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I've been at my new company for about a month and I still only have basic skills with their email program. At my old job we used Outlook which was fairly easy to use but this new place has Lotus Notes which is pretty terrible so far. I'm slowly but steadily learning all the specific programs used here but I try to write stuff down and not to ask the same question twice.
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Aug 18, 2014 17:48
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The fact that Lotus Notes still exists and that it hasn't changed since like 1998 is always anazing to me. Do some companies still use 90's-style WordPerfect?
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Aug 18, 2014 17:54
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I would refuse to take a job if they did dumb poo poo like use LotusNotes or pay a ton of money for some homebrew ERP that works with nothing and nobody knows how to use
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Aug 18, 2014 17:55
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Shear Modulus posted:The fact that Lotus Notes still exists and that it hasn't changed since like 1998 is always anazing to me. Do some companies still use 90's-style WordPerfect? My company for some reason switched to Lotus Notes 3 or so years ago, and went back to outlook within the year. I don't really understand why they decided to change in the first place but hey whatever. Outlook/exchange was working just fine, Lotus was a pile of poo poo. Then we had webmail only for a while. Today I have a customer that wants one of their ads out online today. Typically we have a built in 5 business day turnaround from the time we get files to the time its online for them, and that's built into the contract. Anything outside of that is usually manageable and just gets a rush charge attached. So, he emailed me at 11:30 asking about getting 3 grand opening ads online. I email back to inquire how soon, can he please send me files/info/etc. He lets me know he wants it as soon as possible, I let him know I need all the information to properly give him a timeline. We're at 45 minutes in so far and still going back and forth, still no files or info. He's wasting a lot of time for someone who seems to be in a hurry.
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Aug 18, 2014 18:20
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Combo posted:He's wasting a lot of time for someone who seems to be in a hurry. This will all be your fault when you miss his deadline.
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Aug 18, 2014 18:28
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Pleads posted:This will all be your fault when you miss his deadline. Thankfully he's not that unreasonable. They're a relatively new client, which typically means we have to gently train them to provide what we need in a timely manner. I've done him favors in the past already and he knows I can't keep doing so, and I've already told him its going to cost him quite a bit extra this time. He just keeps trying to get me to commit to a time frame which I'm not going to do until I know what the actual size of the workload is.
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Aug 18, 2014 18:48
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visceril posted:I would refuse to take a job if they did dumb poo poo like use LotusNotes or pay a ton of money for some homebrew ERP that works with nothing and nobody knows how to use That's part of my future interview question list along with identifying whether or not they use Trackwise for change controls. If they answer anything other than Trackwise in the future, I'm not working there. It has its problems, sure, but after dealing with Symphony EtQ for the last year, gently caress anything that isn't Trackwise.
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Aug 18, 2014 19:45
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Anybody have any horror stories about working for a company that got bought by another company? I want to know the worst to expect. My company was bought about 2 years ago amid promises that nothing would change, the parent company liked everything the way it was, blah blah blah but now we're seeing top tier execs get replaced with ones from parent company. Tell me goons, how hosed am I?
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Aug 18, 2014 19:57
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Volmarias posted: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. Resume and education fraud is pretty rampant in this industry. It's so bad that some of the big contracting companies send out friendly reminder emails occasionally letting their suppliers to know not to send doctored resumes, fake degrees, etc. Some companies will even substitute consultants for phone interviews - the person that shows up to the client location for the position isn't the same person that was interviewed on the phone. We caught one of our own consultants forging supervisors' signatures on employment letters just last week. A big company like Samsung might feel like they're in a safer position getting contractors in from a large contracting company like Modis or Experis, but the truth of the matter is that all of these big companies are pulling contractors from pool of smaller firms with a variety of vetting processes for employees (read: no vetting process at all). These small companies know that verifying education and work experience overseas is so difficult that most managers don't do it. There's a lot of incredibly skilled and hardworking consultants out there, but there's also enough liars and cheaters that it makes getting them a crapshoot.
