How's work been?

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I just wanted to start a thread where you get to share your experiences from work without having to hold back and word it carefully so everyone can understand. You can be as specific or as vague as you want. I was just thinking about how some members in my family ask how work has been and I start telling them about it then seeing their eyes glaze over even when I'm not using particularly technical vocabulary.

Also any changes that have happened to you in the workplace recently? Got involved with some projects? New training?

Let us know how you're day has been. I'll start off.

My company's Apple specialist had left so I've been given his responsibilities. I've been getting more involved with our network team, familiarizing myself with routers/switches and configurations to help with my cisco certifications. Since I've been showing some proficiency with networking, my job has been including me in WAN/satellite office support. I've also been promoted(?)/moved into our server hardware team. Basically providing hardware support for anything in our server room, on top of my other responsibilities. I've also been doing some OS/network testing with different devices that we plan on introducing.

My division started experiencing a lot of group changes. My group has been moved so that we can focus more on infrastructure and avoid taking level 1 helpdesk calls. For some weird reason our level 1 groups would just forward simple calls to my group (toner needs to be changed out when the client has the cartridge on their desk, printer is jammed) or not even attempting to troubleshoot/get any info from the clients. So now we're training them with basic pc troubleshooting.The software and hardware teams have been merged because the division director noticed that a lot of the responsibilities and skills were overlapping.

Anyways this what has happened to me in the past couple months. How about y'all?

I've been here for 40 minutes and I'm still reading GWJ threads. So pretty much like every other day.

Gravey wrote:

I've been here for 40 minutes and I'm still reading GWJ threads. So pretty much like every other day.

FedoraMcQuaid wrote:
Gravey wrote:

I've been here for 40 minutes and I'm still reading GWJ threads. So pretty much like every other day.

"Suspected race condition in your code", I said. Now I feel a little lighter.

I call stuff like that "pink paint". It's the legwork you have to do before making something someone else's problem, cf the Someone Else's Problem Field in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Are you honestly telling me that for a report run as a cronjob, the query criteria are in the region's local time, while the run time is always in Eastern time, where the servers live? Seriously? AND IT NEVER OCCURRED TO YOU TO BRING THIS UP BEFORE? No, no, that three-hour gap EVERY STINKING DAY FOR THE LAST SEVEN YEARS for people on the West Coast isn't an issue at all.

Timezone issues are the worst.

CISSP Training cancelled! I got pulled out of the session before that because we needed someone here 'just in case' of audit questions (there were none). Oh well there's another session in January/February. Back to regular work upgrading the DC's to 2008 and getting SCOM installed.

Our department is slightly understaffed and corporate headquarters keep sending more stuff our way because we're relatively cheap labour and our division has surpassed all targets for the last four quarters... which i suppose is great, i mean, it means job security and stuff... The problem is that two people are away on sabbaticals, one person left the other month from our quality department, leaving them understaffed, and two people announced in the last week that they're moving on from our department to other opportunities, leaving us understaffed as well.

Worst thing is, these aren't jobs that people can just walk into and start doing within a week or two. To replace these people is going to take months and then months on top of that to train them up. I've been there for a year now and I'm not even fully trained.

So as we ramp up on several new projects we're weaker in manpower than when i first joined.... I'm not sure how the next few months are going to go...

I am surrounded by stupid. Many days, I really don't know why I'm here. I'd like to do something that genuinely helps people. Instead, I'm helping squeeze a tad more revenue onto the bottom line of a handful of mismanagers bonus checks. Whee.

I'm doing awesome, i sell office space to small companies and just closed 2 deals in the last month with another 2 in the pipe. As well as we're upgrading our phone system from a 10 year old Nortel/Meridian Mail system to Cisco's Call Manager 8 VOIP on the 14th it's been crazy hectic but so much fun, i really do enjoy the fact that everyone in my company seems to like their job and are good/decent human beings!

WOO!!!!

also

Gravey wrote:

I've been here for 40 minutes and I'm still reading GWJ threads. So pretty much like every other day.

My immediate manager found a new job within the company and is departing soon. Planning for the follow-on to my current project is filling me with the opposite of confidence and excitement. I have spent the last week doing battle with IT and various other teams trying to get relatively simple things to just freaking work. We are out of half&half in the break room.

Bah!

We need data from several engineers in every district?
Sure, let's use python guy.

Other than that, fine. Turns out when you automate some of the data processing, you can produce things at a rate faster than engineers can read graphs.

"Make this enormous pile of bloatware work on this incredibly cheap, low resource feature phone."

"Hey, remember that feature we removed from our product? We're adding it back in for no apparent reason. However, we're not going to use it the way it was originally intended, and everyone who knows how it works is in India. Figure out how to make it work again, and then figure out how to make it do what we want. Did I mention that the front end is all done in Flash even though the rest of our UI is all HTML? Have fun with that."

The Dean of Technology finally agreed to consider committing funds to Mac integration into the AD environment. I submitted the proposal last week. Just waiting to hear back. All the Mac users in the school are up in arms that we're going to be managing their systems. MUAHAHAHA!

Who broke the job submission system on the new nodes of the Biostats cluster? WTH are you people submitting? Oh. Bitcoin mining. Now I have to get you fired.

Wouldn't have any idea as I can't find any company willing to give me a job.

