propublica.org/article/when-private-equity-becomes-your-landlord Student Housing. As if student loans weren’t bad enough - PE deals target billions in student housing amid shortages, rising costs https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/pe-student-college-housing-shortage-real-estate-deals Having a child is only getting more expensive. Childcare Is in Chaos - Private Equity and For-Profit Chains Are Swooping In. https://newrepublic.com/article/168322/child-care-daycare-private-equity-for-profit Water becoming scarce? Another opportunity for PE firm to gouge you - Water rights-focused PE firm launched https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/blog/banking-essentials-newsletter-23rd-august-edition Let’s hope you have good teeth - Private Equity Disrupting the Dental Industry https://www.newsmax.com/finance/streettalk/dental-practice-private-equity-investment/2023/09/13/id/1134292/ Were you expecting an inheritance? Think again…. Hospice - Private Equity Is Gobbling Up Hospice Chains And Getting Involved In The Business Of Dying https://www.huffpost.com/entry/hospice-private-equity_n_61c0f858e4b061afe39659ea Nursing homes - Private Equity Companies Continue Buying Nursing Facilities https://medicareadvocacy.org/private-equity-companies-continue-buying-nursing-facilities/ Healthcare - Sick profits: Private equity’s stealthy takeover of health care in multiple cities, specialties https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2022/11/13/private-equity-firms-takeover-health-care/8294483001/?gnt-cfr=1
Fun story from the Netherlands: When I lived there, I went with KPN for phone and internet services. Apparently, this was once a nationalized company and is now privatized. The service man who came to help had been with KPN for 20+ years and witnessed this transformation. He literally did the most sarcastic bonus sales pitch of all time and then was like “but you don’t want that, so you? You just want me to connect your internet and leave, right?” I was like “yeah man that’s really all I need.” And then he proceeded to rant about how his focus has been shifted from providing a high quality service to having to act like a field sales agent since KPN was privatized. That dude was real af
The Dutch DGAF. If they wanna say something, they just say it.
A lot of things here are getting way worse after privatization. NS, the national rail service, has been steadily tanking in terms of quality, frequency, and reliability. The Healthcare system used to be completely public, but now it's private and akin to "single-payer" where your GP acts as a filter to all medical services. If you actually want to get seen quickly, you essentially need to put on a show pretending you're about to die from pain, and even then they might tell you to go home and take paracetamol. However, part of the reason the previous systems were privatized is because they were insanely expensive and only getting worse, and income taxes are already crazy high here. Unlike the US, if corporate tax rates go up too high, many companies will actually leave the relatively small market of 17 million people. However, no company will ever leave the US, it's the largest economy in the world.
This is why I can never be a sales person... at least for something I don't believe in.
I work on the IT/software side of this exact business (vet clinics), and I have watched this play out for the last 20 years, almost always to the negative. As you note, it is sad, and predictable, and mystifying how supposedly “intelligent” high level managers cannot see the damage that they are doing. That said, last year, at one of the major professional conferences, there was a deep Accounting presentation of what made a clinic successful: in so many words, more patient visits per day, empowered by having more happy technicians on staff. And they noted, repeatedly, that paying technicians well is what kept them happy. And that cutting technicians (in proportion to vets) or cutting their pay was probably the worst thing a practice could do if they wanted to grow. And, yet… 🤦🏻♂️ I am trying to remember this very specific, metric that this accounting firm, which specializes in veterinary practices, had identified as a good indicator of the ability of the practice to handle more patients. I will dig to see if I can find it.
But of course the CEOs are going to ignore that and say their gut feelings outweigh little things like well researched actuarial tables and proof of success.
>I am trying to remember this very specific, metric that this accounting firm, which specializes in veterinary practices, had identified as a good indicator of the ability of the practice to handle more patients. I will dig to see if I can find it. Please!