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Aug 18, 2014 20:04
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Xibanya posted:Anybody have any horror stories about working for a company that got bought by another company? I want to know the worst to expect. My company was bought about 2 years ago amid promises that nothing would change, the parent company liked everything the way it was, blah blah blah but now we're seeing top tier execs get replaced with ones from parent company. Tell me goons, how hosed am I? Given your stories about your current job, if they got rid of you, it would be a positive thing for you. And if the execs that are getting replaced are the same ones that think 10 + hours days as a norm are acceptable working conditions, then you should be dancing in your cube. edit: I should say more because the above may be Not Helping. I have gone through mergers and divestitures. 2 years is about right for when executives start leaving. They may have something in their contracts regarding the mergers, and, after 2 years, everything has been handed off and the company with the power will know who they want to keep and who they can get rid of. Usually it starts from the top and works its way down, except for that first big round where they eliminate the redundancies and make the new company leaner. So after the C levels are gone, then the VP's will go, then directors, etc. Look at the execs who did stay on from your company, and you will see what parts were valued. For another story, a large company I worked for got bought by another large company. One of our VP's had twin sons that worked in different departments. 6 months after the merger, they both moved internally to a different department. Guess which department did not have layoffs? Sometimes things like that can give you clues. SubjectVerbObject fucked around with this message at 20:35 on Aug 18, 2014 |
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Aug 18, 2014 20:24
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Shear Modulus posted:Do some companies still use 90's-style WordPerfect? I work at a translation agency that does a lot of work for a MAJOR security company, (card readers, IR cameras etc.), and ALLLLL their documentation is in WordPerfect. NONE of the major CAT tools support it, they are the bane of my life.
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Aug 18, 2014 20:40
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I've heard a lot of law firms still use WordPerfect. Honestly, as long as it isn't OpenOffice I'm good.
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Aug 18, 2014 21:28
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What in the gently caress is up with these stupid action items wherein some manager needs my assistance but cannot be bothered to find, call or email me? It's always someone I've never heard of before and somehow the person asking (who is never my boss) seems to thing my time is well spent trying to seek this person out so that I can then tell them that all of my analysis tools are at my desk and that standing at his happens to be a complete waste of time.
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Aug 18, 2014 22:40
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Xibanya posted:Anybody have any horror stories about working for a company that got bought by another company? I want to know the worst to expect. My company was bought about 2 years ago amid promises that nothing would change, the parent company liked everything the way it was, blah blah blah but now we're seeing top tier execs get replaced with ones from parent company. Tell me goons, how hosed am I? The company where I worked got bought, and we were told nothing would change for us (call center for a utility). Then they replaced all the C-levels. Then they told us that they were building a new call center in Boise, but we were welcome to apply for jobs there. Then they only accepted the applications from the seven newest (and thus lowest paid) people. Then they closed my call center down, basically giving the people who'd worked for the original company for 20-30 years the finger. So in a nutshell, you're completely and totally hosed.
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Aug 18, 2014 22:57
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Ah, so I had my first day of my Real Job today. The work seems like it's going to be stressful and monotonous. On the other hand, all these people I've met are the same brand of crazy that I am and don't seem to be too butthurt. That is a very good sign. Everyone is like "oh it sucks here" and when I tell them about my previous job, they say "... well then maybe this place isn't so bad for you." I do worry that when I explain what my position is, they all give me this pitying look and say "good luck."
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Aug 19, 2014 00:23
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Shear Modulus posted:The fact that Lotus Notes still exists and that it hasn't changed since like 1998 is always anazing to me. Do some companies still use 90's-style WordPerfect? My company uses Wordperfect 5.5 for most of its data creation and the system feeding results into it is a mad hodgepodge that I think may be on the verge of gaining sentience. There's just too much infrastructure built around that ratty-rear end program and the directors are so inept that the IT guy (who's legitimately amazing) doesn't get time to update it, on account of being assigned to one inane, unrelated project after another.
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Aug 19, 2014 00:35
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visceril posted:I would refuse to take a job if they did dumb poo poo like use LotusNotes or pay a ton of money for some homebrew ERP that works with nothing and nobody knows how to use I've never used lotusnotes but after hearing nothing but tales of woe about it i will have to ask that question in an interview if i ever can get one.
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Aug 19, 2014 01:04
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Asking if someplace uses Lotus Notes is like asking if there's "Nude November." It belongs in the bucket of deal breakers so improbable that it's not worth explicitly asking about, so why ask? I mean, I cannot comprehend someone switching TO Lotus Notes ityool 2014.
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Aug 19, 2014 01:55
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Ho boy, the worst internal systems I've ever had to deal with were when I processed insurance for a national insurance company. We used Lotus Notes instead of Outlook, apparently because Lotus Notes enables weird programs and shortcuts to be attached to it. Since I was fresh out of college and had barely used Outlook, and this was over ten years ago, I didn't mind it. Don't know what it's like these days except that Adobe's software feels like it's bloated and clunky for no good reason. They also used Word Perfect for policies and contracts, which existed in a sort of quasi-mainframe interface. I had never used it before but I did learn it and all its bizarre quirks that we needed in order to enable us to edit our contract wording, just in time for them to come out with an update where we could edit the drat thing in Word like normal people. Sort of. Also their Mainframe was very touchy and apparently the ONLY person who knew how to run the thing was this 90-year-old guy who was teaching his 60-year-old son the family secrets. I still have dreams about entering data into that Mainframe. It was oddly satisfying. Especially when they finally implemented same-day triggers so you didn't have to wait until morning to see if your stuff worked! Lastly, all of their proprietary software was total poo poo. They had a Workflow Tracking System (WMS) that was so clunky we called WMS "Work More Slowly" ... and then they rolled out a new tracking system that was so much worse and many times more labor intensive it just ate into our processing time. This is why they are failing as far as I know, continuing to witch hunt employees before they're vested to "save money" I presume.
