|
Seat Safety Switch posted:Of course it turns into a "let's solve every problem on this ridiculously expensive all-hands call even though 99% of the people here don't give a poo poo" daily pissing match.
|
#
?
Aug 16, 2014 05:16
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 10, 2024 19:58 |
|
|
Defenestration posted:This. I don't know what sectors you all are working in where they give you greater than COL raises without promotions, but it sure is hell isn't anything I've seen. Maybe like finance? Tech bubble computerstuff? I guess biglaw gives lockstep raises with seniority but lol working at a firm I work for a software company and we've historically given out 6% as an average raise. I've tended to get closer to 10% (a large part of which is because I'm pretty underpaid for what I do and our parent company has a cap on annual raises and salary adjustments), but even folks who aren't doing to well still usually get 3%. We just got reorged to another division of our parent company, though, and I think they're trying to cut costs (even though we're growing our revenue at 30% a year, which far outpaces what our expenditure increases have been), so we'll see what happens next year.
|
|
#
?
Aug 16, 2014 08:21
|
|
|
Ninja Bob posted:Yeah, I don't know about that. It's definitely lovely a lot of places, but that's not universal. I just got 7.something percent on my annual increase, and I believe it was around the same last year. Tends to fluctuate from about 5-8% depending on the year if you end up in the highest performance category (which isn't some magical non-existent rating, I've had it for the last few years and I'm a good worker but not a wizard). Agreed that negotiation on those annual increases is pretty unlikely, but I'm sure there's some companies you can pull that off too. This is really industry-dependent, though. I mean if your field is hot (software, biotech, healthcare) then yeah, 5% is more like what you should be getting but let's not forget there's some bias in our sample set on the forums and in this thread. If 5% was typical we'd be seeing inflationary pressures on the economy not wage and price stagnation. Some of my friends in engineering find they get only 1-3% a year but if they jump ship/explain their options to employers they can get more blood out of that stone, but that's still very much different from say a labor force outside of big cities where the job markets are less dynamic.
|
|
#
?
Aug 16, 2014 15:32
|
|
|
Oh man, it's that time of year again for all us folk that run on the October-September fiscal years. Fiscal Year 2015 budget planning, in August. Oh, wait, you say you just got "guidance" on that number we knew our budget was going to be since April, yesterday? Okay, when do you need to me to figure out how this $350M is going to be spent across 15 national labs? Oh, tomorrow?  So I bust rear end to pull it all together, weather the shitstorms of "I can't believe X thinks they need that much money don't they know that Y needs that for this super important work?!" and finally get a workable number that everyone buys off on and get it in before the deadline.  "Oh, we actually won't get final guidance until September."I can't wait until my staff development review which definitely won't just be a mediocre raise and an apology that I can't have the promotion I've been working for because budgets.
|
|
#
?
Aug 16, 2014 20:00
|
|
|
Higgy posted:Oh man, it's that time of year again for all us folk that run on the October-September fiscal years. Fiscal Year 2015 budget planning, in August. Oh, wait, you say you just got "guidance" on that number we knew our budget was going to be since April, yesterday? Okay, when do you need to me to figure out how this $350M is going to be spent across 15 national labs? Oh, tomorrow? I think I'd rather have that than what we do. Our parent company makes us do budgets in July for the following fiscal year, which is aligned with the calendar year. The second half of the year has been when we've done the best in landing large new customers, except that if we need to do any kind of significant expansion to accommodate them, the budget's already been submitted and can't be revised (never mind that we don't get a finalized version back until February or so). So, we end up having to pull money from other areas and try not to impact them too badly. The most extreme example I can think of this is one year when we signed several large customers on a continent we hadn't previously done much business on. We're a PaaS company, so that meant we needed to put up a datacenter there to minimize response times and trans-oceanic constraints, and we had nothing in the budget allocated for it because it wasn't a thing when we went through the budget cycle. We were able to pull enough money from workstation and laptop upgrades and server replacements to mostly cover it, but we still went over budget for the year and got complaints about it. Never mind that we added way more revenue per year than we spent as a one-time cost. Apparently we're supposed to do that for free or something.
|
|
#
?
