Recently in Work Category

My group at The Big Bank are in the middle of a huge software deployment. Because so many of the team I'm in have left or are on holiday of one sort or another, I've stepped away from the day-to-day parts of the deployment, in order to do a lot of day-to-day work that noone else would do otherwise.

I figured that having the idea for the big project, doing the design for our company, picking the product, writing the main documents, and administering the special-case early deployment product would count for something.

I was wrong.

Now, I'm 'not involved', and that 'I'll be more involved for the next phase'. I am fucking involved! Every time they deploy one of those appliances, they're deploying something I have pushed through the initiation ritual of the Big Bank Ministry of Wasting Time and Money. Every time they look at the virtual machine it's installed on, they could see that the direct-to-VM deploy is something I suggested, almost everyone opposed, and now everyone seems to think is the best idea ever. Every time they lift a piece of config straight from the old systems and onto the new and it works perfectly first time, they might remember that it's specifically designed that way, to make it easier.

I guess you're only as good as your last status email.

This is absolutely the way it is at The Big Bank, except that five people could never make a decision unless two were very senior executives.

When I eventually got logged into my work VPN this morning, I happened to look at the IP settings because, predictably, it wasn't working properly.

There are 23 domains in the DNS search list. That's at least 19 too many.

At what point does a company stop trying to consolidate and centralise, and start separating systems again so that they can be maintained? I think my company has gone a long, long way past that point. In an attempt to have one single desktop for everyone, that single desktop is so completely overburdened with configuration that it ceases to work properly.

It's more than just the domains. The login scripts rarely work properly. The systems for installing applications are cumbersome. The systems for security exceptions are impossibly bureacratic and stupid. I need to get a newer version of an application installed so I can actually use it for its designed purpose. I need the security officer's personal approval so I can upgrade a licensed, approved application on my own comporate-standard laptop. I've been waiting nearly two weeks for a reply.

Even with 100,000 fewer employees, the systems are still sized for a few years ago, and for the budgets from a few years ago. Someone needs to take a big decision. I just know that noone is willing to stick their neck out that far.

Ok, it's a fair cop - there is a good and rather obvious reason why companies give no feedback after interviews, especially companies from more litigious cultures than Britain. It just didn't occur to me at the time that it might be because they don't want to get sued for saying the wrong thing.

I still think it's a lousy policy. It's possible to give constructive feedback without being discriminatory, assuming of course (as I am assuming here) that discrimination isn't the reason. I can see why it's not allowed though - policy decrees coming from legal don't normally make allowance for social graces.

Of course, in my career I've become somewhat familiar with overzealous legal people making life difficult for everyone; it's really very easy for me to just transfer the blame straight to Counsel. I know they won't mind, or even notice.

I little while ago I was asked by Google to apply for a job. I learned today that I didn't get it. I was pretty excited about the idea of working there, and now I'm rather disconsolate about not getting in. It's not wholly unexpected, I flubbed parts of the interviews, but I thought I did ok. Apparently not ok enough.

Lots of others have written in expansive detail about their experiences, but instead I'm going to honour their (Google's) request to not discuss the interview process. I make one exception: They refused point blank to say why they said 'no' - it 'wasn't company policy'.

This isn't a question of policy. It's a question of politeness. I put a lot of time and trouble into the process, took time out of my work to travel abroad to see them, and quietly waited weeks for their recruitment person got back from holiday before getting refused. It's bad enough to not get the gig. To then be unable to get any explanation as to why is just plain rude.

I'm not trying to shoot the messenger here - if that really is the company policy, then it's the policy that sucks, and not the person following it. Still, I expected better. I am gutted I didn't get in; and I think it's a crying shame that my last experience of dealing with a great company like Google is to feel arrogantly dismissed.

'Soul destroying' is a phrase I've used often. I don't think I've ever really felt the truth in it before - the soul is, after all, something that belongs to a God in whom I don't believe. 'Spirit crushing' is more visceral, less laden with religious baggage, and it sounds so good, at least when Ewan McGregor says it. You takes your cliché and makes your choice.

I've applied one or the other many times, to many different things. Never, in all that time, have I really felt like I meant it. I have hated things, from my head to my toes; and I've regretted things - boy, have I regretted things - but never could I really and truly say that I felt my spirit being crushed by external stimuli. Until now.

It has taken merely the prospect of a new, exciting job to show me the extent to which my existing work is constricting my soul/spirit. I may work in technology, but I believe that creativity is where you put your heart, and there's no heart going into anything at The Big Bank. With a few notable exceptions, I feel surrounded by people who have been round the block a few times too many, and been wrung out by the experience just a few times too often. I don't think they're bad people. I think they're tired people. Tired to the bone. Broken.

I am not going to let that happen to me. Whether or not this current opportunity pans out, I have to move on. Whether it takes ten minutes, six months or thirty years for the ship to sink, those left on the deck are committed to their fate.

As a serendipitous knock-on effect, this new job, should I get it, would involve a move some distance away from where I live today. The thought that that might actually happen quite soon was like removing a heavy backpack after a long walk.  It's not because there's anything wrong with it here (there isn't) and not because I don't have friends here (I do); it's because I can finally escape the shackles of my partner's divorce. In a new place, I will be far away from her pitiful ex-husband; in a new place, I'll no longer have to fume in silence as his kids are constantly disappointed by his selfishness and stupidity.

My partner doesn't have a cynical or spiteful cell in her body. I feel ashamed of my cynical nature when she is shocked at my interpretation of events involving her ex. Unfortunately for everyone, I am right more often than wrong. No matter how low I set my expectations, he falls short. Worst of all, after years of disappointment she is starting to arrive at the very same conclusions. She is becoming as cynical and jaded with the whole sorry show as I am, and that is so terribly sad.

