2003-06-27 - 12:17 p.m.

So after cooling off from my initial rage that I wrote about in my last entry I decided to write a calm, well-reasoned letter to my manager. I pointed out to him that according the company documents a software engineer II has 2-4 years of experience and a software engineer III has 5-7 years of experience. I noted several specific instances where I had done software engineer 3 level work. I discussed how, since by his own admission my manager knows nothing about me or the work I do, this decision was obviously made due to misinformation. I also pointed out that my salary increase was unsatisfactory and that if the company wanted to demonstrate that it values employees who write software for multi-million dollar contracts, they should do so with raises that amount to a weekly rate of more than the cost of a 6 pack and a pizza.

To my surprise, I got a letter back from my manager in a rather short amount of time. There were a few points in it I'd like to share:

Lie #1: I do want to stress that this is not a "demotion." This has nothing to do with your level of proficiency or the work that you do at this company.
How is this not a demotion? This has everything to do with my proficiency and work I do. If levels of placement had nothing to do with proficiency and work employees do interns could architect software, my manager could file papers and lick envelopes.

Lie #2: I was not involved directly in you moving from a SWE3 to a SWE2.
Right, so HR just did this for kicks? Why do I doubt that?

My manager promised to forward my letter to the appropriate parties. Still no response. They have until Monday. I'm really losing my patience. I am going to raise hell over this, one way or another this will be resolved. I will either get specific examples of why I was demoted and given this joke of a raise or I will get my title back and a real raise or I will leave. I don't actually care which of the three happens but one of those three will happen, and by the end of July, I swear, one of those will have already happened.

To further impress upon me that he doesn't care about me, my manager skipped our meeting we had scheduled for today. In my review meeting my manager told me he doesn't know much about me. He also mentioned that he meets with North Carolina every 2 weeks just to chat, so he knows all about him. I demanded I get to meet regularly just to chat also. Why shouldn't I be getting attention? (It's important to note the company I work for dictates that managers are to take an active role in the careers of the staff they are responsible for and serve as mentors. What kinda mentor admits he knows nothing about his mentee?) Today was supposed to be our first meeting just to chat. My manager decided he'd go get lunch, rather than show up. No apology, no notice of cancellation, just a big "fuck you" to Warrior Geek. He came back later and said he forgot about the meeting. Oops. Yeah right.

I think the point here is painfully obvious. This company has no interest in retaining me as an employee. They may not realize it's going to suck for them when I leave but we are quickly getting to the point of too little, too late.

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