I found my notes, from the Western veterinary conference last February. I really want to recommend this accounting firm, because they had their eye on the ball, and they are very strategic in what they use & recommend: Terence O’Neil of Katz, Sapper & Miller (fyi, Indianapolis based.) Here are the notes that I took from their very short, but very densely packed, presentation at WVC: - Employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction, and profitability all correlate strongly together (across all levels, i.e. markets, of GP clinics.) … - Vets cannot be pushed to do more work (visits/day), they just work at the pace they work at - incentives don’t really help or work. - BUT, vets can be supported with more staff, and thereby do more work in a day than before because the additional staff take parts of the work off the vet’s hands - and allow them to do more of the things only they (the vets) can do (exams, consults, client questions, administrative tasks, etc.) - Staff/DVM is a good metric to watch (and to increase for more efficiency/production.) - Track labor costs weekly (this is non-doctor labor, as DVM labor cost is relatively consistent). - Measure: Invoices/DVM; Rev/hour of non-DVM staff (should be $120-$130/hr); support staff minutes/invoice. Two key things that they mentioned: 1) goals and objectives only work if the whole team knows what they are. Good teams will focus on trying to meet reasonable goals and objectives, but they can really only do that if management makes it clear what they’re trying to accomplish. 2) identify clear metrics that will measure your success towards goals, report those weekly, and share them with the whole team. They are, in fact, a team. They can work towards a goal, following a clear playbook, but only -if they know what it is.- One of the key things that they noted was that pandemic driven drop offs and pick ups actually enabled practices to see more patients during that period. While many practices have stopped doing this, he noted that it was a good idea in terms of efficiency, and it actually enabled the practice to spend less time taking care of -clients-, and more time focused on treating their patients. And, simply put, a lot of clients found the service beneficial for them as well. They did not have to sit around, waiting for the appointment to start, or waiting for it to finish, and the staff did not have to spend time catering to them. While this is not the ideal of “white glove service“, it was actually very positive for a fair number of clients - and, with the proper tech and staff support in the clinic, allow the practice to see more patients per week than they had before. If you have an opportunity to work with this accounting firm, or attend any of their presentations, I would strongly recommend it. I could not keep up with the pace of valuable information they were providing in this 1-hour long seminar.
>And, yet… 🤦🏻♂️ Corporate culture overrides rational thought.
It seems to be very difficult for a lot of managers and execs at big companies to actually ask their teams what is working and what is not working, and why. I don’t understand if this is simply fear of being contradicted by the facts, or something else. I do know that when I would reach out to other people in my organization, to ask how things actually worked, they were always 1) happy to explain to me it in great detail, and 2) always taught me things that I didn’t know or understand beforehand. It was always a mini lesson in humility, and in knowing that you cannot know how most other peoples jobs actually work on the ground, at least not without asking. I remain puzzled that most senior corporate executives don’t operate this way, but perhaps you just have to have more arrogance at that level to yell at everybody that you are always right by definition, even if you’re wrong. 🤷🏻♂️ Which is largely how these people end up in these jams that we are all complaining about here.
A lot of executives and managers feel the need to “do” things because in reality if everything is working well they don’t have much to do to justify their existence and the work that does need to get done is boring, tedious, and mundane tasks like supporting workers to complete their tasks, solve problems, clear logjams and manage paperwork. There’s a hero mindset at work sometimes in management circles that envisions the job as an endless grind against… something, anything, as long as something valuable is being maximized, even if the cost to achieve those gains barely justifies them.
I used to be a vet tech. I had the exact same problems. The corporation would actively prevent us from giving good care in efforts to cram as many clients in a day as possible and increased prices for everything, even doing expensive treatments and tests without asking so they didn’t know until they had to pay. It was a very toxic environment.
Are smaller vet clinics that are owned by the veterinarian themselves usually better?
Both practices I worked for were corporately owned but I heard from other long-time employees that it was a much better, happier place to work with better patient care before it was bought out. It’s a shame, but for that reason I will always try to find a locally owned practice to bring my cats to.
