Job thread

[Rasix]

And... another manager bites the dust. 

Over under on the new manager to be introduced in 2017 is 6 months. Now taking bets.

[Yegolev]

Our overlords are probably why we are not seeing Rogue as a company.  I considered mentioning it to our GM but I am pretty sure I know the answer.  I simply don't see any of the usual suspects anymore, for various reasons.

[Abagadro]

So 3 weeks in and things are going well. I can't decide whether it means I am actually pretty good at what I do and I made the right call or there is some other shit-shoe that will drop soon.

[Yegolev]

Enjoy the ride.  Life is too short to imagine additional shoes.  If they don't like what you are doing, and they don't bother to bring it up, I'd suggest that they are actually OK with what you are doing.

[Merusk]

Yep. Hard to get into that mindset sometimes, particularly after living in a glass jar for so long - as you were as a public servant - but that's the one to go for. If they aren't telling you shit's wrong or you didn't do something you were supposed to then you're ok.

I've had a similar hard-time adjusting at my new position as a consultant where I've got more freedom than I ever had as a professional. Every day I had to focus on a specific set of tasks and deliverables. Now I pretty much set my own schedule and focus on my own education and expanding my knowledge base unless I'm assigned a real task or consulting engagement. It's unsettling at times.

[Yegolev]

FREEDOM!  HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE FREEDOM!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPc6qaEQ600

[RhyssaFireheart]

Is this where I can come bitch about how my co-worker/counterpart treats the group email box as her personal email (and granted, she's been using it a lot longer than I've been on the team) and she never fucking cleans it up?  It's nice that the retention policy doesn't apply to group inboxes, which means you can have emails lingering in there since August, but it's messy and a PITA to find anything.  Her folder system for this year doesn't make any sense to me (I stopped years ago trying to be detailed for my personal inbox and just toss emails into a folder based on the month I got it.  Makes things way easier to file now), some emails have been acted on but are still showing as unread, and she apparently likes to tag things to the task list and then never check them completed.  I did some cleaning yesterday to take action on emails giving invoice approvals, so that we could get the SAP invoices down from the 50+ we have waiting.  Down to under 25 now.

I set myself to "open to discussion" or whatever LinkedIn is calling it and got a recruiter who sent me something.  Going to reply to that because I don't need this stress and annoyance.

Also not looking forward to the fight about pushing for more division of labor in what she and I do.  I get my manager wants us to be able to back each other up, but honestly, doing monthly project financial recovery isn't really a job sharing kind of activity.  And if she was busy before getting the new tasks that accompany what I do, she's over busy now.  That's the angle I'm going to take with the manager to try getting things to change a bit more next year.

[Rasix]

OK. I have a year to plan my escape.  

I survived the quarter cull (not exactly, these people all still have jobs, just doing other shit). Now I get to plan and execute an entire test phase by myself. I am my own department.

Woo woo.

[Merusk]

Is this where I can come bitch about how my co-worker/counterpart treats the group email box as her personal email (and granted, she's been using it a lot longer than I've been on the team) and she never fucking cleans it up?  It's nice that the retention policy doesn't apply to group inboxes, which means you can have emails lingering in there since August, but it's messy and a PITA to find anything. 

http://www.x1.com/

I worked with a guy who had EVERY email from the day he started 11 years prior until the day I left that company. He used that to find things (though he refused to file them in the project archives. I wish his file would corrupt irrecoverably, because it was his method of controlling his team so they had to come to him for info.)

[Yegolev]

I'm the only person doing what I am doing... maybe I am also my own department.  I don't test things. 

[Viin]

[Selby]

Last year I was a superstar at my job with a great review but was told I needed to stop being antagonistic and let people do their jobs.  So I held back on telling it like it was and stealing people's work from them.  This year the boss didn't give me a great review as apparently I've been too passive and not finishing up projects anymore (that aren't mine to begin with since I stopped jumping in people's tasks).  I explained to my boss how he pulled me back last year because I was offending too many people and he said now that he's going to give me more responsibility and start giving me more of his work (since he took everything for himself and is now overworked).  My bonus reward is that now I get to deal with the problem employee no one likes since no one else will deal with him.

Personally I hate dealing with reviews and feedback once a year.  This kind of surprise also irks me too.