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Aug 19, 2014 02:04
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I've never really understood the hate for Lotus Notes. Maybe I just suck at email, but my current job uses it and it can send, read, and search adequately. It's obviously worse than both Outlook and GMail, but at least in my case the amount of time wasted doesn't seem large enough to care. It's actually worse now because we migrated, but someone didn't consider that some information can't be stored on the cloud so now I have to use two different systems for email.
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Aug 19, 2014 03:39
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Why don't you have your own Exchange server? There is no way at all to justify using horrible outdated software. Either you're gonna pay for an upgrade now, or you're gonna pay way more when Accenture has to bail your rear end out after the one guy that knew how everything works leaves.
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Aug 19, 2014 03:44
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The worst part about lotus notes was the subtle gently caress you to windows users vs outlook. On windows,99% of the software they use: F5= refresh Lotus notes: forget my credentials, and force me to log in again. I was notes certified in both R5 and 6 
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Aug 19, 2014 03:54
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Volmarias posted:Asking if someplace uses Lotus Notes is like asking if there's "Nude November." It belongs in the bucket of deal breakers so improbable that it's not worth explicitly asking about, so why ask? My company had just finished migrating from Notes to Exchange when I started a couple of years ago. They still have a Domino server running (that they just moved off one of my Linux boxes to some Windows machine that I don't have to deal with, thank god) that serves a few web applications no one has bothered to recreate in something modern, though, and apparently there are actually still a few Notes holdouts in one of our subsidiaries using it for calendars and messaging. 
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Aug 19, 2014 03:56
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Roundboy posted:Lotus notes: forget my credentials, and force me to log in again. Why would this be a function key?! 
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Aug 19, 2014 03:57
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Lotus notes had its niche back in the day providing emails and a 'better' alternative to access for making a database available to many users at once. Now you too can make a user input form and deploy it across the company! Programming! If/then ! As a consultant I've seen some poo poo,man. A large utility company, using it to hold info on everyone who ever worked for the company,with an employment start date field. The formula would fire when days on the job hit milestones at x years...but to do this it would need to refresh every document to increment the days field. For hundreds of thousands of records, on a lovely access like db, pretending to be relational. I coded around it, but I really suggested they move to a proper db.
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Aug 19, 2014 04:10
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Volmarias posted:Why would this be a function key?! Why was 'shut down' a key that someone decided to put on a keyboard? Because the people who are designing these interfaces have apparently never used one before.
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Aug 19, 2014 05:03
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I worked for a company that used Lotus for some really important reporting. There was this report that took up three pages, some of the data that you entered on the first page would auto fill on the other two. All together, the report was a few hundred data points. If you didn't finish the third page and the program crashed, you'd lose everything because you couldn't save before you were completely done. If you saved before you were completely done, or if you made a mistake on the first page and didn't catch it before generating the second, you had to get your manager to delete the entire thing so you could start over. gently caress lotus forever. Edit: in some places you had to enter times in AM / PM, others it was 24 hour clocks. Some dates were yyyy/mm/dd, some were dd/mm/yyyy.
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Aug 19, 2014 11:18
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Is anyone else a contractor working through a staffing agency? My staffing agency recruiter keeps trying to handhold me like it's my first day of kindergarten and it's getting really annoying. Is there a polite way to tell them to stop calling me unless it's actually important and relevant to my contract? The frequent calls about nothing except asking how my day went and what I'm working on are starting to piss me off.
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Aug 19, 2014 15:12
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Annnd I just got an email from HR saying my email to a colleague in Japan was unprofessional. Said colleague asked for our address. I sent them an email back with a link to our office details that I found by making exactly three clicks on our intranet that is our default homepage and a link from a google search.
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Aug 19, 2014 15:14
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During the tech boom it was like this. Recruiters are salespeople, and this is reselling after the sale. To me it means that they finally got a good candidate into the position, and they really, really, really want you to stay rather than leave after a month when the full time job you applied to finally extends an offer. They are making bank from your placement. Tell them to back off but maybe buy you lunch sometime and you will let them know any concerns you have.
