2022 :plac: life !

[Desertbreh]

Duh dood. They have anus in their name.

there goes the coffee

I do think it is that lateral industry movement resulted in jumping out of one dumpster fire into a worse one. Happens a lot in my biz as well.

[max225]

There is a lot of shit found everywhere. It seems that a company with the size of about 50-100 employees that are ruthlessly led by a singular person that aligns everyone underneath them is the most efficient/effective. Anything over under is a shit show... happens to also be the size of most start ups before they get snagged up.

[wap]

I worked for GM too, an even larger corp. SO MUCH BETTER in terms of culture, engineering, and planning. Night and day.

I'll never own another Stellanus product again, and can't recommend them in good conscious knowing how they're developed.

I'd consider another GM product.

Duh dood. They have anus in their name.

Kinda funny to me that D-Plac constantly misspells "stellantis" . Like he is psychologically incapable of spelling it correctly.
Unless he means to spell it with "anus" in it.

[Desertbreh]

Duh dood. They have anus in their name.

Kinda funny to me that D-Plac constantly misspells "stellantis" . Like he is psychologically incapable of spelling it correctly.
Unless he means to spell it with "anus" in it.

I would assume that is his intent, just like most of us can never just use the correct nomenclature for whatever. I am fascinated how many things "bro" can be inserted into quite cleanly.

[wap]

Kinda funny to me that D-Plac constantly misspells "stellantis" . Like he is psychologically incapable of spelling it correctly.
Unless he means to spell it with "anus" in it.

I would assume that is his intent, just like most of us can never just use the correct nomenclature for whatever. I am fascinated how many things "bro" can be inserted into quite cleanly.

I imagine you're probably

[ChrisoftheNorth]

Duh dood. They have anus in their name.

Kinda funny to me that D-Plac constantly misspells "stellantis" . Like he is psychologically incapable of spelling it correctly.
Unless he means to spell it with "anus" in it.

I've actually used it so much here and in texts and emails with colleagues/friends that my phone autocorrects to Stellanus.

I wouldn't want it any other way. That place is a dumpster fire shit show. It should have went under in 08 and never came back.

[D Griff]

I think it's just large corp honestly... I really can't complain as I work at a very good place that has treated me well. For the most part I'm surrounded by good people. Our CEO seems cool and down to earth from what I can tell. But I have noticed, the bigger we've gotten, the more that seems to come up.

I worked for GM too, an even larger corp. SO MUCH BETTER in terms of culture, engineering, and planning. Night and day.

I'll never own another Stellanus product again, and can't recommend them in good conscious knowing how they're developed.

I'd consider another GM product.

Oh yeah, Stellanus sounds waaay worse than most. It just does paint a funny and also sadly true vision of what a lot of large corp. America looks like behind closed doors.

The other crazy thing is that Stellanus makes some pretty cool products, must be the work of some really annoyed product planners and designers struggling to keep things moving forward.

[D Griff]

There is a lot of shit found everywhere. It seems that a company with the size of about 50-100 employees that are ruthlessly led by a singular person that aligns everyone underneath them is the most efficient/effective. Anything over under is a shit show... happens to also be the size of most start ups before they get snagged up.

Mostly

A lot of my customer base is very small companies, like 1-20 people, and some of them are pretty well run, most are not. They will call me with questions like "you guys sent me an invoice for $10,492, what the hell is wrong with you?" Take a deeper look... "Hmmm Joe, that's because we delivered 100 boxes of Cat6 and three amplifiers last week"... Joe" "Oh I forgot, OK. Well, I am going to be late on that payment, can you tell your accounting dept?"

Most of the owners in this size range are just really good techs and pretty shitty at business. There are those who really get that they need to just hire good techs and focus on managing and sales, those seem to be the most successful and easiest to work with.

I never realized how spoiled I was at my previous company (like 25 people in the US, 120ish world wide). Every single person there was enthusiastic, smart, and understood the business/their role in it. I was pretty spoiled at that place.... but the corp. life offers like 2-3X pay for a lot less work, so there's that. It's just more annoying.

[coogles]

BRZ orders are out to June/July according to my . That might be just about perfect.

[max225]

BRZ orders are out to June/July according to my . That might be just about perfect.

They willing to at sticker ?

[ChrisoftheNorth]

I worked for GM too, an even larger corp. SO MUCH BETTER in terms of culture, engineering, and planning. Night and day.

I'll never own another Stellanus product again, and can't recommend them in good conscious knowing how they're developed.