[Torinak]

At a previous job with annual review cycles, I suggested to my mentees that they check in with their manager about least once a quarter for a 2-minute performance update. It helped avoid surprises at annual review time, and in a couple of cases made a big difference. One thought they were still doing X well, but the previous praise had actually been to grow by doing X in more ways. The employee did so, and got another strong review. Another thought they'd been improving on Y by doing Z, but the boss didn't know anything about Z. The boss suggested a couple of other things for the employee to do to work on Y, and the employee found one to be a heck of a lot more appealing than Z.

In most cases, it was never a formal meeting between boss and employee. It was a quick email or two, or a few minutes of chat in an elevator, the parking lot, or a hallway.

[Strazos]

2 minutes a quarter? That still seems...insufficient to me. In recent positions where I haven't been working directly with my supervisor on a regular basis, I've had weekly meetings. That may not be doable if you supervise a lot of people directly, but surely you can come up with more than 2 minutes a quarter? And if you cannot, perhaps you're the direct report for too many people, and need to look at delegating some of that performance appraisal work down, if only to spread the workload and ensure you can spend enough time with people so that performance reviews are more of a year-long process rather than once-a-year affairs.

[Khaldun]

Reading Dan Lyons' book on working for HubSpot for a year and I'm glad:

a) I'm not in my twenties looking for a job
b) I'm probably never going to be fired and looking for a job in midlife in this economy
c) I don't work for a startup.

https://www.amazon.com/Disrupted-My-Misadventure-Start-Up-Bubble/dp/0316306088

I really feel for you if some of your own working experiences are like this. I'm sure he is pissing in the cornflakes with special vigor, he says as much, but still...it's pretty much like Office Space: The Documentary.

[Yegolev]

It's pretty fucking sad when two minutes a quarter is a massive improvement in the realm of work feedback.

I don't remember a situation where a project was ruined by overcommunication.  Too many meetings?  Sure.  Not the same thing.  Just go ask your supervisor if she thinks you are doing what you need to do.  If she does not know, you will want to let her know.  Because otherwise you're probably just off shitting in a bucket somewhere.

[Yegolev]

Yeah, I was partly joking.  I'm now (apparently) a software developer and so I'm supposed to be at least running test suites on my code.  However, by pedigree I'm an operator and so using the magic of The Cloud I just spin up test instances and see if my shit works.  Once it does, promote through the tiers.

The more chin-stroking people say I need to be using test kitchen and InSpec (for Chef obviously) but there is a lot of horseshit I have to set up and configure just to get it to work.  Then I'm maintaining a test environment as well as the other environments.  Practicality dictates that I skip over all that stuff and just cit right to the final version (in test instances of course).

I'm going to order a shirt that just has "GSD" on the front.  Also one that represents "Taco Bell Programming" in some manner.

[Torinak]

2 minutes a quarter? That still seems...insufficient to me. In recent positions where I haven't been working directly with my supervisor on a regular basis, I've had weekly meetings. That may not be doable if you supervise a lot of people directly, but surely you can come up with more than 2 minutes a quarter? And if you cannot, perhaps you're the direct report for too many people, and need to look at delegating some of that performance appraisal work down, if only to spread the workload and ensure you can spend enough time with people so that performance reviews are more of a year-long process rather than once-a-year affairs.

Some places have management that's so profoundly dysfunctional that 2 minutes a quarter is more than most employees get.

Ideally, yes, one would be having regular fruitful interactions with one's management during which one could discuss performance issues.

The best manager I ever had would schedule 15-minute meetings a couple of times a month with every one of his (40!) direct reports. His first question was always, "what problems can I make go away?"

[Cheddar]

2 minutes a quarter? That still seems...insufficient to me. In recent positions where I haven't been working directly with my supervisor on a regular basis, I've had weekly meetings. That may not be doable if you supervise a lot of people directly, but surely you can come up with more than 2 minutes a quarter? And if you cannot, perhaps you're the direct report for too many people, and need to look at delegating some of that performance appraisal work down, if only to spread the workload and ensure you can spend enough time with people so that performance reviews are more of a year-long process rather than once-a-year affairs.

Government.  In corporate USA the above is not unusual.  Plus added in ambiguity etc etc.

Taking a couple minutes to get a true opinion on work is smart when true evaluations are yearly and pay impacting.

