Cannot imagine that level of satisfaction

The meek "please call me" was after the manager found out from upper management that they were far more replaceable then Caleb was.
- Exactly. If Caleb had it in writing that he was going to be paid regardless then the dude had some serious leverage.
- Nah, "call me" always means "let's make this a real-time social hierarchy game, because I'm good at exploiting verbal cues and expectations to shove people toward my desired goal."
  
  And also a way to move something to where there’s no proof of what was said.
  
  There's also the "oh shit, I'll get this fixed, but nothing I say can be in writing or I'm definitely getting fired" possibility.
  Nah boss, I just apologized for my misunderstanding, I have no idea why $InsubordinateContractor is saying that I said he'd better come in or I'm going to blacklist him in the entire industry and ensure he never works again ... I mean, why would I say that?! I don't have that kind of power!
  
  Yup those of us who are not good at bad faith conversations need to get good at recognizing when one is about to happen and insist on written.
  "We need to take this conversation offline" is a near-universal precursor to ethical dispensation.
  
  No, "call me" means "I'm going to say some things to you I don't want to put in writing that could be used against me later."
- In my experience "please call me" is more often business speak for "you've really got a problem now" than a statement of weakness. Like they've got too much shit to say to you to fit in an email, and they maybe don't want what they're about to say to be written down
  
  Yes. But then the “no” is a full sentence response. I love it.
  
  No. It’s a way they try to cover their asses so it’s not in writing so it can’t come back to bite them when they inevitably do or say something illegal and he comes back with a lawsuit.
  
  In my experience it means managers want to discuss something without a paper trail.
- Or it's the manager seething with rage, wanting to vent that rage, but not being able to do it adequately via text message.

I can.
I was stuck in a job I hated for over a decade, and not only that, I was the guy on the team doing the shit jobs no one else would do because many of the older, tenured people didn't want to work weekend hours ever.
I remember the slight panic in my boss's eyes when I put in my two weeks, but it wasn't half as sweet as my former coworker's panicking when they realized that they'd have to figure out how to do my job without my help. One even had the balls to say something to me about selfishness.
You see, they'd also declined my offer to train them on the functions I was involved in and the items I created.
Glorious.
- The irony is that, for the job I have now (which I LOVE!) I spent the interview talking about the databases and resources I'd created in the former shit job, and that work got me hired. My new employers treat me like absolute gold.
  
  Yeah culture is so important, you can work somewhere people are like whatever we used to do it by hand and nobody died, and then you move somewhere they realize the excel sheet you made saves them hours of time each day. It's just sad so many people out there working at and owning businesses and they're just not interested in pursuing best practices.
- I love it when people expect loyalty's benefits without paying loyalty's price.
- I always loved the "selfishness" take regarding jobs. It's business not friendship.
  
  You should be as loyal to your company as your company is to you.

"I was just informed you weren't on the morning stand up call this morning" implies that this person wasn't there either.
- It's a middle manager whose presence isn't needed in daily stand-ups, as evidenced by the attempted micromanaging. We don't invite those fuckers to stand-ups because they just talk about useless metrics the whole time.
  
  You could have just stopped at “who’s presence isn’t needed.”. If they’ve got time to worry about standup attendance, then it’s extremely likely that all the useful parts of their job will fit into a short python script, and the company can save some money.
  
  You seem to be contradicting yourself here. Yes, in most variations golf Agile, middle management should -‘not be in standups. This is the opposite of micromanaging
- They also may have just not checked to see if everyone was on the call, especially if that meeting has a bunch of people on it.
  
  Then there is too many people on that meeting and its a waste of time.

I don't know, call me skeptical or whatever, but this feels like one of those "and everyone clapped" kind of stories
- It does seem probably fake, but being able to set boundaries and say no is definitely a major saving grace of freelance work, even if you have strong reasons to be professional about it.
  
  There's "saying no" and then there's "You guys really oughta read the contracts you have us sign sometime. Pretty wild stuff in there."
  The burning of bridges on a current contract makes it seem fake, but it could also just be that the guy is fed up and already has something else lined up.
- It does, and it's old, but it's still a good story.
- Ah, the Reddit experience. "Somebody did something cool, nobody ever does anything cool, time to put on my cynical curmudgeon cap and call it fake!"
  
