This Business and Moment...

I'm in that awkward phase at work of waiting to hear I have no job and they have removed all responsibilities from me, which is great haha

In this time though, my boss is obviously trying to find places I can provide some value so dropped me into our portfolio management team. The person managing the team currently is doing so 50% of the time and in her words "they need help in focus and prioritization" because they are all over the place. It's still objective setting time (lol we're ******* in Q2 ffs) for the team, so was asked to go and sort that out with them.
Issue is, the little german fella running the team is a bit controlling and seems to think I'm there to use as an extra resource to do things he doesn't want to.

Since I give zero *****, I was like no mate, this isn't what I'm here for. You asked me to do something I don't agree with and I was asked to help with focus and this isn't doing that, in fact I think it's the opposite.

I brought the two of them together and was like, you need to talk and work out what you really want me to do. Grow some balls.

I simply cannot be ****** with any of this utter BS that people waste all this time on.
 
randomshenans said:
I brought the two of them together and was like, you need to talk and work out what you really want me to do. Grow some balls.
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Might have escalated this one a little bit today...

Spoke to my boss, she was like "I was hoping you guys could work together, not him tell you what to do..." I was like yea, he can't do that he's got issues and then laid out all my experiences working with him and also shadowing their team the last 4 weeks. He's an insecure man who is controlling and gatekeeps information to try and stay relevant and powerful, when he's nothing but a useless, spineless **** who treats his team mates like ****.
I said it much nicer.
Turns out, one of the 2 other team mates reached out to me and told me he has been to HR and is currently in a whole process with them about not being able to work with him, too. The other team mate also told me she felt he was holding information back and not managing properly. It's so ****** it's beautiful... purely because it's not my team, I'm getting notice next week, so I can say it how it is and **** the politics.

I had a team meeting with them and tried to take him, the manager, through the work I did and he refused to listen and said we'd do it today in our leadership meeting.
Come to today's meeting I asked him about the work I did and he said he scanned through it but didn't have a chance to go through it properly and he'll just redo it from scratch. I called him out and said he should have maybe looked at it, would have saved him time. Turns out I checked the analytics and he didn't even open it. So I sent an email saying he was controlling, abrasive, incapable of listening to those around him and I refused to work with him in any capacity. Which CC'd my boss.

He's the Director for Portfolio management. His 2 direct reports are Ass. Directors, as am I and his boss is the Exec Dir of operations. He's not some low level manager, but this guy is a total lemon. He has complete small man syndrome and is so insecure, he has to be, which is why he tries to gatekeep and control everything.

Had a long ass meeting with my boss and documented all my feedback on paper and it was well received, or so she said. Turns out they had an HR meeting today about him as well so I'm sure this lot came at a BEAUTIFUL time for the whole thing.

If I can do anything before they get rid of me, I'll clear out some of the **** toxic behaviour, as long as they actually take action... not sure anyone has the spine to do that though.

/essay out
 
HangTime said:
And for the first time in my career if push came to shove I don't feel like I could just walk straight out of the door into another perm role paying the same or better money, there aren't a huge number of those around in the current market.
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I suppose good time to at least explore and have conversations. That's what I'd probably do in that position.
 
randomshenans said:
If I can do anything before they get rid of me, I'll clear out some of the **** toxic behaviour, as long as they actually take action... not sure anyone has the spine to do that though.
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Well after I sent him an email telling him to take a long hard look at himself to understand why he behaves in the way he does, it ended up in me having a frank discussion with him. I half feel for the guy. He's working 50% on this role and 50% on another (because corp fun of not yet finding his replacement) but no one ends up doing 50% of each and he's pulled between both. I told him I empathised, but in this situation his approach was going to end up with him failing both, burning out and everyone in his team failing too.
I said that he had good people there willing to help, but he needs to let up the control and trust those around him to help and it won't go against him in any way.
He lightened up a lot during the conversation and I could tell he wasn't intentionally being a nob, he just is a bit out of his depth and doesn't know how to have his own boundaries, so then passes on that to his people.

So now I'm going to see how I can help him structure things in his space a bit better to help him be more successful, which is fine, but means I will have to actually do a bit more work :cry:
 
Got the email yesterday that 13:30 today is D day on my "future at the company" as they put it :D

This **** is so long. I just want to mess around going on the most ridiculous of adventures, the whole process is such a mental drain.

I'll update the outcome, although I'm almost certain what it'll be. It would be comical if it wasn't, because I don't know how I'd react in that situation lol
 
randomshenans said:
I'll update the outcome, although I'm almost certain what it'll be. It would be comical if it wasn't, because I don't know how I'd react in that situation lol
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It is DONE!