I'd consider another GM product.

Oh yeah, Stellanus sounds waaay worse than most. It just does paint a funny and also sadly true vision of what a lot of large corp. America looks like behind closed doors.

The other crazy thing is that Stellanus makes some pretty cool products, must be the work of some really annoyed product planners and designers struggling to keep things moving forward.

Someone at some point put Ralph Gillies in the exec ranks. He's currently in charge of design, and probably the person I respect most in the entire industry. He doesn't play the bullshit, empowers his people, and at the end of the day drives a laser focus on making badass looking products. He is the sole reason Stellanus has any success because people buy the products based on design. ANYTHING the company gets credit for has come from his team. The 12" screen in the Ram? Came from Design. UConnect? Design. Interior quality? Design. All the planners do is make ppt decks for mgmt to argue about in exec meetings. Design makes the vehicles worth buying, which is sad because the engineering is garbage, powertrains are ancient, build quality is meh. And it's all due to Ralph who DGAF about corp politics and just does his thing.

My favorite Ralph story:

I somehow was asked to cover an exec meeting. I was told to just sit in the corner and take notes. Fine. There was an argument going on between planning and engineering about some EV and ranges and the engineers blamed design for not being aero enough. Someone asked Ralph to work with his team to come up with a design that was more aerodynamic. He said "no problem, I'll have a sketch in a day". The discussion moved on, but Ralph started drawing in his iPad. 5 minutes later, during some boring discussion about global emissions requirements, Ralph speaks up and says "I don't know what we're talking about, but I have the sketch ready". The other execs looked puzzled and said ok... and he asked to share his screen. They agreed.

He then showed an image of a bubble with wheels that looked like a 5 year old drew that he had just drawn and said "you do your fucking job and I'll do mine, ok?" staring right at the chief engineer who asked him for the sketch. The guy had no idea how to respond, and just nodded and continued the previous conversation.

There was also a time where we were reviewing the new Grand Cherokee L and someone made a comment about not liking the wheels and how to make them look better. Ralph pulled black masking tape out of his pocket to replicate what they guy suggested on a prototype that cost the company 7 figures and said "well that looks like shit, guess that's why you're not a designer". I just happened to be standing right there and chuckled, Ralph gave me a fist bump.

He's my hero.

[max225]

Do y’all have any women at your org is it dick swinging central? Man that’s a rough environment

[razr390]

Oh yeah, Stellanus sounds waaay worse than most. It just does paint a funny and also sadly true vision of what a lot of large corp. America looks like behind closed doors.

The other crazy thing is that Stellanus makes some pretty cool products, must be the work of some really annoyed product planners and designers struggling to keep things moving forward.

Someone at some point put Ralph Gillies in the exec ranks. He's currently in charge of design, and probably the person I respect most in the entire industry. He doesn't play the bullshit, empowers his people, and at the end of the day drives a laser focus on making badass looking products. He is the sole reason Stellanus has any success because people buy the products based on design. ANYTHING the company gets credit for has come from his team. The 12" screen in the Ram? Came from Design. UConnect? Design. Interior quality? Design. All the planners do is make ppt decks for mgmt to argue about in exec meetings. Design makes the vehicles worth buying, which is sad because the engineering is garbage, powertrains are ancient, build quality is meh. And it's all due to Ralph who DGAF about corp politics and just does his thing.

My favorite Ralph story:

I somehow was asked to cover an exec meeting. I was told to just sit in the corner and take notes. Fine. There was an argument going on between planning and engineering about some EV and ranges and the engineers blamed design for not being aero enough. Someone asked Ralph to work with his team to come up with a design that was more aerodynamic. He said "no problem, I'll have a sketch in a day". The discussion moved on, but Ralph started drawing in his iPad. 5 minutes later, during some boring discussion about global emissions requirements, Ralph speaks up and says "I don't know what we're talking about, but I have the sketch ready". The other execs looked puzzled and said ok... and he asked to share his screen. They agreed.

He then showed an image of a bubble with wheels that looked like a 5 year old drew that he had just drawn and said "you do your fucking job and I'll do mine, ok?" staring right at the chief engineer who asked him for the sketch. The guy had no idea how to respond, and just nodded and continued the previous conversation.

There was also a time where we were reviewing the new Grand Cherokee L and someone made a comment about not liking the wheels and how to make them look better. Ralph pulled black masking tape out of his pocket to replicate what they guy suggested on a prototype that cost the company 7 figures and said "well that looks like shit, guess that's why you're not a designer". I just happened to be standing right there and chuckled, Ralph gave me a fist bump.

