Money, Money, Money

So it seems like all the problems that I have with my jobs always have to do with money. Which I feel is strange, since I don't really consider myself a money-motivated person, but so it is.

At my old job, they were rolling in money. My boss constantly bragged about how much the company was making, or how much they were going to make from this deal. Or how he just saved the company thousands of dollars by being a cheap ass on this deal or that, which was all fine. I'm fine with a company bragging about its success. My problem was that when I felt like I needed some more money because I was trying to qualify for a better house, all I was told was that I could work some extra hours, and maybe make some overtime, even though I was a salary employee. And on top of that, I saw the company cut corner after corner. Not paying for Microsoft Windows licenses, buying the cheapest computers known to man, finding the cheapest (not most reliable) vendor for every service, cutting back on employee benefits, keeping employee salaries ridiculously low, because it's easier to hire someone new with no skill set and train them than to keep someone that already has it. It wasn't until I threatened to quit, that I was offered an almost 50% pay increase. Which I feel like was a slap in the face. Before they couldn't afford to pay me more, I had to earn it. But now that I was going somewhere else, I was offered a HUGE increase. Obviously they believed I was worth more, they just weren't willing to pay me more, until I quit. Needless to say I left, and haven't looked back. Well, I guess I've looked back, but mostly to say, "Man I'm glad I don't work there any more."

So now I'm at my new job, and we are an internet startup, so our funding comes from investors. When we were running low on money, everything is hush, hush. The engineers don't get to hear anything about whats going on. Management is way to busy to talk to us, they can't tell us anything about their conference room meetings, but when we finally did get funding, look out. They started spending money like it grows on trees, because I think to them, that it does. My boss goes out and immediately buys each of us miniMacs and new monitors, and while I am grateful for the new computer, I would have much rather just had a laptop that I could take home and work from, but our opinions aren't solicited. I think the larger problem though, is that they spend money on useless items. Each of the engineers was purchased a video camera so that we could carry it around and make recordings and upload them to the website. The decree: "One video per week or it gets taken away" was issued, but some of my coworkers have never upload videos and they still have a camera. Then I walk in one day, and my boss and I each have new Sidekick phones. This is so that we could keep in touch with work a little better. We did the pre-paid, month to month plan. After 2 months, we started running low on funding, so we stopped paying for it. So a couple hundred dollars was wasted on the phones themselves, which we no longer use. So then, my boss decides that he doesn't want to have the sidekick + his cell phone, so he decides to go and a buy a blackjack. He's going to use it for work, so he uses the company money. Since he's not starting a new plan or anything, the company just gets to eat the $400 cost for the phone. Which he already has one of that he doesn't use. Then a few weeks ago, he decided he needs the i-Phone, and he needs it for work, so work has to pay for it. Its ridiculous. It happens that way with everything around here.

So I don't know what I'm looking for in a company. I don't think my problems here are worth quitting over. I get paid well, and I feel like I have things to do, and I enjoy what I'm doing, but sometimes it just bugs. Hope I don't get Dooced for saying so, but I had to vent.