Posted: 12/10/2024 10:50:00 PM EDT
| I work for an apparel decorating company as a embroidery digitizer. Mainly I fix designs that are not correct but at times of need do full designs. They use outside sources (private businesses not owned by them) for digitizing spending between $25 to $50 for what I would call junk. Most all of the online vendors farm all their stuff out to Asia because it's cheaper for them to do the work. I find all sorts of problems with the designs and fix them. They are now telling me that I will run and check the design on a machine. Once I identify the problems they want me to advise the vendor on how to fix the design and also provide guidance on future designs. I am not being compensated by the vendor and expressed my view that it's not my place to provide my skills for free to another private business. I believe that the vendor has the onus on them to provide a usable design since the company paid them. It took quite some time to get to the point I'm at as far as skill goes and I'm concerned that if I did "train' the vendor I'd be replaced eventually. I'll probably be let go if I refuse and because of my age it's hard to find a place that wants to hire older people. |
| I understand your concern. But, if your employer is paying you to do that work, you have to decide what to do. If I were your employer and you told me you didn’t want to do it because the 3rd party isn’t paying you, I would be very clear that I’m paying you for your time and you should get to work on what I assigned you to do. Sounds like you have some decisions to make and possibly a resume to update. |
| There's always a risk that technology will take jobs away from people...you refusing to do your job now is just going to make you jobless faster |
Lug1: Maybe a trip to Trader Joe's would cheer you up, or eating some dandeliions...Check your size 12 birkenstocks
FGracing: Congratulations on being the premier example on why join date and post count is meaningless
FGracing: Congratulations on being the premier example on why join date and post count is meaningless
Having functioned in this sphere, I know what you're talking about. I did a fair amount of digitizing for my wife's home business, though, we purchased most of our designs and for custom designs that were well beyond me , 30-40k stitch, 12ish thread stitch outs we would contract with someone like yourself. Had I tried to sell design you would have ripped your hair out fixing my work  As previously noted, if the boss is paying you to do the work your choices are limited. Unfortunately you're not even protected by it being your original work product. All you can really do is decide if you feel this is going to result in your inevitable obsolescence and if you have a way to pivot now to better position yourself. |
|
Your company is already farming out design work. You say you only do design on an as needed basis. The vendors have a track record of being bad. They aren't fixing this themselves. You're being paid for your time. What do you think could come from this new arrangement that would be bad for you or your employer? |
|
Another point of view is if you train the contractors to submit good work you won't have to fix it. Is it easier for you to do the whole thing from scratch or to fix what they submit? You get paid the same either way. |
Silent Brigade, 1/20/20: Dangerous wankers to a one. 3rd rate BB
|
My wife does what OP does. Both for embroidery and for custom t-shirts. People having a family reunion or some small company comes up with a logo and wants a run of shirts. They bring their half baked MSPaint idea they want to the t-shirt shop. The design needs to be fixed, reworked, or in some cases remade to be able to be embroidered or screen printed. There are at least 2 shops in town my wife has bounced between. They keep offering her more and more money. If she wanted to put in 80hr weeks with it, she could. Cause without somebody doing her job, the shirts they put out would only be as good as the designs the people brought in off the street. OP, I think there are other places to work besides where you are now. Like with the local t-shirt shops, each design coming in is coming from a brand new person. You won't ever be able to properly train whoever is making the designs, because they don't come in from the same person. I would put out some feelers to these sort of local t-shirt shops to see what the demand is. |
|
What is your compensation like? Hourly or salaried? (sorry if I missed that point) Are you flying all over or just driving 20 miles to some mall shop somewhere... that makes a difference. Print up a card, make an LLC, and drop it in their pencil holder and turn this into a new job. Or maybe just make the card your social media links to make it more subtle. It doesn't seem like you like your employer much so maybe think about other gigs and those other vendors might be the door into a better work/life balance for you. As a dude literally stuck in the basement to work from home, I'd jump at the chance to go all over and get paid for it for a while. Don't forget to enjoy new places to eat and shop and listen to podcasts in the car too. 
