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FogHelmut posted:This short cartoon sums up my life This video perfectly captures what business school was like for me. Also, it feels like I'm moving through all the "Reasons I no longer want to work in" threads. First retail, then into call center and now I just got hired at a national lab which I can only assume will be rife this kind of stuff. Any goons here with experience for working the business side of major labs? Are they anything like a corporate environment?
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Apr 21, 2010 16:26
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Ripoff posted:
Three weeks, I tell myself. Three weeks and I pry off Level 1 Help Desk support and move onto greener (hopefully) pastures.
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Apr 23, 2010 05:42
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Keep your head up and keep applying, it'll eventually happen.
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I have been addicted to this thread since its inception as I am a month away from entering into this type of white collar work. I sincerely hope I have a better experience than the majority here but I don't hold high hopes. Having said that, I think all you white collar guys and gals out there would appreciate this TED talk on the science of motivation and how management as we know it is an artificial construct that doesn't work for most business related tasks in the 21st century. From what I gather of these stories in this thread, the guy in that video is pretty spot on.
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May 1, 2010 19:09
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Aquatic Giraffe posted:She got called out on it the other day and couldn't come up with anything she'd actually been working on Sounds like your future boss. I just spent a week on business travel doing some "assisting" (consulting) for one our performers by my program's HQ. I got time to spend with three very bright project controls folk who are way more experienced then me yet were doing everything about project scheduling rear end-backwards because the guy that originally set up their project schedule had a PhD and program management at this place didn't want to rock the boat. I spent 2 hours basically telling them how they could make their lives easier, do things faster and turn around the sour reputation this performer has gotten with HQ. My next step is to get some top-down pressure on the management there to actually do it the right way if they want to keep getting funding. Still have to scan in my 2 taxi receipts and fill out an expense report and hope I don't get yelled by my admin for not providing "sufficient justification for work related travel."
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Aug 4, 2013 17:51
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She's just dead weight.
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Speaking of training, I recently had to take my annual CyberSecurity training (3 times for the 3 different log-ins that I have to different network resources). One of the "exercises" in one of the three 90 minute trainings was a Wheel of Fortune type "game" where I had solve the puzzle. "What is it when someone uses your credentials without your knowledge and poses as you on a network to gain access to government resources?" I_ENT__Y TH_FT I got an applause sound bit for getting it right.  Every single one boils down to "don't give your credentials to anyone ever and if an e-mail looks remotely suspicious then report it." Three. 90-minute. Trainings.
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Aug 9, 2013 23:58
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Miss-Bomarc posted:
It really wouldn't shock me at all having worked in IT for 3 years previously in my last job. It was more of a lament along the lines of "every sign has a story." The fact that this training still exists means that people still need be educated on basic cyber security. Along other lines, I had 6 hours on Friday to basically determine the funding levels our labs will get for the next year. My superior had known that this needed to be done two weeks ago and dropped off the task at my desk the morning of the same day it was due. That's okay though, I'll just put aside the three other "urgent" taskings that I had been given so I can make sure that the people who actually execute our work have the appropriate money to do it. I wish I could say that's an isolated case but it's just the norm.
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Aug 11, 2013 18:28
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Xandu posted:You can generally come up with some sort of performance evaluator, though. A lot of mine have to do with managing certain relationships and keeping things on track. These were basically my FY13 goals. My company has me self-select my specific goals and they get signed off by line manager. My goals this year were "learn HQ operations" and "develop relationship with federal stakeholders" to name a couple. Basically, I would have to just sit in my cubicle not doing my job every day to not meet and exceed my goals.
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Aug 12, 2013 23:24
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Harry posted:If you're in a planning meeting about your company's current/future transition plans, there's no reason to include someone who will be gone in a week. Because they might have valuable insight based on their past experience and have an objective viewpoint that could help them with decisions? It's not like all that goes away just because someone turns in their two weeks.
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Sep 18, 2013 00:00
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I won't bother to derail anymore on a dumb point. Content: I'm starting to get a real sense just how alive and well Student Syndrome is among apparently professional people who are all supposedly well organized and good at their job. We asked for their input about 2 weeks ago for what budgets they need and how to allocate them to their projects and performers (labs) for the upcoming fiscal year. We asked for the input by close of business tomorrow. I'll give you guys three guesses as to how many people have responded so far and the first two don't count.