  Dude… you’re so butthurt about people assuming this is fake that you’re insulting them by calling them names.
  I wonder what one would call the kind of person does that….
  Hmmmmm…
- Willy Wonka didn't market itself as a documentary.

In my experience, daily standup meetings are largely pointless. It is yet another meeting that should have been an email or slack thread.
- It makes sense if you're in an industry with hotspot flare-ups. I work MSP IT and those morning meeting are the way my team asks for help on pressing issues, or rings the alarm bells on business impacting outages. Additionally, Tier I helpdesk and Tier III projects never communicate, so the SUM is where T1 hears about where projects are at (in case they get the breakfix for that item) and T3 knows how swamped T1 is and what mobile techs are out, and T2 gets a chance to tell us if the flow from T1 and T3 into the "escalation sandwich" is too much. And we genuinely have it down pat to 5-10min.
  Don't get me wrong, I've had shitty SUM requirements, but when they're done right, it's better than a state of the union email/Teams message.
  
  Still could just be a slack thread or a dashboard. Putting people in a room every day is simply wasteful, even if it "works okay". When I managed a team I hated them, but we did have a meeting each Friday afternoon to go over what we did well that week, so I guess you have to be tactical about when you pull everyone off task to huddle.
  
  See, the previous MSP workplace I was at did one a week. If something was pressing the tech would inform the service manager, who would tap the correct resources to assist. The stand up was mostly just reviewing all service ticket requests and making sure nothing was falling through the cracks, so that if someone had a list of lower priority work but got slammed with something intense that took them away from their usual follow ups, those less important jobs could be reassigned to someone with the bandwidth to take them on. Also to ensure that any new tickets are being picked up in a timely fashion (not generally a problem, just doing a health check on it). Took ~1hr across all tickets and techs to review. Almost never longer, but frequently shorter.
  It was a small team and we would continually keep in contact throughout the day by phone and slack. Nobody needed baby sitting, we were all professionals and adults.
  I only left that position because the owner was cheap and continually denied raises. I didn't see a raise in ~4 years and decided to find something that paid better. I couldn't keep paying my bills with all the COVID inflation; I'd still be there if I was paid better.
  
  It makes sense if you’re in an industry with hotspot flare-ups
  Only if handled properly, which a lot of supposed "stand-ups" aren't.
  I don't see how you can have a meeting with members of 3 different tiers of support where progress on multiple projects is summarized in a way that someone not on the projects can get anything meaningful out of it, in addition to tier 1 gets to talk about how swamped they are, and tier 2 gets to talk about the flow from tier 1 into some delicious sandwich, and have that only take 5 minutes. I'm guessing that's a minimum of 15 people in the meeting, if you have multiple tiers and everyone's present. To get things done in 5 minutes means that on average everyone only gets to talk for 24 seconds. If you have people who aren't talking, that suggests they don't need to be in the meeting.
  In addition, the whole concept of "standing up" for a meeting is stupid. Sure, it means meetings don't last as long, but that's because it's uncomfortable. Plus there are social dynamics issues you introduce between tall people (often men) and short people (often women).
  
  There may be some scenarios where they are helpful, but I think it's possible to do it asynchronous in those situations.
  If there's a critical issue that needs to be dealt with ASAP, there should be an escalation process.
  You can have reoccurring (or ad hoc) meetings to discuss projects across teams. If the standup is a slack thread, any interested party could view it (based on channel permissions).
  It shouldn't be on the individual members to bring up poor processes or that they're overworked in stand-ups. That should flow through their managers
  Not trying to be difficult with my responses, just adding my insight from years in tech across a few different positions and companies. I am happy to hear that your team has a process that works!
- I disagree, we're all remote so most of the time we have no idea what's going on with other people. Dailies are basically "Ok where are we? What are we doing?" and we're done in 10-15 minutes. Daily really is one of the most useful meetings for me. We experimented with thread approach but it was horible, no one was reading it and we became desynchronized really quickly
  
  I think the length is what’s important. For a long time, my team’s stand ups were going 30-45 minutes and most of it felt pointless (or were discussions that should’ve been on smaller meetings). When I got control over them, I made sure they’re 20 minutes max and I’ll cut people off if they’re talking too long about something only a few people need to input on. Now no one has an issue with the stand up and it’s helped us catch stuff that might’ve been missed otherwise.
  
