This Business and Moment...

Start my new job next Tuesday. Never worked in a German speaking office before and bricking it ever so slightly, as every email and all my contractual documentation has been in German.
Even going to an office a couple of days a week will feel strange after 3 years of fully remote work I guess, without the language issue. I've also had to buy a new work wardrobe and think about commuting gear - I'm sure cycling to work will get old fast as winter approaches.

Since I handed my notice in, four other senior members of staff have done the same, which is about 20% of the workforce in our delivery centre :(
Lederhosen. That is all you need.
 
Start my new job next Tuesday. Never worked in a German speaking office before and bricking it ever so slightly, as every email and all my contractual documentation has been in German.
Even going to an office a couple of days a week will feel strange after 3 years of fully remote work I guess, without the language issue. I've also had to buy a new work wardrobe and think about commuting gear - I'm sure cycling to work will get old fast as winter approaches.

Since I handed my notice in, four other senior members of staff have done the same, which is about 20% of the workforce in our delivery centre :(

Nearly 4 years in the German part of Switzerland.
Worked for 2 German speaking companies out of the 4 jobs I had since moving here.
Had an German speaking girlfriend for 2 years.

And I am still struggling the learn this dame language! (never mind Swiss-German!)

Still good luck! Im sure you be fine :)
 
are we talking 2 hours on one train where you can fire up the laptop and get stuff done or is a more involved commute?
It's about 1.5hrs on the same train, I used to do emails or document reviews when I did this journey before. Or watch videos when I first started and had a more manageable workload. As I've said before, I don't particularly mind the act of commuting when everything is running to plan, the time away from home is bad but I'm OK with the actual commute.
It's annoying though, some of the carriages on this route are 5 seats wide rather than 4, which makes it pretty cramped when someone is sat next you, can't get your elbows out when typing etc. Or when there are delays it may be standing room only.
If you start talking terms I'd try and get some wording in the contract that states that the role is hybrid and requires 2 days a week and any changes require x months notice or similar.

I saw an interesting job but would have required full time in the office so I did a back of the napkin calc that once I include commute costs, extra child care, time missed with kids. I would want at least a 50% increase in total comp. Make sure you stick to your guns
When I took my first job in the City I did actually get over 50% increase in comp, it wouldn't be that much this time and compounded by the crazy marginal tax rate (although I'd probably offset with pension).

The more I'm thinking about it the less likely I think it is we'll come to an agreement. I hadn't really given it enough thought in the early discussions, so I'm going to look like a bit of a **** if they offer me the job and then I'm moving the goalposts too far compared to the initial discussions. Although I do have some ammunition there, they were pitching it as the employer is covering your travel cost but I've done the sums and it is nowhere close, their cap is too low even to cover 2 days a week (due to the rip off nature of 8 day flexi-season tickets that cost about 90% of the cost of an annual ticket), taxable benefit etc. I basically worked out that ~£10k of gross income will be lost purely on rail travel.
 
I basically worked out that ~£10k of gross income will be lost purely on rail travel.

That's pretty big, plus the 1.5 hours of your time each way, even if you do manage to get emails/document reviews done you're essentially working for free then - so incur even more losses overall - It'd have to be a raise after all those considerations for me personally.

In other news, got a high review score and a 9% raise which was unexpected, if not great when you take into account how much everything has gone up - but considering I expected nothing I'll not complain overmuch.
 
9% is pretty good assuming you don't have additional responsibilities and aren't underpaid to start with. Although inflation is 10%, average earning increases are a lot lower.
 
9% is pretty good assuming you don't have additional responsibilities and aren't underpaid to start with. Although inflation is 10%, average earning increases are a lot lower.

Yep no extra responsibilities, and considering we were told not to expect anything this year it was welcome. Definitely not underpaid either.
 
Yeah I think it's because a lot of internal recruiters started life as 'traditional' external recruiters so are hard-wired to ghost people when they consider them no longer to hold any immediate value. Very much playing the short game. What goes around comes around though, when I was a hiring manager I once had an approach from a recruiter that had previously done this when I was a candidate in the past (which they'd doubtless forgotten about). Conversely I still remember the name of a recruiter I spoke with about 15 years ago who gave me really good feedback following an unsuccessful interview, and they even reached out to me about 9 months later about another role, rather than the old "we'll keep you on file" AKA the bin.

I had one not long ago where it went radio silence before the final stage interview that was supposed to be scheduled in but never materialised and I basically predicted what had happened and said "is it something like this?", that they had another candidate that had gone through already and they were in negotiations with, so didn't want to shut me down until they got that signed, but equally didn't want to progress with my final interview unless it didn't work out with the other candidate. As a rule I'd say if more than 10 days passes between stages without any proper comms, it doesn't bode well. Although there are exceptions, I once applied for a job and was called for a first interview 6 weeks after applying, I'd moved house in between heh.
 
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I was recruited for the job I’m currently in back at the end of February, with the understanding that this was an 18 month contact. I’ve just been blind-sided in a meeting with top management types from the office that in fact, the team I’m part of will go in December, which is less than half the 18 months stated at the interview stage. Will be raising this with my supervisor in the morning, as I just felt so gob-smacked, that I was worried that if I did raise it at the end of the meeting, I’d lose my temper.

