How's work been?

Infyrnos wrote:
boogle wrote:

Take the new job don't take the counter even if it's better.

Accepting a counter offer is just giving them time to find your replacement..

This.
You played your hand already, just follow through.

f*ck work. Not enough and struggling to find more. Need alcohol, but that doesn'thelp anything.

boogle wrote:
Infyrnos wrote:
boogle wrote:

Take the new job don't take the counter even if it's better.

Accepting a counter offer is just giving them time to find your replacement..

This.
You played your hand already, just follow through.

Fourth, fifth, whatever to this. If you've asked for some kind of advancement, either position or salary, and they say "sorry, we can't", but then you say you're considering another offer and suddenly, they're finding a way to give you what you asked for, then you want to bail. Either they don't value you as highly as you deserve, or they think you're bluffing and they can get away with keeping you where you are. That's not the kind of company I want to work for. I'd rather be at a place that actively works to keep me feeling valuable and wanted.

Unfortunately, that's hard to come by, and many/most companies are happy to keep progression as slow as possible. A good employee that's in a position lower than what they can handle is cheaper, so may as well keep them there if you can. I get it, it's business. Likewise, if you're not moving me up the way I want and can handle, and I can find another company that will give me that, then I'm happy to take the new job. It's business. Remember, the company (not necessarily your supervisor, but those are different things) would be totally willing to get rid of you if your services were no longer required.

Thanks for the advice, everyone. You're all right, of course. My boss pushed our meeting back twice. When we did finally meet yesterday, all he wanted to do was talk about why I was leaving and say that as a friend he wouldn't tell me not to take the new job. He still hadn't bothered to talk to his boss, and said he was going to meet with her Monday now. Seemed like code to me so yeah, I'm out of there. As soon as the official offer comes through...any day now...*drums fingers anxiously*

See, that's good. I'd rather have, or be, the kind of boss that recognizes when their people have a legit better opportunity elsewhere, and don't try and bullsh*t or guilt them into staying.

Can we take a moment to vent about all the work surrounding GDPR? Because holy sh*t have I been inundated with requests for architecture, process documents, and retention policies. My team is literally juggling day to day requests with the ongoing process and project documents. Multiple projects I had scheduled for 2018 are now being rescheduled for 2019 just to support GDPR.

On a personal level I'm happy. I support GDPR and I want services and systems to be accountable for my data.

On a professional level this may be the biggest project I have ever been involved in.

I got pulled from the GDPR thing at the hospital. I'm thrilled, and you have condolences, ThatGuy.

So many brain weasels. All my dramas are in my personal life, so I feel especially blessed that all the staff in my team are awesome and supportive of their pain in the arse boss and they do great work even when I'm not around to drive them.

I really need to get my head right so as to not let them all down but in the last 6 weeks I've had one of my best friends commit suicide, Finding my toddler having a seizure, not breathing and turning blue and getting her rushed to hospital and my wife going to hospital with pericarditis, which has the same symptoms of a heart attack. For anyone that doesn'r know my family history my wife and both children have all had open heart surgery so anything like that is a bit of a trigger.

realising this probably belongs in the depression thread so I'll cross post it there.

Work has been busy like it always is. It's busier for me now that I've been training a new hire for the third week. Eventually the onboarding will pay off and I can truly free up more time to work on cross-training for another position on a new project.

The new guy can't be older than his mid-twenties. He may very well be my first real exposure to the "oh, the problem with millennials" tropes that have been so popular on social media. He's an eager and impatient one, almost like a walking contradiction. On one hand he's keen to jump in and gets his hands dirty. The flip side of that is he needs everything explained to him in the style and pace of his liking. Which is to say, he needs the full hand-holding tutorial of the task he's going to be doing before he's given the reins to do said task. "Let me do some real work... but be sure to bend over backwards & set me up for success first"

I've set up a safe space for him complete with guard rails and - in my opinion - clear instructions each new day on what I'd like for him to work on. He has access to our schedules, trackers and knowledge base... not all of it yet, but the stuff that really matters for him right now. He's doing... sorta, just fine. I'm taking a lot of mental notes as I watch him work. He's not exactly making the right inferences and connections based on prior hands-on time with our tools nor has he shown a capacity for figuring out small things on his own.

I've intentionally had to leave some details vague due to time and simply to give him the space to learn on his own. And there's a meatier portion to my role (and soon-to-be, his) that I've scheduled into the second month of his probationary period once he's proven he can handle the smaller day-to-day hustle. I'm sensing a defensive undertone with him whenever there's a lesson learned from a mistake and it's along the lines of "oh, I wasn't explicitly told about this beforehand so how could I have known?" or "I wasn't prepared for these odd inconsistencies in the tool I'm using, what's up with that?" The initial phase has already passed, thankfully, when he was being vocal about how he wanted to be trained to the point of subtlety critiquing the instructions he'd been receiving thus far.