  My experience is similar; the projects with daily stand-ups are well coordinated and people remain informed while projects without become chaotic and the people become clueless rapidly.
  
  no one was reading it and we became desynchronized really quickly
  This sounds like an issue with your team and not the process of having a thread approach. If people just ignored the daily standup meeting, like they did the thread, they would also become de-synchronized quickly.
  
  That was our meeting before covid, but suddenly it became a 2-3 hours meeting every Monday morning. It's a nice way to drain your whole energy to start the week
  
  Yeah, had a similar experience in a place I worked where people wrote in slack the things for the day. It was too much and too noise too and people would not read or care. It's too annoying and people felt disconnected anyway.
  The important thing is really to have a strong arm and focus on the time. I think all the problems I ever had and they were solved in dailes was exactly because someone was enforcing time and not allowing others to say too much or derail the daily in useless details of their tasks or problems.
- Unfortunately there are many juniors that you give the job of doing A to C, and if you come back a week later they'll report they're still stuck at job A, point 1 and didn't want to message anyone, and is something a senior can fix in 5 minutes. Even worse you message them and they just report everything is ok, they're working on it. Of course they never update the status of the project so you never know if they're stuck or just not updating.
  That makes daily meetings necessary so they don't lose the entire week and delay the project. Unfortunately more senior members also get dragged in those meetings. It's a frustrating part of working with mixed teams and a "just let me code" mentality.
  
  When I was a manager of a small team it was all junior guys. I had to hammer into their heads to message if they had trouble making progress.
  A few times I got the feeling one of the guys was having issues (based on messages). So I called them up on Friday afternoon and they admitted they were way behind because they couldn't get past an issue. But they said "don't worry, I'll work through the weekend to get it done".
  I told him "no, you're not working on the weekend. We'll connect on Monday morning and work through the problem together. Just let me know sooner next time so we can get you back on track quicker."
  After a couple of those they got the message that it's ok to ask for help and isn't a sign of weakness and they're not gonna get fired for asking.
  
  While I agree that a daily standup would help with this, I feel like there's other avenues to approach this problem. If their task is to do A -> C, give them some deadlines and if they don't meet them then become more involved. Have them check in with a senior on the problem. No need to drag the entire team into a standup because the juniors can't figure it out. You can also try to build a culture of asking for help, which is difficult to do. People either think they can figure it out eventually, or they're just slacking.
- Generally true. We have a daily 30m “standup” but mostly it’s just us shooting the shot because we’re all remote, and it’s a way to socialize a bit. It’s pretty much optional but most of us usually show up just to chat a bit.
  We do our real meeting on Monday mornings
- I just want to point out that this may be true for IT or other remote positions (I don't know, I've never worked in IT.) But in some other industries a quick 5-10 minute morning meeting can be essential. Especially in industries/jobs were everyone doesn't have computer access. I know Lemmys all tech bros but I did want to point out that this approach works well in other work environments.
  
  Yeah when I've managed more junior teams I didn't have an official morning meeting but I would make a point to do 3 rounds a day. One in the morning, one before lunch, and one before leaving. People could obviously ask questions any time but you'd be shocked at the number of 'well while you're here' questions you get that they never would have walked over with. Once they gained more experience half the time they wouldn't even take headphones out, just give a thumbs up. Cost me maybe an hour or two a day but def made the team more efficient
- I mostly agree, but only because what people usually call "dailies" are actually morning meetings around half and hour. I also had those sometimes, it's horrible.
  But on the other side, when you have truly meaningful dailies that do what they are supposed and make the right people talk to each other and are short (5 to 10 minutes), those really are good. I've had those and I like them a lot.
  There's many mistakes people make, like letting a single person describe in detail the shit they were doing ( nobody cares about that, it's not a status meeting with your manager), others like focusing on telling things to the manager there which is totally wrong since most times he shouldn't be there or if there should be totally invisible.
  The whole point is to make the people on the team talk with each other, either saying they need help on something or they found something that needs further discussion or deciding that another stakeholder on another team or manager needs to get involved to help unlock something. Most times not even everyone needs to speak, if everyone knows what was happening either because they were pairing or working on something already known, it just needs to be skipped ahead.
  Anyway, truly most people are right in hating dailies because almost no one gets them done close to right.
  I find them valuable to get a quick overview of what other people in the team are doing and maybe struggling since I could help and is a good way to start the day by knowing which priority I need to focus first (usually help in a review because some other colleague really needs to unlock their work). When working remotely one could spend the whole day sometimes focused on their own work and getting a quick overview with the team is good.
  Now, don't have dailies with managers or people not related to the team unless they were called specifically to help on some issue. And anyway that should just be a quick thing, like saying "hey I'll need to talk with you maybe after the daily because X"and that's it.
  