|
100%-PureBlood-100%
|
Originally Posted By RR_Broccoli: ....... Print up a card, make an LLC, and drop it in their pencil holder and turn this into a new job. Or maybe just make the card your social media links to make it more subtle. It doesn't seem like you like your employer much so maybe think about other gigs and those other vendors might be the door into a better work/life balance for you. As a dude literally stuck in the basement to work from home, I'd jump at the chance to go all over and get paid for it for a while. Don't forget to enjoy new places to eat and shop and listen to podcasts in the car too. Exactly. Prepare for your next step as either a manager of vendors for your current company, or an independent consultant/ contractor servicing many vendors. |
|
Originally Posted By rock71: Here’s some advice that made my life a whole lot easier. “What you are asked to do, when someone else is paying you to do it, is none of your business.” Well thats about stupid as fuck. What if I slipped $20 in your pocket and told you to go kick that officer over there in the dick? Companies view employees as replaceable. They don't care about you. They don't care about your family. They care about the company. If that means paying OP to literally work himself out of a job, then toss him aside when he's no longer needed, then so be it. |
|
Originally Posted By giantpune: Well thats about stupid as fuck. What if I slipped $20 in your pocket and told you to go kick that officer over there in the dick? Companies view employees as replaceable. They don't care about you. They don't care about your family. They care about the company. If that means paying OP to literally work himself out of a job, then toss him aside when he's no longer needed, then so be it. For the autists: “What you are asked to do, when you agree to take someone else’s money to do it, is none of your business.” The point is, if you take the money, you take the ride. If there’s something objectionable, illegal, or immoral, then don’t take the money. If OP thinks he’ll be working himself out of a job, either don’t do it, or be thankful for the clue, and start making preparations for the next phase. The freedom in that phrase is that you don’t have to use up all of your bandwidth making things make sense. If your employer wants you to dig a hole, then fill it back up, or move a pile of rocks back and forth, fine. It’s just their money. Too many people get caught up in what makes sense and it becomes a source of frustration. Just do the job, or don’t. |
Distinguished
|
Originally Posted By rock71: For the autists: “What you are asked to do, when you agree to take someone else’s money to do it, is none of your business.” The point is, if you take the money, you take the ride. If there’s something objectionable, illegal, or immoral, then don’t take the money. If OP thinks he’ll be working himself out of a job, either don’t do it, or be thankful for the clue, and start making preparations for the next phase. Also for the autists, OP agreed to do 1 job and has been getting paid to do that. Now the employer is completely changing what they want him to do. He hasn't taken their money to do that new thing, and isn't sure he even wants to. It is not in his best interests to work himself out of a job. And thats the whole point of this thread. |
|
Originally Posted By Andr0id: Yep, just march those Jews into the ovens. That didn’t take long. You lose. Godwin’s rule. Also, see previous post: “If there’s something objectionable, illegal, or immoral, then don’t take the money.” |
Distinguished
|
Originally Posted By Stryfe: Your company is already farming out design work. You say you only do design on an as needed basis. The vendors have a track record of being bad. They aren't fixing this themselves. You're being paid for your time. What do you think could come from this new arrangement that would be bad for you or your employer? Originally Posted By Stryfe: Your company is already farming out design work. You say you only do design on an as needed basis. The vendors have a track record of being bad. They aren't fixing this themselves. You're being paid for your time. What do you think could come from this new arrangement that would be bad for you or your employer? Originally Posted By minimalist65: It took quite some time to get to the point I'm at as far as skill goes and I'm concerned that if I did "train' the vendor I'd be replaced eventually. I see this... I worked at another company we had many remote teams all over. My specific dept was known as the Network Engineering - Upgrades and Implementation Team. We mostly deployed new gear or new features and services to current gear, upgraded firmware, Processors, and added links/bandwidth between devices and between sites.. However we also did On Call, Break Fix type of stuff for outages and speed/service complaints.. At some point, someone new TIE high up decided to move everyone around like Chess pieces. Depending on what department you were in, you were slatted to move to either Colorado, Madison Wi, Louisville Ky, or somewhere in Tn... This was the 3rd time many of us had been though the restructures and re-seating (what they called it when you were forced to pack up and move). Most of the folks (like 18-19 of 20 or something like that) refused to move this time. Everyone in my group was slatted to be seated in Colorado. None of us wanted to go. At the end they told us they needed a list of who was going and who was not and for the # of folks not going, we had to train train contractors that were going to replace us with how to configure the Cisco, Arris, Foundry and other network gear. No thanks. I had another gig lined up, put in my notice and jumped ship. |
LARUEMINATI
NRA Endowment Life Member
Originally Posted By Boom_Stick:
""AKs are for villagers you have to tell not to shit in their water supply.""