What he hasn't fully grasped yet is that mistakes and little oopsies are entirely expected and acceptable because I've shielded him from making the actual grave mistakes that will make the entire team's day go bad. He hasn't grasped yet that I'm not grading him on his ability to grok our tools the moment he lays hands on them. BUT... I AM observing his behaviour in the face of obstacles and looking for proof that he's understood something beyond his affirmation that he does.

All of this is to say, I'm not thrilled with him so far but his tenure is still quite young and I'm not quite done with him yet. Hey, I continue to be very busy and maybe I'm being a dick when I should be coddling him more. I sincerely hope he does work out as he came highly recommended from my counterpart on another team who I also trained a couple years back. Discovering some deal-breakers a few months in and having to cut him loose might be a touch awkward and definitely, definitely a nuisance.

ThatGuy42 wrote:

Can we take a moment to vent about all the work surrounding GDPR?

Sounds like the Euro version of HIPAA, which on the face of it sounds like an innocuous piece of legislation that accomplished the laudable goal of requiring privacy and accountability for health data, but in reality is a monstrous beast that chews up stunning amounts of time, resources, and personnel, to the point of actively interfering with healthcare activities.

Good luck!

I had a meeting today with just myself and a roomful of upper management folks. Long story short, there was a lot of tension leading up to this meeting because a VP from another group had gone behind my VP's back and not invited him, so when he found out about it my VP had me forward him the invite so he could crash Shady VP's meeting.

Everyone was already in the room from a previous meeting when I arrived. As I sat down, Shady VP tries to play it cool and says, “now don’t worry, this isn’t the Spanish Inquisition.”

As I opened my laptop I deadpanned, “nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.”

Eight other people in the room, and only my VP laughs. He earned some respect from me today.

Coldstream wrote:
ThatGuy42 wrote:

Can we take a moment to vent about all the work surrounding GDPR?

Sounds like the Euro version of HIPAA, which on the face of it sounds like an innocuous piece of legislation that accomplished the laudable goal of requiring privacy and accountability for health data, but in reality is a monstrous beast that chews up stunning amounts of time, resources, and personnel, to the point of actively interfering with healthcare activities.

Good luck!

GDPR is arguably a lot less complicated overall than HIPAA, but its still new enough that there is a lot of fuzziness around the edges. It also has a potentially much wider scale, as any organization that does business with anyone in the EU, or has EU citizens visiting any portion their website, should be figuring out whether they need to comply and if so what that means for them (well, they should have figured that out long ago, but its been my exerience that there are still plenty of organizations who are either completely ignorant of GDPR, or just hope they can ignore it and it will go away).

Rewind a month ago. Work was super busy as our project was winding down. I do project management putting whole businesses in place. I got a new project at that time and a new partner leading it. The last few weeks have gone from me having fun working to being absolutely miserable and stressed. The new leader seems to have communication issues of either thinking they say something or infer things to me and we understand it completely differently. What does this mean? I may be asked to do something out of order so of course I push back letting them know this potentially harms is down the road and I don't understand why we would do this. I am told we just need to and go back to build the ask getting several notices of how it will impact us down the line in the project so I go back again and let them know again we are really facing some bad problems by continuing this process. Not once is it shared in language a good reason why we are doing this. I later vent to management and am informed the reason why and it makes sense that we needed a mock up unrelated to our project.

There was an easy work around the whole time and I could have assisted in this had the leader discussed this with me. It as it as explained we just needed to get the tool up and running regardless of the repurcussions when we only needed a test system to demo the utility to stakeholders.

Now I need to have a good come to Jesus talk with them to figure out why we are having so many communication problems. I only have a few listed above but seriously my work has gone from busy buys but some of the most fun I have had to the most stressed and almost the lowest low I havr had in years of working. I am doing my best job but really feel put down in this all. I was on track for promotion before this and I have no idea now. Idk if it doesn't get better I can always move on to a new job but really liked this department overall. Idk this really sucks and I want my old team back.

Who else in the org shares your concerns about how this "leader" is failing to communicate?

Thankfully all the others do. I have learned by texting a friend who is one of the coleaders. I just now need to simply confront her, document all attempts to comply, and give examples of what I deal with.

Sigh. f*ck corporate America.

I have a happy work story for once.

I work at UPS. I used to be a package car driver. Those are the folks that bring everyone their Amazon boxes. A few months ago I transferred to the feeder department. Those are the folks who drive the UPS tractor/trailers.

It turns out that being a feeder driver really suits me. I have always enjoyed driving in the middle of the night, and that’s a big part of what we do in feeder. I also enjoy piloting vehicles, especially complicated and challenging vehicles. I’ve really grown to LOVE the job in the short time that I’ve been doing it.