Aug 16, 2014 20:14
|
|
|
I'd rather we could have at least started the process in July or earlier. We get rough budgets outlined as early as April so that's when I begin pulling this stuff together so I at least had something to start with. Our scope, at least, is relatively constant year to year so there's no reason this shouldn't be so difficult. Of course, our budgets are determined by congress and then go through about 20 levels of bureaucratic fuckery before it gets to us so there's really no choice. Additionally, it's more likely congress won't have a budget for us on October 1st so all of my efforts are moot anyway. I envy the private industry sometimes but then I read this thread and realize we're not so different just more public about it. It's truly a wonder our government manages to function the way it does.
|
|
#
?
Aug 16, 2014 20:28
|
|
|
What I love about budgeting is explaining how much $$$ the company will make off of each budget item, no matter whether it's a directly monetized budget item or not. When site management at my company receives their annual budget (let's say, $100M for 2015), we also receive an expected ROI for it. (Let's say, 2015 revenue expectations of $1B accountable from said $100M). Want a piece of that $100M budget? You'd best explain exactly how getting any of it will contribute toward the revenue expectation! So, project plans turn into bullshit that shouldn't need to be explained, like "please fund contractors and employee paychecks in the development group for 9 months so that we can complete the CD-mandated validation campaign on Product X, otherwise you will not be allowed to make any Product X in 2016. By completing the validation, none of you will get barred from the industry and you will get $882M in sales revenue." Then it gets sent back to you requesting an explanation of how that applies to the 2015 revenue expectations, because they aren't making budgetary approvals based on revenue in 2016.  I wish I could read budgetary responses to R&D's new drug funding requests, but there aren't any. They're all reworks of existing IP that got pulled under consent decree. Last time I checked the pipeline, we literally had zero new products. This is also how we do year-end goals at my company. We're supposed to provide a dollar value to everything we report in our performance write-ups. "Caught Quality sending seriously defective product out the door, shut down the entire production line and made people fix it. Value: ???" Sundae fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Aug 16, 2014 |
|
#
?
Aug 16, 2014 22:07
|
|
|
I had to pare down at the beginning of the year getting 3/5 of what I thought we needed for 14, then operated under that which was NAN because the mothership and execs kicked it back and forth till mid year when we actually got approved. Then I got 30% more than I asked for for the year to use in the next 6 months. I just submitted first round numbers for 15...and I'm having trouble believing that there is any weight placed in the number I give them to begin with. now the glut in travel budget for last half 14 is going to kill me!
|
|
#
?
Aug 16, 2014 22:15
|
|
|
Sundae posted:"Caught Quality sending seriously defective product out the door, shut down the entire production line and made people fix it. Value: ???" Billions in potential liabilities! 
|
|
#
?
