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Some of our databases run SQL Server Web Edition. Another one runs SQL Server 2008r2. I get that licensing costs are a concern for some companies, but c'mon son!
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Mar 2, 2017 19:01
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COOL CORN posted:I guess as a database dev I'm allowed to post here. I'm getting super frustrated with the management here being stingy with non-standard editions of server software. Maybe play their game, push converting everything to MySQL / PosrgreSQL because hey, they are free! Why bother giving $$$ to M$? They are so greedy! You could potentially add some more things to resume before leaving them with a half-done dumpster fire that your replacement will never complete and will throw away.
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Mar 2, 2017 19:15
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I'd like to do actual development instead of 99% of my job being putting together ad-hoc reports because the management is too lazy to sort and filter in Excel.
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Steve French posted:How the gently caress is that an entire job? I mean, there's other poo poo to do - some of its been touched upon here but making sure that you have the tools you need to get the work done, making sure that people who need to be involved are involved, facilitating discussions, brainstorms, looking for fun things to do, watching planes fly outside, reading manga, posting on these forums, making sure there's a plan for when you're done with a project rather than just moving on to the next one. It can be pretty involved and it can also be really lightweight. Really just depends on the company and the overall investment you guys have to TPMs and the like.
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Mar 2, 2017 22:36
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COOL CORN posted:"Why should we pay that much for software that will do the work for us? We're already paying you to do it!" "You're paying me to do that, or you're paying me to do all the other poo poo I could be doing for you while this piece of software that doesn't cost nearly what my salary costs does it instead. Also, how the gently caress are you in charge of anything more important that what to eat for lunch if you don't understand what opportunity costs are?"
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Mar 2, 2017 22:39
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Che Delilas posted:"You're paying me to do that, or you're paying me to do all the other poo poo I could be doing for you while this piece of software that doesn't cost nearly what my salary costs does it instead. Also, how the gently caress are you in charge of anything more important that what to eat for lunch if you don't understand what opportunity costs are?" I mean phrase this politely and they will listen right? Otherwise sell them a London Bridge.
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Mar 2, 2017 22:47
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It's also very possible that there's a budget for that salary but not a budget for software. Which makes no damned sense but that's how bureaucracy works. Somebody, somewhere with their hands on the money is totally fine paying to have that position keep existing so why would they increase the budget to buy new software to do what the position is already doing? It's hard to justify increasing a budget to add something redundant but less difficult to convince somebody to just let things chug along as they already are if the expenditure isn't huge. Chances are one person doing database stuff isn't a huge expense on a corporate scale. The other side of that is that management rarely actually understands technology all that well.
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Mar 2, 2017 23:51
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To be more practical: I've had success explicitly enumerating their options when this kind of thing comes up. "Okay, if you want me to do this now, then other projects A, B and C will be delayed by at least X weeks. Does that work for you?" Of course, by "success" I mean "they agreed and then pretended to forget about changing the deadlines for projects A, B and C when the original ones came around." At least until I shoved their email in their face because I got that agreement in writing after they agreed to it verbally because I knew they were a two-faced piece of poo poo.
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Mar 3, 2017 00:38
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Task to fix bug was prioritized #1 because of looming deadline. Bug symptoms are well-defined but the circumstances to get it to occur are not. I work on bug, reproduce bug, nail down the exact set of circumstances, fix bug. Sprint nearly over at this point, we roll out. Boss complains that this bugfix doesn't fix all the other bugs that may exist with this brand new, hideously complex feature that's barely been tested in a realistic environment yet. I resist the urge to tell boss to kiss my rear end, and instead remind him that if he wants us to work on things, they should be at least mentioned during planning. They were not, this one very specific bug was prioritized and it was emphasized that it MUST BE FIXED BY A CERTAIN DATE, so that's what I focused all my effort into doing. Not, you know, finding and fixing any of the other bugs that weren't in the task at the top of the list. Make things clear when we plan, if you want us to work on more bugs, put them in the goddamn list.
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Mar 7, 2017 09:20
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Che Delilas posted:Task to fix bug was prioritized #1 because of looming deadline. Bug symptoms are well-defined but the circumstances to get it to occur are not. I work on bug, reproduce bug, nail down the exact set of circumstances, fix bug. Sprint nearly over at this point, we roll out. This post just screams systemic issues at your company.
