This Business and Moment...

randomshenans

randomshenans

randomshenans

Soldato
Joined
11 Sep 2009
Posts
14,061
Location
France, Alsace
I don't know if this is allowed, or if I'll get shouted at, but I thought it would be nice to have a thread where you chatted about just general stuff relating to work, be it your own problems you're facing, or whatever... not worthy enough stuff for a thread to itself, but somewhere to get them out/ vent.

e.g.

I'm trying to balance cash flow at the moment, i.e. I have no flow apart from it going out. We are trying to hire a SVP for sales in the US, but with no money, the 3 of us founders will have to balance that somehow.
We have outstanding sales calls for interested parties, but sales cycles are slow!
UGH.
It's been an interesting day though; spoke to a company in Scandinavia who are potentially interested in licensing our product, which could be good if it's just for the Scandinavian market, (and the money is right!) as it'd take us a while to reach there anyway.

All the while I'm contracting to keep food on the table/ money ploughed in to the business and trying not to get fired for moonlighting :p

*vent*
 
We've been looking at Super-Detractors as part of our drive towards better customer service recently. About 30% are down to a mixture of Systems and/or policies or procedures. The other 70% is down to people. Which doesn't surprise me really.
 
For me currently. I feel very stuck :(

I love working with data, Mi, reports all that sort of stuff - making sense of sheets of number and data and allowing people to the understand and make descion's from it with insight and guidence.

But I feel like I've stepped back in my current role from it and I miss the whole interaction and creation.
 
I spent until 1am trying to get frigging interns to do what they are supposed to. We have a few who are great. One is headed off to Google after her stint with us (not fit, before you ask) and she's as sharp as anything. She's running a mini project team for us, looking after another intern. They're OK.
One guy is really good too, he's working on our data side, and is switched on, gets things done. Only trouble is he's constantly checking in code to the master repo and not branching anything off. Even after many tellings.
Last dude, christ, my god. He's supposed to be working on UI, arguably one of the most important parts (customer sees this, so it's important), yet since Jan 5th, I've seen ZERO code. Nothing. NOT A THING! I'm losing my **** with him and not sure what I can do.
I shouldn't have to micro manage them like I am, I have other things I need to do, but our ~CTO/ VP Engineering (best developer, these guys really make me appreciate him more), is great but no man manager, so I have to manage them and him.

/rant

killing me here.
 
@Random

Bit of both :( I thought I was movign to a area were it would be the next step forward - it was a move out of were I had be com comfortable and was finding work easier, but it know feels like it was a move to almost a dead end.

internally I can't find a move any were to what I used to do - but we do have 'another' team merger so there maybe a change back some software I am used to and enjoyed working with.

If I ove up the ladder then next levels are leadership ish and as such further away from what i enjoy doing.

Catch 22 postion, move up more pay etc, or move sideways and back ish into what I enjoy and found to be fun
 
Waiting on confirmation of start date - going through security / screening etc at the moment... heading off on holiday next Friday for 2 weeks, expecting to be starting induction on the Monday that I return so need to get flights etc booked between now and leaving for holiday!
 
Trying to manage building a business with completely renovating a property - managing a load of builders, plasterers, electricians, plumbers, tilers, etc. and most days there seems to be a mini crisis on a daily basis.

First the flat above us had a leak and flooded our newly laid floor, then the builders dropped a freshly bought and painted bath down the stairs, then I found out the tiler had been living at our flat without us knowing. After he got kicked off the job he sent me a text message which managed to include racism, homophobia and the C word sprinkled throughout. Classy.

Work-wise I've employed a mate. No idea whether this is a good thing to do. He's doing well and just executed his first piece of business, but his lack of confidence is really holding him back. Was working from home the last couple of years with limited and manageable outgoings, now I've got to cover his salary, office, telephony, insurance, etc. bleurgh
 
@tcfreer, I think that's always a bitch of a situation, choosing progression and something you don't want to do, or staying technical and not climbing the ladder...
I found myself getting tired of technical delivery and dealing with all the crap (probably due to the company I was at) which made what I wanted / where I wanted to go easier.

I don't envy you tosh, I'm fortunate in a way that my cofounders are old Uni friends and we work for nothing but equity until we can pay ourselves, but all costs come out of my pocket. I can shout at them though, which is handy, we're good like that.

What is it you're doing if you don't mind me asking?
 
randomshenans said:
I don't envy you tosh, I'm fortunate in a way that my cofounders are old Uni friends and we work for nothing but equity until we can pay ourselves, but all costs come out of my pocket. I can shout at them though, which is handy, we're good like that.

What is it you're doing if you don't mind me asking?
Click to expand...

Headhunting - I've done it for a decade, but spent the past few years on my own. Suited me perfectly, very little in the way of overheads, good clients, a lie in every morning, was taking 3-4 months off every year and travelling or sodding about, and generating decent billings. Not much future in the self-employed headhunting game long term, but decent enough for right now.

The girlfriend kindly informed me that I was putting on weight and becoming a bit of a slob, which wasn't incorrect. So 4 months later I'm bogged down with a bigger mortgage, a 6 week property refurb which was taken 16 weeks, rent on an office and an employee to look after. Bloody girlfriends.

Didn't you work in recruitment for a bit earlier in your career? Seem to recall something like that - if so, what made you change?
 
