My boss stole my database!

[paindivine]

Well, first off, I wasnt really worried about the $$$ or anything. It was more a matter of my boss claiming it for her own... then asking IS to create a new one based on what "She" had told us to write for her...

But it all worked out in the end. The IS person that was put in charge of the project is awsome. She requested that I attend the development meeting, said she was impressed with what was there. Said that to keep the flexability of the application she thought that the front end of the database should be kept in Access and she thought we should link the contact section to the companies Oracle database. Then the notes section she said she'd like to eventually move as well. But all in all she would like me to remain in charge of the frontend so we could manipulate the data in any way we want.

She also said she'd clear any changes with me prior to release. I'm much happier with the situation now. I know that, even if she ends up taking full control of it, she has our best interests at hart and isn't going to just shove some pre-packaged junk at us.

 

[Dreamweaver]

What they choose to have you do during those hours are up to them.

Sorry can't agree there as if my employeers asked me to design them a db I would have the right to turn round to them and say sorry mate it's not in my contract of employment so if you pay me X£'s per hour I'll be happy to do it for ya.


mick

 

[CraigDolphin]

Unless of course your employment contract has the 'other duties as assigned' clause....

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Dreamweaver,

With regard to refusing to design the DB without extra money, that is of course your business. They can't take what you didn't write and I certainly understand that viewpoint. There are times when I have the same feeling.

Unfortunately I have an "other duties as required" clause in my job description appearing in my employer's contract with the U.S. Government. Therefore, they could easily request a DB design and I would have to either feign ignorance or outright refuse. Nobody would believe the feigned ignorance, so that's out. In this job climate on my side of the pond, a refusal is not conducive to continued employment unless I can show scheduling overload as a contributing factor to that refusal.

However, you reference a monetary unit of England. This makes me think you are in a different legal context, too. In the USA we have a situation about ownership regardless of your contract. The copyright laws of the USA (specifically, Copyright Law of 1975) specifies a default presumption of ownership to the ultimate employer who pays the salary, unless there is a specific ownership clause in the contract to counter the US (Federal) law. This is not even what we call a "State's Rights" issue.

Therefore, any program I write at the office belongs to the U.S. Navy, not even to my employer. I can't even write it at home and use it at the office. However, I have an exclusion for my hobbyist writing. I write government documents by day and a different type of fantasy fiction by night, but they don't overlap so I'm O.K.

 

[Brianwarnock]

Sorry can't agree there as if my employeers asked me to design them a db I would have the right to turn round to them and say sorry mate it's not in my contract of employment so if you pay me X£'s per hour I'll be happy to do it for ya.


mick

What weak and pathetic management you must have, I can just see the goddamn awful jobs I would have given to any body who took that attitude with me, mind you I would hope to have weeded out anyone with that mindset before they joined.

Brian

 

[Keith Nichols]

Cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.

Sorry can't agree there as if my employeers asked me to design them a db I would have the right to turn round to them and say sorry mate it's not in my contract of employment so if you pay me X£'s per hour I'll be happy to do it for ya.
mick

It's an odd attitude. I make the presumption that you are interested in databases by your pressence here. Your employment is obviously not developing databases. Why on earth wouldn't you take the opportunity to be involved in something you are interested in whilst on wages with the added advantage that the business rules and DB requirements would be something you are intimately involved in? Seems like a dream situation to me.

The UK has a long and ignomious tradition of 'Us and Them' where employees and management are adversarial with no quarter given or taken. This has faded since the Thatcher revolution, and whilst that was painful to many (myself included) it was so required. If you advance the cause of the business you work for, you advance your own cause. You won't always be recognized for it, but that doesn't make it untrue.

If you resent your employer so much that you don't want to be paid for something you enjoy, change jobs. If you feel that you are not being used to your full potential, change jobs. If you feel that they are asking you to do something that merits a higher grade, ask for the grade.

In all my employement contracts, I don't think I have ever seen anything that restricted what I could be asked to do. I have had job titles, but that doesn't preclude the employer from asking me to do anything that they feel I am competant to do safely. External to my contract, there have been demarkation issues (that's 'Electrical' not 'Instruments' etc) in highly regulated or unionised industries or legal issues where some industrial tasks have to be performed by specifically qualified staff.

To end my pro employer rant, I have noticed that when I moved into the position of developing a database, I sudenly stood out as being 'useful' above and beyond the normal requirements of my job title. This internal departmental kudos gave me a bit of licence in other areas and has been baneficial to me as well as being interesting and stretching. My CV is improved for its presence.