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Sep 18, 2013 12:42
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Higgy posted:I'm starting to get a real sense just how alive and well Student Syndrome is among apparently professional people who are all supposedly well organized and good at their job. We asked for their input about 2 weeks ago for what budgets they need and how to allocate them to their projects and performers (labs) for the upcoming fiscal year. We asked for the input by close of business tomorrow. I'll give you guys three guesses as to how many people have responded so far and the first two don't count. So we extended the deadline to COB today, Friday. A few people, upon hearing this, dropped the task to go do other things and didn't bother until today. One person hadn't even done anything on it and proceeded to blast me with e-mails all day about why this, that or the other thing wasn't working and the import spreadsheet isn't working and now it has to be done manually in the system. Also, this is going to take too long because he has a lot of items to put funding on and can we extend the deadline? We put out the guidance and instructions for this input over a month ago. I barely ever got away with this poo poo when I was in school, how is that an okay thing in professional life? But it's okay, the day is over and I have vodka. Higgy fucked around with this message at 00:04 on Sep 21, 2013 |
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Sep 20, 2013 23:07
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Blue_monday posted:Are you kidding? my name is Jerry, and it is plastered everywhere, including my bigger than normal font email signature, yet I still get all sorts of correspondence addressed to Gerry. Every other e-mail is "Brain, can you . . " or "Hey, Brain". Whenever I bring it up that they flipped the letters on my name, the response is always "just take it at as a compliment!  " like it's the most original joke.
Higgy fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Sep 21, 2013 |
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Sep 21, 2013 16:28
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Omne posted:I'm pretty similar at my office. I'm usually there by 8:30 and leave at 5. Some of the people on my team show up around 9:30, and then bitch when they see me leave at 5 because they stay until 6. Sorry, but I'm not "slacking off" because I leave before you...get here earlier, then you can leave at 5. I brought it up with my boss because I was getting tired of the passive aggressive comments, he said not to worry. Being there early is more important than staying late This reminds me of some questionable advice my father gave me when I started my internship at the lab I work for. "First in, last to leave; that's how you get ahead." Which I think is terrible advice that just leads to overwork and lack of quality since it puts a heavy emphasis on just putting in the hours. Turns out that the better advice would be "do your job well, find better ways of doing it and apply it on visible projects."
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Dec 29, 2013 20:16
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Sundae posted:As much as I hope they run it like this, in reality, I suspect the other guy is right given the way my company is run. This place is all about making demands without providing means of completing them. It sounds like someone in management saw a Scrum flowchart and said "yes do this" without thinking too deeply about it. I'm so sorry for you. Have a typical conference call in (at least 5 hours of any given week for me): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYu_bGbZiiQ
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Jan 27, 2014 23:17
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Sundae posted:Anyone working in regulated fields: Do your SOPs force you to get your Excel spreadsheets verified? "TPS Report and coversheets - Sundae's Personal Hell" Holy poo poo, this is the worst thing I've heard in the entire thread. I had to gin up a forecast model in excel using federal budget forecasts and a fairly complex algorithm with multiple variables to determine the performance targets for the next 5 years. This is to be used for program planning on a ~$400M/year program. Nobody questioned a damned thing and now just refer to it as "Higgy's Model". I would not get any work done if I had to get spreadsheets reviewed like that because I would literally just stop making them to answer people's questions. On the topic of "Higgy's Model", someone at some point said "this will determine all of our planning" and now everyone just assumes it does despite the long list of assumptions and caveats I've tried to make clear since it's inception. Convincing people that, yes, you DO have to still actually have detailed plans for how to exceed the performance target and how to spend the money allotted to you with your project teams has been harder that actually building the damned thing to begin with.
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Feb 5, 2014 04:01
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But it all hinges on caring about quality, people and long term vision. So judging by the stories in this thread, it will never be A Thing in the larger business world.
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Feb 13, 2014 17:26
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Sundae posted:Does anyone here have a company that actually does Continuous Improvement initiatives well? My last two both turned them into an ax hanging over your head, because they were hard, fast metrics you had to meet rather than philosophies. One thing I picked up on pretty quickly in B-school is that initiatives like the ever nebulous "Continuous Improvement" or things like Six Sigma, Lean, etc. are all buzzwords to management that generate posters and are almost always implemented in a half-assed manner but just well enough to improve a metric to show investors and drive employee morale down. I have yet to truly see it done in a meaningful way unless the company was either built around it, basically invented it to save the company(e.g., Toyota in the 80's) or is a fictional company used to teach people about it (Goldratt books).
