This Business and Moment...

[randomshenans]

Huge reorg announced where I am contracting in IT. Which is great, the place is due a shake up. People scared about losing their jobs, I think it's a good thing though and I know this role will go, but it's a stupid role in this current structure anyway. A very good friend of mine has been made Exec Dir of Engineering now, so I'm hoping I can wangle a decent role in the new structure. If there is a product manager role going I'd be all up for that, it's what I do outside of work anyway, and it's also what this friend of mine knows. Will see if I can get something like that, if so I'd prob take perm for it.

 

[randomshenans]

Just had a message from the Cheezus developer telling me he can't do the wine / drinks recommendations side. I was like, oh? Too hard? It's the same as the food pairings though? Nope, religious reasons. Dammit. I'm trying to find workarounds so I don't have to pay someone else to do it on top of this lol

To add to this the SaveNode wallet is still not with me. I was told, after the initial 60hrs went by, we're now at like 6 weeks. Last tuesday was supposed to be handover day. Now, I've been chasing delivery for the last 3 days and they're avoiding answering ffs.

 

[Jony27]

Small update; after a 30min call with the team lead last week, I've just been notified that I'm through to the final stage and a call setup for next week.
Time to brush up on some networking knowledge that I picked up along the way

Had the final stage call last Monday, went on for 45mins and I think it went fine. Need to phone the recruiters now for the news as I had missed a call from them earlier.

 

[dowie]

Just had a message from the Cheezus developer telling me he can't do the wine / drinks recommendations side. I was like, oh? Too hard? It's the same as the food pairings though? Nope, religious reasons. Dammit.

Oh cringe, he's probably a bit ignorant. Is he muslim? If so then the Hadith citied re: the sale of alcohol actually applies to *anything* muslims can't consume... ironically that would include some cheeses. There is a recurring story in the press about some worker on a till of a supermarket not wanting to sell bacon or alcohol, if they're genuine then under the same rule they shouldn't be handling *any* non-halal meat or anything else they're not permitted to consume... realistically though that never happens and could make things rather tricky to manage in that line of work so you get people being arbitrarily selective re: when they feel like sticking to the rule, they can't eat non-halal chicken but they'll still scan it... they can't eat bacon ... ah that one will cause a fuss to be made, queue held up and manager called to scan it and deal with the transaction.

But developing a site that might be used to help sell/recommend, that's like another step removed and frankly the guy is just being a jobsworth.

If he's some sort of strict Christian then frankly I've never understood those guys, it is pretty clear that Jesus was fine with drinking wine!

 

[mattx2]

Just had a message from the Cheezus developer telling me he can't do the wine / drinks recommendations side. I was like, oh? Too hard? It's the same as the food pairings though? Nope, religious reasons. Dammit. I'm trying to find workarounds so I don't have to pay someone else to do it on top of this lol

Strictly religious works on an app called cheezus makes sense

 

[randomshenans]

 

[randomshenans]

Search results page all done, just waiting for the API to be ready after new cli tool written to update data. Couple more things app wise and we're nearly over the line... come on!

 

[NickK]

Was put at risk Wednesday, have until the 31st next month to find a new internal role. I know all the background (roles moving offshore) so it’s not a surprise as such but it does provide the unique opportunity to move forward.

So today is CV day & external applications.

 

[Steeps]

The company I am working with has just been completely screwed over by the NHS. We were already seeing issues with the changes in the NHS and already making efforts to change focus away to other products but the management structure within the NHS is doing so much damage to small companies. Honestly don't know what to do now.

 

[NickK]

The company I am working with has just been completely screwed over by the NHS. We were already seeing issues with the changes in the NHS and already making efforts to change focus away to other products but the management structure within the NHS is doing so much damage to small companies. Honestly don't know what to do now.

This is quite common in public sector.

Larger organisations have learnt to absorb this, adding it to the costs levied everywhere else to the public sector.

Often they push for work without budget or budgets are reduced over time, so only by covering the entire sector backed with a buffer to absorb and reclaim over a 5-10 year period will a company really succeed in the public sector beyond small paid up front pieces of work.

