This Business and Moment...

randomshenans · 28 Nov 2019 at 08:29

Rids said:
Its been a rough 6 months, and I wouldn't want to go through it again, but I think I'm going to do alright out of it.

Sounds very much like it's going to work out, which is great. At least makes all the arse ache it's been for you a bit more worthwhile. It's nice to see a company react like that and make changes. So many companies talk a good game but nothing materialises.

randomshenans · 28 Nov 2019 at 17:55

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight, I knocked up the Cheezus site in about 30 mins and I want to replace it with a bit more of a useful site for impending first version, and a bit more traffic etc. What should I have on the site?

Basics I have are:
- About the app / basics of what it does
- download the app links
- social links
- contact us form
- blog posts and updates
- Sign up for updates
- how you can get involved (for producers and vendors etc)

Anything else I should have on the site? Ultimately I want it for people to be able to go, get updates, a point where people can learn about the app and stuff... am I missing anything? I'm just planning out the content and I'll palm it off to some random. I mean, how much can you mess up with a simple WP site? haha famous last words...

memyselfandi · 4 Dec 2019 at 12:44

Well, don't know what going to happen with my role in the next month or so ...

Back story is that I worked for my previous company for a very long time but for various reasons left earlier this year. I've been with the new company for a bit over 6 months. When I went for the job here I had fairly specific goals and the role seemed to match them and would allow me to expand my knowledge with several, in demand, elements which I had been blocked from doing much with at the previous company for internal political reasons. But when I started the role had changed. Again I was blocked from doing what I had been told and instead was put doing something fairly dead end and lower level than what I was doing 20 years ago. The reason for this was that they desperately needed a headcount doing this work (they also desperately needed someone doing the other stuff too but the manager for this stuff shouted louder. Now my salary was for what I should have been doing but even so I was very not happy. My direct manager was completely unsupportive over it but his boss, and the sister team's team leader, (both of whom interviewed me originally) were supportive and were not happy with the situation at all.

Now, both my boss and his boss are leaving the company by the end of the year and there is going to be some "restructuring". They want us to align more with the US arm of the company (but wont tell us yet what that means). I passed my 6 month probation but I made it clear to my bosses boss that as far as I was concerned the company had failed it which he said he couldn't argue with given what had gone on. I have been told by several people that things will change and to hang on till January (which I was going to do anyway as just before Christmas is not really the idea time to start job hunting) but that was before the US involvement was announced ...

Just ranting really ...

subbytna · 4 Dec 2019 at 15:54

Just ordered 1000 cables for our new line of charger cables. That's a milestone as before we had only ever ordered 300-400 at a time. Happy with how things are progressing Still not able to leave the full time job yet but progress is progress. Plus managed to get a Christmas theme on the website too

A bit more than xmas smilies

subbytech.com for some snowy scenes lol

Deleted member 77746 · 4 Dec 2019 at 16:36

You not supposed to promote your own business on here. Surely you know that by now @subbytna

randomshenans · 5 Dec 2019 at 10:09

subbytna said:
Just ordered 1000 cables for our new line of charger cables. That's a milestone as before we had only ever ordered 300-400 at a time. Happy with how things are progressing Still not able to leave the full time job yet but progress is progress. Plus managed to get a Christmas theme on the website too A bit more than xmas smilies

subbytech.com for some snowy scenes lol

Awesome! I love it when I see a side business growing, it's really cool. Keep it up dude.

I was getting annoyed. I wasn't seeing the speed of progress on Cheezus I wanted and didn't see anything. It's happening though... I got a video of the app working this morning. Yes, the info on the cheese needs to be worked on, and the pairings Db after that and many other things, BUT the machine learning on the cheeses is learning and working!

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=2784114331652104

Pretty chuffed and it's starting to look like a real thing!

Throrik · 5 Dec 2019 at 22:22

So I have had a bit of a bumpy six months in terms of work. I left my previous MSP which I loved but had kind of hit a plateau to go do some contracting which was great, then joined a big VAR for Pre-Sales/Consultancy which was completely misadvertised and I was a certified BOM Builder which was about as challenging as making a cup of coffee, they sold me the dream, HLDs hands on, proper tech so I lasted there maybe six weeks before I decided I couldn't keep doing that mind boggling work every day. Joined another MSP which I said I wouldn't do, but my brain loves the stress, the rush and the crazed tempo of an MSP and it's another decent one like my previous one. A bit behind in terms of processes but I can see a huge amount of things coming into play, just like the previous one so hopefully it'll continue the marked improvement I think it will.

A bit of a step back in terms of 'job title' but they never matter anyway - back to hands on VMware, NetApp, Flexpod etc as the specialist but also taking on a lot of 'Apps' work so lots of SQL, been fist deep in an odd ADFS issue from a place that is a bit anti-cloud, and I will be leading our cloud solutions run with Azure which will be fun again.

mattx2 · 6 Dec 2019 at 02:05

randomshenans said:
Pretty chuffed and it's starting to look like a real thing!