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Feb 13, 2014 17:50
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Tony Montana posted:CI isn't 'I always want better results' (that's the shareholders), it's that Japanese example already given where a factory line worker could tell a manager something and it actually get implemented. I've seen it as a job description, a CI Manager and she just listened to people and tried to package stuff up to present to management. I agree with you on everything there, especially the bit about how hard it is to implement it every day which is where I am currently. My problem is that the management that wants it and should take it seriously doesn't and won't put in the time, effort, or resources to actually implement it properly. So I might be a little jaded when I say that it's all posters and buzzwords because it's all I've seen materialize in practice. It's a very frustrating thing to watch happen.
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Feb 13, 2014 18:56
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detectivemonkey posted:"We lost a batch because the batch was lost". Preventative action: do not lose a batch. Bonuses for everyone! Good work, team! Welcome to every single project variance narrative I ever received when I was doing project controls for an earned value project.  We're behind schedule because this task took longer than we estimated. We're over budget because poo poo cost more than we estimated.Me:
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Feb 13, 2014 20:00
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Renegret posted:I'm still waiting on my "Yearly Compensation Meeting" where they talk about my raise. That was supposed to happen two weeks ago. I think you mean your "Whenver-they-get-to-it Compensation Lecture" where they talk about the raise you won't get because budgets are just really tight, you know? Good work this year, though. I mean you really knocked it out of the park. I think. To be honest I never actually read your yearly goals that I forced you to submit by that deadline but Carol says you looked kind of busy. You did come in 15 past 8 that one day though so you get a 4/5 with no raise. Higgy fucked around with this message at 23:15 on Mar 31, 2014 |
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Mar 31, 2014 23:13
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ladyweapon posted:Why would anyone ever use text speak in a business email? Is typing "plz" that much faster? I got this from a state regulator of radiological materials for a federal agency along with "thx" after sending him some detailed analysis of what he has in his state. Just let the whole of that sink in for a bit.
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Jul 6, 2014 15:17
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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.
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Aug 16, 2014 20:00
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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.
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Aug 16, 2014 20:28
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Via E-mail: "Hey Higgy, can you write up a template for our funding discussions next week?""Sure, here you go!  ""Thanks Higgy! Can you copy this into a word document and put it on the share?"Just in case if you guys ever wondered how the federal government gets work done. The feds also seem to have this habit of conveniently forgetting I'm on travel (for the job they pay me for) and ask me to do this type of stuff. Of course it's always a priority and needs to be ASAP, even if i'm more than a few timezones the other way.
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Jan 29, 2015 03:54
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Sundae posted:
And I thought my job was just acronym soup. 
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Jan 30, 2015 03:14
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Sundae posted:Oh don't get me started. I have one hell of a cheat-sheet saved on my desktop. I started typing out a long rear end post using all my industry acronyms and by the end of it I started to hate myself for so easily writing it all down. I need a drink for looking too long into the abyss that is the inner workings of federal programs.
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Feb 1, 2015 03:38
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Sydin posted:Seconded. As a peon currently working to help implement agile for a upper management that doesn't really understand it beyond "agile = faster dev work & more releases", the schadenfreude is delicious. On the flip side, management not understanding what Agile is when it's actually being used correctly. If I get asked "but when is it going to be done?" one more time in regards to our enterprise program management system one more time...FYI answers of "When you stop paying for development" or "Never, hopefully" are not ever good answers. : Scrum Master? LOL what does that even mean?!I'm super happy to be giving up my Product Owner responsibilities in a few weeks. Higgy fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Mar 5, 2015 |
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Mar 5, 2015 05:04
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There is nothing that feels quite as good as transferring 90% of my scope of work to a colleague who was light because his fed doesn't care and my assignment in DC ends in 3 weeks. He took it up right away and ran with it so now all I have do is some minor documentation and close out of some on going tasks that I've had on my plate before I jet off back to WA state and get away from FedLand to actually do some work in a non-toxic environment. Have fun with users of our software bitching at you because they still can't figure it out after 7 years, buddy, and thanks again.
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Mar 10, 2015 01:42
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outlier posted:I'm always thinking "surely there must be some workplace in this world that actually works. It's good to dream. Just know that the grass is never greener on the other side and, in Sundae's case, that grass often fails to meet quality standards and will probably kill you.
