So, found out that while our CEO tells the employees to "suck it up" and instated wage freezes, he and the board collected over 2 mil in bonuses and took huge raises. (200k on top of his already 2 million in compensation).

Yup. Over the past 3 years where we've had the company of 4000 or so employees be hit with raise freezes and caps of 1-2%, he and the board are sitting pretty and taking 1.3 million in bonuses for example for just the CEO. Other popular players taking a bit less but total between 2 and 3 million.

Yet they can't even be assed to follow wage laws regarding, oh, say, minimum salary/wage and have decided to ship parts to our newly built facility in Mexico, which since it has its own airstrip, will also probably end up serving as a drug smuggling operation. They build an on site cafeteria, dorm, school, and three production plants yet "we're not moving any work out of country."

Bullshit.

They tell their employees that it's tough economic times and to "suck it up" on a webcast, then on the shareholder filings tell the SEC "hey yeah, we're giving the CEO a 163% of his base salary bonus.

Oh, and the segment just before that? "Bonuses are capped at 160% to 140% base salary..."

Right.

And when he quits? Yeah, 7 million bucks out the door, not to mention his stock in the company. Which has doubled in the past three years that we had "tough economic times" and we blew hundreds of millions on building a new facility and BILLIONS on buying out our only real competition.

But internally? Yeah, fuck man - do shit cheap, not right. Hire incompetent consultants that try implementing security LAUGHABLY. What's that? Consolidate an 80+ site company into a single domain around the entire world? Give the nearly 50 domain controllers ALL global catalog? Make the ACL's on the WAN so that sites can only talk to the data center and all domain controllers will have to sync across non-existent pipes? Yeah. Fucking fan-goddamn-tastic.

I hate my job. But only slightly less than I hate being unemployed. But seeing the SEC filing showing what our board is being paid... yeah. I think when I leave I might just drop a link to the SEC.gov's archive with the filing to the everyone mailing list. This is goddamn ridiculous.

THIS is what the 99% are pissed about. We've been asked to work double, triple shifts to make the company more money in hopes that we get loyalty and respect in return. Instead we get wage freezes, then when those are over, we get 1-2% raise caps. Only reason I got more than that was because I threatened to quit if they didn't start taking action to bring my wages in line with California labor law. Which is still 22k below where it should be, but I get to dick around at the office and not be bothered so I'll take it for now.

But employees are told to suck it up, shareholders are told we've never been more profitable with billions in sales a quarter, and oh by the way we're taking bonuses 'cause it's our work that made this happen. No, it's the fucking shop floor guys, who get paid as little as 10 bucks an hour to run the machines, that make the parts and make the company money. Corporate? They FUCK SHIT UP. They've broken our IT process. They're building in a DoA network. They dictate terms of hiring and wage. I can't WAIT to see this company tank when the entire network goes irrecoverably down because the infrastructure changes they have planned. They physically can't work from an enterprise point of view. I pointed it out for months and got kicked off the team for being negative, even though everyone but corporate agreed (and I was the only technical person on the team). Then the entire team got disbanded because they refused to go along with the plan, so new team, let's do it, oh hey problems. At everywhere but Michi's site. Amazing. A fucking mazing. I wonder why that is? Is it because he knows what he's doing? Is it because he's the only person that actually understands wide-scope IT in the damn company?

I mean shit, I out-hacked two hacker gangs to remote access and regain control of our website because corporate LOST THE PHYSICAL DEVICE. As in they had no idea who was running it. But it got hacked and turned into a major PR nightmare, I counterhacked it and what'd I get? a 50 dollar gift card and a pat on the head. Gee. Thanks.

I've been flat out told that they can't pay me what I'm worth because somebody my age should be lucky I have what I have.

Sure, your average 25 year old should be grateful for a 53k/yr job in California. That's barely enough to pay the bills, much less make any serious effort towards savings. But I live within my means. I should be making a LOT more. Not because of greed, or because I'm part of some "everyone gets a ribbon" movement. But because I BUST MY ASS for the company and get wage freezes and insultingly low tokens of appreciation.

Seriously, you show me somebody else that will manage 200 users/120 systems daily, as well as troubleshoot global architecture problems, global networking problems, and devise and manage troubleshooting and solutions to enterprise architectural problems ranging bandwidth congestion and web filter management to network configuration of a site that somehow got set up without Kerberos without losing the entire site where Microsoft says just rebuild it. Or sits here and programs and entire fucking interface in a language he taught himself in maybe 5 hours for reading ANY of our crystal reports and only displaying reports that the user has the ACL rights to access.

How about also managing to be familiar enough with security to have the only site that passes security audit? Or maybe the one with literally until corporate got involved, 100% planned uptime. Now we're lucky if we get 90% thanks to constant lockouts and authentication issues. I've programmed and mapped the entire network architecture on our Cisco kit. I DESIGNED the specifications for the Mexico facility. Which they ignored and are now complaining because the networks slow since they went with inferior kit, wiring, and design scheme.

I don't know anyone that can wear this many hats that works for 53k/yr and spends 40-60-hrs a week (100+ hours during emergencies) working. It's bullshit. I can solve every fucking technical problem put before me in the business environment in usually a matter of minutes, no more than a few hours. My boss panics when I even bring up job searching. But they won't give me a raise because corporate dictates the pay, and I'm too young.

I'm the 99%. Just because I have a job doesn't mean that I shouldn't be willing to fight for equality.

You know what I wanted to do when the Egypt protests started up? Create a mobile phone app that would integrate Google maps, and let people create either public or private maps and, in real time, allow people to tag phones as certain roles - Leaders, Participants, Enforcers, Medical, etc. Each role could have certain permissions and duties per the map - anyone can report a medical emergency, or location of police, provacateers, etc. The leaders could relay new locations or waypoints to all members. Access could be restricted. Maybe implement an ad-hoc network between the phones if the protest needs to avoid police interference to be effective. Think of it as a real life command and control application for the masses. Someone hurt? Report medical attention. GPS location sent. Medically trained and designated people show up. They know where ambulances are located in perspective to them. All via GPS.

Make it easy for people to get out there and they will. Make it easy for people to become freedom fighters, and they will.

Unfortunately I don't have the skill in programming or encryption to make all of this happen, and the idea has sat stagnate.

Now I look out at the 99%, and the crackdowns, and think to myself - if I actually had more time, I could have had this app out there. But there's never enough time. My animation? It's gonna take years to teach myself everything I need and animate my movies, but I'm doing it. I'm slowly learning mono for android, when I have spare time. But something as complex as this? Wouldn't even know where to begin. And so it sits.

I'm the 99%, but the 1% are doing a great job keeping us so drained of creativity that we're reduced to trying to destress instead of spending time learning and increasing our awareness.

Whatever. This turned into a long, rambling rant. Sorry. But it's there. Count me as another voice in the crowd. Yet another person near the breaking point.