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
Can I have your job? Sure beats mine...
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.
Get out of my head Charles!!!!
My work's been going alright, but ho-lee-hell my girlfriend's work has been shit lately. It's actually been pretty shit the whole time we've been dating, but she's really finally starting to feel it.
She's in a Sales/Consulting role and the 3 "project managers" that do all of the work she brings in are worthless. I say "project managers" because they don't actually manage projects. They refuse to call the client to get clarification (instead they call my gf who has to relay the info to the client and back). If a client sends an email saying "I've got this project, when can you have it done by" They won't respond. She has to forward it to them (at least once, usually twice) asking them to come up with an estimate, and then they'll email it to her and not the client. Couple that with f*cking up a ton of the work they do get, she's pretty frustrated.
The PMs are managed by one of the 3 owners, and he does shit. So she has to try and manage them, but has no authority.
They've always told their clients they're available 24/7, and have never been staffed for it, so if something comes in late, one of the PMs (or one of the owners, but never the one who manages the PMs) has to do the work late or on weekends. Until recently when she was told they're no longer willing to do work late (because one of the PMs worked on something late and then didn't show up the next day).
To top it off, they let a couple people go last Friday (a good thing imo, cull the herd, says I) and instituted some new sales standards. So on top of managing her current clients, and micro managing the PMs she now has to make 30 cold calls every day. I guess they did the same thing last year and she got an ulcer and had to have a sit down with her manager and the owners about how it was affecting her health, and they made it a little better (for a couple months or so).
All this bullshit while she's still exceeding her number every month (and is currently on pace to get us an all expenses paid trip to Mexico [which I expect them to put the kabash on when she actually makes the number they weren't expecting her to be able to make]).
I've been here for 40 minutes and I'm still reading GWJ threads. So pretty much like every other day.
I do wish I worked for a company that made this a possibility.
At the risk of breaking the thread, I'm one of those awful people who loves my job. It has the upsides of science without the downsides that come with research, and the satisfaction of working in health without the conditions that doctors and nurses have to put up with.
Pretty damn good lately. I'm still exhausted from orchestrating the office's mov eto a new building just under two weeks ago, but we've managed to secure a rollver of contract until June 2015 for one of the two programs we run and the other program is heading in the right direction. Employment services is a license to print money. We made $26,000 yesterday off placing 3 clients with some form of disability into work and keeping them there 6 months.
With luck in the next week or so I'll be installed permanently as the manager since I've done my 3 months as acting manager and in htat time everything got better.
Only downside to my job?
No GWJ at work.
I have a minion now. Fresh graduate from MIT. Smart kid.
So I can offload all my boring grunt work onto him! Hurrah!
I have a minion now. Fresh graduate from MIT. Smart kid.
They're waiting for him, Jonman, in the test chamber.
I'm having a day/week so bad I'm kind of afraid to start describing it for fear I could never stop.
Jonman wrote:I have a minion now. Fresh graduate from MIT. Smart kid.
They're waiting for him, Jonman, in the test chamber.
Hmm. You raise a good point. Maybe I shouldn't let him work alone on the Anti-Mass Spectrometer quite yet.
This are going really well for me now.
Two years ago, I realized I had gotten everything I could out of my dead-end, most-likely-soon-to-be-eliminated job. I decided to take a chance and pursue something I thought I might actually enjoy, and would allow me to work with my hands. I enrolled in an associates program for Wind Turbine technology, and asked for a transfer to 3rd shift at work.
Taking classes during the day and working at night was pure hell. There were days where I only managed to squeeze in 3 or so hours of sleep due to overtime at work. However, it has paid off, and I now work at a large wind farm and find my job to be very satisfying. I come home tired, smelly, and dirty every day, but I am far happier than I was before. Better pay and benefits are nice as well.
Plus, the skills I'm learning in my new job leave me much better prepared for survival in a post-apocalyptic world after a zombie uprising.
Working 50 - 60 hours a week with weekends. It's getting old, but better than not working.
This is my first week back at work after 8 weeks of leave. I thought the time off would help me recharge my batteries, and I'd be able to come back to work with a fresh perspective. Apparently, I was wrong. I'm just as apathetic about the job 4 days back as I was before I left.
And while it wasn't as big of a deal when we didn't have kids, being 7 hours away from the grandparents and all is going to be a drag shortly. I'm thinking the job search will commence in earnest in a few months (I'd like to stay with my current employer through the end of the year to ensure I'm eligible for the annual bonus payout).
Been out of work since mid-August and have enjoyed it despite the financial setback, exacerbated by the fact that I felt obligated take an unpaid time-off hit to be a best man at a destination wedding Mexico, subsequently being seven hours shy of meeting my insurable hours requirement for EI.