He's my hero.

This is epic levels of knowing your worth and swinging your dick on dumb people. I respect it.

Nothing like tough love when it’s deserved.

[ChrisoftheNorth]

Do y’all have any women at your org is it dick swinging central? Man that’s a rough environment

It was all white men, except for Ralph who's part black. He acts like he knows he's unfirable so he just does whatever he wants and makes the company whatever success it enjoys.

There were a few women promoted up through the ranks, but they had to be absolutely terrible to get up there. That company promotes dicks, my boss stated many times that if he didn't make someone cry in a meeting, he wasn't doing his job. When Manley was CEO, an HR rep had to follow him into every meeting he went to because there were so many HR complaints against him that he needed a baby sitter.

What in the fuck.

[D Griff]

Do y’all have any women at your org is it dick swinging central? Man that’s a rough environment

It was all white men, except for Ralph who's part black. He acts like he knows he's unfirable so he just does whatever he wants and makes the company whatever success it enjoys.

There were a few women promoted up through the ranks, but they had to be absolutely terrible to get up there. That company promotes dicks, my boss stated many times that if he didn't make someone cry in a meeting, he wasn't doing his job. When Manley was CEO, an HR rep had to follow him into every meeting he went to because there were so many HR complaints against him that he needed a baby sitter.

What in the fuck.

This is amazing and terrible. I don't think I've seen someone cry at work ever?

Mostly white men here once you get up to the VP and higher level, HR is led by a woman, as is marketing and e-commerce. Lots of women in low/mid level positions in marketing, accounting, a few in sales and engineering.

[max225]

Do y’all have any women at your org is it dick swinging central? Man that’s a rough environment

It was all white men, except for Ralph who's part black. He acts like he knows he's unfirable so he just does whatever he wants and makes the company whatever success it enjoys.

There were a few women promoted up through the ranks, but they had to be absolutely terrible to get up there. That company promotes dicks, my boss stated many times that if he didn't make someone cry in a meeting, he wasn't doing his job. When Manley was CEO, an HR rep had to follow him into every meeting he went to because there were so many HR complaints against him that he needed a baby sitter.

What in the fuck.

Yea given your meeting descriptions this sounds spot on. I worked in cultures like that before also... its usually top down...

[wap]

Oh yeah, Stellanus sounds waaay worse than most. It just does paint a funny and also sadly true vision of what a lot of large corp. America looks like behind closed doors.

The other crazy thing is that Stellanus makes some pretty cool products, must be the work of some really annoyed product planners and designers struggling to keep things moving forward.

Someone at some point put Ralph Gillies in the exec ranks. He's currently in charge of design, and probably the person I respect most in the entire industry. He doesn't play the bullshit, empowers his people, and at the end of the day drives a laser focus on making badass looking products. He is the sole reason Stellanus has any success because people buy the products based on design. ANYTHING the company gets credit for has come from his team. The 12" screen in the Ram? Came from Design. UConnect? Design. Interior quality? Design. All the planners do is make ppt decks for mgmt to argue about in exec meetings. Design makes the vehicles worth buying, which is sad because the engineering is garbage, powertrains are ancient, build quality is meh. And it's all due to Ralph who DGAF about corp politics and just does his thing.

My favorite Ralph story:

I somehow was asked to cover an exec meeting. I was told to just sit in the corner and take notes. Fine. There was an argument going on between planning and engineering about some EV and ranges and the engineers blamed design for not being aero enough. Someone asked Ralph to work with his team to come up with a design that was more aerodynamic. He said "no problem, I'll have a sketch in a day". The discussion moved on, but Ralph started drawing in his iPad. 5 minutes later, during some boring discussion about global emissions requirements, Ralph speaks up and says "I don't know what we're talking about, but I have the sketch ready". The other execs looked puzzled and said ok... and he asked to share his screen. They agreed.

He then showed an image of a bubble with wheels that looked like a 5 year old drew that he had just drawn and said "you do your fucking job and I'll do mine, ok?" staring right at the chief engineer who asked him for the sketch. The guy had no idea how to respond, and just nodded and continued the previous conversation.

There was also a time where we were reviewing the new Grand Cherokee L and someone made a comment about not liking the wheels and how to make them look better. Ralph pulled black masking tape out of his pocket to replicate what they guy suggested on a prototype that cost the company 7 figures and said "well that looks like shit, guess that's why you're not a designer". I just happened to be standing right there and chuckled, Ralph gave me a fist bump.