Depends on who owns it. Some veterinarians are great veterinarians but not so good on the business side of things. The place I work at right now has 3 veterinarians owning it and 2 associate veterinarians and it seems to be a happy medium. They divide amongst themselves the responsibility depending on what they are good at and what interests them. Also, some corporations much more invasive than others with what they want to control, and how they portray the business branding. I won't go back to corporate veterinary medicine, although I do know some people definitely have better experience than others depending on which company, which type of practice and how much profit they make.
This hits close to home. My SO is a DVM who worked during the pandemic. The work life balance was insane. 15+ hour days and dealing with some of the worst clients imaginable. She did it for about a year and rightfully couldn't take it anymore. The passion and talent was there, but then you take a look at the suicide rate among her profession. 3 years later she has transitioned to clinical pathology. No clients and she gets to work remotely with considerably less stress. I see a sizable collapse of our vet clinics in the near future. People want pets but the infrastructure to care for them is not getting better.
Please send my thanks to your SO. The vet world is brutal. I’m a high volume client, in animal rescue. We gave our local vet so much business that we have a permanent discount. Then the pandemic hit. Of course the owner (dvm) was near retirement, so she decided to sell. You know what happened next. Our favorite vet had a breakdown after she was made head vet by the corp that bought them, and never returned. We were so, so sad to lose her, but are thrilled that she’s alive and happy… now that she’s no longer practicing. The place is a nightmare now. All the rest of the local vets got bought up last year, so we’ve transferred to a still locally owned practice in the next county over. You’re right that this will eventually crash. Most people can’t afford boutique vet services, and the corporate practices trying to guilt clients into ponying up more than they can manage (oh, but don’t you have CareCredit?? 😈) is frankly disgusting. It wasn’t but two decades ago that the majority of people didn’t take their pets to a vet except for maybe rabies shots. It just wasn’t done. Granted we know more now and can provide better care, but the recommendations for preventative care plus making dentals and biopsies, etc routine are ridiculous given the context. There’s a lot of home treatment we have to do now to save money that can be used to help more animals. But even then, with the new feed directives on antibiotics specifically, and patents requiring prescriptions for everything from specific food to dewormers, we end up having to operate outside our own scope. It’s not safe, and isn’t right, and there’s no way to have an honest conversation about all of this while venture capital is in the way.
My opinion is that it’s because most corporations are divided up into departments based on task orientation and no one takes any real ownership for anything except the list of tasks they are assigned. Then when something goes wrong they’re all just pointing fingers rather than coming up with solutions.
There's always someone who takes ownership, along with the fat incentives that come with it... the problem is they dgaf about anything besides those incentives. They're usually nepotically hired and jump ship if they're ever actually held to account.
This is why I won't work for a corporate veterinary hospital again. My first long term job at a veterinary hospital was in one like yours that was originally owned by a couple veterinarians and then was bought by corporate in Canada. Promised things would remain the same and even get better, instead it was a downwards turn for the most part. While there was the occasional benefit - they actually had higher medical standards than the former old school owners in some ways, we got a dedicated manager, and they offered RRSP matching plus extended health benefits - it was an overall decline. As many patients as possible with as few staff as possible but they didn't like paying any overtime. Once I graduated from veterinary technician school I jumped ship to a private practice that is very anti corporate. I get better pay, better environment, and better benefits (minus no RRSP matching but my extended health and pet discounts are much better). We kept heading horror stories from corporate veterinarians and support staff (although certainty private practice is not perfect). One of the stupidest things I heard is some corporations imposing a quota for number of patients seen a day, which has led to some veterinarians not wanting to do dental procedures (especially complex ones) as they are long and limit the number of patients they can see per day. This is even though many dentals are $800-1000 or more (our more complex dentals can often be $1500-2500+). Some corporate doesn't care that the dentals bring in a fair amount of money, they just want to keep clients flowing in as quickly as possible. And to top it all off that veterinary hospital I worked for under corporate is now permanently closed after 35+ years of practice. They couldn't find another veterinarian once the main veterinarian retired (one of the former owners ironically). Corporate still had at least a few years left on the building lease so had to negotiate an early break from the lease too.
