This Business and Moment...

Eurgh. Crap couple of days. One of our candidates was made an offer 6 weeks ago, accepted it on the spot, but then the client went quiet. They've just had to pull the offer due to approval for the hire not being signed off.

Then this morning I find out that a client we did a massive favour for - split our fee 25:75 in order to let the candidate settle in - has let the guy go 1 day before having to pay us our fee. Also, due to us giving them a bit of room on this, we allowed them an extra 6 months to pay the fee and they've gone and done the dirty on us well outside of our rebate period.

That's about 2 months worth of revenue up in smoke. My colleague, who I've mentioned a couple of times in this thread, is starting to really get the hang of things. However, he's just lost out on two mandates right at the final hurdle through circumstances we couldn't control... and therefore he'll narrowly miss his annual target. One of the interview processes fell apart after the guy accepted the offer but he was due to join through a spousal visa sponsorship... but then right at the end of protracted contract talks his wife got made redundant, and therefore the spousal visa went out the window! Couldn't make it up.

I personally don't care that my colleague misses his target - it was purposefully a difficult target to hit, and he's performing really well - but he's a motivated guy and was really excited about achieving his year one goals.

Quite annoying seeing as we've had a stellar second half to the year.
 
skaif said:
So I'm not a big GD poster but need somewhere to vent so here goes....

I'll start with a bit of context in spoilers
Currently I am doing well for myself (at least in my eyes).

I am 28 and currently in my 3rd year of Head of Business and Computing at a local secondary. I am on course for the standard pay rise which should see me clear £40k this year.

Wife is expecting first child due in November and despite living at home (parents have pretty much said they want to retire abroad and spend many months away at the moment leaving just me, wife, older brother and younger sister) I am quite happy.
However, I know that I am not going to be in teaching forever, I have always wanted to start my own business. Be it a youth center or tuition place or whatever. I can only see myself in teaching for another few years.

Since I started teaching I contributed towards living expenses giving away half my salary on the usual bills, food etc, mortgage (which we cleared in Jan this year) and for the past 2 and a bit years have completely run the house by myself (Large 7 bed detached).

Now my parents foster care (by default myself and wife are nominated carers) and they have let the agency we are with know that after our current placement, they are out of the game and wish to retire. Current placement is due to end next summer so happy days.

Anyways, on to the business.
Keeping with the helping others and giving back to the community, my brother and I have agreed with our parents that we wish to use our house and convert it into a children's home / young adults care home. So much so that we have the business registered, business plan drawn up and are due to go through OFSTED regulations soon. Now this could prove to be a game changer for us as my brother has industry care experience, I have the education experience and our business partner has a successful business of his own. All looks good right?

This is where I need to vent. We have been given a timeline of Jan 2017 to open doors and get the business up and running. We are a loooong way from that.

That required roughly £40k worth of investment to the house and to put our family up in rented accommodation temporarily. (The plan is to run the business for a year and use the profits to buy another home that we can move into). The business plan makes sense, we stand to make some good money while helping out people in the process.

However, my wife is struggling with the pregnancy and will struggle to move unless its this month meaning we need to move out ASAP.

That means extra rent. We don't want to take any loans and want to do things ourselves (parents are willing to chip in but don't want to rely on that - they have practically given us a house) We have around 10k in savings and a further 10k from eldest sister.

Moving out, extra rent, on top of that the safeguarding and welfare of our current placement means that there are issues left and right. My brother is adamant that he wants to see it through and we should plow on, struggles at the start make it sweeter later on etc. My point is that I am fine in my current situation, should I be putting myself through all of this? I feel like he needs it more than I do but I also want to help out.

So yes, money is an issue, timing is an issue, I feel like I am choosing between this business and my family and sometimes feel like I am battling my wife and my brother. I know that a year from now if things go well I will be laughing about it all but at the moment its stressing me out :( Talk about first world problems
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skaif said:
Ain't it weird how things work out....Over the weekend we managed to secure funding from a family friend, no strings attached which takes our total savings to £50k, today we confirmed rental on our temporary accommodation (well minimum 2 years) that is an awesome house everyone is happy with!

Now the real work starts, moving house, renovating the old one, starting the business. Here's to the next 12 months!
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Ok so an update on this...

First off, we moved house, and then literally 3 weeks later my baby girl was born. Happy days! :D

But the old house is now a drag - we had issues with the CCTV guy, issues with the wallpaper stripper guy, issues with plasterers and issues with people falling into floorboards and damaging ceilings below!