  The whole point is to make the people on the team talk with each other "hey I’ll need to talk with you maybe after the daily because X"and that’s it.
  Can't this be accomplished by people using your company's messaging system (hopefully not teams). You shouldn't have to have meetings to force collaboration.
  I am all for being up to date with what your team is doing, but there is no way that every member of the team gives a meaningful update in every standup.
- So glad I don’t work in IT, all I hear about are endless ‘standup’ ‘agile’ ‘blah blah blah’ meetings.
  I work remote and message my manager if I need anything. We talk over Teams almost every day, why would we need a meeting. I work with providing support to a client for their Customs import activity. Just leave me alone and let me do my work!
  
  I think that there's too many tech jobs which are middle management whose job is to make it look like they're doing something while contributing nothing.
  Just leave me alone and let me do my work!
  Agreed! If you need me you know how to reach me.
- There's a point. Usually it's to stroke the ego of the managers and reinforce that they can make you do anything, regardless of how useless that activity is.
  They can also spend the time interrogating everyone at the same time about how their output isn't good enough and that they should try harder despite having most of their working time being sucked up with unproductive meetings and fucking TPS reports, and filling out time and completion information on their tracking system, all while you're getting random ad-hoc untracked walk-up requests from anyone passing by.
  I swear, I spend more time reporting and accounting for the fact that yes, I'm working, like I'm paid to do, and I'm expected to do, than I actually spend on doing the work I've been hired for. Now we have mandatory meetings about whether I'm doing work and why I'm so far behind and/or so slow at getting things done.... maybe I'd be able to get my work finished faster if I didn't have to stop every 10 minutes to report that, yes, I'm actually still working on the tasks I'm assigned, and dealing with Mark for the sixth time today because he walks by my desk and always has some inane complaint/request/question that he just needs to relay to me every time he goes to the bathroom. I'm not your therapist Mark, if you need me to do something, submit it through the tracking system so I don't keep looking like a lazy-assed failure! But no, mark is the step nephew of some c-level and if I actually complain or deny him, he's going to run off to my superior and then I'm going to have more meetings and shit on my plate. I just want to do my job. Leave me the fuck alone.
  
  If your boss is checking in on you that much, that isn't a good sign.
  At minimum, I would let your boss know before you do anything for the nephew because it is their job to say your priorities. Hell, you can even blame your boss for doing this. "I'm sorry, but my boss won't let me do that" is a great excuse which puts the responsibility on someone else.
- At my work they are necessary. I'm... I guess middle management, you'd say (supervisor in a shop). Our work changes from day to day, nobody doing the same thing from one day to the next, so there's an upper and middle management brief where they outline all the work for the day, assign tasks to specific shops, give general information to be passed along (upcoming events and reminders), then I take that to my shop to assign individual tasks from our shop's workload.
  So I attend two of those daily meetings a day (about 5-10 min each) but they are definitely necessary for us.
  
  there’s an upper and middle management brief where they outline all the work for the day, assign tasks to specific shops, give general information to be passed along (upcoming events and reminders), then I take that to my shop to assign individual tasks from our shop’s workload.
  If this is the entire meeting, can't they just tell you this in an email, phone call, text message, etc and have you delegate it out to your shop?
  I know most of my responses in this thread come across as I'm very anti-meetings, but I feel like if you're going to have a meeting, it needs to be beneficial to everyone. People have to take time out of their day, the meetings never start or end on time, and they generally could have just been an email. If you're just passing along information to specific teams, I don't think a meeting is necessary. There's better and more efficient ways to do things.
- Meeting per videochat with the whole team 1 or 2 times a week is enough.
- Kind agree. Daily standup is often only valuable if the team doesn't do a lot of communication in other ways. In my team, there's jira comments, pr comments, slack, project meetings. So our standup is just rote "I'm working on X" over and over.
- Yup, this. My last job was nothing but meetings where everyone in the room knew what you were doing but everyone still went around the room to verbally reiterate what they were doing… that day! My brain was melting, it felt like grade 3!
  You need as many meetings as you need as many meetings. If you need one, set one up. Don’t set them up just to fill them.
  The worst part is they ate into all the work time. So leads were like why isn’t this done, well because you had me in a 3h meeting at end of day, that’s why. But that was apparently your problem, not theirs.
- Bruv, we have a Team meeting once a week on mondays and it's basically useless. Once a month would be fine.

