This Business and Moment...

[randomshenans]

I would hate to be back in the office full time again. It just suits my logistics way better. I am alone at home every other week, but I am just making sure that I arrange things with mates, which is much more fun than interacting with work people anyway haha

One of the highlights from Covid as remote working is written into my new contract.

100% this. I'm seeing waaaaay more on this as well for roles I'm being approached about. Spoke to 2 people this morning. One company is Singaporean but role is remote. One is Kenyan, but the role is remote. Both asked if I could potentially travel a couple of weeks a year to site? Yea, sure I can work with that. Never would have been this flexible pre covid at all.

 

[randomshenans]

I do miss my audio books from the train commute though.

I read kindle books while riding on the bike trainer at lunch, so at least it's more productive and kills two birds

 

[randomshenans]

Listen, show offs, not all of us have time to work on our physique.

dude I eat more I train, it's always more for my sanity than it is my body hahaha damage limitation

 

[randomshenans]

• A lot of people seem to take out trials and then not actually do anything beyond signing up.

What do you do in terms of product analytics? Do you understand your customer journey within the app? Where they go,what they do etc? This is very useful to be able to be able to bunch users into cohorts, which helps you understand what the behaviours are of the one who pay most vs. ones who don't and allows you to do use different marketing approaches for each.

• Mobile phone use seems to be about 90%. Tablets 7% and laptops/desktops the other 3%. Some users have never seen our website on a laptop/desktop

One thing I really missed was app store optimization at the start. How do you rank on the keywords you're targeting there? I relied a lot on web but completely missed that 90% of people now see if there is an app for something!

Congrats man, it's great to see it moving like it is. Really loving it! Keep us posted

 

[randomshenans]

I'm not particuarly unhappy but equally not particularly happy. It is more a feeling of restlessness. I've been told that I have a good future at my current firm but it feels like there will be no progression without other managers retiring first. Galling point is that a job spec was put out for a role more junior than mine with a salary bracket which covered my own.

Have you simply confronted your management about this? That would be a start if you're not actually unhappy with what you're doing?

 

[randomshenans]

The pay matter is simply the pebble that has started the avalanche. Looking at some of the jobs which I have interviews for I am looking at nearly a 50% pay rise so I am not entirely confident that my current firm could counter. Added to that a payrise would mitigate some of the grievance, I am not sure it would help with my general milaise and the progression.

That's fair enough then. Always get the best progression moving, sadly!

As for jobs, I'd definitely use Linkedin over Reed! Loads of really good jobs on there.

 

[randomshenans]

for another place that again was them approaching me rather than the other way round

The two I'm talking to at the moment have all been linkedin and both approached me about the job through linkedin!

 

[randomshenans]

Remember Monster? Jesus that was a spread by numbers job that. Quality was low.

 

[randomshenans]

Anyone ever made such a move or knows people that have? What's it like actually working/living out there? Maybe it's just new year back to work restlessness...

What do you have to lose? Don't like it, come back?

 

[randomshenans]

The only real loss is that the AUD is quite weak at the moment, so in GBP terms I'd be taking a ~£10k pay cut in all likelihood.

Only matters if you're in the Uk though. If you're over there why does the comparison / exchange make a difference? You can rent out your flat. That stays in GBP. I compared exchanges for a while but you soon realise it makes **** all difference as you don't live in England anymore.

 

[randomshenans]

We'd already removed our normal phones for headsets.

Same as us.

I like being at home as I've said before. I have to pick up my daughter from school at 15:45 and will do so. I can equally do that and transfer any meeting I'm in on teams, to my mobile and continue it there. I can jump on the bike in the house at lunchtime, get far more exercise at home than I did going to the office. I just find the structure better for me. We have offices all over anyway, so most meetings even if I was in the offiice, were on headsets as said above. I had more coffee breaks at the office and yes, the benefit of that chat was often work stuff that helped things, and haven't found a way to get teams to fill that gap. Yet the rest far outweighs it from my side of things.

 

[randomshenans]

If I have to pick up one of the kids sick from school. Now its a 15 min round job. Previously that would be me out of the office for half a day. Wait for a plumber? Collect the car from the mechanic. All massive chunks of time.

100% this for me.

I had a job interview yesterday. No idea how it went, it was a nice chat though. We just casually chatted about stuff together so will see what they and if it goes to the next round. Not sure I want it, I'll see how the other chats go if they do!

 

[randomshenans]

Didn't pan out in the end, they walked back a little from the offer they made on Friday and demoted the role from 'head of' to 'manager' which was just too much of a hit on bonus / CV optics to make the offer viable long term. Short term its a hell of a payday I'm passing up, but long term the new job is the sensible play.

The fact that they went back like that, shows you that the experience of the past and how the empty promises didn't materialise, that they're just not trustworthy and the new role is the best play.

 

[randomshenans]

No formal conversation, just basically "This is now required of your role, do it."

Unless it's in your contract it's a change of contract surely?

 

[randomshenans]

Ah man what a mission of a morning. Harper woke up with a headache complaining she had been sleeping badly. I was like hmmm she was a contact case on Monday so tested and was negative, tested this morning, positive. I was negative but one of her brothers is positive too. So then had to go get them all PCRs as well. Mission! I have had such a busy week at work, but it's been very productive. I feel OK at the moment, a bit heady but OK. Hopefully it'll just skirt past but just a pain in everyone's neck we could do without.

I've got a bit more ballsy at work at the moment. Just think, you got me here to do a job, so I'm going to do it. I don't care about anything else and all the political BS. Just get the right people to agree and make it happen. Done. Which has led to some actual good progress being made in January but man it's shown how much work I have on. I need more people really. The guy who covers the services side has a team of 4 and yet everything is already done. I have just me and it's all to do and to define, then to manage? It's madness, but hey. Deal with that as it comes.

How's everyone's new year started?

 

[randomshenans]

My new year started as it usually does, with working out the bonus pool. Thankfully, the bonus apportioning to the teams I run has been a lot less stressful this year. Previous years I found it very stressful indeed, but the company has been performing well, so the pool is up quite a bit and I've been able to reward people appropriately for a change.

I'll look forward to receiving my email with regards to this. Thank you kindly.

 

[randomshenans]

Yes @Freefaller my Mum on the lead up to retirement did a lot on salary sacrifice to reduce her tax liabilities into the higher tax bracket by pushing it into her pension and the company allowed her to do it no problem! HR should certainly be able to sort this all out for you

 

[randomshenans]

Ta I just wanted to make sure this was a "normal" thing to do - apologies if it came across as a bit of a "show off" post. I just didn't want to have egg on my face by asking this sort of thing.

Don't apologise! Just show off your gucci belt to us all!

 

[randomshenans]

I swear there was someone else on here that had the same thing happen to them as well! Sneaky buggers those HMRC folk!

 

[randomshenans]

Back at work today after taking last week off having COIVD. I love coming into a 400+ email backlog and a week of ****. I don't think I like this 9-5 rap game.