Now since some floorboards were lifted and god knows what happened, we are now experiencing a huge electrical problem and have been quoted £3k to get the entire house certified...

The project needs proper micro management but working full time and relying on my bother is starting to drain.

Not ideal....(does anyone know any electricians based in Beds - specifically Luton?!)

But anyway, setbacks are setbacks and we must soldier on!
 
toshj said:
My colleague, who I've mentioned a couple of times in this thread, is starting to really get the hang of things. However, he's just lost out on two mandates right at the final hurdle through circumstances we couldn't control... and therefore he'll narrowly miss his annual target. One of the interview processes fell apart after the guy accepted the offer but he was due to join through a spousal visa sponsorship... but then right at the end of protracted contract talks his wife got made redundant, and therefore the spousal visa went out the window! Couldn't make it up.

I personally don't care that my colleague misses his target - it was purposefully a difficult target to hit, and he's performing really well - but he's a motivated guy and was really excited about achieving his year one goals.

Quite annoying seeing as we've had a stellar second half to the year.
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Was it the guy that kept thinking about leaving etc but you knew he'd be great and talked him into staying despite what his family was saying?
 
Great news that he's upped his game tosh!

And congrats on the baby skaif! The hard work starts here dude :) keep pushing!

My boss on my contract has always been quite untrustworthy, he's based in the states and plays the company game to get where he wants and doesn't particularly like me. Yet recently he's been very nice and I don't trust that. He's currently taking on the job at the level above his, which is the reason why he's trying to keep everyone sweet as possible.
He's just said to me tonight that he's sorry we haven't wrapped up my contract for next year yet, he doesn't know what's going to happen, but he's really pushing for me.
Pretty much his words, word for word. I think he just likes to stress me out, I wasn't even concerned but now I can't help having a niggle annoyance there. Officially I have 2 weeks notice I think it is, but on every occasion so far, people have had 3 months just to be nice. If he gives me less, I'll be just seriously annoyed. Leaves it with very little time to line up another over Christmas, which is crap.

/rant
 
AHarvey said:
Was it the guy that kept thinking about leaving etc but you knew he'd be great and talked him into staying despite what his family was saying?
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That's the guy. Seems to be going well for him at the moment despite missing out on these two mandates. He's agreed to stay beyond the trial period we agreed upon (up to Christmas), and should be with us throughout next year. He's carving out a nice little niche in the market too, which could be a great sector to cover. My senior colleague really helped the junior guy open his eyes a bit.

We've hopefully got another of my former colleagues joining at the beginning of next year, again to work independently but paying his office costs. The big plan for 2017 is to open a New York office. I've got a family member who has recently moved out there and is looking for something between full and part time. They've got experience at one of the biggest names globally in our client market, and we're planning for them to kick off our US client coverage through acting as business developer and client relations in North America.
 
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Quick update from me. Had my phone technical interview yesterday. All went well and it sounds like an awesome project! The guy said he has to make his decision by the end of the week and feedback should filter back to me within 2 weeks. Hopefully 1. Which is perfect :)

Fingers crossed!
 
Phate said:
Quick update from me. Had my phone technical interview yesterday. All went well and it sounds like an awesome project! The guy said he has to make his decision by the end of the week and feedback should filter back to me within 2 weeks. Hopefully 1. Which is perfect :)

Fingers crossed!
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Good luck! Given how quiet things are at this time of year, to be getting interviews is a very positive sign - particularly early next year if things don't go as quickly as you'd hope this side of Christmas.
 
toshj said:
That's the guy. Seems to be going well for him at the moment despite missing out on these two mandates. He's agreed to stay beyond the trial period we agreed upon (up to Christmas), and should be with us throughout next year. He's carving out a nice little niche in the market too, which could be a great sector to cover. My senior colleague really helped the junior guy open his eyes a bit.

We've hopefully got another of my former colleagues joining at the beginning of next year, again to work independently but paying his office costs. The big plan for 2017 is to open a New York office. I've got a family member who has recently moved out there and is looking for something between full and part time. They've got experience at one of the biggest names globally in our client market, and we're planning for them to kick off our US client coverage through acting as business developer and client relations in North America.
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That's excellent news, not just for you colleague but the expansion too :)

I've heard nothing back from the police job or the 5 other jobs I looked at, my problem is a lack of qualifications/experience on paper, in person I could probably do quite well in speaking to them about what I've done.