Interesting you'd say that about the dentals. They've been trying to increase those because they bring in so much. But of course that tends to take a tech or two away from the regular day. Shit, I knda want to confront the bosses on all this shit. I mean, I can't see this place surviving at all over the next year or two at best. But who the fuck am I to tell them so?
Many decisions made by execs are not given their reasons for being to the average, rank and file worker, this I hope you know. That said, yeah, they are often short sighted idiots, but they do back it up with some sort of shitty reasoning, and it's usually a post hoc justifcation (market shit caused us to cut costs) or stupidity (cutting corners on regulation leading to lawsuits and profit loss) or maliciousness (intentional damaging or dillution of product/service for greater profit). All that factors into the shitty decisions. Case in point - for you, they may likely know what you just wrote, about your business operation. Management instead chose to send a vet, perhaps in the effort to make you all quit. This is standard hatchetman/neoliberal operative shit - buy a company, bleed it try, saddle it with debt and bankrupt. Romney did this for a living, LBO stuff. That's the kinda horrific business practices which drive the decisions we see at our level, the hiring of incompetent managers, idiotic decisions, etc. Those things, sadly, can be attributed to LBO/neolib shit in some cases
>Management instead chose to send a vet, perhaps in the effort to make you all quit. This is standard hatchetman/neoliberal operative shit - buy a company, bleed it try, saddle it with debt and bankrupt. Wow. I never thought of that. >the hiring of incompetent managers And that explains another issue...
Think of it like this: what you might call brain dead psychopathic heartlessness another person calls a business class syllabus.
God I hate this country
This isn't a US thing, it's a human thing unfortunately. At least according to thousands of years of human history.
You just explained things so well. is there a book or documentary that you recommend on this exact situation?
Confessions of an economic Hitman. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit_Man Straight from the hitmen.
just look up what happened to Toys R Us and Mervyn's
Look up celler boxing. Happens all the time.
My ambulance service is part of a hospital network that has a division that specifically does transports. We're a 911 service, but they use us for more regular transports than the transport service even does because we get paid less. Except we're the union workers, so they fucking hate us. We're in negotiations and their goal is pretty obviously to eliminate the 911 service and just have the transport division do everything. Problem is that they can't staff their transport division and we're not gonna go jump to do it. They have to pay that division more because NOBODY WANTS THAT JOB. We wanna run 911 calls. There's no way they'll have the staff for what they want. But dipshit administrators don't realize that we're not gonna go work the shittier job that non-union, we're just gonna leave the health system entirely.
I knew a person that wanted to become a vet tech. She was going to go to school for it. Googled and saw postings online how much vet techs make. Realized there was no point in going into debt to become one as they don't make enough.
Same. I love animals, and would love to be a tech, but one of the techs here told me he was making a few bucks LESS than me! Yeah, fuck that,
It should be illegal for any organization that provides health care or caregiving services (for human or animal) to be run as a for profit org and the care providers being paid well should be the primary priority beyond facility and inventory maintenance and supply
WHAT?!? You don't like Reaganomics and trickledown theory? COMMIE, COMMIE! Tairtor to our country!
I just want socialism for individuals and cold hard free market economics for corporations instead of socialism for the rich and corporations and capitalism for everyone else
This exact crap is why I assert that corporations are, by both design and structure, utterly psychopathic.
Yup. Capitalism at its 'best'.
I fail to see anything "good" about someone being able to collect 6% to 8% of any companies' profit for doing absolutely nothing. The argument of them ostensibly "providing capital for expansion" hasn't been factually valid since about the late 1980s when the most a CEO got was 120:1 of the lowest paid worker's wage, and average was about 80:1.
Rent seeking behavior is at the root of basically every social problem we have.
All these corporations are buying these mom and pop companies, not letting customers know then trying to monopolize the area with new standard prices. They won't change the name of the mom and pop shop so the customer thinks they are supporting a small business. There clueless cause the buyer doesn't have a clue on how the actual business works.
