This Business and Moment...

@Rids I hate jobs like that, ones where you can't take a second without a priority changing. There has to be priorities though in every line of work otherwise nothing would get completed. Tell your manager now before it's too late. My last job blamed people that it was their fault when they couldn't do something. Never a managers fault for prioritizing though always a fault of someone else. I'm no longer there.
 
Funny times at the moment at my place (software vendor), changes being made, good people leaving, be interesting to see how things pan out as all feeling a bit odd lately.
 
Just over 3 weeks to my start date in the UK and I haven't had a peep from the relocation company after weeks of chasing.

Starting to lose patience....
 
Rids said:
All my usual techniques for coping are not working, I can't make lists and prioritise tasks because everything is a priority, everything is either overdue or will soon be overdue and there is nothing I can do about it. Senior management are not helping, because they can't, they don't have the skill set or the understanding. I've been operating at the bleeding edge of my ability for so long now, I've learned so much and come so far but now the cracks are forming, and I don't think I can get to where I need to be in the time I have available.
Click to expand...

Well that is BS, even if everything is of a high priority they should still be able to order it.

Are they all from multiple departments? I mean who are the people chasing you? Managers internally? External clients etc..?

Can you take the initiative there and just go direct to say whoever the MD in charge of account management is and get them to meet/decide which clients are their priority at the moment/top 3 issues etc..etc.. Or if internally and there are multiple people chasing from a particular department then you go to the head of that department, get them to make a call on which issues are most important for them, what are their top 3 etc..

Get that done and just tell the rest to, politely, go **** themselves and join the queue or invite them to go speak to their bosses and argue the case with them for their issue being in the top 3 vs the others.

(well top 3 is arbitrary - but essentially a list of the high priority issues in order is what you need - if you're doing the actual work someone else should be deciding the priority)
 
I'm in a similar situation and every 2 weeks we have a meeting to arrange my priorities and work load which everyone involved is invited to in an attempt to bid for my services. It doesn't work as a couple of days later the priorities change when we need to react to something else and the other projects fall behind. Been covering admin's holidays this summer, I still have ~40 days to use up (rolled over some from last year) but no one will do my work while I'm away.
 
I'd say getting the business to decide on priorities is best strategy most of the time. Get them to elect suitable service / product owners who are going to take responsibility and let them fight it out between themselves. Though we've had an internal customer get in a huff because a different project is now priority above theirs and trying to place the blame on us, despite the fact it's essential a board level decision for this other project to now be number 1 priority.
 
So after a months of refusing to complete a "Confliction of Business interests" form due to my Photography interests, and after giving in, the company has concluded that there is "no confliction of Business Interests"..

I sometimes wonder who makes this rubbish up..
 
Steeps said:
I'm in a similar situation and every 2 weeks we have a meeting to arrange my priorities and work load which everyone involved is invited to in an attempt to bid for my services. It doesn't work as a couple of days later the priorities change when we need to react to something else and the other projects fall behind. Been covering admin's holidays this summer, I still have ~40 days to use up (rolled over some from last year) but no one will do my work while I'm away.
Click to expand...

It can work but people need to get on board with it and/or expectations need to get managed. Better to have more frequent priorities, like weekly, and have some things pre-determined - priority of certain clients/projects etc...

Just taking a lot of that out of your hands and collectively into the hands of the people who might want to chase things (or rather the MD they report to) can relieve the pressure. For example if dealing with clients then you grade them/who are the priority clients at the moment... so it is pre-determined that if an issue comes up from a particular client then that will take priority. It doesn't then matter if something else gets delayed as it isn't your fault - if other projects fall behind then so be it, they need to re-evaluate the schedule for those projects based on the resources/time you're able to allocate to them.

The key thing IME is just to make sure that people are kept informed, if something is to be delayed because another thing has popped up then making sure people know about that right away is good practice - if there are multiple people who can chase you then you need some way of determining who gets to make the call on which is the priority... so long as things can be prioritised then that's you sorted, something else gets shifted back - not your problem, that's the decision that was made by the company/MD level to focus on something else they deem more important. I don't mean you or your team need to be jobsworths, like help when you can, work later when stuff is really important/close to deadlines etc.. but having a continual backlog/being chased frequently is something that can be managed and in some places is just a day to day occurrence and not something that needs to be stressing any particular individual.