There was a part 2 to this. They told him he wasn't actually fired and to finish the job. He obviously declined
https://twitter.com/BirdRespecter/status/1483897633210974208
- Here's part 2 for those who don't want to click links.
  
  Appreciate it! I literally clicked on the link and got confused by all the spam comments promoting dick pills.
- Nice, Nitter link in case someone prefers: https://nitter.net/BirdRespecter/status/1483897633210974208#m
- Fucking awesome lol. Sorry pal, you can’t just “forget I said that” and walk away 🖕
  
  Bosses are too used to having 100% of power in the boss/employee relationship.

"Please call me."
"No."
- "Please call me"
  Translation: I want to tear you a new one through a non-written medium so it doesn't get recorded.
  "No"
  Translation: You have no power here.
  
  I have an app that records all my calls. All of them. It's uploaded to the cloud daily.
  I did it because I know I'm not the only one listening to them. Or at the bare minimum parsing them. If csis or the NSA isn't running all our calls through some kind of aj I'd be shocked. "Oh w|re not recording your calls don't worry" they'd say slyly as every fucking utterance is tokenized and stored forever in some kind of creepy fuck you mainframe somewhere.
  When I started looking through what Google collects on me I realized that this is just what they're letting me see and there's all kinds stuff I don't get to see. And they "keep it for 3 months' or some timeframe like that (riiiight).
  If the time ever came where I needed any of that data (I'm extricating myself from Google slowly but surely but in the meantime) - they've proven they're not trustworthy enough for me to be able to rely on them to get it.
  Also I can do fuck you.

I worked with a woman when I worked for the federal government who was quite unpleasant. She left and went to work for a major contractor. I was on a call with her when several of her people didn't show up for the call. She was raging and asked me where they were. I told her that I had no idea where her people were. She finally had had enough and demanded that I go find them and get them on the call. I said, "I'm not going to find YOUR people on your call with me, THE CLIENT. I don't work for you anymore, Diane." and hung up on her

I really wish these were true.
- Just replace 'alien encounters' with 'internet stories'
- Why do so many of you Redditors think everything is fake? Like, really, where's the evidence or even "tall tale" tone that makes this sound fake to you? Just because it's not common? Do you only accept things that are rarer if you see them in photos or something?
  
  Redditor that believes evening they read complains about “redditors” calling everything fake.
  You certainly couldn’t fake this level of irony.

We do what I call a shotgun standup twice a week. But it is done async 99% of the time.
Every Tuesday and Thursday we have 30 minutes that conveniently coincides with opening of the coffee shop in the office (two of us are onsite, six remote) prior to which the team is intended to write three bullets in the meeting chat:
Prio one yesterday - and outcome
Prio one today
Any blockers discovered for either of those
If nobody posts a blocker, then we get 30 minutes on the calendar where nobody from outside our team can schedule anything. And the onsite folks get the freshest coffee before everyone else gets down there.
If there is a blocker; the person who called it out and the most experienced person in dealing with that type of blocker will join the call, as will anyone interested in the outcome. Once the blocker is resolved, the solution is put into the same meeting chat.
- I understood most of those words, and still have very little idea of what is going on. Something to do with coffee?
  I have no idea what a prio is, or a blocker in this context.
  
  Haha, fair enough. I was just describing one way that 'standups' can be less annoying.
  Prio = Priority. As in which task we were primarily working on. Blocker = Some lack of resources, skills, budget, policy, or infrastructure, that is blocking someone from completing a task.
- We do what I call a shotgun standup twice a week.
  I hope that's not like a shotgun wedding. But anyway this sounds like a good idea more or less.
  Even better if they scheduled it half an hour after the coffee shop opens.
  Our stand-ups are always on and I think folks here forgot the idea of a stand up ... Nobody stands and so it runs a full half hour. I guess the time isn't as bad as it sounds because it is a massive system.

I love this person so much. Good god I would pay hundreds of dollars for an intensely realistic VR game where I can just go absolutely apeshit on middle managers for hours every day.