When I was being trained to be a feeder driver, it was made clear to me that there is a huge emphasis on safety. I’m a safety enthusiast. I know that sounds like an odd thing to get excited about. In the 20 years that I was in package car, I received extensive safety training on a constant basis. I really took that training to heart. But my management team pushed production over safety. Package car division is a meat grinder, and the package car drivers are treated like cattle on their way to the slaughterhouse. The way the drivers are treated can be qualified as evil, and that’s not a word that I use lightly. So when I was told that in feeder I was going to be expected to follow ALL of the safe work methods, I was happy and relieved that I wouldn’t be passive/aggressively punished for working safely.

-

About two weeks ago I was rear ended on the freeway. To me it felt like a small bump. I checked my mirrors and saw a black passenger car veer hard to the left, hit the concrete center divider, and go into a spin. The driver that rear ended my trailer ended up getting killed. He had stalled out in the carpool lane and for some reason got out of his car. Luckily I didn’t see it happen. I had to drive a bit to find a spot where I could get the entire tractor/trailer off of the road. It was 4:15 am and still dark. All I could see was the lights of the emergency vehicles.

10 days later I was cleared by my drug screening results to come back to work. Before I could be requalified to drive, there is a mandatory safety ride with our safety manager. The ride went well, and I was given some suggestions as to what I could do better as well as praise for the things I did correctly.

Then came the surprising part. My safety manager put down his paperwork, leaned back in his chair, and told me about the meeting he had with our division manager. We have a system called telematics that records tons of data about our driving, in real time. He told me that he sent dozens of screenshots to the division manager showing that I was not exceeding the speed limit. He told me that there were witnesses that corroborated everything that I said about the accident.

I very sincerely thanked him for having my back in that meeting, and he said “No. You had my back. You followed all of the training you were given. Since that was a fatality accident, if you had done just one thing wrong, you and I both would have been thrown to the wolves. I’m thanking you for working safely.” I gave him an emphatic “You’re welcome.”

I’ve been with UPS since 1992. That was the first time that I was thanked for following the safe work methods. For the first time in my life, I love my job.

Wow, Rawk, I love that! Most of the management I've had in the past wouldn't give any thanks on an individual level since they didn't feel the need to thank people "simply" for doing their jobs. Your safety manager sounds like a (very rare and) real gem!

bekkilyn wrote:

Wow, Rawk, I love that! Most of the management I've had in the past wouldn't give any thanks on an individual level since they didn't feel the need to thank people "simply" for doing their jobs. Your safety manager sounds like a (very rare and) real gem!

Yeah. He very well may be. Thanks.

On the subject of management misdeeds, several months ago, our company hired and replaced our old president and CEO with a new one that was released from his last company president job for having a very publicized affair with a subordinate. Last week, our company demanded the resignation of one of my very smart and effective former senior managers after it was found out he was having an affair with a subordinate. What the hell is wrong with this picture?!

As far as companies failing to value their employees is concerned, after a round of senior engineering layoffs earlier late last year, the company announced it would no longer contribute to pensions for current employees (I'm not one of them - by the time I signed on, 401k with company stock options was the only option). As should be expected, a lot of people resigned and/or opted for early retirement. The company ended up losing a ton of highly experienced, near-irreplaceable talent and bringing on a similar number of new hires and interns. In that same vein, they have been highly resistant to pushing promised raises and promotions through unless a group has had a high turn-over rate.

I could drone on for days about diminishing benefits, increased hours, etc., but those issues are becoming more and more standard. Basically, work force benefits are at the point where if you're not searching for new employment every 2-4 years, you'll quickly stop being paid what your current skills and experience are worth. Even then, eventually you'll hit that age and/or salary roadblock where no one will be willing to hire and/or retain you any longer.

And it's only going to get worse.

Well my employer had me take some network security classes at the local community college because we had a need for a dedicated network security person, rather than have all of us do the job when we get time from our other duties. They paid for the classes so that was cool and I was thinking the most likely scenario is just that I'll get more duties tacked on to my current stuff as per usual MO despite the need for a dedicated person.

Anyways fast forward a week after finals and I get an email from the CIO that we just posted a new network security admin job, it'll be open until the next week and that if I'm interested, I should consider applying for it. So my first thought is "I should probably apply that posting" and then I started thinking in memes for a brief second but yea I applied to it. It's in a higher pay band where the minimum is higher than my current pay so hopefully I get it. It'd be nice to have some extra spending cash for SDCC 2019.

Even if I don't get picked, it'd be nice to increase our ranks at the very least so we don't have to get pulled away from our projects fairly regularly.

Usually, "We have a position, it'll be open for a week" means "We've identified an internal candidate we intend to hire, but we're legally required to open the position and keep it open a week."