Feeling totally demoralised. I’d given up a position where I was on track for being promoted to be here, and I wouldn’t have done it for less than 12 months work. Feel like I’ve been misled.
 
I was recruited for the job I’m currently in back at the end of February, with the understanding that this was an 18 month contact. I’ve just been blind-sided in a meeting with top management types from the office that in fact, the team I’m part of will go in December, which is less than half the 18 months stated at the interview stage. Will be raising this with my supervisor in the morning, as I just felt so gob-smacked, that I was worried that if I did raise it at the end of the meeting, I’d lose my temper.

Feeling totally demoralised. I’d given up a position where I was on track for being promoted to be here, and I wouldn’t have done it for less than 12 months work. Feel like I’ve been misled
That's sucks. Sometimes a change doesn't pay off. When I left a long term job I had change jobs a few times before I got one that worked out.
 
I was recruited for the job I’m currently in back at the end of February, with the understanding that this was an 18 month contact. I’ve just been blind-sided in a meeting with top management types from the office that in fact, the team I’m part of will go in December, which is less than half the 18 months stated at the interview stage. Will be raising this with my supervisor in the morning, as I just felt so gob-smacked, that I was worried that if I did raise it at the end of the meeting, I’d lose my temper.

Feeling totally demoralised. I’d given up a position where I was on track for being promoted to be here, and I wouldn’t have done it for less than 12 months work. Feel like I’ve been misled.
Sometimes business plans (have to) change. When you were interviewed, the plans likely were what you understood to be true, but now they're different.

The grass isn't always greener on the other side, but it's how you make progress in your career and your compensation.
 
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As a further point, we had to do a massive exercise which involved going through all files on a specific drive to look for any compromised customer/supplier info. It was a horrific process consolidating loads of different files into one. Took about a week of my life at an already busy time.

We then had a list which we reported up to our head office, which made our group look massively worse than everyone else as our impact rate was fairly high. It then got to deadline day and a few other CFO's apparently asked the question whether anyone had included EFT/SEPA banking files because there were thousands and it'd take ages.

At this point we looked good on account as we'd actually been thorough and everyone else went into a panic!
 
As a further point, we had to do a massive exercise which involved going through all files on a specific drive to look for any compromised customer/supplier info. It was a horrific process consolidating loads of different files into one. Took about a week of my life at an already busy time.

We then had a list which we reported up to our head office, which made our group look massively worse than everyone else as our impact rate was fairly high. It then got to deadline day and a few other CFO's apparently asked the question whether anyone had included EFT/SEPA banking files because there were thousands and it'd take ages.

At this point we looked good on account as we'd actually been thorough and everyone else went into a panic!
Sounds like the time where you get roped in to do the job for others; and the others get rewarded for identifying a way through when time was about to be a mega crunch (i.e. by getting you to do it, lol).
 
So I'm not happy about the new role;
a) I report into an outside IR35 contractor on a day to day basis who has feedback into my performance review as a FTE.
b) The delivery organisation also is prodominately a contractor as interim-head of delivery
c) An incumbent third party consultancy has expanded it's base as my delivery organisation
d) The group in (c) and the head of the unit along with the contract head of delivery have discussions about the nature of the product but I'm not in the loop.
e) The long existing manager that was brought into the product family has been moved back to his old job.. the head of the unit is asking the encombant to provide a product family resource..
f) The team (including the incumbent contractors) aren't interacting to update their progress in jira.. except through the their delivery manager..
g) My day-to-day contract manager has been moved to a separate product, under the family and I've been pushed to pick up the pieces of the product family.
h) the unit doesn't really have a reason to exist.. other than sort some crap out but even the operating company who is delivering doesn't want us either (top down CIO down)..

The only thing that it keeping me from resigning is we have remortgage going through. Although that's approved.. it's scheduled to complete until later in the year so resigning isn't really on the books.

I've already lost it once.. and got everything refined and planned out.. now I'm going to have to lose it again about not managing their progress as was agreed.

May start putting the feelers out for a new role.. because this one seems terminal.
 
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Sounds pretty grim!

I'd say definitely look around. My hiring and onboarding experience for this new role (existing company and in fact my original manager who hired me in 2017)... Has just been awful. Not entirely the company's fault but ultimately, I was pressed to take the role and to start within 11 days, when I really needed 3-4 weeks to finish moving house.

As it stands I started 10 days ago, my last 4 weekends have been mad panics to pack our belongings, I've only been able to be in the workplace 2 days a week between bank holidays, leave and commitments to the existing London office. So my new starter is quite bored I think, but I am obviously now run down and have been ill for a week. It's just very hard to have much enthusiasm right now at work when I'm still getting to grips with the messy situations I've landed onto sorting out, plus being ill and honestly just prioritising my house move.

So the end result is that as soon as I've got any mental capacity back after moving, the first thing I'll be doing is looking for new roles. Sad but there we go.
 
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