It's not the seventies any more !

 

[Dreamweaver]

Read the post A Couple up I know my value and your right I'm a hobby db designer if that's what you wanna call it.
I get on well with my employers and along with a number of others have been with the company for years.

I feel that a person should get rewards for what they do\know I am the one who's spent years of my life learning what little I know so should my employers wish to utilise that then why in hell should I not get paid for it.

At the end of the day everybody's situation is different.

And by the way I am Very useful to my employers that's why I just got a good pay rise which included another promotion and as I said get on well with them who I might add understand a persons value and I'm sure if they wanted me to do something in the design lines (That at the moment have nothing to do with my employment) they would be the ones to offer me an extra incentive to do a db for them it don't make them week just nice people.

not all employers are rats, it's got sod all to do with the seventies.

I'm happy there happy and I can't see a problem with trying to get a few extra Quid for doing something you don't have to Unless your one of those employers or where that don't give a stuff about there employees and just want to use use use them

 

[Rich]

just want to use use use them

Isn't that the object of employment?

 

[Dreamweaver]

Isn't that the object of employment?

Depends on your view really and the contact you have with the company also the employment laws Need I go on.

but at the end of the day if you're will to allow yourself to be used when you don't have to maybe because of the reasons above then that's your choice.

I have been on both sides of the fence As A Proprietor, Managing Director And Contracts Manager I now work as a general work Due to Illness but got feed up years back of being used.

Just as an example why I like it where I am and the sort or directors we have I was doing overtime to help get an order out as was a number of others and half way through One of the directors went around to each person giving out chocolates which ain't the first instance, that is why they get a lot more cooperation and as they started at the bottom themselves why my statement about them making me an offer if they wanted me to spend time doing a system for them.

And also because of the way they are they get a lot more help from the employees which I might add shows on the balance sheet

The above may sound like a contradiction in terms and may be best left as everyone of us has our own thoughts on employment and what we are willing to do\put up with but at the end of the day my employers know me as I do them and we get on as they seem to want me and I'm happy to stay.

 

[Dreamweaver]

Originally Posted by Dreamweaver
just want to use use use them

Isn't that the object of employment?

I'm not gonna answer this at the min as want to find the right words first

 

[The_Doc_Man]

This is almost getting philosophical but it is worth commenting.

Dreamweaver, as long as you have the feeling of being used, you are definitively in the wrong job.

First, remember that employment is a mutually beneficial condition. "They" get your expertise, you get "their" money. Quid pro quo.

Second, congrats on being promoted and getting more money. You are doing something right. But I have found that the real key to usefulness is either incredible devotion or dazzling versatility.

I'm over my workaholic days after a family crisis back in the mid 1980's, but I have learned a couple of useful things along the way. Besides being a system admin for a mid-size system (Google OpenVMS and Alpha Servers if you're curious), I also do Access and other MS Office specialties. I've lost count of the third-generation languages I can use productively. And I took some courses so that for a while, I was allowed to teach Windows Security for Systems Administrators - to new U.S. Navy Sys Admins at that.

Versatility takes different paths, of course, and you might well be right to refuse to do DBs. But drop the feeling of being used. It is not conducive to career advancement. On the other hand, it is perfect fair for you to say, "Doing that database design wasn't consistent with my plans for myself." The difference is that in one case you are saying you feel abused and in the other case, you are merely stating a preference for direction. The one sounds like sour grapes. The other makes it seem like you really have your act together - whether or not that is the case.

If you REALLY want to get a feeling of being used, look at your yearly tax bills. Toss down a couple of shots of your favorite form of liquid courage before you do so, though.

 

[Dreamweaver]

I do agree there The_Doc_Man but people seemed to have missed the point I didn't say I wouldn't do a db for my empolyers I would just feel I would deserve a little something extra for doing it

First, remember that employment is a mutually beneficial condition. "They" get your expertise, you get "their" money. Quid pro quo.

to me they want 100% and as an employee you expect 100% from them.

I wont go into my qualifycations here there's no point in it

I can understand how a family criss can change a person after my brother lossing his son a few months back and now problems with my older sisters health It makes you rethink what your doing and have done that you culd have done different as Myself and my brother were both workaholics anyway I'll say no more there I'll end this topic for me now maybe one day I'll be able to explain myself better.

