This Business and Moment...

[Noxia]

I said in here before about wanting to try my hand at a devops role, well it looks like it could happen now thanks to some very helpful colleagues. I am currently doing some shadowing to see what area I like, and then a secondment will be arranged and providing I like it (and can do I guess) then we would look to change my role. One of the few perks of public sector work is the ability to dip your toe into different areas.
I think my background with digital delivery will be beneficial as I know how I'd be expected to interact with delivery managers and product owners. I've always felt I was capable of more (not disparaging the DM and PO roles at all) but put up my own mental blockers that stopped me ever really pursuing a different path. The good thing is that if I decide its not for me, or I'm not good enough then I have the project management or delivery manager roles to fall back on. So very little risk to reward ratio.

Edit: Just to add some context, I have been tinkering with programming since about 1998. I just never stuck with it but have picked up a very broad knowledge of principles, theory etc etc, as well as done a fair bit of cyber tinkering. It's not like I've never written a line of code before and suddenly said I want to program.

 

[rypt]

Make sure any offer you get includes green card sponsorship from day one even if you have to pay back the fees if you leave. The sooner you get it the easier it is to settle in without worrying about being kicked out of the country at your bosses whim

Forgot to reply to thank you for the advice

Will definitely ask this question if/when it gets to the HR/external council stage. Definitely makes sense to push for green card straight away if possible.

 

[randomshenans]

Had my first 1:1 yesterday since the news of my departure and my boss was talking documentation and sorting out the confluence in a way that it was best places bla bla which was my task to get done. I did it in 5mins while she was talking.

Then she asked if I wanted to take on more work and I couldn't help but burst out laughing. Then apologised and said, no, of course I don't? I said I would want to do everything properly if I did anything, but I am as you can imagine, just not motivated to do that so I'd rather just not. She was like yea, totally get it. I also said I'd rather punch myself in the face than work for Hannes the problematic German with little man syndrome. I mean, I left the last bit out

So looks like I can do as I please now! Which is nice.

I'm off to book a trip to Japan next month while these ******* still pay me

 

[rypt]

Have a formal interview for the role scheduled for mid-May.

From what I gathered from others... I'm the only real viable candidate.
There is also a fear within management that they might lose me if they give the role to someone else.

Had formal first round interview yesterday (I was the first one to be interviewed) - and I'm through to the 2nd round (which is likely the final round).

Only 3 questions asked by my global manager (for whom I've already worked for the past 7 years!)

My rumour mill has completely dried up, but I'm going to take the above as a positive sign.

 

[NickK]

Trying to herd cats and the org (a) does but doesn't want product (b) may or may not finance (c) wants to work a new way (Shape Up) but go silent without an answer to the question of how do we tell people when things are coming if they only do the bits they like. I don't mind working in anyway.. only issue is I'm one that is having to document it and justify it. A little sick of being the one on the hook but being allowed to be ignored by peers by senior management.

I think it's time to start looking for a new role, new we've saved the company bacon twice, we're being left to rot rather than mature (there's 5 FTE and all vendor and have explicitly been told that we can't hire more FTE). It has all the classic signs of build and dump. It's no longer the solution for the burning fires. It also speaks of being a political direction driven product/portfolio as it can't stand on it's own two feet.

I think the next stage would be the forward momentum of a product portfolio.. however it's hard todo that when financial team should have their sanity questioned.. but everyone is scared of them.

 

[NickK]

you know when everything bypasses you, you’re waved as a oversight function and there’s no new work in the eyes of the CEO that.. as a product person you’d better start looking for a new job..

 

[dowie]

you know when everything bypasses you, you’re waved as a oversight function and there’s no new work in the eyes of the CEO that.. as a product person you’d better start looking for a new job..

It seems like you've had issues with this job from the start tbh. I'd deffo look to jump ship.

 

[NickK]

It seems like you've had issues with this job from the start tbh. I'd deffo look to jump ship.

I think the issue was that 2 weeks after joining the CIO got the boot.. and the org decided to do a 180 and rather than centralise, after 4 years, switch to completely decentralise. There's a lot of politics and (rightly so) annoyed executives.