If your CIO is telling you to consider applying, there is a strong possibility you're that candidate. Good luck!

Hitting a bit of a low after steady progress over the past 4 years. Finished up a degree in Software Engineering Technology this past summer, including a 6 month internship processing data at an insurance outfit(mostly doing QA). Landed my second internship at the company I'd been looking at since I went back to school. After 6 months there, I bombed the technical portion of my interview not once, but twice(they gave me a second chance.)

Now I'm 37, unemployed, and feeling not so confident in my programming prowess. I have another interview in a few weeks. I like the folks on the team I'm interviewing with, but it's going to be rough if I have to commute into the office every day. It's a fair bit away from our house.

Still considering going back into law enforcement. Turning 37 means I'm no longer eligible for career federal law enforcement jobs. Chatted with the State Troopers a few months ago, and their response was that they don't age discriminate.

I'm getting plenty of support here at home, just need to vent to the outside world a bit.

Government shutdown means contractors with valid work can do it from home. My group has plenty of backlog reports and data analysis... but man staying on task working from home is hard for me.

I need to find better ways to motivate myself.

My employer (aka one of the richest people in the history of the known universe) has decided he can't afford to pay me and my coworkers or all the days I (and we) are scheduled to work over the next four months. So ... furloughs!

I think I'd almost rather be laid off so I can off the journalism chronic and move on to some other drug.

I'm in that phase of my job where the relentless pace and need for outcomes simply can not be filled in the given amount of time available to me. As I go from meeting to meeting, screaming that I need more time and that there's no way to fulfill all the asks in front of me, my joy and satisfaction in my job simply evaporates away. Thank goodness that I have an amazing boss and an amazing team otherwise I think it may be time to move on to another gig. Heck, it may be time to move on to another gig anyway.

I've been working in the capacity of a tech lead for about a year now, but in the past 7 months it's ramped up into a situation where I mostly work on architecture and deep technical problems. Even 7 months in whenever I delegate to someone I feel like I'm being lazy.

Does delegating ever stop feeling like this? Like you're a lazy slacker who's just passing the buck?

Don't take this the wrong way, but that's the anxiety speaking. "I can do it better myself anyway". Delegation helps others develop their skills, and builds the team. And ultimately, it gives you back some of your time. Be selfish with your time, because you need more of it to keep yourself together than other people do. So... Delegate and mentor and treat yourself to a slightly less stressful job.

So I've worked at my Internet marketing company for seven plus years, mostly in a SEO support role doing a wide variety of things. It's been great, but recently we got some outside investors, and now the company is really diving more toward "everything needs to generate direct revenue".

I don't generate a lot of direct revenue because I do things for the client-facing people that do.

So for the past several months, my boss has wanted me to help our developer with more dev stuff, which I'm fine with. I'm not a big programmer, but I know javascript and CSS and HTML and can do a lot of varied things. Not a lot of tasks have come in to me, but I've helped where I can.

Well apparently it isn't enough. In my six month review yesterday, they basically told me I have six months to learn all these dev things so I can take more tasks off the developer's plate, on top of the stuff I already do, so I can be shown to be generating more revenue for the company.

It was the most brutal review I've ever had. All I want to do is be useful for this company, and in that moment, I'd never felt more useless.

Once I got over the initial gutted feelings, I started to realize I'm glad they're giving me a chance to morph into yet another role with the company (this isn't the first time I've been morphed into something else, and this is California, they can let me go at any time). It's terrifying, and I'm scared sh*tless, because this company is amazing and I don't wanna be unemployed again, but I'm gonna try my best and hopefully show them I can do what they've asked me to do.

I would update the resume and start getting it out there anyway. Look at it as you've got 6 months to also get a feel for the market and possibly find a better fit, which may eliminate any unemployment risk if you do find something better. Growing professionally is always good, but tossing out ultimatums is never a good sign. It sounds like your position just changed to where your goal posts are going to be constantly shifted around, and worrying that your job is on the line 24/7 is going to push your stress levels to new highs. Have an exit strategy.

That being said, I quit my sh*tty job last May, moved, and now I'm employed again! And I'm finally in an IT related job that I start on Tuesday. I'll be building and configuring streaming servers for an IP-based re-broadcaster... and I only got the job because while my resume sucks, a guy I trained years ago and helped out a ton while at Comcast works there and got me an interview, and I somehow impressed them. I feel like I'm in a bit over my head, I've got a lot to learn (they operate CentOS linux on Macs, neither of which I have almost any experience on), but optimistic at the same time. I've got a voucher for my Security+, and I plan to get maybe RHCSA within a year or two.

Yeah, updating my resume and having an exit plan is probably a good idea. Sigh. I'm already starting to save so I can have savings in case they do let me go, but I need to go further. Thanks!