This Business and Moment...

Freefaller said:
... I will say however, from a non professional, but purely human level, it's good for mental health to actually socialise a little.
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I recognize that for some people, their workplace is their main social network. It's never been for me; I have a great friendship and social network completely separate from work, and work was simply how I earned money so that I could live my life and provide for my family. Due to this, I have never needed to seek any sort of social "fulfillment" from my work colleagues. Coincidentally, I have pretty-much always worked in companies where none of my colleagues socialized with each other outside of (mandated / opt-in) work events.
 
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jon86 said:
I recognize that for some people, their workplace is their main social network. It's never been for me; work was simply how I earned money so that I could live my life and provide for my family. Due to this, I have never needed to seek any sort of social "fulfillment" from my work colleagues. Coincidentally, I have pretty-much always worked in companies where no one socialized with each other outside of (mandated / opt-in) work events.
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That's fair.

I mean I mainly socialise out of work as well, martial arts, sports, regular friends, my kid's friends parents etc...

That said I love my work and love just being around people, random or not. Not saying you're wrong or that I'm right - everyone is wired differently, I guess this being a more tech environment (forum) then it isn't surprising that there's a bias for being more remote.
 
jon86 said:
I recognize that for some people, their workplace is their main social network. It's never been for me; I have a great friendship and social network completely separate from work, and work was simply how I earned money so that I could live my life and provide for my family. Due to this, I have never needed to seek any sort of social "fulfillment" from my work colleagues. Coincidentally, I have pretty-much always worked in companies where none of my colleagues socialized with each other outside of (mandated / opt-in) work events.
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You realise both are possible though? I've never had a problem maintaining networks and friendships both inside and outside of work. I don't feel I "need" social fulfillment from work colleagues, I just enjoy it equally and see no need to draw hard lines between work and socialising.
 
Lopéz said:
You realise both are possible though? I've never had a problem maintaining networks and friendships both inside and outside of work. I don't feel I "need" social fulfillment from work colleagues, I just enjoy it equally and see no need to draw hard lines between work and socialising.
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I realise that both are possible, and I do have a few former colleagues who I've kept in contact with since leaving a shared employer that I'd consider to be my friends. I just find that, for me, it's rare to have work colleagues who I'd also consider to be my friends. Acquaintances, for sure, but not friends. To me, a friend is someone who I keep in contact with despite time apart, distance, leaving a shared employer, etc. Over a 16 year career, I can count the number of former colleagues that I have regularly kept in contact with on one hand.
 
Freefaller said:
That's fair.

I mean I mainly socialise out of work as well, martial arts, sports, regular friends, my kid's friends parents etc...

That said I love my work and love just being around people, random or not. Not saying you're wrong or that I'm right - everyone is wired differently, I guess this being a more tech environment (forum) then it isn't surprising that there's a bias for being more remote.
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I think people in tech might be more used to working remotely, and slotting into different projects and teams.

I also agree that everyone is different. A team that gets on well can be more productive. They could also be a pack of messers. But it's not a requirement.

My most enjoyable places I have worked have been with colleagues I've had a good rapport with. Stayed friends years after.

The worst places have been those with poor communication. That's been regardless of working remotely or not. In fact usually it's been in an office. Just dysfunctional people.
 
Freefaller said:
haha! Mackerel in the microwave is definitely not a way to make friends! :D

I mean it depends on your industry. I'm in the heavy civils and major projects sector, personalities, and human behaviours do play their part in this. Also personally, I feel remote-only creates a very isolated and sterile working environment. However, I've not known any different, 25 years of travelling and working in various offices and sites is a hard experience to break out of.

In my industry most people don't like to be remote and generally love to come into the office or on site - work doesn't get done otherwise! So it is industry specific. Also for me personally, I cannot forego the socialising that goes with being out of the house - it gives me energy! Those incidental conversations have added more value to my career than not. That said I'm also a very gregarious, vivacious and outgoing person so doing the opposite to my natural instincts makes me sad!

I'm not here to say "working in the office is a must and the best thing and anyone who doesn't is wrong" - not at all, I've never been in an industry that didn't need me to "go/look/see" to help solve problems or add value. I'm sure were I a programmer or someone that just did analytics etc... it would be different. I will say however, from a non professional, but purely human level, it's good for mental health to actually socialise a little.
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Why would work not get done if you weren't in the office.
 
Interesting to read the above. I'm very social in, and around, work both with customers and colleagues and fairly antisocial outside of it.
 