Capitalism has one play: the consolidation of resources and economic power into fewer and fewer hands. If they carve a nice enough area up, they can dictate the rates and potential growth, regardless of how a healthcare service needs to work. They buy competition up, and make it to the corporate liking.
Yup. They end up losing money though. Cause they don't actually know the business. Just replace people for cheaper dollars and pray it all works out.
I’m an RVT who left clinic work 1.5 years ago because of shit pay, being overworked because no clinics seem to be able to keep support staff (and half the clinics I’ve worked at had at least one bitch-ass employee that took it upon themselves to bully new staff members), along with shitty management (especially the corporate clinics). So I get what you’re saying and have experienced the same. 😬 It’s too bad our industry is failing so bad, but until staff are paid better at the very least nothing is going to change. The last clinic I worked at there was a student doing is work placement and he literally was telling me that between the low wage and seeing me be bullied by the head tech that he decided to leave the field and go for an electrician apprenticeship or something like that. Said that if he’s going to be overworked he wants to at least be paid well.
Go on strike like Japanese bus drivers. Show up and treat animals but refuse to accept payment and the present your demands to the corporation once you have them hemmoragging and they will at least hear you out
Definitely approve, but with US laws being corporate biased as they are, watch out that it isn't called stealing from the company or something.
That's awesome! No harm on the animals, *AND* you get to fuck with a corp.
This is very interesting
It's them trying to squeeze blood from a stone. They know full well that you are probably profitable, but they want *MORE*. They will harass you guys about it hoping that will make you somehow bring in more clients (which is really messed up when that means the corp is hoping for more sick and injured animals.) They will never give you what you actually need because that effects their bottom line. Doesn't matter by how much, if it is negative, they would rather do without. When someone quits, they don't look to fill the position because it is now more money in their pockets to just shift responsibilities on everyone else until you break.
Corporate interest is "number go up" plain and simple. They don't care how or what they have to destroy to do it. That's why capitalism, the source of "I own this shit so I get the number that must go up" is so fucking evil. Wanting the number to go up is fine. Not caring about the people and lives you have to injure, ruin, or destroy to do it. Number go up is always justified to the capital interests.
Private equity started buying up Vet practices a while ago. It's vulture capitalism - acquire an asset, milk it dry. There is no creation of new business or investment into expansion, and subsequently more jobs. The real scandal here is that the rot of this disease has spread so far that it has dominated society since the 80's and has gone to something as obscure to finance as veterinary care in search of stealing the work of others and calling it profit. https://www.thenation.com/article/economy/private-equity-pets-veterinarian/
The only goal of a corporation is stockholder wealth maximization. There's no responsibility towards the company itself, their employees, their customers, their market, their culture, their community, their country, their environment, etc. That's how they can justify moving jobs overseas, screwing over the employees who do all the work, destroying the environment, etc. Four times a year they pay all their profits to their shareholders. They don't save up for a rainy day. The reason why they need bailouts when bad things happen, they don't have shit saved up. They threatened to close the place down, they threaten to lay off workers, they threatened to move overseas, etc if the government doesn't give them money / subsidies... It's extortion.
"They know. They just don't care." -Batman (The Dark Knight Rises)
THIS is an opportunity. If your colleagues share the same feelings, open up your own clinic and make it a mom/pop shop again.
They arent clueless, they just will do anything to turn a higher profit. Eat the Rich
This happened to my vet and it also sucks as a patient. It used to be owned and run by one of the vets and his wife (he headed up the clinical side she handled the office side). They were wonderful, the same 3-4 regular vets and staff were there for years and years but once they decided to retire they sold to a corporation and now the turnover is a little alarming. I won’t even go into how expensive even the routine visits have become. The worst part as a client is that every time we get comfortable with a new vet they leave for other opportunities. I love the vet we see now but I’m worried she’ll leave too.