End of Feb 2025 will be my last day. 10months of getting paid and doing **** all :D I've already planned my transition because I knew it was coming, so this first 4 months of trying to make me still work will be me not working and then it's 6 months of fully being off!
 
blairw said:
6 months of gardening leave??
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Yea, which is nice. And I have 25days of holiday I won't take... and I'll get bonus for 2024 (paid out next year before I leave) and severance of possibly 30k? Not been there long enough as a full time employee to get the most of the 20yr plus some people get I know.

But hey, I'll make the most of this time and go do other things
 
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 :D

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 :cry:
 
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.
 
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...
 
radderfire said:
Dropping 6M and getting nothing is shocking. This would have been enough to build it in house.
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haha yea, it really is... they strung them out 3yrs for that, too. Stupid thing with them, is that they always choose to "buy" because they think it will be more scalable and less technical debt, but really they're just idiots.

We're building it on a MS power apps base tbf. Which allows us to easily integrate with all their stuff and generate customs documents needed, based on whatever material type they are shipping. It's a really nice solution we've created to be fair. Also means you can easily deploy it to all people as well and even run it through everyone's Teams if needed.

Meeting my old recruitment agency again soon, too. Met with one of the owners last week and they want to do some stuff better than keyword searching and I was like oo I think we could build something really interesting for that. So that's coming up, too. We'll chuck something like that into the mix.

Over beers we also chatted about a really simple solution for product management. As simple as like a trello in terms of it's usability and simplicity, but covers things like capacity / resource / skill management, so you can see what things you'd lack / need / etc by moving resources around in product teams, or deciding to do X thing over Y.
Their background is building project management solutions, but these days there is so much product stuff, and the one who sold his company can't release a project management product until Dec 2025, but nothing about product related ones ha

I have a ton of stuff being juggled at the moment, but as long as I can do it all while I'm on the move and wherever I am at that time, I really don't mind. I love this stuff.
 
After nearly knocking out this one in a couple of days, I decided to knock out another.

image.png


I am not sure if I'll get the chance to make it this week, because arctic trip prep, but when I'm back I'll do it.

Then I'll have itscheaper.in and itsavailable.in :p

Not massive monetization ops really, but fun projects nonetheless and practice. I'll use VPN affiliates to monetize in some way for both.
 
I've been having fun playing with ideas!

Got back from Arctic Trek, which was absolutely epic. Tiring, but so amazing. But while being away, it just fueled me to come back and do a ton of stuff :D so that's what I'm doing...

Here's a quick breakdown of how I fill my time :cry:

It's Cheaper In - A site that tells you, based on your subscriptions, which countries you can get it cheaper in.
https://itscheaper.in
This is functional now, just need to add some guides to it and a bit of a user flow and push it live. I'll have that knocked out by end of next week. Monetization is essentially guides to tell you how to sign up for each service in other countries, with affiliate links, too. Small fun project, small effort to get it done. Most of it was me, a non dev on chatgpt.


It's Available In - if your fav show is removed from Netflix in your country, this site just tells you where you can watch your shows, which country. Another VPN pusher, essentially. Maybe if they're popular as sites, I'll see if a VPN company wants to buy them :cry:
https://itsavailable.in
Started this yesterday, took the below video. Just need to return the results back, tidy up a few things (mobile, responsive, logo change etc.) Then it's done and will be live. Should be live by the weekend. Will post on reddit and that. Like I said, a fun one and I have spent less than a day on it.


The Ultimate Directory - A directory of products, spanning all departments; sales, marketing, finance, eng, HR, business systems etc etc. that helps you truly compare which product is right for your needs at which point of your company size and growth. Not just comparing features but to be able to compare costs over time, users, projected growth etc.
output-2.png

What might be a good shout for your business at the start can add a hell of a lot of operational costs in a short space. Making sure people can pick the right products and also know what it will be like to migrate from that product to another.
What's more, as a company you can not only track all your internal tools you use as a company, but if you are a product company, you can set alerts for all updates in your space. New pricing from a company? New features? New product released? You get access to that competitor data to help you see what people are using, what's new, how they should use that to build better products.
https://theultimate.directory
Doing functional wireframing at the moment to make sure that I cater for all the user journeys I need and then can start to make them a bit more designed and functional and will at least start to build out the site myself from a front end point of view and then can start to look at making it functional. Think I'll get my mate to help me with this haha
I really like this idea. The way I am building it is really unique and monetization is cool on it as well. You can pick from both sides as there is value on both sides.


