Well you never improve if you don't step out your comfort zone into the unknown. I have done that a few times
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Well you never improve if you don't step out your comfort zone into the unknown. I have done that a few times
Soldato
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Well you never improve if you don't step out your comfort zone into the unknown. I have done that a few times
That’s true. I’m being pushed quite hard at work anyway though and I really believe in what we’re doing so I’m really not that keen to leave! Money is money though.
Edit: interview went well. I really liked the guy I spoke to and the job sounds good, though I'd urgently need to learn all sorts about software!
I think they tried to offer me the job on the call but weren't 100% sure what the package was. The guy is going to come back to me with a proposed package which would sit for the next 3 months, he said, at which point it would change. He was going to map that out for me, which is pretty interesting. I've never been involved in anything to do with salaries where they told you where you didn't just get a number emailed to you. It could also include stock options.
I was up half the night worrying about leaving my current company, though. It's easier just to stay...
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It's happening.
No formal conversation, just basically "This is now required of your role, do it."
Yay!...
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Unless it's in your contract it's a change of contract surely?
Yep. Which means it’s about to get ugly lol.
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Ah man what a mission of a morning. Harper woke up with a headache complaining she had been sleeping badly. I was like hmmm she was a contact case on Monday so tested and was negative, tested this morning, positive. I was negative but one of her brothers is positive too. So then had to go get them all PCRs as well. Mission! I have had such a busy week at work, but it's been very productive. I feel OK at the moment, a bit heady but OK. Hopefully it'll just skirt past but just a pain in everyone's neck we could do without.
I've got a bit more ballsy at work at the moment. Just think, you got me here to do a job, so I'm going to do it. I don't care about anything else and all the political BS. Just get the right people to agree and make it happen. Done. Which has led to some actual good progress being made in January but man it's shown how much work I have on. I need more people really. The guy who covers the services side has a team of 4 and yet everything is already done. I have just me and it's all to do and to define, then to manage? It's madness, but hey. Deal with that as it comes.
How's everyone's new year started?
I've got a bit more ballsy at work at the moment. Just think, you got me here to do a job, so I'm going to do it. I don't care about anything else and all the political BS. Just get the right people to agree and make it happen. Done. Which has led to some actual good progress being made in January but man it's shown how much work I have on. I need more people really. The guy who covers the services side has a team of 4 and yet everything is already done. I have just me and it's all to do and to define, then to manage? It's madness, but hey. Deal with that as it comes.
How's everyone's new year started?
I've had my first actually hectic busy Year End. Usually i've managed to avoid the typical accountant year end madness in previous companies, but it's been pretty hectic here with some long 14-15 hour days. The issue with working in a group role consolidating lots of companies and the issue of 50% of the companies being US based, so you give people a deadline of X Day, but they can be working till 10PM due to time differences so can have questions right up to that point and if i leave it till the next day it's then hours till they come online and can action any changes.
It's calmed down now though and just rolling into month end as normal!
Still happy in this job overall, have spent this week detailing all the projects i need to get on with and want to really crack on with those as some of them have dragged on since before i started and then made slow progress as i've been getting my head around things and other people have dragged their feet.
My main issue i've identified this month is i need to be much more assertive. I'm helping implement some time recording systems and in most entities we record at a project level so we can report on specific projects and identify over-runs, However one team leader just wants general buckets per customer. Despite around 4 calls with him pointing out it'd be a bit pointless i gave in and accepted he'd just have an inferior system because i couldn't be bothered arguing and dragging things on any long and ultimately i'm just implementing what he wants.
However my boss then stepped in, involving a few other people and pushed him into speccing out a more detailed Project list (albeit i'm still waiting on it!). In reality that's what i need to be doing more and so i need to get better at pushing back.
Keep in mind that sometimes pushing back directly isn't the only option, getting others to lean on someone can sometimes be just as effective and help demonstrate that you are driving towards consistency across the group, rather than just being awkward with them individually. It's easy to say "I need to be more assertive if someone isn't happy following my instructions" but depending on the relationship with the other party it's not always that simple.
As for granular time recording one of the issues I've seen myself in the past is that it all makes sense on paper but then where overruns / underspends are identified it often rolls up in aggregate to a higher level anyway so you end up just shifting budget between projects. So a £500k budget ends up being broken down differently than anticipated but at the levels reported for finance it's going into particular planning buckets and hence whether that was a 200/200/100 split by project or 300/100/100 it matters little if the projects are categorised the same.
In that scenario you at least get some empirical data for future project planning but I've also seen even worse situations where instead of re-allocating budget from B to A people are instructed to just book time to B even though they are working on A. In that scenario you might as well just have the 'buckets' approach.