Aug 16, 2014 22:15
|
|
|
I love it because they want to project revenues but having to make up arbitrarily large ROI numbers for everything to get anything funded guarantees that the entire exercise and all numbers produced are meaningless.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2014 04:15
|
|
|
So yesterday was my last day at the job that hadn't hired me after three years of contract work. My boss reminded me that he wanted me to copy the contents of my computer to a thumb drive and then copy it to a supervisor-only network drive using his PC. I asked him if he had a thumb drive I could use (I wasn't exactly keen on using my own, god knows how much room I'd need). He told me I thought I had one. Then he reminded me he also wanted me to "print everything off your computer." I had thought this was utterly inane before, so I told him now that I would not do it because things like spreadsheets and all are not really printable. He was disappointed but told me to call MIS to take care of the thumb drive at least. I called them and the lady I usually work with answered the phone, she's very down to earth. I told her what my boss wanted. "A thumb drive? No, we're not gonna do that. Jesus. Just find out the destination folder and we'll move it all at the end of the day today or first thing Monday." I told her he wanted to print everything. "What, is he INSANE?!?! What the hell would he do with all that? It would fill a room!" I really like our MIS department. Is it pretty standard that people over the age of 35 just don't know how to use a computer? At probably every job I've had, it seems like no one knows how the hell to work a freakin PC and I have to walk them through such complexities as emailing with Outlook and navigating Windows Explorer. Anyway, after we had cake for my leaving, I gave my female coworkers jewelry (plus one dude picked who one for his wife) I'd made as gifts to remember me by, and I got a little stack of greeting cards, and I never felt such positive energy. The woman I worked with pretty closely - I assisted her with running the office, on top of my other duties - no one gets along with her. Except she really liked me and I liked her and she was freakin sobbing that I was leaving. My boss left without saying goodbye to me. Classy. I went out for a drink with a few people and had a ball, then I went home and opened all the cards. Every last one had money in it, even got a necklace from someone, and every last card had some sort of really nice thing to say about me and how much they'll miss me. You don't realize how much a part of your life that these people you see every day can be. So now I only pray my new place likes me just as much. They seem very keen to get me started and they are also government so I'm used to/craving their version of crazy. I'll also be in a similar role - in the middle of everything and juggling needy people. But even doing your dream job can be hopelessly marred by horrible people. I think that in the end, for the most part, people are simply what make or break a job.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2014 04:32
|
|
|
^ not just over 35. I've got graduates coming in who don't grasp the concept of saving a file then locating that file. It's detrimental to their careers and I tell them as much when they come through our induction. My dream job is one where all my colleagues are competent with technology and we use it to run an efficient business. It's a simple ask but I'm yet to find it.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2014 08:21
|
|
|
Ottoman posted:Is it pretty standard that people over the age of 35 just don't know how to use a computer? At probably every job I've had, it seems like no one knows how the hell to work a freakin PC and I have to walk them through such complexities as emailing with Outlook and navigating Windows Explorer. I don't think so - 50 maybe. I'm 37; Windows 95 came out when I was 18, kind of thing. Having/using a computer was pretty normal at least where I grew up.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2014 14:33
|
|
|
Sundae posted:This is also how we do year-end goals at my company. We're supposed to provide a dollar value to everything we report in our performance write-ups. "Caught Quality sending seriously defective product out the door, shut down the entire production line and made people fix it. Value: ???" Do you get the 5 day hold time for drugs for micro while you sort the poo poo out?
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2014 14:53
|
|
|
quote:Holy cow is this actually par for the course in pharma or is your company just that bad? I mean my company does beverages and some OTC medications and that would never be acceptable. There's a reason we're operating under FDA Consent Decree, and it sure as hell isn't "because we were a big convenient target" like so many of my co-workers seem to think. It's because they've been willfully pretending that GMP guidelines and CFRs don't apply to OTC products for like twenty years. (Yes, we do release micro testing.) The short of the particular event was that all of our critical quality attributes were coming back bordering on failure (barely above our lower release specification) for almost a year on one product with no identifiable reason, and nobody had said anything. They just said "it passed so out the door it goes." Quality didn't care about the concept of trending or that there was no justification for why we'd had a major step-change a year earlier that dropped all our readouts by almost 10% across the board. It was still in specification, so la la la can't hear you and don't care. Reason #1 to care: our analytical methods were biased high during that time period, meaning that in reality, we were sending out-of-spec material out. Reason #2 to care: once I got my team looking into it (after quality declined to investigate) it ends up that the shift aligned perfectly with a new API lot from our contract API manufacturer. The contract manufacturer of the API had changed their synthesis process without telling anyone, so we were effectively selling a non-validated product with no FDA prior approval supplement, no stability data, no nothing. That was a really fun month of work, let me tell you. It was like pulling teeth getting anyone to listen to a loving word I was saying. (And thank god I was right and there was special cause.)