The free time has been, well, freeing. I've gotten back to exercising more, reading more and gaming more of course. I've resumed teaching myself Japanese and dabbled rather unsuccessfully with meditation. Both my parents on getting on in years with the old man still recovering from the effects of his stroke two years back. Since moving closer to them I've been able to help them out more but they worry about my immediate employment prospects as do I. Q4 2012 isn't looking like the most bountiful job seeker's market and I'm not sure i want to be out of action for very much longer. Might consider picking up a job-job during the Christmas rush to pocket some spending money.
Oh yes, and my gf of over four years recently admitted to me that she wanted to have a child yesterday. Gentle creature that she is, I had to pry this information out of her over a few stressful weeks of couples squabbling and soul-searching. It made me sad but it was also a good motivator / perspective shifter for myself. And we still have time to achieve everything we want, just as long we both get our shit together as a team.
But it's not all doom, gloom and rainy afternoons. May be in striking distance of scoring a designer gig with a studio that works in the casual/social gaming space. Interview seemed to go very well and the position itself sounds like it will be challenging and well suited to my skill set. Fingers and toes crossed!
At the risk of breaking the thread, I'm one of those awful people who loves my job. It has the upsides of science without the downsides that come with research, and the satisfaction of working in health without the conditions that doctors and nurses have to put up with.
You can talk about how good your job is. It's all about how's your day been. Sometimes something good happens and you can't tell someone how good it was because they won't know what you're talking about. Go ahead brag as if we all knew exactly what's up.
Today I had a level .5 tech ask me how to install a printer when she had the install procedures in her hand. I simply responded "I'll check it after I finish this *insert made up issue*" Technically she's an IT consultant, and they aren't as familiar with certain procedures so I'll give a little leeway. But still. She had the procedures in hand, and they were the ones I wrote for the consultants. I wrote them in a way that someone with no experience with computers at all could install a printer. I'm not doing the damn thing for her.
Gravey wrote:Jonman wrote:I have a minion now. Fresh graduate from MIT. Smart kid.
They're waiting for him, Jonman, in the test chamber.
Hmm. You raise a good point. Maybe I shouldn't let him work alone on the Anti-Mass Spectrometer quite yet.
Please tell me you at least gave him a crowbar.
Me, been network and storage fiascos for weeks. We mostly shut down this afternoon as our software took a crap. We lost search functionality, and our ability to do "Conflict of Interest" searches IE check names and organisations against current and past clients, personnel, etc. So the whole system was shut down. I can do my work without that, but it will take me twice as long, and often can only half complete assignments.
Boogle, you work too fast. Every time I give you something its done in like 10 minutes because you write scripts.
I like to call this one of them good problems.
Boogle, you work too fast. Every time I give you something its done in like 10 minutes because you write scripts.
I like to call this one of them good problems.
Well boss, I have a lot of pent up sexual energy...
duckilama wrote: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.
Get out of my head Charles!!!!
+1
I can expect a client production crisis 4 out of 5 days of the week. This is generally due to one of several factors: improper training/understanding of the client staff, bad customization on the part of our implementers/support, a missing update, improper installation on the machine, incompatible hardware (usually printers), user error, legacy code from before I started working here, or a new bug that got by our almost non-existent QA process.
Today a recently launched client site was on phone with support with a bunch of errors all at once. One of the errors, it turns out, was because they'd hand the signature pad to a customer and this would pull out the USB cable. Another was due to improper configuration. I'm the most talented and experienced troubleshooter, so I get called in all the time, which means less time for me to do my actual work, which is writing code and updating our apps.
We had been given a project to make a non standard serial hardware control interface on an FPGA ,low level driver, high level API and GUI and get everything tested and working in 3 work days. 
The timeline was pushed and now we've got 2 weeks, but there are a few holidays in the middle so It's 5 work days instead of 10. We'll probably finish it Sunday or Monday anyways. We do whatever the customer wants ;),and the FPGA gives us a lot of flexibility.
Sonicator wrote:At the risk of breaking the thread, I'm one of those awful people who loves my job. It has the upsides of science without the downsides that come with research, and the satisfaction of working in health without the conditions that doctors and nurses have to put up with.
You can talk about how good your job is. It's all about how's your day been. Sometimes something good happens and you can't tell someone how good it was because they won't know what you're talking about. Go ahead brag as if we all knew exactly what's up.
In that case: today I did a test that showed that a baby born last week that was very sick at the time should be getting better soon! 
Also, one of our myeloma patients that looked to be in a bad way seems to be responding to the most recent treatment.
Edited to remove too-specific information.