As for granular time recording one of the issues I've seen myself in the past is that it all makes sense on paper but then where overruns / underspends are identified it often rolls up in aggregate to a higher level anyway so you end up just shifting budget between projects. So a £500k budget ends up being broken down differently than anticipated but at the levels reported for finance it's going into particular planning buckets and hence whether that was a 200/200/100 split by project or 300/100/100 it matters little if the projects are categorised the same.
In that scenario you at least get some empirical data for future project planning but I've also seen even worse situations where instead of re-allocating budget from B to A people are instructed to just book time to B even though they are working on A. In that scenario you might as well just have the 'buckets' approach.
Yeah, especially when there's a reasonable disparity in seniority - Me being a financial analyst and him being the Head of Customer Services. Ultimately it was the DACH group leader who i think has agreed some granularity is important and therefore as you say applied some pressure from that side.
I agree about fully granular time recording. I've worked for financial services companies who record in 6 minute blocks and it gets a bit ridiculous. This is more project per customer where there is only 2/3 at a time anyway, but will allow grouping internally. We tend to bill on a time and materials basis so having accurate time recorded will make life much easier! Whereas the guy just wanted 3 groups per customer "Development", "Support", "Professional Services" so would be tricky to identify which project had been worked on.
I agree about fully granular time recording. I've worked for financial services companies who record in 6 minute blocks and it gets a bit ridiculous. This is more project per customer where there is only 2/3 at a time anyway, but will allow grouping internally. We tend to bill on a time and materials basis so having accurate time recorded will make life much easier! Whereas the guy just wanted 3 groups per customer "Development", "Support", "Professional Services" so would be tricky to identify which project had been worked on.
Soldato
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How do you record time spent on overclockers in 6 minute blocks?
Relaxed. Only been at work for 5 days, was basically doing nothing.
Spending most of my time learning Python, packing and organizing my move for next week.
Soldato
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Started out ready to say it's good and I've got more motivation, but in the middle of the day I hit yet another frustration
We've got a software release Monday. Development was completed around Sept, then testing and December was spent sorting any niggles and final config, infrastructure tests etc. So the last couple of days have been very much writing a plan of action for Monday and making sure everything was lined up. I need to get an approval to merge the release candidate to the production branch so on Monday we just pull the trigger. Very few senior people in today, and they went "ooh this automated test says failed on it". Basically as it's proposed to merge to production, not our development branch, it's configured not to do a test deployment. So instead of reporting "skipped" (which is the output of the automated step) it reports a human-written message saying it failed. The human that wrote it doesn't work Fridays.
I couldn't convince them it's fine and we can go ahead, so now it's been bumped to Monday even if we end up delaying the release. I very nearly downed tools and said call me once the ****ing thing is released. Feel like I simultaneously have no authority, but am not learning anything in an unstructured team with no really solid process. Grumble grumble.
Going to switch off and think about my house purchase instead. That project will be a good distraction from work for a while
I was just about to say. We price at service group level but book our time in a bucket. We tried to book time how we price but teams beg, borrow and steal so it totally broke the entire system.
My new year started as it usually does, with working out the bonus pool. Thankfully, the bonus apportioning to the teams I run has been a lot less stressful this year. Previous years I found it very stressful indeed, but the company has been performing well, so the pool is up quite a bit and I've been able to reward people appropriately for a change.
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I'll look forward to receiving my email with regards to this. Thank you kindly.
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I'm wrestling with balancing my new income with making it as tax efficient as possible for my pension contributions. Do businesses typically allow you to do a salary sacrifice if you want to put more into your pension pot? They have a typical "we'll contribute x% for every y% you contribute, up to a maximum of z%", but I'm trying to balance it as much as possible.
Yes, they typically let you put in as much as you want, but only match up to a certain %.
The max the company will double-match is 7%, I currently put in 13% so the company puts in 14%.
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Ok I'll see what HR say, I didn't want to start the conversation unless it was worthwhile. They offer 12% so that's not bad as I put in 6%. My previous role was salary sacrifice so it was able to organise it to get below a certain tax threshold - this new role that won't happen (I know I know, first world problems), but I'm trying to minimise my tax burden and maximise my pension contribution - whilst still having a bit more in the bank to enjoy life a little!
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Yes @Freefaller my Mum on the lead up to retirement did a lot on salary sacrifice to reduce her tax liabilities into the higher tax bracket by pushing it into her pension and the company allowed her to do it no problem! HR should certainly be able to sort this all out for you
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Ta I just wanted to make sure this was a "normal" thing to do - apologies if it came across as a bit of a "show off" post. I just didn't want to have egg on my face by asking this sort of thing.
It's a tough blend though to enjoy more income but also save for the future as I'd like to retire as early as possible.