Rewritten the CV, applied for 3 more jobs within 20 miles, luckily I'm based between Stoke, Telford, Crewe and Shrewsbury so quite a few areas to look at. I've also found a job at Mullers which is a mile down the road, 2 new IT roles there. Probably above my experience level slightly but i'd be up and running within a couple of months. All jobs are between 40-60% pay increases for the same hours plus, lots of training in them with properly IT systems. Also helps that i know one of the head financial guys at Muller :D Also working through my MS Server training, but finding the time is a pita. I'm owed a few days holiday though so might book some time off to make a real dent in it.
 
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Man this couple of weeks.. ugh. Busy.

Contract work is busy... I've been assigned to deliver training on 4 different applications, which is fine but it's getting it all ready and working out what I'm set to deliver. I'm also managing two sets of migrations from one platform to another set to kick off 15th, finishing the 23rd. Which is funny as ****, since they haven't even told me whether I have a contract here in January, which is leaving me a ton of notice...
Hopefully I'll have something, as otherwise I'll be selling pulled pork road side. Which doesn't actually sound like such a bad thing really :p timing would be annoying mind.

emotuit is keeping me busy too; we've pushed out a fix for ASU and signed contracts (woo!), even though I wasn't happy with some of the wording on it about the data, it was going back and forth so much with the attorney it cost me a fortune. I now have to supply an insurance certificate for the company that meets all their MASSIVE list of requirements, so trying to get that sorted now too. But it's progress...
They're now testing the app in their staging environment, so again, progress.

We also pushed out the Zendesk widget to the dashboard, too, so people could send us support requests directly from it. Trying to simplify the whole support model process as we get more customers.
With that we pushed out the above video I shared, the intro.js tutorial feature this week too, so that's now in Prod.

Invoiced that client in South Africa too and he's all sorted and paid up. Not a lot, but that's something from him.

Pushing on with our next release, which will contain active tab functionality; understanding when a student has switched tabs and not on the learning management system anymore.
Then on to our internal dashboard, which I think will come at the beginning of Jan now anyway, but we're moving again.

We've been evaluating Dbs to use as well and narrowed it down to Cassandra or Couchbase with a Spark cluster and blob storage. Means we can store all the readings in the big HDFS dbs and then do predictive analytics with spark and reference baselines from user profiles which we can store in the blob storage. Means our algorithms should evolve for each user as data grows, which is our aim. Spun up a couchbase instance and have tickets for cassandra and spark to be done before next week too and we can come to a decision.

On top of all of this it's getting ready for Christmas and trying to apply for as many contracts as I can. Which is always a giggle.

*breathe*
 
Well, I applied for Mullers last night and have a couple of contacts there. It seems more IT/Asset tracking than helpdesk but the pay increase will make things so much easier, and quite frankly, I can't work for a company that is considering leasing desktop PC's from PC World....
 
Judgeneo said:
Passed that, had the face to face on Monday, and just got a call offering me the job :D

More pay and responsibility, closer to home and less hours.

Chuffed!
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Moving on again, the last job didn't really work out as I'd hoped it would. No ability to really use any of my technical knowledge, very little scope to actually push through the fixes to problems I identified, and I was shocked at how little some of my colleagues knew about what they were actually doing. I shouldn't have to explain how a subnet mask works to anyone out of basic training, amongst other things.

New company seems to have their heads more screwed on, but it does mean back to commuting daily.
 
Still no news from the latest interview. Frustrating when it takes this long to trickle through various levels of management!

Still, work are sending me to Frankfurt this week for 24hrs to sort some bits in our office there. Gives me a break from the mundane office :)
 
Well update for me

1 - Still no offical letter of redudency from my current employer, which is annoying as even my Line manager, his Manger and her Manager have told me that this Friday is my last day.

2 - Got 2 Rejections so far, little disheartening, but 2 out 26 is ok.

3 - Got through 1 face to face interview with a comapny, and tomorrow I meet 2 of the Owner's of the Company, 1 of whom I'll basically be a direct Report for. I'm a little nervous but I feel my technical skills are on par and I'm ready for it.
 
Have heard back. They loved me, were preparing the offer...then the job got pulled and it all fell through :(

What with this and wasting a day at the airport on cancelled flights. I'm going home.

**** Today
 
Phate said:
Have heard back. They loved me, were preparing the offer...then the job got pulled and it all fell through :(

What with this and wasting a day at the airport on cancelled flights. I'm going home.

**** Today
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But, if it comes up again chances are you'll be their first phone call to see if you're still interested!
 
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