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2014 16:21
|
|
|
Swink posted:^ not just over 35. I've got graduates coming in who don't grasp the concept of saving a file then locating that file. It's detrimental to their careers and I tell them as much when they come through our induction. I thought they were teaching kids how to use computers in school these days, as opposed to when I was in school, it was an occasional thing, like one Apple //e per classroom, followed by computer labs with one or two classes a year in them. If I didn't have my PowerMac at home to play around on I would be far behind now. Bottom line is, I don't think it's a simple thing to ask for. When hiring people give them a practical test on your machine. When they were interviewing people to be my replacement they had them type out some minutes using our standard format, very easy. The office manager had to help one of them find where the boldface option was in Word. And this was a person with supposed decades of office experience.  We did end up offering my position to somebody (she would have been a perfect replacement) and she declined, probably due to the pay. We're waiting to hear back from the bitchy candidate (totally bad vibes from this lady) who is still at least qualified to use a computer. feedmegin posted:I don't think so - 50 maybe. I'm 37; Windows 95 came out when I was 18, kind of thing. Having/using a computer was pretty normal at least where I grew up. Not to mention, some people seem totally not wired for computer use. My mother, for example. She's the same age as my father and we got a computer in about 98 when AOL was The Big Thing, I was in 11th grade. I swear she called me downstairs to help her every 15-30 minutes with something that she had asked me to do a million times before. And this was using nothing but AOL, that was the ISP and browser IIRC, it was crappy but it was as simple as you could get. Meanwhile my dad picked it up with no help. And we installed it for my grandmother in her house, she was in her 60s and never used a computer before and I'd get emails from her all the time because while she could not change her VCR clock, she could sure as hell figure out AOL. I ended up writing my mother instructions like "move mouse until arrow is over the word File at top. Click. Move mouse until arrow is over the word Open." etc. I think this hair-pulling experience with my mother actually helped my professional life though because everyone tells me I have patience with the worst computer users. That's because every one of them has been a better user than my mother who still doesn't know the difference between The Internet, Email, and AOL. Also taught me that people have to want to learn because mom would rather harass me than learn on her own - when I moved out, she finally memorized my VCR timer instructions I left her because she actually needed to know it without my help. And regarding the motivation to learn: in the department I just left, the next best user by far is a man who just turned 50 who didn't touch computers until his 30s and apparently didn't have to do a lot with them at jobs until the last decade. He confided in me "yeah, you have to want to learn how to use them. I figured out how to use them so that I could get free porn. Now that you can find porn for free anywhere ... I haven't learned much about the new systems lately because I don't really care." In other news my mother, when she feels like it, can figure out aaaaaaall by herself how to find Youtube because of some poo poo she saw on Ellen and click Related Videos until 3 am. Motivation!
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2014 16:22
|
|
|
Ottoman posted:Is it pretty standard that people over the age of 35 just don't know how to use a computer? At probably every job I've had, it seems like no one knows how the hell to work a freakin PC and I have to walk them through such complexities as emailing with Outlook and navigating Windows Explorer. One day you'll find an office that isn't that way. All positions in my company require a high level of proficiency with technology. Not just knowing how to fake it in the standard programs but being tech savvy enough to learn to learn at least a dozen applications from our company exclusive software suite that each position has to use regularly. Someone who isn't tech savvy wouldn't make it a week. I don't work for a tech company either. We do a variety of retail. Some of the vendors we work with are pc incompetent and it's incredibly frustrating to deal with them. Their POs are sometimes generated in excel or, god help them, handwritten. I don't understand how a modern company can do business efficiently with employees unskilled in computers but they manage it somehow.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2014 17:37
|
|
|
Ottoman posted:Is it pretty standard that people over the age of 35 just don't know how to use a computer? At probably every job I've had, it seems like no one knows how the hell to work a freakin PC and I have to walk them through such complexities as emailing with Outlook and navigating Windows Explorer. All depends really - I've had both sides, the grizzled veterans who forgot more than I had ever learned, and the fussy old codgers that refused to change and didn't want to learn anything new, just "wanted things to work". I saw a lot of the borderline PC incompetent people in corporate environments more often than not, even CEO/CFO/VP types that apparently only browsed the web and so help you if a shortcut got deleted and they didn't know how to find the program or re-create it from the Start menu entry. The only bad ones I've encountered so far being with an MSP have been from one particular client where they use Macs, but outside of logging in and using their programs or browsing the web, they have ZERO experience trying to fix them if something goes wrong. Add in that 95% of their machines are past warranty by anywhere from a few months upwards to 2-3 years, and they don't want to spend any money to upgrade, and it turns into more of a hassle. Especially with a 5 year old Mac that even Apple won't touch because the hardware and OS aren't supported (which is my biggest gripe with Apple, if Microsoft can support an OS for more than 3-4 years without forcing an upgrade on someone, you can too, you loving hipster Apple cocksuckers).