Where I am a contractor we have successfully petitioned to delay a "morning standups" until 1:30 p.m. - Which is a much better time to have it because it gives everyone time to A actually wake up, and be there, and B let's me actually read emails.
So many times things don't get covered in the morning stand up because no one's read their emails yet, and then you have to have another meeting at about 11:00 in order to discuss the contents of the email.
- Unless the email pertains to the whole team and will take less than 5 minutes to discuss, keep it out of standup!

Ha ha ha ha.
However, I guess in that position I would still be more cautious with wording. No need to burn bridges to make a point.
- Depending on the work and the contract, it may be the company burning a bridge. Specialized labour can be both difficult and expensive to find.
  
  A lot of contractors (good ones) know how to play the game. You can get away with a lot when the companies vertically integrated sales app that only they can fix goes belly up. Saw this before where an easily replaceable manager goes up against a long time contractor (ya know, with a contract) and leadership gets to decide how to resolve the situation....
  
  There was a story posted on Reddit about 2 years ago, long as fuck but worth the read, about why you don’t piss off specialized contractors.
  https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/nrnf5j/part_1_of_2_an_absolute_epic_entitled_ahole_gets/
  It doesn’t have a happy ending, but not for reasons you’d think.
- Yea this is just silly and shortsighted. Reputation is everything, and once word gets around that you're a pretentious dick who doesn't need to attend meetings because you can't get out of bed, you'll be hard-pressed to find the next contract.
  
  If I work contract the meetings need to be in the contract. No way Im driving to location for a half hour meeting and then driving home.Either put it in contract or reimburse time, gas and wear otherwise I'm not attending
  
  Depends. I do contract work, and I'm replaceable. I'm nice anyways, but I'm even nicer given my status. However, there are some people that are essentially irreplaceable, and they make more in a week than I make in a month. They're all assholes, but the powers that be capitulate to their every whim. I'd love to get qualified for what they do and replace them, regardless of the pay benefits. How can you make over a hundred an hour and be such a petulant, whiney baby? If I was making that money, man, I'd be literally the nicest person. Like, who gives a shit? You make wheelbarrows full of cash, so... who cares about minor inconveniences? And I'm not talking about work issues, I mean they whine about the same damn contract paperwork everyone has to fill out. It takes 10 minutes. I'm not doing it for you, no one will, so just... do it? Baffling.

"You really need an attitude adjustment"... 😂
- John Cena has entered the chat

Typical “manager”. Everyone show up to these useless meetings that don’t get work done or you can’t work here 🙃

I need my life to be like this.
- That guy probably doesn't have healthcare. Also, I think our boy here probably got fired anyway. If there's one thing a tin pot dictator absolutely can never permit, it's someone else escalating a situation without a response. If you have to have obedience at all times, that means you always have to be the one escalating.
  You can use it against them, of course. People will escalate even to the point that it gets them fired, as long as they didn't have to back down.
  
  Am I the only one who thinks working with this guy must be insufferable?
  
  Not to mention, in the US contractors are on the hook for all income taxes. The tax payment has to be planned for in advance, whether it's saving for it or paying quarterly estimate payments.
  Contracting works well for people with a valuable skill set, but many get screwed by it.
  
  You could be describing a politician.

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How is being a contractor relevant here? A normal employee could say exactly the same things
- Yeah and a normal employee can actually be fired. But independent contractors are usually on completely different contracts so unless the contract actually says they have to start at 9:00 a.m. they don't have to do anything. Refusing to start at 9:00 a.m. is not a breach of contract like it would be for an employee.
  I'm a contractor because the company that I contracted for is far too cheap to actually pay full-time staff, I tend to get in around 10am ish (although one time I started at 4:00 am because for some reason I had loads of energy and couldn't sleep but then I finished it like 11am so I still did short hours).
  As long as a contractor does the work there isn't really much else they can complain about unless the employer puts other stuff into the contract. It sounds like in this case they didn't.
  
  In the US requiring a schedule is one of the factors that's considered when determining if a contactor should be an employee. Other factors include if you're telling them how to do the job, or who provides the equipment. You can get in trouble if you're hiring people as contractors that should be employees.
  https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/independent-contractor-self-employed-or-employee
- And get fired without pay. Contractors have some problems of their own, but their contract usually guarantees a certain amount of pay and if they're any kind of smart, specific job duties.
  