 

[Keith Nichols]

Read the post A Couple up I know my value and your right I'm a hobby db designer if that's what you wanna call it.
I get on well with my employers and along with a number of others have been with the company for years.

I feel that a person should get rewards for what they do\know I am the one who's spent years of my life learning what little I know so should my employers wish to utilise that then why in hell should I not get paid for it.

At the end of the day everybody's situation is different.

And by the way I am Very useful to my employers that's why I just got a good pay rise which included another promotion and as I said get on well with them who I might add understand a persons value and I'm sure if they wanted me to do something in the design lines (That at the moment have nothing to do with my employment) they would be the ones to offer me an extra incentive to do a db for them it don't make them week just nice people.

not all employers are rats, it's got sod all to do with the seventies.

I'm happy there happy and I can't see a problem with trying to get a few extra Quid for doing something you don't have to Unless your one of those employers or where that don't give a stuff about there employees and just want to use use use them

Dreamweaver,

That sounds a lot more reasonable and it does appear that both employer and employee are appreciated where you work. Congrats on the recent promotion.

I guess the only issue left is should your employer pay you extra for a none-core activity when your a self confessed 'hobby DB designer"? Don't missunderstand, you may be very good at DB design and development, but you are not a professional and as far as your employer is concerned, you must be an unkown quantity in this respect. While you are doing your DB design for them, you are necesarily not doing your core activity, which they do pay you for, so they are taking a risk and possibly getting poor value for money as your productivity on DB design may be very low.

My DB productivity is extremely low and I am certain it would have been far cheaper for the company to get the IT dept create the DB in the first place. There is no effective budgetting in this company so that is slightly irrelevant and the departmental control was considered important, at least during development as well as the problem of defining the requirements.

From your post, it seems that the company you work for would recognize you for any extraordinary effort or achievment, such as developing a useful database for them. But wouldn't you expect this to be after the fact, i.e. once you have produced something and proven its worth, not before when your abilities are pure speculation?

Regards,

 

[Rich]

Originally Posted by Dreamweaver
just want to use use use them

I'm not gonna answer this at the min as want to find the right words first

But you already did

 

[Brianwarnock]

As I was reading through the thread I was compiling my reply to Dreamweaver, but then found that Keith Nichols had said it all.

Brian

 

[Pauldohert]

In general I do not agree with working outside of the contarct of employment - if its not in the contract of employment for you to be doing something you shouldn't be doing it.

This is done for two reason

1)To protect the employee from abuse

2) To ensure the employer knows what skills it is employing and where/who.



Of course the contract of employment can change - but its important that is done so everyone really knows what going on. Who needs to be hired, fired, recruited, promoted, rewarded, basic management of human resources etc etc - this can only be done if you know who is doing what - hence the need for contact of emploment.

Any boss that feels these aren't important - is probably covering their own inadequacies by exploiting others - against the best interests of the company.

If the company policy is anti contracts I would consider moving as exploitation in the end is in noones interests.

 

[Brianwarnock]

In general I do not agree with working outside of the contarct of employment -.

So you accept that there are circumstances where it can happen?

In 1988 I was in Costa Mesa attending a Terradata User Group meeting for my company, I was a software guy, but whilst there met a rep for a company who was marketing hardware that would provide channel speed connection for our remote mainframes, what do I do , say not my job? Well no I see him in my own time get the info, and later after it is all working fine feel job satisfaction.
At the next review get big bonus, feel even better , but that is not why I did it.

Brian

 

[Pauldohert]

Of course one offs are fine - but if this was happening regularly - they should really be sending buyer (or whoever) , or regarding you as partly buyer role - there needs to be some recogntion of who does what - in your case there was - so fine.

At the next review get big bonus

.

ie Neither of these apply

1)To protect the employee from abuse

2) To ensure the employer knows what skills it is employing and where/who.


If this had not been recognised - I owuld strongly recoomend noone doing it again - for the good of themselves abd the company

 

[Rich]

Of course one offs are fine - but if this was happening regularly - they should really be sending buyer (or whoever) , or regarding you as partly buyer role - there needs to be some recogntion of who does what - in your case there was - so fine.


.

ie Neither of these apply

1)To protect the employee from abuse

2) To ensure the employer knows what skills it is employing and where/who.


If this had not been recognised - I owuld strongly recoomend noone doing it again - for the good of themselves abd the company

I would have thought that one with an attitude as such should simply look for another job

 

[Pauldohert]

I would have thought that one with an attitude as such should simply look for another job

I dont know what you mean Rich?