I'd get less work done in the office, as I'd have all the job justifiers asking me every 5 minutes how I'm getting on.

With customers if I'm doing multi-cloud design work, I absolutely want to be on-site with them and a whiteboard, no remote call gets anywhere close to what you can achieve in person. There's a time and a place for being in the office so to speak, and having it mandated to X days a week doesn't work unless there's a specific reason for it.
 
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My sons sales team has literally just disintegrated since a '3 days a week back in the office' mandate came in. There were 8 people in the team, now only two left, and one of those is currently looking around.
There seems to be quite a push to get people back into offices, even if they can just as easily work from home, but I also think there is quite a big push back against it.
 
NickK said:
So what happens at the end of the contract?

Sorry but unless it's contract role, then your 'perm' position in the company appears (from the obvious culture) that it's directly tied to work.. seems odd.
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I've worked somewhere like this before, where contract wins influence perm recruitment. Basically they expect to grow and win more business in future but also they may not have huge cash reserves to tide them over if there is a short term lack of business. Essentially with perm roles they need to be more wary of 'overcommitting'. They did make extensive use of contract resource to fuel their growth (a 'land grab' if you like) but were starting to get squeezed on margins (they had quite a lot of people billed out on a T&M basis) so needed to shift the balance more towards perms.
malachi said:
Compared to the UK where its six months. I prefer the six months... Lol.

It's three months where I am too. It's not long enough to pick up certain jobs.
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I find it really varied and doesn't have much correlation to the job. I think the longest probation period I've had was 4 months and that was in a job that paid about a sixth of what I earn now in a job with a 3 month probation. Then there was a job I had somewhere between the two with no probation period at all.
I'd agree that 3 months isn't long enough to pick up certain jobs but really if you hire someone you should have a view on their aptitude after 3 months, even if they still have a lot to learn.
Freefaller said:
I'm choosing to stay in a hotel as it's a 2hr drive to the office (so 4hrs in total), and frankly it's cheaper and of more value for me to stay over. I can stay in the office longer on the first day, go out for drinks with friends/colleagues, and can have a bit of a lie in and still get to the office by 8am or so. I could have course drive there and back twice a week and not do back to back days. Some weeks I may do that depending on how my week is going - my assistant knows my situation and preference so can help manage my diary accordingly. It's coming out of my own pocket if I do stay in a hotel.
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This is what I do if I have any social events. I'm about a 4.5hr round trip from the office and typically do 2 days a week in the office. A hotel often costs about the same as a day's train travel anyway (I'm not fussy if staying on my own).
What i've found later in life is that the majority of my socialising is done with work colleagues or friends and family in other towns, it's extremely rare nowadays I'll actually go out in my own town so going back into the City has some fringe benefits.
 
OspreyO said:
I've experienced both situations. Lately I've fallen out of love with socialising with work.
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Depends hugely on who you are working with. When I first started where I am now there was a group of ~30 of us who were part of a pretty active work social scene, most in their mid 20s and great people to be around. Around a dozen of us would regularly go clubbing, and other activities likes sports would be 20-30 strong group, there was almost always something being organised. Sadly most have left over the years and while I get on well with most of my current colleagues I have zero interest in socialising with most of them outside of what is necessary for work and the dynamic is completely different - there are small groups who do stuff outside of work together, but most of those already knew each other before working here and most people have little interest in colleagues having any part of their life outside of work. I actually find it quite a strange contrast.

HangTime said:
What i've found later in life is that the majority of my socialising is done with work colleagues or friends and family in other towns, it's extremely rare nowadays I'll actually go out in my own town so going back into the City has some fringe benefits.
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We had friends staying over the weekend and in conversation they mentioned when they move to a new area the first thing they like to do is find the local pub and network and bemoaning that people generally just don't do that any more like they used to.
 
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So the CTO pings me yesterday, well after sending through a meeting for financial guy to give an overview for original meeting tomorrow. Nothing like adding another slide deck to the workload. I did that slide deck and now I'm up early ready to assemble the next slide deck.
 
2 second interviews done yesterday, another later today and an interview for another role on Thursday. Waiting to hear back about a couple other interesting opportunities in the energy sector.

Still most excited about the role with the no-longer-a-start-up global company, even though it's a risk for sure it has the most opportunity I think compared to the others which are relatively silo'd and UK-centric. They've invited me in for a final interview with their UK staff (one who'd be under me, and the other who's leaving) later this week after meeting with their also relatively new CFO yesterday.