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Mar 8, 2017 00:57
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redleader posted:Some of our databases run SQL Server Web Edition. Another one runs SQL Server 2008r2. I get that licensing costs are a concern for some companies, but c'mon son! For my day job I work with a company that runs SQL Server 2008... without the r2 upgrades. Dynamics AX 2009 forces it, and it's a multiple hundred thousand dollar project to upgrade. Sucks. Web Edition there's not much of an excuse for that.
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Mar 8, 2017 01:29
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Anybody else here have "unlimited vacation"? Our company is apparently switching us over, big announcement to come tomorrow. We'll be paid out for any existing vacation time we have. I'm cautiously optimistic about it. My boss sounds like he will be very cool about it... other teams may be completely boned due to poopy managers who give no fucks though.
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Mar 8, 2017 02:11
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Unlimited vacation is super hit or miss. It often actually means zero vacation unless your team has a culture of harassing people who take too little vacation.
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Mar 8, 2017 02:43
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My Rhythmic Crotch posted:Anybody else here have "unlimited vacation"? Our company is apparently switching us over, big announcement to come tomorrow. We'll be paid out for any existing vacation time we have. Most of the time "unlimited vacation/time off" leads to management piling more work on the team than they can possibly get done if they ever take a vacation. In theory it's supposed to be "we positively don't care if you take every single Monday off and a whole week every other month if your job gets done." In practice it's "you will literally never have an opportunity to use it and you have zero guaranteed vacation so we don't even have to pay out for what you don't use so go us." It sounds awesome but most of the time it's to the benefit of the employer. The nice thing about guaranteed vacation days that get paid out if you don't use them is that the boss has a pretty strong incentive to let you use it in that it costs him if you don't. It also devastates morale and makes him look like a massive jerk if everybody has >10 days left at the end of every single year they could never, ever use. A more open policy gives management more ways to gently caress everybody over and boy howdy do some of them use it.
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Mar 8, 2017 02:50
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It also allows them to not have to pay out PTO if you bounce. Another thing it does is remove the scarcity of PTO time, which does a cool reverse psychology on people leading to less time taken off because you don't have to worry about losing it.
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Mar 8, 2017 03:07
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ToxicSlurpee posted:A more open policy gives management more ways to gently caress everybody over and boy howdy do some of them use it. Yep. Anytime management champion 'flexibility for the worker', what they really mean is they'll use the power differential and their culture to force that flexibility to look better for them. They have the numbers to know whether they're succeeding or not, the worker doesn't usually.
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Mar 8, 2017 03:11
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revmoo posted:This post just screams systemic issues at your company. Yes it does, and there certainly are, mostly related to communication. We have consistent problems getting things defined, there's always some kind of issue that should have been prioritized right at the top and talked about during planning that we only hear about two days into a sprint. Fortunately when we push back against bullshit they usually listen, and we aren't held to account when too many things are promised to too many customers on too short a timeline without consulting engineers first.
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Mar 8, 2017 05:59
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Maluco Marinero posted:Yep. Anytime management champion 'flexibility for the worker', what they really mean is they'll use the power differential and their culture to force that flexibility to look better for them. They have the numbers to know whether they're succeeding or not, the worker doesn't usually. This happened at the job I was contracting in last week and I resigned yesterday because gently caress that noise.
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Mar 8, 2017 06:28
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Plorkyeran posted:Unlimited vacation is super hit or miss. It often actually means zero vacation unless your team has a culture of harassing people who take too little vacation. Maluco Marinero posted:Yep. Anytime management champion 'flexibility for the worker', what they really mean is they'll use the power differential and their culture to force that flexibility to look better for them. They have the numbers to know whether they're succeeding or not, the worker doesn't usually. Vulture Culture fucked around with this message at 15:30 on Mar 8, 2017 |
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Mar 8, 2017 15:26
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Vulture Culture posted:One good benchmark I learned from Mathias Meyer with Travis CI: any company can pair their unlimited vacation policy with a minimum vacation requirement. Then we've just looped back to standard corporate vacation days. This isn't an easy thing to handle and the grand majority of implementations of it still gently caress over the worker. Always assume these kinds of things gently caress you over, it's a business decision and the worker is always the losing party in this situation. None of this matters in the end though because capitalism will fall in the glorious socialist revolution, power to the people 
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Mar 8, 2017 15:42
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Pollyanna posted:Then we've just looped back to standard corporate vacation days. I'm genuinely curious why you would say this. Standard corporate vacation policies specify a maximum number of days taken with no lower bound, so Vulture Culture's example of specifying a minimum with no [documented] upper bound is the standard policy's exact opposite. What do you mean? I worked at a place which, after an acquisition, converted standard PTO accrual to unlimited but didn't pay out the difference. When unlimited went into effect there was no minimum specified. HR flatly refused to answer any requests for clarification from management which resulted in some managers documenting how much people took and unofficially rating them based on minimums or maximums (depended on the manager!), and some managers not giving a gently caress. It was not a good policy.