 

[rypt]

Had formal first round interview yesterday (I was the first one to be interviewed) - and I'm through to the 2nd round (which is likely the final round).

Only 3 questions asked by my global manager (for whom I've already worked for the past 7 years!)

My rumour mill has completely dried up, but I'm going to take the above as a positive sign.

Interestingly - they've opened up a job rec for what looks like to be my replacement

Certainly starting to feel like I might get the role to run the US team

 

[jaybee]

Right Monday morning rants from me.

1: People (typically PMs) that ask you to fill in a rubbish excel sheet they've made so they can see everyone's upcoming holiday/absences.
2: People (typically PMs and other managers) that passively aggressively bully you into booking annual leave up "early" or "in good time" so they can do all their planning "for the year".
3: People (typically PMs and other managers) that get you to do the same as in 1, but by booking your leave as an additional appointment on yet another outlook calendar which loads of people are all added to (without being asked).
4: People that abide to 3 which causes your own calendar in outlook to fill up with about 20 other people's annual leave so that you are all "aware" of other people's leave.

What ever happened to just putting your own leave in your own calendar and people can check as and when they need to? All calendars are open anyway ffs.

Stupid, stupid, stupid waste of time and tools.

I might start booking time out of my calendar named "filling in other calendars".

 

[sidimmu]

Right Monday morning rants from me.

1: People (typically PMs) that ask you to fill in a rubbish excel sheet they've made so they can see everyone's upcoming holiday/absences.
2: People (typically PMs and other managers) that passively aggressively bully you into booking annual leave up "early" or "in good time" so they can do all their planning "for the year".
3: People (typically PMs and other managers) that get you to do the same as in 1, but by booking your leave as an additional appointment on yet another outlook calendar which loads of people are all added to (without being asked).
4: People that abide to 3 which causes your own calendar in outlook to fill up with about 20 other people's annual leave so that you are all "aware" of other people's leave.

What ever happened to just putting your own leave in your own calendar and people can check as and when they need to? All calendars are open anyway ffs.

Stupid, stupid, stupid waste of time and tools.

I might start booking time out of my calendar named "filling in other calendars".

So by looks of things, you can book holidays for others if its just on sheets and not controlled through a system.
Why not just book holiday for others to drill the point that their current system is not up to scratch.

 

[jaybee]

So by looks of things, you can book holidays for others if its just on sheets and not controlled through a system.
Why not just book holiday for others to drill the point that their current system is not up to scratch.

We have a HR system where you book your holiday. Only you can access your own profile and make requests. Your boss can then go into their account and approve/decline requests etc. This system has zero integration with outlook, so you are meant to go into outlook and also put it in your own calendar there as well. I mean...if you cba.

Then say you are actively participating in 3 or 4 projects or pieces of work. There might be a combination of excel spreadsheets and other outlook calendars to fill in. What I think we are meant to do on some of them, is book annual leave in our own calendar, but on the resources/to list, we are meant to add an outlook group called say "Project X".
Then everyone added to "Project X" outlook group (which will have been done without you asking) gets a stupid holiday notification request in their own calendar as well. I can't even remember what happens if you click decline. I think it just means you don't get your calendar fill up with their holiday requests.
The whole thing is just dumb.

 

[OspreyO]

We have a personal HR leave system and a Dept one. The Dept one is open so you can plan around each other. Works well enough. Except when people don't fill in the Dept one. Which, hands up, I often forget to fill in.

 

[dlockers]

Right Monday morning rants from me.

1: People (typically PMs) that ask you to fill in a rubbish excel sheet they've made so they can see everyone's upcoming holiday/absences.
2: People (typically PMs and other managers) that passively aggressively bully you into booking annual leave up "early" or "in good time" so they can do all their planning "for the year".
3: People (typically PMs and other managers) that get you to do the same as in 1, but by booking your leave as an additional appointment on yet another outlook calendar which loads of people are all added to (without being asked).
4: People that abide to 3 which causes your own calendar in outlook to fill up with about 20 other people's annual leave so that you are all "aware" of other people's leave.

What ever happened to just putting your own leave in your own calendar and people can check as and when they need to? All calendars are open anyway ffs.

Stupid, stupid, stupid waste of time and tools.

I might start booking time out of my calendar named "filling in other calendars".

You know you can just ignore the people you don't care abouts leave right? Decline the invite and it'll disappear?

 

[ChrisD.]

You know you can just ignore the people you don't care abouts leave right? Decline the invite and it'll disappear?

Are you one of those annoying PMs he's referring to?

 

[HangTime]

Yeah but that's just another piece of admin. It's one of my bugbears that annoys me more than it should, I know it only takes 10s to reject the invite and there are bigger issues, but it still grates because it's so unnecessary. The biggest ****s are the ones that don't even change the outlook invite off default settings, so it makes my calendar show as tentative until I decline the invite, rather than free. Like, if someone wants a meeting with me before I've declined it, I don't want them to have to manually look at the entries and figure out that I'm probably not going to off to Majorca with Carol from Accounts, and could make that timeslot.

In general, this topic (multiple calendars) is a really annoying problem to have in the modern day and age, it's a problem that should've been solved in a generic way. I've seen it many times especially when you are eg working for a consultancy that then has a end client, that then has multiple projects, so you've got four different calendars, plus your HR holiday booking system, plus internal timesheets, plus client timesheets, plus plus plus blah blah blah. People insist on their own special leave calendar rather than just having an integrated system and due to matrix structures that means many different versions of the same thing, all with different formats so you can't even copy paste half the time. My greatest achievement at a previous employer was arguably persuading them to just have a master that people maintain (the official system) and then propagate to different 'views' depending on specific needs so you didn't have to enter things multiple times and manually keep it in sync. Luckily, they are a specialist Data consultancy so I wasn't banging my head against a brick wall, they actually 'got it' in terms of the benefits of not having 57 different variants of the same thing if they could be consolidated.

 

[jaybee]

Yeah but that's just another piece of admin. It's one of my bugbears that annoys me more than it should, I know it only takes 10s to reject the invite and there are bigger issues, but it still grates because it's so unnecessary. The biggest ****s are the ones that don't even change the outlook invite off default settings, so it makes my calendar show as tentative until I decline the invite, rather than free. Like, if someone wants a meeting with me before I've declined it, I don't want them to have to manually look at the entries and figure out that I'm probably not going to off to Majorca with Carol from Accounts, and could make that timeslot.

In general, this topic (multiple calendars) is a really annoying problem to have in the modern day and age, it's a problem that should've been solved in a generic way. I've seen it many times especially when you are eg working for a consultancy that then has a end client, that then has multiple projects, so you've got four different calendars, plus your HR holiday booking system, plus internal timesheets, plus client timesheets, plus plus plus blah blah blah. People insist on their own special leave calendar rather than just having an integrated system and due to matrix structures that means many different versions of the same thing, all with different formats so you can't even copy paste half the time.

Exactly! 2024 and we're doing things like this just seems insane.

My greatest achievement at a previous employer was arguably persuading them to just have a master that people maintain (the official system) and then propagate to different 'views' depending on specific needs so you didn't have to enter things multiple times and manually keep it in sync.

Shut up and take my money.

 

[dlockers]

Are you one of those annoying PMs he's referring to?

Haha nawh but I am the opposite to all in here it seems. I tell people I am out and tbh, have never updated the master system in my life - because no one checks it, and I live in Outlook anyway (where the fact they are OOO is useful to know).

 

[jaybee]

How do you guys cope with delusional managers that are so focussed on objectives, that they won't allow you to perform BAU duties and general housekeeping tasks to the point where if they are not done, bad things will occur?

Example:

Objectives for Q1:
1: Do new thing X because it aligns with the company goals
2: Do new thing Y because it aligns with the new CTO's obsession with AI
3: Do new thing Z because we need to deliver this new feature for our customers

Reality:
Spend the entire Q1 and most of Q2 tidying up old **** and decommissioning old legacy on prem servers, simplifying a load of code/processes, making it more reliable and run 4 times faster just to keep every day workflows running as they should.


Review time comes:

Boss: "So I can see you made some progress with objectives but most are just not achieved"
You: "Yeah because I was doing other stuff that needed to be done."
etc

 

[rypt]

How do you guys cope with delusional managers

I don't let my current manager set my objectives - instead I set them, as I know better