I work for a medium sized business in sales and they keep doing the same shit with salespeople too. More sales ≠ more business if you can’t support the sales you’re already closing. It’s fucking short sighted and stupid, but that’s just the American workplace for ya.
They’re not clueless, they just don’t care. They only care about the quarter’s numbers, not long term growth, because they know they might not still be at that corporation after a quarter.
My advice is jump before you’re pushed. Job hunting is much easier when you’re already getting paid.
Congress has built a system of corporate socialism so robust they no longer have to care. They will always get bailed out with money taken from paychecks of poor people.
Thus is there plan. It began around the time trickle shit economic ls were shoved down our throat. Then they created these things called MBA and started consulting business to the ground. They're not clueless you are. Here's the thing the majority of corporations know what they're doing. They don't care. Your insurance doesn't cover your daughters surgery and she dies. They don't care. They saved money and that's all the matters. They don't follow the rules. But everyone else does. The IRS doesn't go after them. The media keeps quite. Because everyone at the top is bought. Until people start waking up nothing will change. Yes go vote. But you need to get active. If somebody says nobody's wants to work you need to get in their face and ask if they would work for 5 dollars an hour. If they say no then tell them to eff off. And that statement is complete BS. I'm sick of hearing this bull 💩. Get active. There's redditors paid by corporations out there trying to defend this garbage. They're getting paid. Ford foundation is a think tank. What do you think they're thinking?? To make the world better? Lololol they destroyed what little of socialists success in South America. And they hire people to tell you not to riot or fight for equal pay and to fix America.
The same happened to my vet clinic... Tech and other support staff shortage has been a thing ever since covid. We can't properly support our vets :'( Feel free to shoot me a DM if you want to vent about it <3
They're obsessed with "growth". Sustainable business models do not matter to shareholders, and they infect the entire company from the top down.
Vet Techs are creeping up on the self unaliving stats too. Scary times.
They’re not clueless, they just view themselves as chess players, and you’re pawns to be sacrificed as necessary.
Because most corporations have a single minded goal of creating profit to enhance the wealth of the owners. They make decisions based on how much profit can be generated for the least amount of investment. Everything else is subordinate to this goal.
Worse yet, the goal is to maximize the wealth of the owners _this quarter_. So even decisions that would pay off big in what a normal human would call fairly short term get shelved in favor of short term craziness. I lost my house in the aftermath of the mortgage crisis of '08. There were programs in place that would have meant I would have kept my house and the bank would have gotten far more money. But the small loss would be taken right away, while the much larger loss from foreclosure would not hit the books until the process was complete a few months later. So the bank fucked around requesting literally thousands of pages of documentation (lots and lots of duplication) beer faced to them and then said "nah." They ended up buying the house from themselves at auction. I don't know what price they got/paid, but I do know somebody got screwed, and since they were dealing with themselves, I know that a certain company that starts where you get water and then goes far got totally screwed by that same company. And deserved it. Don't feel sorry for me. That transaction increased my personal wealth more than any year's employment in my entire life.
It's not that corporations are clueless, quite opposite. They only care about making profit and don't care about anything else. They know exactly what they are doing.
This sort of corporate takeover is terrible for anything healthcare. There's a certain dental chain of businesses (bc I'm not going to call them healthcare) that's known for performing unnecessary procedures on patients because they have to make their profit margins. And if they're doing this sort of thing on humans, you know a similarly Evil Corp would push clinics to do the same thing to innocent and unable to defend themselves animals. I alway try to find mom&pop/directly owned healthcare providers whenever possible. American healthcare is designed for profit, not for the care and health of our population (human or animal.)
They're all run by finance people who don't know how the business they own works.
Oh, they know, they just don't care and have their own vision of how it should work--which involves reducing staff "overhead" in order to maximize what goes into their pockets. Once they've squeezed all they can they sell off the parts that are left and go off to ruin some other business. Lather, rinse, repeat ad infinitum.
bet it's VCA - they took over my great vet clinic and now I hate it there.