NRA Endowment Life Member
Originally Posted By Boom_Stick:
""AKs are for villagers you have to tell not to shit in their water supply.""
|
Originally Posted By giantpune: Well thats about stupid as fuck. What if I slipped $20 in your pocket and told you to go kick that officer over there in the dick? Companies view employees as replaceable. They don't care about you. They don't care about your family. They care about the company. If that means paying OP to literally work himself out of a job, then toss him aside when he's no longer needed, then so be it. Originally Posted By giantpune: Originally Posted By rock71: Here’s some advice that made my life a whole lot easier. “What you are asked to do, when someone else is paying you to do it, is none of your business.” Well thats about stupid as fuck. What if I slipped $20 in your pocket and told you to go kick that officer over there in the dick? Companies view employees as replaceable. They don't care about you. They don't care about your family. They care about the company. If that means paying OP to literally work himself out of a job, then toss him aside when he's no longer needed, then so be it. And he called you stupid as fuck unironically… |
"Now none of the frightened soldiers moved, for they saw that cowardice and valor purchased equal plots in the sniper's killing field."
"A great many men, on the point of taking to the sea, give no thought to storms."
"A great many men, on the point of taking to the sea, give no thought to storms."
|
Originally Posted By Andr0id: Yep, just march those Jews into the ovens. Originally Posted By Andr0id: Originally Posted By rock71: Here’s some advice that made my life a whole lot easier. “What you are asked to do, when someone else is paying you to do it, is none of your business.” Yep, just march those Jews into the ovens. Yeah, that’s exactly the same thing. This place gets dumber by the day. |
"Now none of the frightened soldiers moved, for they saw that cowardice and valor purchased equal plots in the sniper's killing field."
"A great many men, on the point of taking to the sea, give no thought to storms."
"A great many men, on the point of taking to the sea, give no thought to storms."
|
Originally Posted By minimalist65: I work for an apparel decorating company as a embroidery digitizer. Mainly I fix designs that are not correct but at times of need do full designs. They use outside sources (private businesses not owned by them) for digitizing spending between $25 to $50 for what I would call junk. Most all of the online vendors farm all their stuff out to Asia because it's cheaper for them to do the work. I find all sorts of problems with the designs and fix them. If the designs came in perfect every time what would your job entail? They are now telling me that I will run and check the design on a machine. Once I identify the problems they want me to advise the vendor on how to fix the design and also provide guidance on future designs. I am not being compensated by the vendor and expressed my view that it's not my place to provide my skills for free to another private business. Your employer is paying for your time. You may not like your assigned tasks but you're being compensated for your work. I believe that the vendor has the onus on them to provide a usable design since the company paid them. Correct. That said, your employer is paying $25-50 per design. If you tie up enough time each day with a vendor's employee for each design that that had issues, the vendor will figure out it's losing money taking on your employer's work. It took quite some time to get to the point I'm at as far as skill goes and I'm concerned that if I did "train' the vendor I'd be replaced eventually. Again, if the designs came in perfect every time what would your job entail? |
Heller II - Challenging DC's bans on semi-automatic rifles, large-capacity ammunition feeding devices, and its onerous and expensive handgun registration process. http://www.HellerFoundation.org/
|
Originally Posted By Homesteader375: Having functioned in this sphere, I know what you're talking about. I did a fair amount of digitizing for my wife's home business, though, we purchased most of our designs and for custom designs that were well beyond me , 30-40k stitch, 12ish thread stitch outs we would contract with someone like yourself. Had I tried to sell design you would have ripped your hair out fixing my work As previously noted, if the boss is paying you to do the work your choices are limited. Unfortunately you're not even protected by it being your original work product. All you can really do is decide if you feel this is going to result in your inevitable obsolescence and if you have a way to pivot now to better position yourself. Know about hair pulling. I do the impossible stuff that nobody will touch since the "employers" and their sales force promise well beyond reasonable. It's the skill set that bothers me. If the company is paying a third party for