So: For my sake, for the freedom of my spirit, for the integrity of my soul, for the win, for the fun of it, for ours and the common good, I need to get myself the bloody hell outta here as fast as my career will carry me. As one of my favourite antiheroes Nick Succurso might have said: Now would be good. Sooner would be better.

My employer just announced tens of thousands more redundancies. In the announcement, the CEO referred to 'getting fit', that is, to streamlining the company.

As I write I'm attending a meeting. It's an 'introductory' meeting about a process. There are eleven people on the call, and none of them are doing any actual work.

Here's a hint, folks. If a process needs a separate introductory meeting, it's too fucking complicated.

We're 25 minutes in. At the moment, the speaker (who barely speaks English, I only mention it to provide some atmosphere) is walking us through an Excel spreadsheet. He's reading out a list of numbers from the spreadsheet in a robotic voice.

Hint: If your English is barely good enough to order a meal at a restaurant, and is limited to a halting monotone, don't give presentations to English speakers, as they might start losing the will to live.

I'm one of the least senior people in this meeting, at Vice President level. Some of the other attendees are two or three levels above me. We're all listening to a shitty (and late-starting) walkthrough of something that really should have written documentation.

We're not achieving anything, we're all just holding jobs and having dinner. Our company is haemorraging money, and here we all are, spending shareholder's money on sweet motherfucking nothing.

Another day in the office.

I work as a software developer/engineer/whatever. Actually, I'm not really a programmer, I'm a systems administrator who can code. Most of the time, it's pretty mundane stuff. I'm told I'm very good at it, and I'm quite well paid for it. All the same, it's not often very exciting.

Sometimes it is, though. I've been working, working really hard all day. I've been fighting to make an automated self-test pass. It's been a long struggle, finding the problem, identifying the source, building the necessary tools to fix it, packaging and installing the tools, and finally re-running the test suite.

Still mundane, I'm sure most people will think. On the contrary, at least from my perspective: When that test said 'success', I was cheering like I'd just scored the tournament-winning mawashi-geri jodan (roundhouse kick to the head) in the national championships. It was a really, really good feeling, and my current job doesn't allow me to feel it often enough.

I fought the machine, and the machine fought back hard. In the end, I won. I know that most would have given up, or not even tried. Many wouldn't have even understood there was a problem to be solved. Today I reminded myself that there's a reason I do this stuff - because there is a challenge to be found, if one's standards are high enough; and that I can meet that challenge head-on.

A good day.

In my previous post 'The slow, relentless crushing of the spirit', I mentioned that I'd worked at bad places before and that I recognised the signs. Another sign is flashing in front of me this evening.

It's Sunday evening and I'm pissed off. Downright cranky, in fact. Nothing else for it: I'm dreading work.

Now to a lot of people that's every Sunday. Not me - I like what I do, at least I like the core of it. I get to play with expensive toys and occasionally do stuff that's cool. I get to work with some smart people, which really does make up for working for so many dim people. I don't exactly jump up and down with joy at the end of the weekend, but normally it's not too bad.

I suspect, however, that my being filled with bile and loathing before the week has even started is a fairly good sign that things at the office are not all they should be.

God, I hope a holiday - soon now, very soon - is all that's required. This is a crappy time to be looking for a new job.

Sometimes when you have a bad day at the office, you know it's just a bad day. Not the first, not the last, not the end of the world.

Other times, you know it's time to get your walking shoes cleaned up and ready for action.

I wrote an email to a colleague today, and I'll extract it here. The background is relatively simple: Last week I absolutely hit my marks, and did a whole load of great stuff so far beyond the call of duty that it was a bit silly. One of those great weeks when you just get it right.

My boss came back from a work trip and failed to notice. Well, to be precise he dismissed one of the changes as 'not ideal' and failed to comment on the other. Then, when we submitted the stuff to be deployed on customer-facing systems there was a tiny, tiny error. The operations guy mailed 21 people to say it was broken.

Here's what I wrote.

Why send this to everyone? Is it your intent to make us look bad?

I went to the wall for you guys last week. Without my efforts, [project A] would certainly have failed when we turned up [company B]. It still might; it's just less likely. I went to the trouble of checking everything with [expert at a technology vendor] (not really down to me, but I did it anyway); and when it didn't work, I patched [our server software] to make it work. In case it's not obvious, that is a non-trivial amount of work. Without it, we'd have all had a really shit day with [Company B].

How long do you reckon it would have taken [our vendors] to fix that problem? Weeks? Months? I did it in a morning, because it needed done.

Then, when you and [another operations guy] gave me access, I spent hours tracking down an elusive [software] bug. [It's] not my job, I just did it because no one else was doing it. I could have stalled, or passed the buck, or just not done it. Instead, I got my head down and sorted it out.

How long do you think it would have taken the [software product] team to figure something like that out, if they'd even accepted the challenge? Weeks? Months? Never?  I did it in an afternoon, because you asked me to and because it needed done.

How are my efforts repaid? Yesterday you caught the result of a very minor bug, and mailed a big red FAILURE to 21 people. The result was that [my colleague] and I look like idiots. Why would you do something like that?

Unlike others in the past, I'm not using my abilities as an excuse for being arrogant and condescending. I'm not keeping myself entertained with irrelevant side projects and taking months over simple changes. I'm trying to help, respecting operations' workload, and genuinely trying to make stuff better. We have worked together many times before, and got a lot done. What's changed?

This has completely ruined my day.

I've worked at spirit-crushingly bad places before, and I recognise the signs. You have three choices: Dumb down to their level; eat it up; or ship out. I think I'll ship out.