Looks good kind of reminds me of this

randomshenans · 6 Dec 2019 at 08:31

mattx2 said:
Looks good kind of reminds me of this

Oh it's the same tech. It's just the model is a lot more difficult as each cheese classes as a different object and each object can appear in many states of maturity. This means the data for each required object is massive. I think I worked out in an ideal scenario to cover all types of cheese in the world and all stages of maturity we'd need about 50m images of cheese, obviously evenly spread across each type of cheese (roughly 4k in the world and growing). That would see us about a 95% accuracy rate.

Yea, I learn a lot of **** about cheese and data science.

Small update; Got my apple dev account for Cheezus Ltd so we're getting close to being able to deploy on iOS too. Good step!

mattx2 · 6 Dec 2019 at 15:05

randomshenans said:
Oh it's the same tech. It's just the model is a lot more difficult as each cheese classes as a different object and each object can appear in many states of maturity. This means the data for each required object is massive.

How do you train the algorithm do you just feed it pictures that have already been labelled?

Got any links to reasourses on this would love learn a bit more

dowie · 6 Dec 2019 at 15:14

mattx2 said:
How do you train the algorithm do you just feed it pictures that have already been labelled?

Got any links to reasourses on this would love learn a bit more

fast.ai is a useful one that takes a no-nonsense top down approach to teaching ML in a very practical way

Building a simple classifier (using one already pre-trained on a bunch of images) is quite straightforward and is covered in the first DL lesson - though they classify different breeds of cats and dogs rather than different cheeses. Because it's been pre-trained then you don't need many samples either as the earlier layers already recognise basic shapes etc.. so you can essentially just re-train the later layers.

Essentially you could knock up something to classify pets, cheeses or something else within a couple of hours if you work through that first lesson/tutorial.

mattx2 · 6 Dec 2019 at 16:04

Thanks looks interesting!

iamdjdz · 8 Dec 2019 at 19:29

Got my ICND2 exam tomorrow, whilst I have been revising and labbing it up I'm still pretty nervous! And got to go into work after no matter the result! A payrise rests on this but ultimately it's not a big one and the business will pay for me to resit if required.

Although tbh CCNA was an essential requirement for the job they gave it to me as I got higher technical entry test score than candidates with it, so I guess that's positive. Still worried though, I don't want to fail, but it is my first time (passed ICND1 first time).

ChrisD. · 9 Dec 2019 at 14:31

Good luck mate, I passed mine at the start of the year.

Yaayuh! · 9 Dec 2019 at 16:26

The Access Group are con artists and their actions of holding customers at ransom by locking them in to upgrade paths via arbitrary hard coded SQL versioning look-ups, is deplorable.

/rant.

I need a new job.

iamdjdz · 9 Dec 2019 at 18:12

ChrisD. said:
Good luck mate, I passed mine at the start of the year.

I passed

and congrats on getting yours. What's your pathway now? I'll probably grab the encor book when it's out and maybe try and get a vsphere cert too. My employer is Cisco partner so there's a push for CCNP that I'm happy with on a personal level too.

ChrisD. · 9 Dec 2019 at 18:39

iamdjdz said:
I passed and congrats on getting yours. What's your pathway now? I'll probably grab the encor book when it's out and maybe try and get a vsphere cert too. My employer is Cisco partner so there's a push for CCNP that I'm happy with on a personal level too.

Congtats, and thanks. I work for VMware now so there's no need for me to progress Cisco certs to be honest. I might do CCNP once the new exam is out and I get the grant for non-VMware training which I get next summer.

iamdjdz · 9 Dec 2019 at 21:17

ChrisD. said:
Congtats, and thanks. I work for VMware now so there's no need for me to progress Cisco certs to be honest. I might do CCNP once the new exam is out and I get the grant for non-VMware training which I get next summer.

Thanks. That's cool

we lost our VMware partnership due to cert expiries so might be worth me getting as I already do a lot on it. Not sure I'd want to be our main support for it though.

randomshenans · 20 Dec 2019 at 09:49

End of working year is upon us, how has it been for everyone?

I had a strange year but overall pretty good. Not as far along with everything I'm doing but still really good progress on things.
Got a new contract for next year as the ASM, which I hate as it's not even a proper ASM role and it's boring as **** and doesn't utilise me well at all but hey, they pays me.

Next year? I would like to get out this one app I've been working on, very quick turnaround job. Then get the same guy to do the redesign of the VolAir app in Q1. At the same time get Cheezus v1.0 out, I really like that one.
I've been trying to line up an internal role where I am as it'd be a step into product management, which is what I really love and I want some holiday and benefits. Will try and work that out and see if it's possible.
Just got an email from HR at Doodle asking if I was available for a chat in Jan. They're based in Zurich and the role is their Chief Product Officer.

wouldn't suck on the old CV but the commute would.

Maccy · 20 Dec 2019 at 10:21

Not been a bad year, keep getting extended at the government (waiting for another extension to come through actually as it ends this month!)
I've also taken on a second role part time, friend has got me in with a client in the private sector. Working through a Dutch company and been to Amsterdam for a bit of work, pays in euros which is fun and helps with the old IR35 shenanigans too!

Hoping for more of this in 2020, I'm liking the idea of having a few bits of work on at the same time to keep me on my toes! Also want to extend my skillset into Devops, maybe with a few to heading in that direction in the future.