the design then it's on them to fix it relying on the their ability. If I have to document every defect and provide the information on how to fix the design the source gets free lessons. Effin call Wilcom is what I suggest. Real issue, I could fix the design faster than going though the teach and learn rodeo. I eliminated all the issues in production on puff, patches, density, small lettering, registration, and packed stitches. The overlords don't get this because they don't understand embroidery. I create time as I regularly remove 15-40% of the stitch count. They don't see any of this but concentrate on the $25 designs since it's such a deal. We running over a hundred heads in house. Didn't mention in the original post but I do run a 6 head as well also figuring out the problems for all the other operators who don't know embroidery. This gets ignored too, it's the let's help the incompetent that finally sent me up the pole. Yes, I do need to find another place to work....... |
|
Originally Posted By Nmbmxer: Another point of view is if you train the contractors to submit good work you won't have to fix it. Is it easier for you to do the whole thing from scratch or to fix what they submit? You get paid the same either way. If one pays for a product then the product should be usable. Half and half on the scratch versus fix. Yes I get paid but what I don't get paid for is giving a third party free lessons so they can apply that to all the other clients they have. Designs are farmed out to the third world. The companies that contract with those people are making anywhere from 50-75% of what they charge. There are some companies that farm out only to be farmed out by a third party who takes a cut claiming they did it. |
|
Originally Posted By giantpune: My wife does what OP does. Both for embroidery and for custom t-shirts. People having a family reunion or some small company comes up with a logo and wants a run of shirts. They bring their half baked MSPaint idea they want to the t-shirt shop. The design needs to be fixed, reworked, or in some cases remade to be able to be embroidered or screen printed. There are at least 2 shops in town my wife has bounced between. They keep offering her more and more money. If she wanted to put in 80hr weeks with it, she could. Cause without somebody doing her job, the shirts they put out would only be as good as the designs the people brought in off the street. OP, I think there are other places to work besides where you are now. Like with the local t-shirt shops, each design coming in is coming from a brand new person. You won't ever be able to properly train whoever is making the designs, because they don't come in from the same person. I would put out some feelers to these sort of local t-shirt shops to see what the demand is. I've begun my search. My specialty is embroidery and digitizing. I know machines as well. Did leatherwork for 20 years too. |
|
Originally Posted By RR_Broccoli: What is your compensation like? Hourly or salaried? (sorry if I missed that point) Are you flying all over or just driving 20 miles to some mall shop somewhere... that makes a difference. Print up a card, make an LLC, and drop it in their pencil holder and turn this into a new job. Or maybe just make the card your social media links to make it more subtle. It doesn't seem like you like your employer much so maybe think about other gigs and those other vendors might be the door into a better work/life balance for you. As a dude literally stuck in the basement to work from home, I'd jump at the chance to go all over and get paid for it for a while. Don't forget to enjoy new places to eat and shop and listen to podcasts in the car too. I work in one location hourly for a company that does roughly 11m a year that is an hour drive each way. I live rural. |
|
Originally Posted By rock71: For the autists: “What you are asked to do, when you agree to take someone else’s money to do it, is none of your business.” The point is, if you take the money, you take the ride. If there’s something objectionable, illegal, or immoral, then don’t take the money. If OP thinks he’ll be working himself out of a job, either don’t do it, or be thankful for the clue, and start making preparations for the next phase. The freedom in that phrase is that you don’t have to use up all of your bandwidth making things make sense. If your employer wants you to dig a hole, then fill it back up, or move a pile of rocks back and forth, fine. It’s just their money. Too many people get caught up in what makes sense and it becomes a source of frustration. Just do the job, or don’t. "start making preparations for the next phase" Well that's a bingo on the card. |
|
Originally Posted By giantpune: Also for the autists, OP agreed to do 1 job and has been getting paid to do that. Now the employer is completely changing what they want him to do. He hasn't taken their money to do that new thing, and isn't sure he even wants to. It is not in his best interests to work himself out of a job. And thats the whole point of this thread. Affirmative. |
|
Originally Posted By smullen: I see this... I worked at another company we had many remote teams all over. My specific dept was known as the Network Engineering - Upgrades and Implementation Team. We mostly deployed new gear or new features and services to current gear, upgraded firmware, Processors, and added links/bandwidth between devices and between sites.. However we also did On Call, Break Fix type of stuff for outages and speed/service complaints.. At some point, someone new TIE high up decided to move everyone around like Chess pieces. Depending on what department you were in, you were slatted to move to either Colorado, Madison Wi, Louisville Ky, or somewhere in Tn... This was the 3rd time many of us had been though the restructures and re-seating (what they called it when you were forced to pack up and move). Most of the folks (like 18-19 of 20 or something like that) refused to move this time. Everyone in my group was slatted to be seated in Colorado. None of us wanted to go. At the end they told us they needed a list of who was going and who was not and for the # of folks not going, we had to train train contractors that were going to replace us with how to configure the Cisco, Arris, Foundry and other network gear. No thanks. I had another gig lined up, put in my notice and jumped ship. Looking at boats right now. |
|
Originally Posted By Bubbles: If the designs came in perfect every time what would your job entail? Your employer is paying for your time. You may not like your assigned tasks but you're being compensated for your work. Correct. That said, your employer is paying $25-50 per design. If you tie up enough time each day with a vendor's employee for each design that that had issues, the vendor will figure out it's losing money taking on your employer's work. Again, if the designs came in perfect every time what would your job entail? Point one, I do the stuff that every source says no to. Best source out there for puff embroidery was unable to do what I've done. Point two, yes I'm being compensated for my work but I'm not being compensated for providing third party vendors free access to my knowledge. I think that is referred to as consulting. Ironically the company I work for hired a consultant who knows nothing about embroidery, screen printing, or dtg where these problems all started. |
|
Originally Posted By minimalist65: ....Point two, yes I'm being compensated for my work but I'm not being compensated for providing third party vendors free access to my knowledge. Your "work" is doing what your employer asks you to do, not what you think, how you think or anything else. If you really don't like third party vendors benefiting from your knowledge THAT YOUR EMPLOYER IS PAYING YOU FOR.....then quit. |
Plano, Texas...........the Gun Nut Capitol of Gun Culture, USA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pELwCqz2JfE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pELwCqz2JfE
|
Originally Posted By DogtownTom: Your "work" is doing what your employer asks you to do, not what you think, how you think or anything else. If you really don't like third party vendors benefiting from your knowledge THAT YOUR EMPLOYER IS PAYING YOU FOR.....then quit. |
"The problem with some people is that they are still alive" - Grumpy Cat
|
Originally Posted By DogtownTom: Your "work" is doing what your employer asks you to do, not what you think, how you think or anything else. If you really don't like third party vendors benefiting from your knowledge THAT YOUR EMPLOYER IS PAYING YOU FOR.....then quit. This. |
|
Sandbag. Train them to 70-80%. Some will make the jump to full effectiveness on their own. Others won’t ever get to the level you are attempting to train them to. The failure rate must be because either they aren’t trainable or you aren’t a trainer. Perhaps your employer would like to pay for teaching related courses for you to improve the success rate? ETA: Also produce a proprietary training manual and require purchase by the people you will be training. Only available in blocks of 50. |
It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is absolutely fatal. - Oscar Wilde
|
Originally Posted By minimalist65: If one pays for a product then the product should be usable. Half and half on the scratch versus fix. Yes I get paid but what I don't get paid for is giving a third party free lessons so they can apply that to all the other clients they have. Designs are farmed out to the third world. The companies that contract with those people are making anywhere from 50-75% of what they charge. There are some companies that farm out only to be farmed out by a third party who takes a cut claiming they did it. Originally Posted By minimalist65: Originally Posted By Nmbmxer: Another point of view is if you train the contractors to submit good work you won't have to fix it. Is it easier for you to do the whole thing from scratch or to fix what they submit? You get paid the same either way. If one pays for a product then the product should be usable. Half and half on the scratch versus fix. Yes I get paid but what I don't get paid for is giving a third party free lessons so they can apply that to all the other clients they have. Designs are farmed out to the third world. The companies that contract with those people are making anywhere from 50-75% of what they charge. There are some companies that farm out only to be farmed out by a third party who takes a cut claiming they did it. You're not wrong in your perspective. But your employer has a different perspective, right? Presumably it's not that much different from yours, except they want you to provide feedback to the contractor, so that hopefully they stop getting so much junk that has to be fixed, by their employee. Could they be looking to lay you off, yes, absolutely. I'd guess, though, they know that, no matter how much you train the contractor, you'll still be getting product from the contractor that needs to be touched up by you. I went through similar in my job before I retired. Except we were designing and manufacturing custom engineered structural components (wood trusses), so the stakes were probably a little higher because it not only has to fit, but can't be allowed to fall on them when they sleep (but nonetheless, you can't send out a shit product). They started with "oh, this former employee wants to do side work, if you need any help with design work." And, as expected said former employee was rushing through their work in the evenings and on weekends, and sending me shit, that I could fix or dick around with trying to get them to fix over the next week or more. Of course, now the boss thinks our design crew has expanded so he's selling more jobs. I was already overloaded, and it was a toss-up whether it took longer for me to check and make a list for them to fix their stuff or for me to just fix it...a great majority of the design process is getting intimately familiar with the plans, so I had to do that before I could even check their work. Anyway, I got semi caught up in a bit of a lull between multi-family projects, and gave my 2 weeks...they were talking about contracting to some guy in western Europe that was running a design crew  .Decided a year later that I could be and was retired. 
|
|
As a former IT Contractor, yeah OP is either about to get 'outsourced' himself, or flat out let go. I have in my past also trained my future replacements. Sometimes I knew it, sometimes it was a surprise. It always started with the 'hey, you're our best tech/expert in this area, could you help out this team's night support so he doesn't have to wake up so many people at night?" Fast forward a couple months, and oh look, the whole helpdesk is now offshore in Mexico/India/Philippians. Good job. Last time one of the bosses started poking around and asking essentially 'can this been done remote by a minimum wage worker?' questions, I literally switched careers and have endeavored to put myself into a position where I deal with the company's proprietary data that they don't want anybody else having access to. Doesn't mean I'm safe from getting outsourced/let go, but I only need it to last another 10-15 years so I can retire. ;) As others have said, unless you feel you can work yourself into a 'liaison' position for either your current company, or for the biggest vendor they work with, yeah, update that resume and start getting some feelers out there. I feel your time at your current job is limited, unless you have another job task that is not being outsourced that you can lean into. |
|
Originally Posted By Stryfe: Your company is already farming out design work. You say you only do design on an as needed basis. The vendors have a track record of being bad. They aren't fixing this themselves. You're being paid for your time. What do you think could come from this new arrangement that would be bad for you or your employer? Add that to your resume and are you prohibited from doing side work or do you have some level of non compete? Make sure your vendors management know who is actually doing the work. |
VCDL Member
NRA Life Member
NRA Life Member
|
Originally Posted By minimalist65: . There are some companies that farm out only to be farmed out by a third party who takes a cut claiming they did it. Sounds like wall street and others dealing in "financial instruments" Fee skimmers all... |
"They want you dead but will settle for your submission" - Malice
| Owner watched a file being sewn by me that couldn't be fixed by anyone. Turned a 50 hour job on a zig zag sewing machine into a 3 hour job. This was 3 weeks ago. Layoffs ensued this past Monday. "Consultant" who was pushing this got the first invitation. Back to the original plan, leaving me alone to do what I do best. Best part, no communication between myself and third party vendors took place. |