Pharmalogiks - Enterprise Shipping product for pharmaceuticals and biotech companies. Product is decent now. Waiting on our man in industry and contact to line up some meetings with GSK to start some sale talks. Really love the product, it's far better than anything that anyone has in this space.
https://pharmalogiks.com - LIVE
This will need a team to execute on. It's not small. But we're teaming up with some other guys (Big Microsoft guy & a guy who recently exited his company here in switzerland) to scale when needed and deliver it.


PeakFolio - Another one that would be delivered with the above guys. The elevator pitch is: “Imagine a tool that pulls all your team’s data from different platforms into one place, where you can see how any decision—like reallocating resources or adjusting budgets—will impact everything else. Peakfolio lets you drag-and-drop changes, visualize scenarios, and make proactive decisions with AI insights, so you can see the big picture instantly. It’s built for product and portfolio managers who want to get ahead of issues, strategize smarter, and drive real impact—all without the hassle of managing tons of separate reports or spreadsheets.”
Might well be speaking at a conference in Barcelona in Jan for leaders in portfolio management about leveraging AI for decision making in portfolio management. Will aim to have some outline prototype designs just in case, but won't focus on a sales approach, more the AI and data side, but could be a great way to validate the solution.


Bespoke Sky - AI document generation for Aviation compliance. We've built a system that allows users to automate repeatable tasks, such as test plans. It will allow them to generate a test plan, or review a test plan, as well as other processes that they do many times but takes them a lot of their time to do. Fully custom LLM based on specific compliance documents.
https://bespokesky.com
Mate who works at one of these companies is very slow, so trying to manage him while he has a massive workload, to help us get into where we need. It's a bit painfully slow though. My effort on this right now, other than trying to get the info we need, is small.


LearnShift Solutions - I had a friend come to me, who has to take a ton of compliance aviation training (aviation big around here) every year, but the people who offer it are old school. It's super niche. So it's all in person. Guy was like, haven't had time to think about making it an online course. My mate was like could we do this for them? Take 30% of rev from each course sold? They're 3500EUR courses, and they have more demand than they can take a month. I've set up many LMSs before, have all the recording equipment thanks to YouTube, so was like do it. Meeting him soon to discuss flying out to meet the guy.
https://coursecreat.ing - LIVE

Cheezus - Not forgotten it at all. I have this redesign I want doing. I had a guy who was going to do it and ghosted me, so took me back to square one. I'm chatting with a few people this week about plans to release the new version on that which should reduce operating costs and mean it's super easy to keep running as well as being so much more valuable to users. The other cheese app stopped operating, so I still get a fair number of downloads weekly, so I should capitalize on it.
cheezus.co

Cheezus - The Vivino for Cheese

Welcome to Cheezus, the app that puts a cheese monger in your pocket! Whether you're a cheese lover or a producer, our app makes it easy to discover new cheeses and pairings, and connect with new customers. With Cheezus, you can search for specific cheeses or browse our database for new...
cheezus.co cheezus.co

Other -
  • I have a mate who runs a construction business and bought a bank monitoring company, all their process is manual at the moment and could be far more efficient and higher throughput if it was automated with a solution. He's asked me to build something and take a % of each report they do. A initial report is 3.5k and subsequent are 1.5k. They are bottlenecked at the moment in what they can do, but could do far more. I already lofi mocked up the solution and know how I'd do it. Timing just waiting for it to be right with him. Could be a nice passive one to keep me ticking along.
  • Another mate wants to build a solution that helps companies scale, but more on the people, process, etc point of view. Not product ways. He's ex HR and has some ideas around that, so will sit down with him and see what his ideas are and how it could look.

Of course I'm still planning road trips and running my socials, which have rocketed up on insta to 17.5k and tiktok to 45k in the last month or so.

This is an update for me rather than anyone else.
My to do list of stuff and building really cool ****! :D I don't want a corporate job... so doing this sort of stuff would be my ideal.

Everyone still lovely?

In a bit x
 
malachi said:
Well, after 7 months in my new job. Got called into the office, I've been sacked but I be working till end of February and they want me to do a handover during that time to the tech guys in India......

I knew something was going on when all of a sudden Im doing user support and application support when I am suppose to be an Senior IT Systems Engineer.

Fun times ahead!!!
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Ah man, that's ****, but I'm sure it'll line you up to something better!
 
What does your product do in the commercial space? As a product manager what do you think could make it more valuable of a space? Of course the heat pumps and energy meters are more popular, are there ways you could find any cross over to those spaces? I wouldn't be able to comment without knowing the space you're in, but sounds like they're looking for more leadership in the strategy for your product line and where changes can be made to be more profitable?
 
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