He's my hero.

I love these pulling back the curtain stories from your time there.

[coogles]

BRZ orders are out to June/July according to my . That might be just about perfect.

They willing to at sticker ?

Just asked, but I'd guess it'll be under MSRP. Falcone doesn't fuck around.

[wap]

Do y’all have any women at your org is it dick swinging central? Man that’s a rough environment

It was all white men, except for Ralph who's part black. He acts like he knows he's unfirable so he just does whatever he wants and makes the company whatever success it enjoys.

There were a few women promoted up through the ranks, but they had to be absolutely terrible to get up there. That company promotes dicks, my boss stated many times that if he didn't make someone cry in a meeting, he wasn't doing his job. When Manley was CEO, an HR rep had to follow him into every meeting he went to because there were so many HR complaints against him that he needed a baby sitter.

What in the fuck.

Sounds like my Alfaprick coworker/former boss would fit in well there.

[ChrisoftheNorth]

It was all white men, except for Ralph who's part black. He acts like he knows he's unfirable so he just does whatever he wants and makes the company whatever success it enjoys.

There were a few women promoted up through the ranks, but they had to be absolutely terrible to get up there. That company promotes dicks, my boss stated many times that if he didn't make someone cry in a meeting, he wasn't doing his job. When Manley was CEO, an HR rep had to follow him into every meeting he went to because there were so many HR complaints against him that he needed a baby sitter.

What in the fuck.

This is amazing and terrible. I don't think I've seen someone cry at work ever?

Mostly white men here once you get up to the VP and higher level, HR is led by a woman, as is marketing and e-commerce. Lots of women in low/mid level positions in marketing, accounting, a few in sales and engineering.

There was a guy I worked with at GM who went to FCA and came back to GM after a year. I talked to him about why before I went to FCA and he just said "it wasn't a fit".

I later found out from a coworker at FCA that my boss berated him in meetings to the point where the guy would tear up and have to leave. The culture is what they called internally "stump the chump" where higher ups would grill people about every single worthless detail until they found something the person didn't know and then laid into them about not doing their job. You could prepare for weeks for a meeting just be torn down within minutes if you didn't know some worthless detail on the spot AND you weren't allowed to reference notes or the slides.

Example: You'd get asked what's the % of trucks that get carpeting on the spare tire cover, and if you didn't know immediately and tried to go to a slide that hopefully showed it, leadership would go HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW THIS!?!? WHAT ARE YOU DOING FOR YOUR JOB!?!?

So people would create 600+ page ppt decks to cover every single possible detail AND THEN MEMORIZE THEM because the desired response to a question was an immediate answer with a corresponding ppt slide to prove you're right.

It's immensely stressful, and spending weeks of work on something just to be called an idiot has quite an impact on your emotional state. Many many people ended up tearing up or crying while being berated by mgmt...then black marked for being weak. I'd talk back when getting called out, which was the absolute worst thing you could do because it "reflects poorly on your team spirit" and would encourage my boss to micromanage me further to prevent me from "embarrassing him" by talking back to mid-level execs in meetings.

None of this made vehicles better or benefitted the customer at all. It's a complete disaster.

[wap]

This is amazing and terrible. I don't think I've seen someone cry at work ever?

Mostly white men here once you get up to the VP and higher level, HR is led by a woman, as is marketing and e-commerce. Lots of women in low/mid level positions in marketing, accounting, a few in sales and engineering.

There was a guy I worked with at GM who went to FCA and came back to GM after a year. I talked to him about why before I went to FCA and he just said "it wasn't a fit".

I later found out from a coworker at FCA that my boss berated him in meetings to the point where the guy would tear up and have to leave. The culture is what they called internally "stump the chump" where higher ups would grill people about every single worthless detail until they found something the person didn't know and then laid into them about not doing their job. You could prepare for weeks for a meeting just be torn down within minutes if you didn't know some worthless detail on the spot AND you weren't allowed to reference notes or the slides.

Example: You'd get asked what's the % of trucks that get carpeting on the spare tire cover, and if you didn't know immediately and tried to go to a slide that hopefully showed it, leadership would go HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW THIS!?!? WHAT ARE YOU DOING FOR YOUR JOB!?!?

So people would create 600+ page ppt decks to cover every single possible detail AND THEN MEMORIZE THEM because the desired response to a question was an immediate answer with a corresponding ppt slide to prove you're right.