Yep, it rocks to be me right now...

I accidentally wrote a report for an application that's been suspended, and now I'm looking at another where none of the figures have been scanned in. Groan.

It's better than being unemployed.

Edit: removed the smiley after reading about Coolbeans below. Don't want to seem insensitive to those out of work. For all we have to complain about at work, at least we have jobs.

Two of the people I lead keep passive-aggressively bragging about how superior their workflow is compared to everyone else's, and I'm waiting for the right time to point out that on the last project, they were the only two who f*cked up.

Me (with next to 0 html training) cleaning up the code of somebody who has taken a full course. I actually enjoyed it a lot. HTML is super simple and I look all smart coding away.

I'm honestly very happy with my current employer (something I've never been able to say before). It's a good, supportive, stable place to work where I'm respected and appreciated, paid well for my work and I have an amazing boss.

My only gripe that's becoming a bigger problem is how bloody slow things move here. This is a small company (three corporate officers sit within 20 feet of my office) and it's got a lot of money in the bank but everything is a grind. We have an ancient Nortel phone system here that's no longer supported and which costs us a fortune a month for the lines and long distance. My boss and I have wanted to replace it with an amazing hosted PBX solution we were demoed since last Winter. This solution could lower our communication costs by as much as 50%. But accounting and our CFO are still mulling about and won't commit to it, yet every time we talk about money, the first thing mentioned by everyone is how astronomical our phone bills are. They also want a document management system because all our project data is still just managed by file folders on the server which is becoming uncontrollable at times. They've been talking about doing that since before I was hired and the level of discussion is still at that level now. Everyone knows and admits that we need it but no one's moving forward on it. I'm not the one who will use such a system so it doesn't affect me much but it's something I hear people endlessly Female Doggo about. My boss finally got authority last year to be allowed to make purchases for IT up to $5,000 without approval. He had to fight tooth and nail for almost 4 years to get that, even though he's the IT operations manager and this is a company that grossed $20M last year with around a 25% profit margin.

There's a lot of talk that the company's quickly losing competitive advantage to others in our field because we're not nimble enough. There's also a profit sharing bonus that all employees get every year and when people hear how much we could be saving with a new phone system, they get more frustrated that the board won't go for it because it means the bonus cheques are smaller. I'm hearing buzz that this issue may be bluntly brought up during a Q&A session at our annual conference in January. I hope so and I hope the board really listens to it.

WHY IS IT NOT THE WEEKEND YET!?!?!?! I feel better.

Basically non-existent for the last year or so.

Him: I think they were systems printers or something.
Me: (just stating a fact) There's no such thing as system printers.
Him: (visibly angry)Well maybe I'm not using the right terminology! {leaves in a huff}

Why do people get so offended at a simple fact. How else can they be educated if they only ever get offended.
I get so sick of mincing my words and babying people so I don't offend them because they feel inferior around computers.
So what, that's why I have a job, but would it hurt to try and learn just a very tiny bit once in a while...

MattDaddy wrote:

It's better than being unemployed.

Edit: removed the smiley after reading about Coolbeans below. Don't want to seem insensitive to those out of work. For all we have to complain about at work, at least we have jobs.

Dude, you don't need to worry about offending me. It didn't strike me as insensitive in the least and it's true, it IS better than being unemployed.

I shouldn't have rained on the parade here, but since it's a pretty big part of my thinking I guess I couldn't resist. I'm finding as the days/weeks/months keep going by with not even a nibble, the depression gets higher and the drive gets lower.

But that's my worries.

I've been with a large Fortune 500 company (bank) for the last 10 years. My current position (past 5 years) is basically a liason between several branch offices and various back office support teams. We're supposed to be taking complex issues and track down high level contacts that can provide a resolution. I'm essentially that guy in Office Space who takes stuff from person A and walks it down the hall to person B.

It pays the bills but it f'n blows. I have lots of downtime, its unfulfilling, its boring, and I sit all day staring at my PC. I hate all things finance, which makes it even worse. I have nobody to blame but myself for stil being here. I feel stuck (bad job market, useless BA degree) and don't know what to do. I wish I could quit, take a few months to reevaluate my life and goals, and jump into something fresh ( I need a field where I can create).

Sorry for the rant/derail but needed to get that off my chest. Any advice or words of wisdom? O_o

93_confirmed wrote:

Sorry for the rant/derail but needed to get that off my chest. Any advice or words of wisdom? O_o

If my daydream of starting a company staffed entirely by Gamers With Jobs people and their variety of skills and good humour ever becomes a reality, we'll all have this problem solved. I just have no idea what the product would be.

We'd be Gamers with Better Jobs.

Montalban wrote:
93_confirmed wrote:

Sorry for the rant/derail but needed to get that off my chest. Any advice or words of wisdom? O_o

If my daydream of starting a company staffed entirely by Gamers With Jobs people and their variety of skills and good humour ever becomes a reality, we'll all have this problem solved. I just have no idea what the product would be.

Glamor Shot company of course!

IMAGE(http://brondabailey.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/uncle-rico.jpg)

Strangeblades would have to be our CEO of course.

KrazyTacoFO wrote:

Strangeblades would have to be our CEO of course.

But then we wouldn't be able to send him out to cover local city council meetings? We should put him in charge of the company newsletter.

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