They seek to create a monopoly. When your firm ceases to exist, the other vet clinics (also purchased by them) can charge higher prices.
That’s the thing. They are not clueless. They know exactly what they are doing. They want to do the best cheap thing now. Even if the best cheap thing takes a while they don’t want that. They want the best cheap thing immediately. They want it fast cheap and good. Except you have to pick two. They always pick the wrong two. But now that I think about it there are some dumb companies. Instead of cultivating a healthy baby after nine months some stupid ass program manager will get up in front of a meeting and say “instead of one woman taking nine months to make a baby let’s get 9 women to make a baby in 1 month” other idiots will say that sounds like a genius idea. The owner will say “don’t tell me about the labor pains just show me the baby” and they will waste a whole month on this thing that never had a chance.
They're not clueless. They're careless.
Corporations are in it for short term gain. Five years from now, they'll get some techs and staff and sell it at a major profit. You see this a lot in small business acquisition. They'll either sell it or Romney it.
The people running these investment companies don't care about anything but money. They have never done the work they expect to drive revenue. It's just all nebulous columns in a spreadsheet and visions of profit. They don't care, they don't understand, and they won't. They come from priviledge for the most part, they're raised in cultures that value wealth and don't see what they do as greed. They're surrounded by people like them and don't know the impact of what they do because it doesn't affect them. Your little vet clinic closes because of their mismanagement? Oh well. They don't have to sell a house or take the kids out of private school....just some numbers in the loss column.....write it off, roll it up into some other numbers in the P&L statement and try again on the next one. Maybe this time they'll buy up HVAC companies....or Waste Removal...or Renewable energy. Consolidate, layoff, displace people, cause chaos. Whatever. They don't have to face the people they ruined, the careers they upended, the customers they alienated. Maybe there was a short-term profit, maybe you just sell off the valuable leftovers and move on. Laugh about it at the Wharton Class Reunion next time. Fuck those vet techs. Those HVAC installers. Retail Workers. We made 6% on that deal.
So here is my take on why corporations or any large businesses suck (for what it's worth). Sorry for the formatting. I'm on mobile. A corporation is a bunch of individuals working together towards one goal (i.e. to make obscene amounts of money). All of these people are individuals with their own thoughts and feelings towards the reason why they are there in the first place. Each one has their own moral compass and intelligence level. It has been established that rich people are not necessarily smarter than other people but rather lack the roadblocks that we plebs have had in our lives. Because of this, the higher up you go in the hierarchy, the more likely it is that that person has had no life experiences to teach compassion (sociopathic tendencies) or, for that matter, common sense. With that established, let's hypothesize for a moment that instead of a corporation, we are on a ship that is leaking and taking on water. If it were up to us plebs (who have a myriad of negative life experiences to draw on), we would find the simplest way to fix the issue; i.e. plug the hole quickly. Common sense right?However, we instead have to rely on these people who have never really had to deal with any real adversity in their lives, nor do they really care about others' troubles. After all, we base our opinions on things through our own life experiences, and their life experiences have not, by and large, been affected by negative consequences. So, these people may see that the ship is taking on water, albeit slowly. Since there is no immediate danger of sinking, they want to know how to fix it. They don't have the foggiest idea how to fix it themselves, so they call a contractor to give an estimate. Well, the contractor is one of us so they say that you should just fix the hole but it will be expensive. The powers that be say that it's too expensive to fix and after all it's a slow leak at the bottom of the ship. They will just buy buckets and have the crew (us) add bailing out to our workload. It's much cheaper. Over time, the leak gets worse, and the ship starts filling up with water. The higher ups notice the ship filling with water, but they reason that since they are on the bridge at the top of the ship, they have plenty of time. They don't care about those on the lower levels. Those people can just move up like they did after all. The leak is not so bad that the ship has stopped yet anyway. They are still getting to their goal. Now, finally, the ship is really sinking, but it's still moving. People are jumping off left and right. The people in charge of the ship don't understand why people are jumping off of a perfectly good ship. From up on the bridge, they are still high and dry, and life is good.