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2014 18:02
|
|
|
Ottoman posted:Not to mention, some people seem totally not wired for computer use. I think some folks just genuinely aren't technically-minded; they have no real curiosity or desire to learn how things work. Since the UI of current PCs isn't really intuitive at all (when looking at it from the perspective of someone who's never really used one before), you have to be willing to learn at least some basics of how things work "behind the scenes" to be able to perform even simple tasks (like, say, managing and manipulating files), much less do any sort of troubleshooting when things don't work precisely as you expected. And there's really no motivation to learn how things work or why something went wrong when you can just get someone else to tell you exactly how to do whatever particular action you're trying to perform or to "just fix it" when it breaks.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2014 18:55
|
|
|
Our office hires through a recent grads as legal assistants, and tons of them don't really have computer skills. I mean, they know how to send emails and can put together a word document because its probably pretty hard to get through university without that today, but many of them have no idea how to actually expand on that. Like they'll go to print out a spreadsheet and when it prints all hosed up, they'll just be like 'welp, who knows!' This also goes for things like if a client sends us a file in a weird format, they'll just go 'Don't know what this is' instead of maybe googling the extension and seeing if openable with another program we have. Also many of them seem unaware of right-click menus, so they'll be startled that I printed a dozen pdfs at once by selecting them, right-clicking, and hitting 'print'. I am regularly amazed that people basically seem so adverse to using self-help tools. Someone will mention a problem to me, and I'll ask if they checked the program help. Never. Did they google for a solution? Nope. They either do nothing or immediately fall back on 'people that know computers'. Which is pretty scarce in the office. Edit: To be clear, older people in the office also do this stuff, but its unsurprising in a 60-year old attorney who has dedicated assists and stuff. But 'not good with computers' isn't an age thing.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2014 19:12
|
|
|
I get that every day but for basic stuff you could Google. Going to start billing my time for stupid stuff like that.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2014 21:33
|
|
|
Ashcans posted:Our office hires through a recent grads as legal assistants, and tons of them don't really have computer skills. I mean, they know how to send emails and can put together a word document because its probably pretty hard to get through university without that today, but many of them have no idea how to actually expand on that. Like they'll go to print out a spreadsheet and when it prints all hosed up, they'll just be like 'welp, who knows!' This also goes for things like if a client sends us a file in a weird format, they'll just go 'Don't know what this is' instead of maybe googling the extension and seeing if openable with another program we have. Some people decide "I'm not good with computers" and then do their best to make it true. I've had so many people who've refused to learn anything related to their jobs, simply because they decided ~10-15 years ago that computers were beyond them, and to not even try.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2014 21:42
|
|
|
STOP ASKING ME WHERE THIS FILE IS. IT IS ON THE SERVER. In the same folder where it has always been, a folder I specifically instituted so anyone could find it easily. Also I swear to god, woman asked me 3 separate times last week where the same google doc was. I linked it to her by email every time.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2014 21:55
|
|
|
Defenestration posted:STOP ASKING ME WHERE THIS FILE IS. IT IS ON THE SERVER. In the same folder where it has always been, a folder I specifically instituted so anyone could find it easily. ARGH. This is all the same crap I went through. People have no idea what you mean. I try to say things in a sort of metaphorical way, like, you have to know where the file "lives," or likening the path to having a bunch of actual folders and then stuff inside of the folders. One lady I give a lot of credit to, she is 63 and has been through computer classes and tried really hard to figure things out and decided she sucks at computers. But instead of just saying "do this for me," she had me sit with her and she wrote down every little step. It took me a half hour to explain to her how to send an email with an attachment to an Outlook contact group (that I had already set up in her Outlook). Every few steps or so she paused a moment to say OH MY GOD THIS IS TERRIBLE and we continued. Then after we finished she practiced on her own and I went back and answered some questions. She really shouldn't have to do some of this stuff on her own, she is an occupational therapist and drat good at it. But she not only endeavored to do the email thing but she also learned how to type her own clinic minutes. I told her she did a great job. So it really is all about attitude. Not being "afraid" of computers helps too. I constantly tell my coworkers that they're not going to break anything if they work on their own: the best way to learn how computers work is the best way to learn about anything which is to "play" with it and if you think you messed up your document then close it without saving. Also: UNDO BUTTON.