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Aug 19, 2014 15:18
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Tide posted:Annnd I just got an email from HR saying my email to a colleague in Japan was unprofessional. Said colleague asked for our address. I sent them an email back with a link to our office details that I found by making exactly three clicks on our intranet that is our default homepage and a link from a google search. That does come off really obviously passive aggressive. I confirm addresses all the time because a) I want written record of it being provided and b) I don't trust any company to update their website
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Aug 19, 2014 15:21
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If you type my company's name into Google Maps it'll send you to a warehouse across town. The actual address of the main buildings is surprisingly hard to find.SubjectVerbObject posted:During the tech boom it was like this. Recruiters are salespeople, and this is reselling after the sale. To me it means that they finally got a good candidate into the position, and they really, really, really want you to stay rather than leave after a month when the full time job you applied to finally extends an offer. They are making bank from your placement. Tell them to back off but maybe buy you lunch sometime and you will let them know any concerns you have. They said my company already stated their intention to poach me at the end of my contract, budget gods willing. I can't think of many good reasons to continue my contract once it's up rather than jumping on as a full time employee given the chance. They'd have to give me a significant bump in pay to convince me not to sign on to a less temporary version of what I'm already doing with better benefits than what the staffing agency offers. Problem! fucked around with this message at 15:30 on Aug 19, 2014 |
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Aug 19, 2014 15:24
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ladyweapon posted:That does come off really obviously passive aggressive. I confirm addresses all the time because a) I want written record of it being provided and b) I don't trust any company to update their website Yeah, in hindsight it is. This same colleague - hell, this same GROUP - repeatedly asks the same thing over and over and my impulsiveness got the best of me.
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Aug 19, 2014 15:27
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Aquatic Giraffe posted:
That makes even more sense. If the company signs you up, the staffing agency gets some sort of bonus from it, so they want to be sure you are happy and will stay. This all sounds like you have skills that are hard to find. It is a double win for your staffing agency. They found someone qualified for the position, which means they make money by contracting you to your company, and they showed your company that they can fill hard to fill positions, which means they may get more business from your company. All of this hinges on you staying. See if you can get some decent lunches out of it, if you so desire.
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Aug 19, 2014 15:49
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Tide posted:Yeah, in hindsight it is. This same colleague - hell, this same GROUP - repeatedly asks the same thing over and over and my impulsiveness got the best of me. Thanks for being open improvement.
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Aug 19, 2014 16:03
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SubjectVerbObject posted:That makes even more sense. If the company signs you up, the staffing agency gets some sort of bonus from it, so they want to be sure you are happy and will stay. This all sounds like you have skills that are hard to find. It is a double win for your staffing agency. They found someone qualified for the position, which means they make money by contracting you to your company, and they showed your company that they can fill hard to fill positions, which means they may get more business from your company. All of this hinges on you staying. See if you can get some decent lunches out of it, if you so desire. I have experience in a fairly small niche industry and happened to turn up at the same time a company in said industry needed a contractor so they snatched me up pretty quick. Pretty convenient for everyone involved. I'd demand lunches but my recruiter is an hour away from where I work. Also my recruiter is new and I think this is her first good fit placement that could turn permanent so she's trying extra hard. Can't really fault her but it does get annoying.
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Aug 19, 2014 17:20
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SubjectVerbObject posted:That makes even more sense. If the company signs you up, the staffing agency gets some sort of bonus from it, so they want to be sure you are happy and will stay. This all sounds like you have skills that are hard to find. It is a double win for your staffing agency. They found someone qualified for the position, which means they make money by contracting you to your company, and they showed your company that they can fill hard to fill positions, which means they may get more business from your company. All of this hinges on you staying. See if you can get some decent lunches out of it, if you so desire. The trick to gently caress the staffing agency is to wait one week before you start your full time job. No staffing agency will try to go to court with a client to collect that bonus.
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Aug 19, 2014 18:38
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Volmarias posted:Asking if someplace uses Lotus Notes is like asking if there's "Nude November." It belongs in the bucket of deal breakers so improbable that it's not worth explicitly asking about, so why ask? My company still had running MicroVAXen until last year. (Granted, because we produced software that supported them. We still support NT4). I'd have loved to have scored one and a VT220 when they were retired, but nooooo. Notes (and we do have Notes for some legacy stuff) is nothing in comparison.
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Aug 19, 2014 20:13
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I was in a meeting this afternoon with a high-up person from another department who pronounced "leverage" as "lebb-err-edge" many, many times. Lebb? What the poo poo? oh also my boss keeps saying caveat but she says "ka-veet" What is happening today? Maybe I should stop drinking the water
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Aug 19, 2014 21:25
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"OMG you did work we didn't budget for!!!!" Lectured by 2 people because I did some work instead of sending it out to a vendor (who would have hosed it up).
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Aug 19, 2014 22:16
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