I mean sure, if people are getting stressed because they're out of their depth job wise or have made mistakes which then caused big delays etc.. then that is a reason to get stressed perhaps. Otherwise it is a resource or a planning issue for someone higher up so long as you (and your team if applicable) are doing their job well.
 
9th testflight release update on the VolAir app... ******* frustrating. Not that there are 9, but that every time the ****** fixes *fixes* one thing, there are like 3 things that break, or he stops from working. We're on 11 new bugs found on this release. GAHHHH! I want all these things done and released by end of sept. The dev is complaining of the time he's spent on this, as it was a fixed price, but I'm like "dude, if you ******* did it right and were better, it would not have taken you so long you massive ****"
Now he won't commit the latest code without payment, but I'm not paying him this last bit until he ******* delivers what he was supposed to, so in a bit of a stuck place and just have to hit the ***** to get him to sort **** out.

Flipside, had some amazing meetings this week. Flying into london next weds to meet a really great guy who used to work for JetSmarter. The guy has so many connections and he'll be great on board managing that side. When we meet weds, we're going to plan some partnership meetings for while I'm over there, too. :)
Then day trip to Monaco in Nov and lining up some meetings there too. Just need to pull the ******* tech in line. I'll be having a big ass word with the "CTO" when he's back from holiday...
 
wonder_lander said:
Cheers, that sounds like most places I land!
Click to expand...

It is still available.

I've actually re-read that job description and I think it's a copy paste of a different one as it doesn't read right. :D But it's definitely to work with the OLPD but I'm not sure the exact nature of their current project. I'm sure it's wonderful though. Feel free to apply. :)
 
Thought you might like a bit of a saga story.

Guy who came on board to start with to do dev for tokens. Sweat equity type agreement. We were pleased with his work but he said he was too busy and didn't want to continue with app work so we said OK fine. He hung about in slack and was always a bit of a difficult one to manage. It's hard when it's technically non paid, but at the same time, he consumed a lot of my time. I think he quit about 4 times, threatened suicide a few more. Yea, was hard work. I actually spoke to the hiring manager he has now and got him the job in IT (he kept complaining of being poor and having nothing, but then going for warehouse jobs!) so did a lot for him.
Anyway, we pulled in this outsourced dev to try and finish off these last bits. We are on update 9 in testflight and he was slowly getting through the stuff. He uploaded to testflight but didn't commit code as he said not until payment etc. a pain, yes. He also caused me ****. Yet, when someone has your code, I tried to keep it all good.

Last week I was reporting latest bugs in slack and he turned around and said it was hard fixing the bad code from the first dev. Obviously that first dev took this well and called him a naughty word rhyming with hunt. Cue a massive **** storm of name calling like petulant children. Dev 1 said he wanted all mention of his name off the site and nothing more to do with it. Dev 2 said he's not committing the code, can't continue work as he's been insulted. So I ended up kicking out Dev 1 from slack and have tried to get in touch with Dev 2 but he's now ignoring all correspondence. We've lost about 3 months worth of code. I am in the middle trying to just pick up the ******* mess in the middle.

So, that was my last week.
 
Bloody hell mate, that sounds horrific! Haven’t got too much experience with sweat equity agreements, but did you one in writing? I guess either way they are owners of the code until money has swapped hands so not much you can do?
 
I'm not sure I understand, are you saying the last commit was 3 months ago, on any branch? Surely he was committing to the repo as he was going?
 
HFnzxQt.png

He said we should just take where we are currently and finish it off ourselves... this person is supposed to take on CTO responsibilities but has done very little in the last 12 months along those lines. He's now moving jobs again, but hey, I'm trying to sort out a new internal job at the same time as doing my current job, as well as doing this and with 3 kids... I am going to get shouty.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom