This Business and Moment...

Martynt74 said:
Woohoo, after complaining i've finally got a new laptop. Unsure what the issue was with the old one, but it was just painfully slow. Taking ages between actions in Excel etc. Initially IT wouldn't replace as it's not due until March 2025 but after multiple back and forths the new one arrived yesterday :)

Forgot the pain of setting it up as there's quite a bit of software needed and we're responsible for that ourselves (small one off things like Excel Add-ins or VPN's managed by external entities).
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I remember my old IBM (pre-lenovo) Thinkpad.. it was perfect being a miniature laptop that could sit and work on an airline seat tray. It even had side bits so the screen that engaged when closed so the screen didn't break off if it was knocked. It lasted a while too on battery but over time it seemed to get slower and slower. The replacement was a Lenovo and didn't have the same magic even with it being faster.
 
blairw said:
That's what has delayed next weeks final stage so much... EMEA General Manager / SVP wants to be the final decision maker for some reason and he was on a long vacation... I have been sitting waiting for over 3 weeks now on the final stage.
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Well, verbal offer made and agreed on the role I want to take so that's a relief... just waiting on paperwork now (damn you bank holiday). I need to continue forward with the other interviews now though as I'm not cancelling until I put pen to paper which is annoying.
 
Interview next month for a Service Desk Manager role in my current organisation. Interview is for an hour and I have to give a presentation of what I'd like to do within 6 months. I've got five points with reasoning why and then some notes to ad-lib elaborate on. Some of the points are a continuation of work I'm currently doing where some are new territory for me.

It feels like a win win at the moment. They don't want me and I continue in my current role which I enjoy, or they do want me and I increase my salary by 14k.
 
Annual IT budget season continues at work - the current challenge is we need to find a way to make 27mio of demand fit into the 22mio of budget we expect to get.

Expectation is that our IT investment budget is flat for 2025 vs 2024, however we have 5mio of estimated new demand, and only 0.5mio rolling off - everything else is multi-year investment that still has another year or two to run.

This feels like a square peg and round hole exercise ...
 
rypt said:
Annual IT budget season continues at work - the current challenge is we need to find a way to make 27mio of demand fit into the 22mio of budget we expect to get.

Expectation is that our IT investment budget is flat for 2025 vs 2024, however we have 5mio of estimated new demand, and only 0.5mio rolling off - everything else is multi-year investment that still has another year or two to run.

This feels like a square peg and round hole exercise ...
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Ahh so just the usual.. and of that 22mio you'll get a 2mio haircut in February because they forgot to fund something important :D

My place was quibbling over 0.7m for a programme that is stabilising the operating companies that underpins everything for multiple companies - they're spending 30M/year operationally and 300M this year in lift & shift migration. Yet they didn't want to build FTE skills and wanted to simply 3rd party it then wonder why it's costing them an arm and a leg. Well at least they have finops attached to the 11 AWS orgs they have (you can run a group/company in one) it will prove eye watering.
 
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I did that once, kept getting called in on my days off due to it "being an emergency" only to find the managers dossing about playing Solitaire on their computer, etc. and basically couldn't be bothered to do their job. One day came in to find things actually were an emergency and just walked out, never went back. No other job to go to but there was also other stuff going on in my life where I was going to have to move back to where my parents lived anyhow so it was kind of an easy choice to make.
 
I'm at the stage in my life where I don't think I could go back to a 9-5 in any way.

I really don't care if I have to sell everything I own and **** off to a cheap cost of living country (I'm thinking about this anyway... I would like a base in Thailand) and just do what makes me happy.

I am certainly not ever going back to a corporate structure. If anything, I'll sell things to the ********, but I'm not living in it. Never again.
 
Dropped my laptop and pass back at HQ this morning.. Reception wouldn't take it and they wouldn't help contact anyone.. so I had to get the Strategic HR guy down to pick it up.

All good, we had a good natter, and from that a few interesting vibes:
* the CTO was the source and not my boss.. so that adds more to it being ITOM related and my boss seemed to be very much not part of it which makes me think he's being ****** over.
* my departure has supposedly gone down like a lead balloon internally..
* when the CTO met with him, he relayed my enthusiasm around the OHI report and it's corrective action.. which the guy knew precisely why lol.. given the report basically says the CTO office is in the lowest 25% and people actively recommend not joining the company :D

The security lady on the stiles kept giving me beaming smiles - the place is in suites and I'm in jeans and a white tshirt.

Well that's that chapter closed, we can now proceed to move on!

In other news I'm sleeping much better.
 
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randomshenans said:
I'm at the stage in my life where I don't think I could go back to a 9-5 in any way.

I really don't care if I have to sell everything I own and **** off to a cheap cost of living country (I'm thinking about this anyway... I would like a base in Thailand) and just do what makes me happy.

I am certainly not ever going back to a corporate structure. If anything, I'll sell things to the ********, but I'm not living in it. Never again.
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I never understood the fascination with moving into places such as Thailand, having been there myself.

Is it cheaper....!?! Yes! Better weather....Yes! Better women.....Depends if thats your type......Would I never move there.....absolutely not! :D

Those countries must be oversaturated by now.
 
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NickK said:
Dropped my laptop and pass back at HQ this morning.. Reception wouldn't take it and they wouldn't help contact anyone.. so I had to get the Strategic HR guy down to pick it up.

All good, we had a good natter, and from that a few interesting vibes:
* the CTO was the source and not my boss.. so that adds more to it being ITOM related and my boss seemed to be very much not part of it which makes me think he's being ****** over.
* my departure has supposedly gone down like a lead balloon internally..
* when the CTO met with him, he relayed my enthusiasm around the OHI report and it's corrective action.. which the guy knew precisely why lol.. given the report basically says the CTO office is in the lowest 25% and people actively recommend not joining the company :D

The security lady on the stiles kept giving me beaming smiles - the place is in suites and I'm in jeans and a white tshirt.

Well that's that chapter closed, we can now proceed to move on!

In other news I'm sleeping much better.
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Based on your Emmerdale style drama posts the last few weeks/months, I think it is for the best. You were behaving like a board member when you were in a senior manager role (aka do as your told and stfu). How did it end?
 
dlockers said:
Based on your Emmerdale style drama posts the last few weeks/months, I think it is for the best. You were behaving like a board member when you were in a senior manager role (aka do as your told and stfu). How did it end?
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More yes minister (although I detect a response to my “Pardon?” post) but I take your point - grow up. It’s more boredom and it got used as a "checkin".

However I agree - the change in the org underrolled as an exhibition of organisational behaviour. I have a very different value set. Time to reset the level.
 
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It's interesting that Hays has been showing a car crash of of an annual report, ~69% drop, and blaming the labour government policy. Secondary observations from social media point that Hays was leading the charge to drop rates with the lowest contract rate at 100/day, and that the workforce has simply avoided them due to the controversy.
 
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Still plugging away at many things over here.

Still on my notice, but of course, not sitting around doing nothing.

I've been building out the pharma shipping tool, which was something that I said that my employer should have built years ago, when I was on that project, but instead they went with a big company off the shelf but customized to their needs. Who then of course failed after spending 6m of their money.
It's all about who you know with these things, really, and I get on really well with someone who is responsible for getting such a product in front of the right people. In fact, he's on a bi weekly meeting with 15 big pharma companies, all talking about how to solve the problem of not having a product that solves their needs.

We've had a couple of sessions with him over summer and he's seen what we've built and said it's already better than what they have now (a 20yr old Lotus Notes solution that they just had to pay the 72yr old who made it, to deploy it to the US as they weren't compliant) and we're still plugging away getting the last bits done ready for a demo.

The thing is, we know what we're good at as well, and we also know what we're not good at! Coincidentally, the guy I'm building it with, his ex boss sold his company (where my mate still works) and now has no job. He contacted my mate and was like, you want to start something with me and my mate? (His mate is ex bank of international settlements and now global strategic accounts in Microsoft)

My mate is like, well, I've been working on something too... so we all sat down on friday and had a chat. These guys are seasoned in executing at scale, managing accounts, building companies in Switzerland and doing all the boring **** we don't like... it looks very much like we'll be spinning something up, where we have a group company that concentrates on finding problems in businesses, quickly validating them, and deciding what to do with that opportunity. Either it becomes a core product we promote, a separate company under us, an app we launch on the store or whatever... internal incubation if you like.

We're going to start with this product we're building, they're going to help us get it to the place it needs to be, and we'll then look at how best to deliver that as well as chucking things into test and validate.

Wasn't at all what I was expecting to come out of this meeting to be fair. I was open in saying I didn't want another "normal" job, so you wouldn't see me on site doing delivery for months. But yea, lets see where this one goes...
 
Broke ground last week with applications. I'd taken time to re-write my CV and changed the tone - it should be clear from the first page.

Had a BBQ at the weekend, three there were from the same company. One was drafted due to being a friend after getting booted from the bank after long service. They're Azure based rather than AWS but it was interesting to hear their experiences.

Sounds like you've got something you feel confident knowing market value with people that understand the process of going to market and investment.
 
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