It's immensely stressful, and spending weeks of work on something just to be called an idiot has quite an impact on your emotional state. Many many people ended up tearing up or crying while being berated by mgmt...then black marked for being weak. I'd talk back when getting called out, which was the absolute worst thing you could do because it "reflects poorly on your team spirit" and would encourage my boss to micromanage me further to prevent me from "embarrassing him" by talking back to mid-level execs in meetings.

None of this made vehicles better or benefitted the customer at all. It's a complete disaster.

Fucking hell man.

[Johnny_P]

Wow sounds like crap. We had some managers at the refinery that were like that. We also had open racist and sexist comments from senior management while in meetings. Management was exclusively white men.

I took a $30k pay cut to work where I do now and I’m pretty happy with my decision.

[coogles]

Fucking hell man.

My first boss out of college was pretty similar. He was a military guy and was still active in the reserves, and he liked to treat his employees as if we were all fresh recruits in the army. He'd call employees into his office and stand behind his big desk grilling us on minute details we could never know without looking at the spreads or loan docs, using both his power and his height - he was 6'7" - to intimidate everyone and make everyone feel they weren't good enough to do their jobs. This was in 2008 and I was in banking. No one was hiring, all internal hiring was frozen; there was nowhere to go, so all I could do was grit my teeth and bear it. I don't know how many times I contemplated leaping over that desk and hitting him with a double leg and putting him on his back before breaking his face with elbows. No one is very tall lying on their back.

I ended up seeing this dude in the Indianapolis airport a couple years ago, actually. I was flying back from San Francisco with a coworker and he was on the same flight. He was sitting a couple rows behind me and, for the brief period I didn't have headphones in, all I remember hearing him talk about was gloating about firing somebody. Hadn't changed a bit. When we deplaned I waited at the gate for my coworker who was a few rows behind this dude, and as he walked out of the tunnel he definitely gave me that "do I know you?" look but kept going. Our bags came out pretty quickly and the escalator out to the parking lot was pretty close to the carousel for our flight. We were halfway up when I looked down and noticed him looking up at me, so I flipped him the bird and nodded attempting to say "I've wanted to do this for a long time". Felt pretty damn good. The look on his face was fucking priceless.

[D Griff]

Fucking hell man.

My first boss out of college was pretty similar. He was a military guy and was still active in the reserves, and he liked to treat his employees as if we were all fresh recruits in the army. He'd call employees into his office and stand behind his big desk grilling us on minute details we could never know without looking at the spreads or loan docs, using both his power and his height - he was 6'7" - to intimidate everyone and make everyone feel they weren't good enough to do their jobs. This was in 2008 and I was in banking. No one was hiring, all internal hiring was frozen; there was nowhere to go, so all I could do was grit my teeth and bear it. I don't know how many times I contemplated leaping over that desk and hitting him with a double leg and putting him on his back before breaking his face with elbows. No one is very tall lying on their back.

I ended up seeing this dude in the Indianapolis airport a couple years ago, actually. I was flying back from San Francisco with a coworker and he was on the same flight. He was sitting a couple rows behind me and, for the brief period I didn't have headphones in, all I remember hearing him talk about was gloating about firing somebody. Hadn't changed a bit. When we deplaned I waited at the gate for my coworker who was a few rows behind this dude, and as he walked out of the tunnel he definitely gave me that "do I know you?" look but kept going. Our bags came out pretty quickly and the escalator out to the parking lot was pretty close to the carousel for our flight. We were halfway up when I looked down and noticed him looking up at me, so I flipped him the bird and nodded attempting to say "I've wanted to do this for a long time". Felt pretty damn good. The look on his face was fucking priceless.

[ChrisoftheNorth]

Wow sounds like crap. We had some managers at the refinery that were like that. We also had open racist and sexist comments from senior management while in meetings. Management was exclusively white men.

I took a $30k pay cut to work where I do now and I’m pretty happy with my decision.

Openly racist/sexist comments were the norm from execs. As were soft death threats in the form of "Who do I need to shoot to get XYZ done" or more specific "I'm going to go to my truck, get my gun, and aim it at whoever is a roadblock"...this was the VP of brand, since promoted to EVP because of course.

I brought all of this up in my exit interview, to which the poor woman said "we know, there's nothing we can do because it's from the top down".


I struck and landed a gig that pays a tad bit more but a drastically better culture and full remote. Never again a old big company.