 

[randomshenans]

Was put at risk Wednesday, have until the 31st next month to find a new internal role. I know all the background (roles moving offshore) so it’s not a surprise as such but it does provide the unique opportunity to move forward.

So today is CV day & external applications.

What do you do? Anything we can do to try and help?

 

[NickK]

What do you do? Anything we can do to try and help?

I should be fine. Already have the internal feelers out and interest externally from ex-colleages.

Although external roles are less common to match - i’ll certainly be looking at step ups, more senior product roles or CTO roles.
I’m accountable for everything from a 100+ team arranged in cross functional teams (each with risk, info-sec, scrum development, business analysts, delivery managers, support managers etc).
Not many places have multiple teams of that size and working at that scale on a global footprint

 

[Steeps]

This is quite common in public sector.

Larger organisations have learnt to absorb this, adding it to the costs levied everywhere else to the public sector.

It's not so much services, it was providing product to treat a very small group of patients within a certain disease area. The CCG's who make the decisions on treatments available have no experience with the conditions, no experience with the products, spent millions on clinical research which blatantly abused the products and refused guidance from the manufacturer, allowing them to publish misleading clinical data and now using this excuse to blacklist a whole arm of treatment options which were only originally available to help the most severe cases of the conditions.

Essentially what they have done is spent millions on researching treatments for different types of cancer, discovered that not all cancer is the same but must find an affordable way of treating cancer. Cancer is now the umbrella term for all cancerous conditions, if your product cannot treat all cancer it cannot be used. If your product has 80% success rate at dealing with one type of cancer but only a 20% for another type (manufacturer did not even suggest using it for that) it is not suitable for ANY treatment at all.

 

[NickK]

Essentially what they have done is spent millions on researching treatments for different types of cancer, discovered that not all cancer is the same but must find an affordable way of treating cancer. Cancer is now the umbrella term for all cancerous conditions, if your product cannot treat all cancer it cannot be used. If your product has 80% success rate at dealing with one type of cancer but only a 20% for another type (manufacturer did not even suggest using it for that) it is not suitable for ANY treatment at all.

Yes and every cell type has it’s own set of “cancers” - so 200+ cell types at least.
Sounds like an alternative agenda “backed up by data”.

 

[Steeps]

That's pretty much what it is, but this is for skin conditions and because patients don't die from it they don't care. The patients who would use these products are generally "last resort" because no other treatment works, but because it isn't cost effective for everyone to use it (other treatments are better for low risk), the last resorts are being denied it.

The main clinical trial was designed to test the effectiveness on "last resort", but they recruited 50% low risk to the trial to get the numbers up so they could be paid (University trial funded by NHS), abused the products, failed to monitor closely and manage the condition, then declared the product ineffective because the half that were low risk didn't see the same benefits as the "last resorts" for the cost therefore it doesn't work.

A small company less than 10 employees vs the NHS and a "top tier" University just doesn't work

 

[Rroff]

Sorry bit of a depressing one but got into work today to find one of the guys I'd worked with until recently when he left as he was about to become a father and wanted to have time with his child apparently committed suicide a few days ago from the lack of updates/baby stuff on Facebook I'm guessing it was all around pretty tragic

 

[Jony27]

Had the final stage call last Monday, went on for 45mins and I think it went fine. Need to phone the recruiters now for the news as I had missed a call from them earlier.

Just verbally accepted an offer for the role of Associate Network Security Analyst. Just awaiting the official letter to come in before handing my notice in

 

[malachi]

Sorry bit of a depressing one but got into work today to find one of the guys I'd worked with until recently when he left as he was about to become a father and wanted to have time with his child apparently committed suicide a few days ago from the lack of updates/baby stuff on Facebook I'm guessing it was all around pretty tragic

That's depressing, another victim of male suicide.

Just verbally accepted an offer for the role of Associate Network Security Analyst. Just awaiting the official letter to come in before handing my notice in

On a lighter note, congratulations!

 

[randomshenans]

Well done @Jony27 !

 

[Throrik]

My last day in MSP life tomorrow. Been a fantastic few years and really showed me that good MSPs exist. But excited to get into my new Systems Engineer role focusing on Private/Public Cloud and DevOps.