I really enjoy the place I work, I like all the people I work with, I just wish people could actually be at work instead of having to leave for good reasons (having kids, taking care of sick parents). We just found out that one of our key doctors is taking an extended leave (we think 2 more months), so that means that everyday my group will have to spend an hour or so hunting down a doctor for all the jobs that have to be finished today so that we don't have to postpone treatments.
We're also so far behind in basic instrument maintenance that things are starting to go wrong all the time and end up being rush/replace jobs.
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.
If this happens, I'd be glad to take up the reins as Chairman. I've got a killer resume too.
My job... well I'm the only one in the office besides the GM who speaks native English. It can be a bit lonesome, but it also keeps me safely employed.
Work's been frustrating.
So I started with this company back in Dec2008. Trained for two months, and was let loose to work my own route in Feb2009. I was asked if I wanted to take the test for the next level tech early, accepted, and passed it on the first try (without seeing the materials) in June2009.
Since then I've only failed one scorecard, and that was during a month we had 3ft of snow, and everyone's numbers were crap. We'd get calls to re-hang drop lines that were knocked down, but because many of these were in outage areas, the customers would just call back in and we'd get hit with repeats for stuff outside our control. So management threw that month out.
At the beginning of this year, I interviewed for a line-tech position in another county. I interviewed well, but the manager picked someone who had more maintenance knowledge than I did (being nearly none, as this information is not readily available to us). So, I waited, and found one of the rare line-tech classes being held about an hour away. I signed up for it on our HR website, and was booked into it as one of the 10 active participants. These classes only come around once every couple years, so I was very excited that I got in.
My supervisor and manager signed off on it, took me out of quota for the two weeks I'd be in class, and I rescheduled a few of my son's appointments to be able to attend. My supervisor had a copy of the materials, which I photo-copied and studied hard before the class was to start, to make sure I passed the test the first time up. I showed up that morning to find 16 of us showed up. The trainer then told us that they used a local spreadsheet to fill the class, not the national HR site, so 6 of us would have to leave. I was one of them. A person from my system, who didn't even try to get into the class until two months after I was booked in, got to stay. I was really pissed.
Since then I've had two other opportunities to do something different (but would make my resume look awesome) fall through the cracks. I've heard a lot of empty promises that they were trying to get a class started locally for me and another guy in my system that got kicked out as well. I just interviewed for a position on a project that would start on Monday, but I haven't heard anything about it, so I'm thinking I didn't get picked up for that either. I might find out today though, so still have my fingers crossed.
However, about a month ago, I applied for a lateral transfer to the system that I live in. I just found out a few days ago that they contacted my supervisor about me, and everything is sounding good on that (I admit, my supervisor has been awesome in all this, and is about the only reason I'm still in this system). I'd be starting over in a new system, but the system I currently work in is rated as within the top 5 worst counties to work in the nation (for my company). If I start the other opportunity on Monday, I might have to decide soon whether to stick with it, or transfer and start over. I'm not sure which would be better for me at this point.
I just feel stuck. And I was just told I don't get a bonus this quarter, because while my numbers are exceeding expectations, too many other techs f*cked up and our whole system lost it. Bah.
I get to do my favourite part of my job today, interviewing potential co-op student hires. Some of them really inspire me.
They're not unreasonable. I mean, no one's going to eat my eyes.
So I was put on the On-Call rotation for our server team and got my first after hours call at 2 this morning. We had a clustered server throwing up a VRM error light. Swapped out the VRM, powered it on, the error light disappears then...."No OS found". That's okay sometimes the server doesn't always automatically grab the LUN or the fiber card isn't seated right. Let me power it off and make sure that the fiber card was correctly seated and all of the connections are firmly seated in their correct ports. Power up then I get VRM and NMI error lights. Well damn at least I know it's not the VRM and can now swap the entire box with a working spare. Okay so I fill out the paper work so the dead server's info can be migrated over and then I notice that the server to be swapped out is on the highest part of the server rack and I'm only 5'5". It gets done but I'm still thinking to myself "I can't wait until these are migrated over to blade servers".
And then when my boss showed up this morning, I was told that I get to go to one of our satellite offices on an over-night trip to get some hands on training for monday and when I get back get started on helping one of our senior network guys on upgrading some network equipment. Kind of short notice on the office trip but I'm kind of excited.
Jonman wrote:Gravey wrote:Jonman wrote:I have a minion now. Fresh graduate from MIT. Smart kid.
They're waiting for him, Jonman, in the test chamber.
Hmm. You raise a good point. Maybe I shouldn't let him work alone on the Anti-Mass Spectrometer quite yet.
Please tell me you at least gave him a crowbar.
No can do. He hasn't completed the requisite OSHA training course in how to safely handle a crowbar.
I just totally saved the goddamn day =)
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