[Strazos]

Yes, I'm continually reminded of my disdain for corporate America and how they do business.

[Rendakor]

We don't even have yearly evaluations here. We get a meeting twice a year or so in which the boss passive-aggressively bitches about whatever we're doing that he dislikes, without calling anyone out in particular, and that's about it.

[Merusk]

Evaluations just review the last month, maybe two of that person. Other than that most managers have had other shit to deal with so they don't keep track because management is also producing in modern corporate America. They're just producing bullshit none of the external customers care about it's all for the next tier of management or execs. 

[Merusk]

Got a call out of the blue today from my boss' boss. They're restructuring the company so the services dept. is under the sales dept. and focuses on 'short term' engagements.  He offered me a direct report position under him overseeing 'long term' engagements and 'revenue-focused' initiatives for the AEC industry stuff we do. 

Well.. shit. Better than traveling every three weeks to teach the basics of modeling programs to people who should have learned them 5 years ago.

[Paelos]

Got a call out of the blue today from my boss' boss. They're restructuring the company so the services dept. is under the sales dept. and focuses on 'short term' engagements.  He offered me a direct report position under him overseeing 'long term' engagements and 'revenue-focused' initiatives for the AEC industry stuff we do. 

Well.. shit. Better than traveling every three weeks to teach the basics of modeling programs to people who should have learned them 5 years ago.

Yeah always go with the long term team. Short term shit means you're one bad fuckup away from a long term vacation

[RhyssaFireheart]

So a little while back, I set my LinkedIn profile to be "open" for recruiters.  Mostly because I have been getting pretty dis-satisfied with where I am and what's going on here.  Got a call today from an unknown number and answered for some reason.  It was a recruiter from Teksystems who had just heard about a project coordinator position and thought my experience was a match, was I still looking?  It caught me off-guard but I said I was open to hearing about a new position, so I guess he'll email me details this afternoon once he has them. 

It's.. I'm not sure now to feel now.  When I was just considering leaving, it was fine.  But now that someone's actually thinking I'd be a fit and contacted me, I'm kind of scared.  Especially since I just got the husband and me set up on health insurance through the current company I got through (and it was affordable!).  Plus, I'm not sure if this would be a permanent position or not, but I'm so over being a contractor.

[HaemishM]

No harm in finding out more information.

[Viin]

The hardest thing about interviewing is remembering that you can stop at any time. It's good to get out there and see what's available, but if its not obviously better than your current gig you need to be comfortable saying no thanks - even after all that time spent interviewing, testing, etc.

[Selby]

I get recruiters bugging me several times a month. It's kind of interesting actually, keeps things shaken up. Most recruiters don't pan out though, so don't worry too much. Gives you good practice on taking to people ;-)

[Paelos]

I get recruiters bugging me several times a month. It's kind of interesting actually, keeps things shaken up. Most recruiters don't pan out though, so don't worry too much. Gives you good practice on taking to people ;-)

I used to do the dance. Now I just tell them what I want to make right off the bat, because most of the positions they are trying to fill pay fuckall.

[Selby]

Now I just tell them what I want to make right off the bat, because most of the positions they are trying to fill pay fuckall.

Same here. Want me in SoCal again? It's gonna take $200k+ along with being something interesting I want to do. Up north? You better have one hell of a package because I'm not living in MN or MI in winter without a lot of compensation. Telling me how "in high demand" the company is makes me give less than a shit. Google and Tesla expected me to fawn over just being chosen for an interview. That may work with certain people but not me.

[Quinton]

Happiness is your project surviving SVP/CEO review and not getting cancelled.

Definitely makes the winter holidays a bit brighter.

[Yegolev]

Congrats!

I pestered the people in Chef Slack this week and learned a few things.  One of these is that no one is as OCD as I am.

[Yegolev]

I think everyone's HR budgets were passed because I've been getting hit hard by recruiters for the past week.  If you want a new slot and can spell "AWS" then you might want to refresh your LinkedIn.

[Rasix]

I can Google it.

I guess it's time for my biennial Google interview. I should probably just lead off with, "look, you guys like the idea of me, not the actual me, move on to the next guy".

[Selby]

The international recruiters have picked up a bit too since the election.  I get SoCal\Illinois and now Germany sending me requests for jobs.