  I mean, only if you live a country that hates people and refuses to pass any laws about worker protection. If a dutch employer wants to fire you for "Not doing things that aren't in your contract", they're going to have to a hard time.
- Independent contractors, by definition, control their own hours and method of work. If a company tries to control their work, the contractor is actually an employee. This matters because companies have to pay FICA taxes for W2 employees, but not for 1099 contractors. It's a type of tax fraud called employee misclassification that the IRS has been cracking down on.

Contractor or not, he sounds like a douche. I was a freelance contractor for 7 years and never talked to anyone like this
- Considering that they feel entitled to his time i think it's fair. They also try to threaten him into submission to their rules. Some people are so accustomed to powertrip that they are genuinely surprised when they can't do It.
- When I do freelancing as a engineer, I had to be like this too.
  Lots of startups hire freelancers, treat them like shit and assume you're part of their 80 hour workweek teams. Those companies often also never survive for very long, where I'm still here.

The freelance contractor sounds like a complete child. This is not behavior to admire and will absolutely fuck you up professionally.
- Naa this is the attitude needed for ass in chair management that only does one thing and that's micro manages people. People like this know their only existence is to be a over the shoulder back seat driver who has no other ability than to tell people what to do. Good managers let their people do what they were hired to do. If your projects are getting done and the customers aren't pissed, then I don't care if you're watching reruns of always sunny and drinking beer on a Wednesday at noon. These micromanaging shits are done for now that WFH has basically shown very little of them are needed, and they all know it.
- Do you, boo.
- Yeah I kind of agree, but it's hard to say anything without a lot more context. I think daily meetings for staff isn't a bad idea as long as you keep it to the point, projects can develop daily and it's a good way to keep things on track. Having meetings doesn't mean you're micromanaging. At an old job of mine we had weekly start of week meetings about our plans for the week. These meetings weren't from management, in fact we had to pull management into the meetings because we had stuff to discuss and needed input and approvals.
  Also, not sure what sort of position it is, but I am surprised they said they were sleeping at 9. Everyone lives different lives and I know some jobs have different needs. I frequently login or arrive at work at 9, but I'm not sleeping at 9. I'm not hating on sleeping at 9, but if everyone else is working at 9 I'd wonder if this person is a good match for our work environment. Typically a stand up meeting means it's either in person or call in from the field, if this is an entirely work from home position than fuck it let them do what the want as long as deadlines are met.
  Finally, why does this manager fucking care? It's a contractor, contractors are the lowest rung on the totem pole. Give them all the work they are required to do, if they don't finish it then follow the contract. If you don't like them, or they don't fit, or their contract needs renegotiation, or literally anything else just don't renew the contract. You hire contractors so you don't have to keep them. Being a contractor has the kinds of perks you see here, but you also have a ton of downsides.
  
  Also don't forget timezones. Just because the employees could be having meetings at that time doesn't mean the contractor is not in a different TZ and that could be fucking early or late and not fit their defined work hours if they even had a specific time to start and end work, they could just have a "core hours" thing and manage their day time as they see fit.

How to not get hired again
- What part of that interaction makes you think they'd want to work there after their contract expires?
  
  The next job he wants to get contracted for the previous guy will say don't hire him here's another more polite person

Yeah that's still no reason to act like a dick
- No reason for a manager to have 0 understanding of how employment works.
- The guy who texted him was a dick to start off. He didn't start of being an ass until the manager started getting uppity about a meeting that doesn't even matter. I have a weekly stand up on Mondays, and honestly we could do without it.
  
  Well he wasn't a dick from the beginning, like you said, but he was unprofessional. Yeah dude, I was asleep, I basically never go to those... Could be worded in a different way.
- You are talking about the manager, right? Then you are correct.
- Nah stand up meetings are unnecessary bullshit and a wet dream for managers and some team leads. Also I know multiple freelancers that all had stories about weird team leads that wanted to control them while literally not being their boss. They just crave the power over employees, they should just join some bdsm Scene and act out their fantasies there.
  
  I do a stand up meeting for my graveyard shift as infrequently as possible. The day shift in my workplace has one every day.
  My guys have more important things to do then listen to me update them on bullshit they are going to forget as soon as it goes in their ear.
  This is how I know they are pointless, we would be wasting precious time getting work out on time while day shift obviously has too much time on their hands.