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2014 23:33
|
|
|
Recently during one of the meetings, the quoting department didn't know how to export a thing to excel. Sure, fine, sometimes things don't work well because of our 5 year old ERP system... then I looked at our ERP and lo and behold, there's an "Export to Excel" button right beside the button that they would use to do it in a roundabout way. I don't really have much to complain about at my current job, though, the 50-something marketing manager can make an excel spreadsheet to convert decimal inches to fractional inches without much issue, and googling for himself, and people are genuinely happy when I teach them an outlook thing. Last job I had, really only had a couple of people who trusted technology at all, let alone had a willingness to learn. Few of the older guys refused to learn how to type with more than two fingers because "minutes were women's work" and would be immune from repercussions on being >8 weeks late on minutes because of seniority. (While if I forgot to initial a page on a 15 page sheaf of documents I was being "irresponsible" and "ignoring my due dilligence" when it would take 3 seconds to fix right there)
|
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2014 00:00
|
|
|
dennyk posted:I think some folks just genuinely aren't technically-minded; they have no real curiosity or desire to learn how things work. ETA: It can't just be that he's not technically minded, because he is. He used to run a reactor for the Navy back when Hyman G. Rickover ran things with an iron control rod, he knows my car better than I do, and he's designed a machine that'd revolutionize agriculture if he ever got a patent and a prototype, but to attach a document to an email he needs help. I think it is just as xsf421 said; some people aren't good with computers, and make no effort to fix that. darthbob88 fucked around with this message at 00:53 on Aug 18, 2014 |
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2014 00:49
|
|
|
We had a big important file that had last been used 15 years ago and it was nowhere in the archive servers and we couldn't even find it in the giant pile of floppy disks from that era we found and we pretty much gave it up for lost (another bit of corporate logic: they'd rather pay me for weeks of searching for a file instead of paying for me to start it over from scratch which probably would've taken less time, because "if we already have it it'll save time just to find it!"). It was still, miraculously, on some guy's desktop and he had no earthly clue how to save a file onto the server. He thought it was magic we could put it in a file on his computer and open it in our computers in another building.
|
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2014 01:21
|
|
|
15 years old and some guy still had it on his computer? Good god.
|
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2014 03:23
|
|
|
Swink posted:^ not just over 35. I've got graduates coming in who don't grasp the concept of saving a file then locating that file. It's detrimental to their careers and I tell them as much when they come through our induction. Sundae posted:[A]ll of our critical quality attributes were coming back bordering on failure (barely above our lower release specification)... 