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Mar 8, 2017 15:57
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csammis posted:I'm genuinely curious why you would say this. Standard corporate vacation policies specify a maximum number of days taken with no lower bound, so Vulture Culture's example of specifying a minimum with no [documented] upper bound is the standard policy's exact opposite. What do you mean? The best places I've read would penalize the line managers for employees not taking a minimum amount of time off because they recognized the productivity deficit long term work accrues. It's in everyones best interest for employees to take time away from the office and competent companies have internalized that.
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Mar 8, 2017 16:07
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My employer has unlimited vacation. I was very nervous about this when I accepted the position. Even though they don't have minimums, they do email people saying "Hey don't forget to take vacation" every so often, and I've never had vacation denied. I generally take off a week per quarter, random days as needed, and of course the standard 'Hey it's MLK day, office is closed' stuff. It's been a pretty good experience, but I do have to watch myself to make sure I actually take off.
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Mar 8, 2017 16:22
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Hughlander posted:The best places I've read would penalize the line managers for employees not taking a minimum amount of time off because they recognized the productivity deficit long term work accrues. It's in everyones best interest for employees to take time away from the office and competent companies have internalized that. It goes without saying that everything I'm saying needs to be supported by the company culture -- defined as the things the company does to set an example, not the promises the company's management makes -- and none of this will just succeed in a vacuum.
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Mar 8, 2017 16:52
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Even with unlimited days, you are still required to take off at least the legal minimum of 20 days per year.
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Mar 8, 2017 17:10
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Achmed Jones posted:My employer has unlimited vacation. I was very nervous about this when I accepted the position. Even though they don't have minimums, they do email people saying "Hey don't forget to take vacation" every so often, and I've never had vacation denied. I generally take off a week per quarter, random days as needed, and of course the standard 'Hey it's MLK day, office is closed' stuff. Yeah, this has been how it's worked for me. We don't have a formal minimum, but I do get prodded into taking some time off if I go a while without it. It helps that half the company is in Denmark and so have a legal minimum of five weeks.
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Mar 8, 2017 18:42
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In america there isn't. This is why people cringe at unlimited pto. America is the land of permanent death marches and pulling 70 hour weeks because gently caress you, pleb.
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Mar 8, 2017 19:07
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We have an unlimited PTO policy but we also have 2 weeks off per year (July and December), and all of the major holidays. Its pretty nice change from being a consultant where even half a day of PTO was to be treasured (we were forced to take PTO during christmas since the client was closed).
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Mar 8, 2017 19:16
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My first development job(in the US) had 20 days of vacation and "unlimited" sick leave. Unlimited in that there wasn't a set limit, but if you had more than 5 "events"(an "event" was defined as one or more consecutive days off from illness, and all routine doctor appointments would be rolled into one) you would get written up. After a couple years of working there they got rid of the "unlimited" sick leave and put it at 20 days. Which was still pretty absurd for a US company. But I learned myself that the "you will be written up for actually using this time" thing was still in force, because my wife was having severe health problems(after we had been married for like 4 months) that had her in and out of the hospital for a few months, so I was taking a lot of time off to be with her. After using 6 days of sick time for that I was warned that if I didn't file "family and medical leave act" paperwork I would be at risk of losing my job.
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Mar 8, 2017 19:37
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BabyFur Denny posted:Even with unlimited days, you are still required to take off at least the legal minimum of 20 days per year. In America 20 days of vacation (as a maximum) is a lot. Max 15 is more typical. There's no minimum, and it's not uncommon that if you don't take your full allotment of vacation in a year you lose it without any compensation.