Does anyone else have experience working for a still loss-making company with ambitious growth plans? Did you regret it or did it pay off? I think the allure of being part of making something a success is quite attractive.
 
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A long time ago now, I was approached by a group of scientists to make a mobile game for them. After long delays getting the funding secured, and long delays with their legal department finally sorting out a contract with me, I eventually got started earlier this year. Hired a studio to make the art for me (I do programming and design), which was all supposed to be delivered in its finalised form by 30th June so I could get the game onto the Play Store by August 1st. They still haven't managed to get the completed artwork to me. It just seems to be one delay after another.

I am fuming.

Not only do I have to cap in hand to my clients apologising for not meeting our agreed timescale, I'm also stuck working on this when I should be getting onto other work.
 
Rroff said:
We had friends staying over the weekend and in conversation they mentioned when they move to a new area the first thing they like to do is find the local pub and network and bemoaning that people generally just don't do that any more like they used to.
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There's a couple of factors in play here I think. It depends a bit on personality, natural extroverts can probably just march into a pub and strike up conversations easily with people whereas that won't come so naturally to introverts. Then there's the fact that we can 'maintain' relationships remotely more easily than in the past via social media etc - go back 20+ years and you'd feel quite isolated in a new area going days/weeks without communicating with friends from elsewhere, whereas nowadays you get your daily photos of what someone did with their kids or had for dinner. It's a bit superficial but sometimes that's all people need. It even compounds the first point about local pub - you might be met with more cliques and/or people staring at their phones rather than actively looking to engage with new people. For example aside from perhaps nightclubs do people even go out 'on the pull' any more or are hookups all arranged online (yes I'm out of touch as been with my partner for 18 years, ironically we met in the pub!)?
 
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So a month into my new job I’m finding myself in a bit of a malaise. I feel I’m making good contributions in meetings, emails etc and can bring my experience to a lot of areas, getting stuck in to various conversations etc but I’m lacking a bit of focus for my desk time and struggling to actually produce tangible outputs. I’m naturally a detail person but I’ve mostly been operating on a more strategic and/or leadership level in recent years, and now I’m faced with needing to build out the detail on stuff myself without much direction. I’m getting easily distracted by things I come across not directly in my remit where I think I can add value, looking at things a bit more holistically whereas actually I’m going to be on the hook for some lower-level stuff that I’m struggling to progress. I wouldn’t say it’s “imposter syndrome” as I know I have the aptitude required, but I feel like sooner or later someone is going to say “OK HangTime you talk a good game, but where’s the outputs we need from you?!?”. I look at what I’ve physically produced in a month and its quite pathetic, really, albeit a fair chunk of time was taken for onboarding, relationship building etc.

This is partly procrastination on my part and partly a lack of direction – my boss is in another continent; the programme structures are very vague (my role spans multiple) and I don’t currently have a team around me although that should be coming soon. I’ve never really been faced with this situation before, I’ve either been out of the weeds or if I’m in the weeds I’ve had a much more specific set of goals to work towards, team members that need things from me etc, providing a natural structure to what I do each day. I’m in the office two days a week which to be honest is largely a waste of time aside from the random odd conversation with stakeholders that wouldn’t otherwise occur, and this org is much less mature than some places when it comes to use of chat software, it’s nearly all peer-to-peer rather than large channels so I’m out of the loop on some stuff. On a positive note people seem pretty good to work with, relatively easy going etc.

There’s a backdrop of unease too in that this organisation whilst definitely well intentioned seems to have lots of groups of people rushing around doing related stuff with an expectation it is all going to hang together but without the sort of governance I’ve typically experienced in large orgs. To use an analogy it’s like one set of people are building a railway track and another set of people are building a train with the intention of ultimately operating a railway line, but nobody is checking if the gauge matches. It doesn’t help that there’s numerous vendors involved on different SoWs, ambiguity on who should take decisions and a general mishmash of projects touching on the same things. I feel like we are at risk of spinning tyres and also end up cutting a lot of corners to demonstrate progress, hence compromising the original strategy. What I haven’t yet determined is whether this is the elephant in the room that everyone knows but not many are talking about, or if it’s simply because I’m new and don’t have visibility of all the machinations behind the scenes yet.

Writing this out has helped me self-reflect & conclude I probably need to just come back from holiday and roll my sleeves up, focus on my deliverables and let the big picture stuff naturally fall into place rather than worrying too much about it. It's definitely not the case that I dislike the org or job, more that I'm struggling to adapt to a different way of working.
 
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