My main frustrations, without getting into too much detail:

-Mismatch between demand / what needs to get done and billing channels. Essentially there is plenty of work to go round but not the authority to proceed with it because it comes from the 'wrong pot of money'. This has other impacts like not being able to fix problems due to there being no budget for it, but then tripping over those problems when trying to deliver the work for which there is budget.
-Need to constantly task switch and adjust priorities due to working across multiple project workstreams at once
-Need to undertake non-project activity such as line management / planning / process improvement / exploring ideas, but no capacity to do it due to above and squeeze on budgets this year (resources leaving and not being replaced).
-Unrealistic delivery schedules (in light of constraints) with insufficient contingency that means that rather than simply fixing problems that are identified, we have to spend our time doing impact assessment and convincing stakeholders that they are happy for the (flawed) delivery to proceed.
 
toshj said:
Headhunting - I've done it for a decade, but spent the past few years on my own. Suited me perfectly, very little in the way of overheads, good clients, a lie in every morning, was taking 3-4 months off every year and travelling or sodding about, and generating decent billings. Not much future in the self-employed headhunting game long term, but decent enough for right now.

The girlfriend kindly informed me that I was putting on weight and becoming a bit of a slob, which wasn't incorrect. So 4 months later I'm bogged down with a bigger mortgage, a 6 week property refurb which was taken 16 weeks, rent on an office and an employee to look after. Bloody girlfriends.

Didn't you work in recruitment for a bit earlier in your career? Seem to recall something like that - if so, what made you change?
Click to expand...

Good memory :p I thought you were in headhunting but the building part threw me.
I was in headhunting myself up until 2008 I think it was. I was working in London for a small company who put all their eggs in the Middle East construction, which took a massive hit when the market went severely south, and none of our clients could pay, which meant my company couldn't pay me. Which was nice half way through the month.
Decided I needed to do something different as people weren't hiring headhunters at the time, so changed careers into IT.

Partners are a pain... look at what she's gone and done!? What industry do you work in? I've done Life Sciences/ Pharma, Construction and Engineering. Normally around the 100k salary base.
I considered setting up on my own at one point, as I did some freelance stuff for a small period. Even bought and setup torchlightsearch.com :p haha

Alas, times are a way from that now.
 
@Random

Feels more and more like moving out of the area i love and enjoy and moving to area I don't really <even when I've stepped up for it>

My main concern is I have almost 10 Years of service in my current comapny and I like the company in the whole.
 
randomshenans said:
Good memory :p I thought you were in headhunting but the building part threw me.
I was in headhunting myself up until 2008 I think it was. I was working in London for a small company who put all their eggs in the Middle East construction, which took a massive hit when the market went severely south, and none of our clients could pay, which meant my company couldn't pay me. Which was nice half way through the month.
Decided I needed to do something different as people weren't hiring headhunters at the time, so changed careers into IT.

Partners are a pain... look at what she's gone and done!? What industry do you work in? I've done Life Sciences/ Pharma, Construction and Engineering. Normally around the 100k salary base.
I considered setting up on my own at one point, as I did some freelance stuff for a small period. Even bought and setup torchlightsearch.com :p haha

Alas, times are a way from that now.
Click to expand...

Generally investment banking, but very few of the banks want to hire or want to afford to hire, so we've changed our focus to private equity, M&A and debt/illiquid credit. Trying to get set up with the banks when you're a two-man firm is difficult enough, so we've gone after the cash-rich growing private firms who've autonomy to hire (and not have to go through levels upon levels of HR and management in order to make a decision!).

How has you new endeavour gone? What's the short/mid plan for it?
 
I jumped from a job that was in the public sector in November last year. Got a small redundancy payment. I then went into the private sector to find out 3 months on everyone is in the situation of insolvency. Isn't a nice feeling.

Grass isn't always greener on the other side.
 
Finally received security clearance for my new role with MS - excited to get started, will be interesting to see how different it is to my previous environment at BT.

Off on holiday on Thursday for two weeks and will be starting the Monday morning on my return... still not really got a clue what the on boarding process entails or when I will actually start working with customers but excited all the same.
 
Doing what @Ricochet?

@Tosh - Never done the banking sector, but imagine it's a nice one to work in. Good luck with it all! Sure it'll be worth the hard work.

Our stuff is going OK, we were put under pressure to raise money by an accelerator we were in, but it would have meant getting really expensive money (bad % given for what we'd get) so we've just continued to bootstrap it out of my pocket.
We're on v0.98, just about to release v1.0 once we've pushed a couple of new features and have one university in Utah as a beta customer and another Uni (UVU in Utah) I'm talking to about a sale. As soon as we get a couple of sales in, we'll be cooking! Sales cycles are slow though, months to get a decision made.
On the flip side, I was approached by a company (middle man consultancy) who are working on behalf of BGC3 (Bill Gates Catalyst 3) a company he set up to pursue things he likes. So hoping we'll have our software demo'd to him on 24th of the month. It's all kinda going the right way, but I'm contracting to pay for it, as otherwise we'd be broke lol

Rock n roll
 
Good luck Random - couple more days till your demo :)

Still trying to figure out in my head what I want to do for myself.

Found out I'm not even at the top of my current pay grade - with the most service in the team :(

If nothing more it's proof that loyalty get's you know were in the current world
 
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