|
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2014 03:31
|
|
|
Pleads posted:15 years old and some guy still had it on his computer? Good god. Bonus points: On Day 1 of my weeks-long search for this file he was the first person I asked since the file was graphics to be specially printed and he ran the graphics shop computer so he HAD to have had it at some point. He said he did not have said file so I believed him and moved on. It several weeks of every lead pointing to him before I physically took control of his computer from him and found it. ETA: Extra bonus points: We couldn't even use the file since the customer changed their mind about the font/size/color/etc and the file wasn't easily editable so I had to start from scratch anyway. Problem! fucked around with this message at 03:39 on Aug 18, 2014 |
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2014 03:36
|
|
|
darthbob88 posted:Contrariwise, I think there are some people, like my dad, who are just scared by the possibility of breaking a computer that'd cost a month's income or a mortgage payment to replace, and/or are intimidated by the scale of the electronic help tools available. He can do some things, and knows enough to do some experimenting until he finds a solution, but for a lot of things, he goes to me for help first. Honestly, my dad wants to learn computers because he is somewhat technically minded, but he used to go about it in strange ways. I guess he learned to be proficient with cars by taking old cars apart, so he used that idea on computers for years... he didn't seem to care much about the software. We didn't have much beyond email by 2004, even though he packed our basement with PCs that he picked up from garage sales and curbs driving around town. He "built" a few, but didn't do much other than word processing. When my mom finally had enough of his hoarding he tried to donate them to charity... who didn't want any of it. It was useless and outdated even for any kind of education. One of our temps got the boot pretty early, I wasn't given a reason. However she did often need someone to "fix" excel for her because she'd do things like "attempt to insert a column, somehow creates a column chart instead". On the other hand, I had to do the same for a full-time employee who's been there for years; she asked me how to un-hide columns, and I showed her the handy "scroll horizontal feature" like a magician.
|
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2014 04:45
|
|
|
seacat posted:Holy cow is this actually par for the course in pharma or is your company just that bad? I mean my company does beverages and some OTC medications and that would never be acceptable. I pretty much try not to take medicine anymore after working in pharma for a few years. Last week, talking to one of my coworkers at the water cooler, they told me about how we had a compound that was listed as a potential high risk respiratory hazard. We of course charge more for working with these things. the customer wasn't thrilled about this extra cost and so the compound was reevaluated and reclassified as a low risk respiratory hazard, Of course no one knows who or how this compound was "reevaluated".
|
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2014 12:46
|
|
|
Honestly people who get confused about how to do things in office is one of the lesser sins due to how hosed usability is in MS Office. Plus shared Word documents end up breaking down after a while, you get undeletable extra pages that you can't get rid of no matter how much you turn on the encoding view and try to delete them. Or my favorite documents from Asia where everything line breaks in the middle of words and the 'line break in the middle of latin words' option has seemingly no effect. Seriously gently caress that trash piece of software.
|
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2014 13:23
|
|
|
Send email Friday afternoon explicitly telling a vendor to start sending survey sample through. Get confirmation from them that they will get on it. Over the course of the weekend I apparently received 5 emails from 4 separate people. After a bunch of inane questions in the first 4 that were answered a week ago, the final one asks if they can start sending sample. gently caress your lovely stupid bureaucracy you morons, you can tell this stupid client why their survey has zero goddamn traffic after I told them Friday we'd have a Monday morning report.
|
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2014 13:39
|
|
|
I generally prefer coworkers who refuse to learn about technology over those who think they know what they're doing. Working in software QA, you'd think that people would be naturally inquisitive, or at least some kind of good with computers, right? Our department was a joke, barring a few people. I was leading a sprint for a new feature, and we were getting ready for a major test. I'd gathered my team together and was explaining procedure to make sure we were on the same page, and one of them kept asking questions. Fine, normally, but they were questions I was in the process of answering. After a few of those, she literally threw her hands up, said "This is hard! This is too complicated!" then swiveled in her chair, put on her headphones, and started watching How to Train Your Dragon, which she had torrented across the company network that morning. Almost all of us were fired about half an hour later, for unrelated reasons. A few months later, after I'd been hired back, one of the developers sent a test case for a new feature across to the QA lead. QA had been under a lot of scrutiny lately- a couple of bugs slipped into production, some bad test cases written, a few bad pushes from our test servers- so the dev BCC'd me on the plan. She decided to rewrite the test plan from the developer from nearly whole cloth, which wouldn't be a problem, except the way she wrote it, the new feature never actually got tested. I e-mailed her about it, to try and keep it quiet, letting her know that the test wasn't going to work the way she rewrote it, and her response was that she didn't rewrite it, and everything was fine. I organized my own test, found some bugs, and sent them off to the dev. Unsurprisingly, the other test showed no problems, and was recommended for release. Really, the ones that think they know more than they do are more of a headache, because they'll actively get in the way of things, while the ones that refuse to learn can be worked around.