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May 24, 2015 20:22
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Karate Bastard posted:Good day, thread. I just thought I'd tell you I have been evaluating your performance, and this page's disjointed discussion on death and polyester has really been top notch. Good job people, keep up the good work.  Now, as you know, nobody is perfect except for me hahaeheheheho...*ahem* Having said that, all of you have done an outstanding job in this thread and in my mind you all deserve "Greatly Exceed Expectations" so here's your "Met Expectations" also no bonuses this year but we will be taking one special department to Jamaica for an all expenses paid resort trip for one whole week! The winner is Sales.
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Jul 5, 2015 21:23
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Jerome Louis posted:I didn't, we had him hired through a temp agency. My understanding is that we didn't need to go through our HR for cases like this Always ask HR even if you don't think you need to. For all the poo poo everyone gives them, the one good thing is that they almost solely exist to cover the company's rear end.
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Oct 16, 2015 03:11
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Finally got my Staff Development Review, our rating is scaled 1-5 where if you're not getting a 3 you're failing, a 4 is "you did good, kid" and a 5 is a unicorn that nobody ever gets. I got a 5.  Let's see what that means for salar-haha who am I kidding, it means nothing.
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Dec 18, 2015 03:21
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Sundae posted:I'd just have to get it approved through the mothership So, no, then?
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Jan 2, 2016 01:18
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There are a few organizations I work with that use it and it's annoying as hell. It's "Official Use Only" folks, basic MS Office or PDF passwords are fine folks, we're not trading in nuclear launch codes here.
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Jan 13, 2016 05:50
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spog posted:Isn't it fairly easy to configure Outlook to automatically encrypt emails to defined users and make it transparent to the users? Why yes, yes it is. Now ask me if Johnny Security Director at Random Children's Hospital in the middle of Ohio knows this. (The answer is no)
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Jan 14, 2016 05:11
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FrozenVent posted:Am I the only one that hates email setups where the system adds [EXTERNAL] to the subject line? A few companies I deal with have that and it grates me to no end. That drives me nuts. They know none of that poo poo is legally binding in any way right? Note: Privileged/Confidential information may be contained in this post and may be subject to legal privilege. Access to this post by anyone other than the intended is unauthorised. If you are not the intended recipient (or responsible for delivery of the post to such person), you may not use, copy, distribute or deliver to anyone this post (or any part of its contents ) or take any action in reliance on it. In such case, you should destroy this post, and notify us immediately. If you have received this email in error, please notify us immediately by post or telephone and delete the post from any computer. If you or your employer does not consent to internet posts of this kind, please notify us immediately. All reasonable precautions have been taken to ensure no viruses are present in this post. As our company cannot accept responsibility for any loss or damage arising from the use of this post or attachments we recommend that you subject these to your virus checking procedures prior to use. The views, opinions, conclusions and other informations expressed in this electronic internet forum post are not given or endorsed by the company unless otherwise indicated by an authorized representative independent of this post. Higgy fucked around with this message at 00:23 on Jun 25, 2016 |
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Jun 25, 2016 00:21
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Sundae posted:I am. Oh I am. If not you, someone must become the new Sundae. There's a void that must be filled, someone do the needful here.
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Jul 1, 2016 18:10
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C-Euro posted:Moral quandary time- my boss is out all next week and I've just learned that the guy with whom I share an office is out Monday, meaning that this Monday I am the only person in my office room. Monday afternoon is also when my wife gets back from a multi-week work and family trip, and she needs me to pick her up from the airport. Do I- If you work where I work, you make up the time. Time card fraud is the #1 quickest path to getting shitcanned followed closely by porn at work.
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Aug 5, 2016 01:10
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ing on the clock.
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I had a guy I work with tell me a story of his construction management days while talking about my officemate taking a couple weeks for the birth of his first kid. "They were back at work the same day! I can't believe he's taking two weeks off."  Yeah, I bet their wives were thrilled with that decision because it's a good decision to make.
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Aug 6, 2016 21:32
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I'd buy that but he's only 4-5 years older than me. I think it's more that he's just kind of a piece of poo poo. Luckily he's in the vast minority for that opinion.
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Aug 7, 2016 19:26
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This is the worst thing and it literally gave me anxiety. My favorite is when someone puts a telecon on hold on their phone and they start playing back our company's hold music the group. gently caress telecons.
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May 29, 2017 23:52
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