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Mar 8, 2017 20:06
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Mniot posted:In America 20 days of vacation (as a maximum) is a lot. Max 15 is more typical. There's no minimum, and it's not uncommon that if you don't take your full allotment of vacation in a year you lose it without any compensation. I like systems that let you regularly accrue hours with no, or with a very high maximum. The rate of accrual is controlled based on whatever criteria (seniority, position, etc.) That way I can take 2 or three long weekends in a year, let some of my time roll over, then take a 3 week vacation next year. I was helping a director with an issue a couple days ago and happened to notice that she had ~200 hours of leave banked.
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Mar 8, 2017 20:38
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The Fool posted:I like systems that let you regularly accrue hours with no, or with a very high maximum. The rate of accrual is controlled based on whatever criteria (seniority, position, etc.) The reason that companies have limits generally is that they are required to keep money on hand to pay out accrued vacation for all of their employees, so if they didn't have a maximum that would be more and money money they'd have to just sit on. At least that is how I understand it.
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Mar 8, 2017 20:59
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The Fool posted:I like systems that let you regularly accrue hours with no, or with a very high maximum. The rate of accrual is controlled based on whatever criteria (seniority, position, etc.) I take 5 weeks every year, what poo poo hole country do you live in Fool?
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Mar 8, 2017 21:24
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Dirty Frank posted:I take 5 weeks every year, what poo poo hole country do you live in Fool? One where salaries are a lot higher and you can retire earlier?
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Mar 8, 2017 21:35
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sarehu posted:One where salaries are a lot higher and you can retire earlier? I just wanted to call The Fool, Fool and feel like Mr. T for a fleeting moment. Killjoy.
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Mar 8, 2017 21:47
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sarehu posted:One where salaries are a lot higher and you can retire earlier? I'm in the US, so the joketruth is that neither is true. edit: I just checked my benefits because I was curious. I currently accrue PTO at 13.34 hours/month, which comes out to roughly 2 weeks/year. Which in my experience, is pretty standard for a non-D or C level employee that has started at a company less that a year ago. The Fool fucked around with this message at 22:12 on Mar 8, 2017 |
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Mar 8, 2017 22:06
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The Fool posted:I'm in the US, so the joketruth is that neither is true. Crappy benefits and crappy retirement so you will be working till you keel over at your desk!
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Mar 8, 2017 22:07
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The Fool posted:I like systems that let you regularly accrue hours with no, or with a very high maximum. The rate of accrual is controlled based on whatever criteria (seniority, position, etc.) I worked with some DoD employees who had infinite accrual. It was pretty cool that they could retire early from all the saved leave, but since everyone wanted to do that they never took regular vacations. Then the government changed things so that there was a cap or an expiration or something and everyone had to scramble to make vacation plans.
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Mar 8, 2017 23:53
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I worked for a company that paid you a 5% bonus on your PTO if you took all of it in a calendar year. Mostly because they had employees who would barely take time off not because they couldn't except me. I quit because my boss forced me to cancel not one but two planned vacations at he last minute.
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Mar 9, 2017 00:45
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Mniot posted:I worked with some DoD employees who had infinite accrual. It was pretty cool that they could retire early from all the saved leave, but since everyone wanted to do that they never took regular vacations. Then the government changed things so that there was a cap or an expiration or something and everyone had to scramble to make vacation plans. That was a common thing to do for the military too. I met a lot of people who would be "enlisted" for like 26 years but only actually on the job for like 24 1/2. They'd just pile up all their vacation time then figure out when they were going to ETS out and take it all right before then. Since they were technically allowed to do that nobody could do anything but boy howdy did some people get real grumpy about that.
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Mar 9, 2017 01:22
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Mniot posted:I worked with some DoD employees who had infinite accrual. It was pretty cool that they could retire early from all the saved leave, but since everyone wanted to do that they never took regular vacations. Then the government changed things so that there was a cap or an expiration or something and everyone had to scramble to make vacation plans. I work for a contractor, and a little while back my boss had to badger the team into taking vacations because we were burning work hours faster than the contract anticipated. It was surreal.
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Mar 9, 2017 01:28
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