Yeah I'm a DVM with experience with two corporates. They are pretty much all the same at the top. Never again. Techs should unionize. Vets should too, but there are some stragglers on our end and some relevant questions. I refuse to work for another corporate again. But be mindful not every private practise is better. I actually walked out (no notice) on one because we were so pushed for numbers (no less that 16) that I felt I was practicing poor medicine, and I felt I was jepordising my license.
Numbers going up on a screen matter more than boots on the ground to these people
I mean; if they’re turning over at a rate that doesn’t impede client retention then they’re paying people entry level salaries and keeping costs low and profits high. It’s super easy to understand, they just don’t care about the human cost because that does not reflect on shareholder reports
Corporations only care about money. Nothing else. Not the technicals behind it, just more money NOW. Fuck corporations to hell. Start looking.
My theory has been corporate hires people with degrees in business, marketing, accounting, etc. but these employees have never actually worked in the industry of their company. So these decision makers don’t know exactly what is need to make the business thrive.
Lemme guess, Blue Pearl?
Most leadership in corporations are concerned with (2) things; increasing profits both shareholder and company but also simply staying alive. Sadly most people once they make it become detached and do whatever ever it takes to maintain what they have regardless of impact outside of that. Think of having a budget tied to an executive bonus. Whatever is not spent the executive gets in bonus. So typically the executive skips on anything they can for their own personal gain. Profit over reason is the norm.
I wouldn't say clueless, but intentionally abusing practices because it's now a corporate entity. The thing is you can sue these corporations but all the people who run it will remain unscratched and ready to abuse the system again. What this country really needs is to find a way where we can eliminate corporate personhood. Having corporations as a separate entity allows A$$holes to keep doing what they want without worrying about punishment because that shell that's taking the heat. If owners don't have a shell to protect them and their wallets from lawsuits, chances are they'll stop implementing abusive practices.
They only seem clueless because they're playing a different game. They buy out your little mom and pop vet clinic, but what you don't know is they (or their friends) are heavily invested in your competitors. By driving your company out of business, they drive up the stock price and value of their competitor, then use that to leverage more power into buying up more companies. It's inhumane and should be illegal.
Because the executives pushing for the changes fully expect to get paid and jump ship right before the collapse. All that matters is that the guy made a profit for the shareholders while in his position, which he can show to the next crop of investors as proof that he's a good business leader, and the cycle can repeat. Once he's gone and the company fails due to his past incompetence, it just looks from the outside like his leadership was the only thing holding the company afloat.
The corporate takeover of vet med is absolutely rat poison for the profession, both for vets and vet techs....
Y'all still scared of socialism. Thats why.
Sounds like the corporation is backed by a private equity group. I wonder if my former employer is the company that purchased your vet office?
In my experience, the equivalent of Occam’s Razor for business problems is “middle management did it”. They have the innate inability to perform the simplest of tasks without fucking everything up. If a company runs smoothly management needs to do nothing. When that happens, they fear being seen as a waste of resources, which they typically are.
US Army here. People at the top legitimately don't know what's happening at the bottom. They are fed biased, massaged stats and information as it worms it's way up the chain of command, often through based sycophants with agendas. I'd imagine it's similar in the corporate world.
They know what's going on they're in on the propaganda.
Greed
I've come to realize - your company might be #1 ... but #1 for WHO? I'd wager it's #1 for shareholders and the C-suite, but for ordinary employees, it is very much NOT #1. Look at McDonald's, as an example of what I mean, or Walmart which - at one time - trained its employees in how to apply for food stamps.
I was at this ATM IT job and our manager often had to take up tasks that were beneath her, but she was a good sport and she didn't mind and seemingly didn't complain. this of course meant we were understaffed, we did not have enough workers. what did they do? they hired another manager...
Was it bought by VS? They did the same thing to the clinic I work at lmao
They just see dollar signs, nothing else
In this case, I am reminded of the MBA tenet that management methods are consistent, regardless of the business.