|
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2014 14:22
|
|
|
Ezekiel_980 posted:I pretty much try not to take medicine anymore after working in pharma for a few years. Uhhhhhh are they somehow not required to provide MSDS for everything you come into contact with?
|
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2014 15:53
|
|
|
Swink posted:^ not just over 35. I've got graduates coming in who don't grasp the concept of saving a file then locating that file. It's detrimental to their careers and I tell them as much when they come through our induction. A lot of the 'engineers' and 'programmers' we rent out have absolutely no idea how to use email. They need to be walked through sending an attachment, and don't even think about asking some of them to open a .zip file. They can't plug in a printer, much less install drivers. They have masters degrees in computer science or engineering from schools in India, and we place them at client companies for sometimes upwards of $90 an hour. I think they float between assignments and use corporate bureaucracy to their advantage so nobody notices how totally ineffective they are. Once they get caught, they float over to another position at another company and the cycle begins again.
|
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2014 16:17
|
|
|
Clockroach posted:Honestly, my dad wants to learn computers because he is somewhat technically minded, but he used to go about it in strange ways. I guess he learned to be proficient with cars by taking old cars apart, so he used that idea on computers for years... he didn't seem to care much about the software. Related, my stepdad is sometimes AMAZED that I know about various Windows tools/functions that he apparently doesn't use. Like, he spent 20 years in the Air Force and worked in all sorts of networking and telecommunications stuff, and has since transitioned to being an IT manager at a company in town for the last 11 years. A while back he told me he had too many programs running and it was slowing his home desktop down, so I jumped on and took a look. Pulled up MSConfig, killed a bunch of startup items, rebooted and he was good to go. The kicker? He had no idea what MSConfig was after working over 30 years with computers of all types and operating systems. Just weird to me sometimes that people can be so fluent with computers and things related to them and completely gloss over some of the smallest, simplest things. Love the guy though, he's the reason I got interested in computers and IT in the first place. 
|
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2014 17:05
|
|
|
majestic12 posted:Uhhhhhh are they somehow not required to provide MSDS for everything you come into contact with? not really, many of the things we work with didn't exist as little as a few years ago. the MSDS is really only required when shipping things. Even then most of them have nothing useful in them.
|
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2014 17:14
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 10, 2024 19:58 |
|
|
Poop Cupcake posted:A lot of the 'engineers' and 'programmers' we rent out have absolutely no idea how to use email. They need to be walked through sending an attachment, and don't even think about asking some of them to open a .zip file. They can't plug in a printer, much less install drivers. They have masters degrees in computer science or engineering from schools in India, and we place them at client companies for sometimes upwards of $90 an hour. I think they float between assignments and use corporate bureaucracy to their advantage so nobody notices how totally ineffective they are. Once they get caught, they float over to another position at another company and the cycle begins again. That sounds about right. When I worked at Samsung several years ago, we hired some contractors. Most were actually pretty good, but a few were utterly useless, as in "literally do not know how to program and spent all day looking at websites for arranged marriages instead" useless. This apparently isn't an uncommon occurrence, since the idea was to pad out the billing by stuffing a few low paid duds in with the good workers. Best case, they bill for more people, worst case the dead weight gets flown home but the good contractors stay. I got my first contractor fired for incompetence after talking to my boss at the time, and was pretty hesitant and sad about the whole thing. Now, I'm just merciless and heartless when it comes to people who should never have gotten hired in the first place. 
|
|
#
?
Aug 18, 2014 17:28
|
|
