Quitting a contract for the first time in 6 years

[ThomasSoerensen]

Yep. Maybe my experience in Agile projects is making it impossible to work in a waterfall environment. Perhaps it's just too big a leap back in time.

Open up your andoid phone
Download the app called poopsalary
Enter your hourly rate in the app
Start the app
Go to the toilet
Evacuate 1kg waste
Recover and wipe sweat off forehead
Exit toilet
Go back to little desk
Stop app
Check result
Smile

[russell]

[Mich the Tester]

Believe it or not, you're making my point for me. This place is full of people who can give a long list of excuses for not doing anything, but nobody who actually wants to get the system up and running. Personally, I have made enough money this year to not need work for several months, and I'd be quite happy to spend a few months training in the gym and pissing around on bikes at the velodrome; I might just go and do that, and if some other contract comes along that looks OK, I'll consider it.

[FiveTimes]

Haven't sent one yet; first one this evening. That's why I need to wait a little while.

get your invoice paid and you might feel better about it all

[SimonMac]

You are on a slippery slope!! One contract today, name change to NWPerm2Contractor tomorrow!!! beware

Harsh!

[MarillionFan]

Believe it or not, you're making my point for me. This place is full of people who can give a long list of excuses for not doing anything, but nobody who actually wants to get the system up and running. Personally, I have made enough money this year to not need work for several months, and I'd be quite happy to spend a few months training in the gym and pissing around on bikes at the velodrome; I might just go and do that, and if some other contract comes along that looks OK, I'll consider it.

Same with present clientco. I am completely constrained by the deployment process & the fact that the people doing the development, deployment and adminstration are so hopeless and lazy that effectively it looks like I will fail to deliver on this project & to boot not get a renewal. 7 weeks ago I had the entire requirements documented to a level of detail they had never seen before.

They immediately descoped, descoped, descoped to which there were only four simple functional changes to make. I did a POC on all four 4 weeks ago on a sandbox using their PAAS.
With an estimate of no more than one man to do the four items, I am sat at home again today with nothing to test as they have failed to deliver yet again. To make it worse, the head developer stops at evey single question, preferring to completely stop sending me an email saying 'I think it's X but you need to make the decision, so I have stopped'. The guy has absolutely no fricking idea on how joins work in a database. This has gone on for 3 weeks and so far he has done 2 hours worth of work (I imagine it's longer). I cannot by pass the process & because it's cloud infrastructure I cannot even configure another server and say 'fook you' & deploy a shadow BI system.

I've just POC'd the work I've waited for, for 4 weeks. Lo and behold, he's set the initial configuration table up incorrectly, so when he does get around to finishing it 'later today' I expect to see an email asking 'Is this it then?' because he is truly that thick.

Escalation email methinks.

[Mich the Tester]

Same with present clientco. I am completely constrained by the deployment process & the fact that the people doing the development, deployment and adminstration are so hopeless and lazy that effectively it looks like I will fail to deliver on this project & to boot not get a renewal. 7 weeks ago I had the entire requirements documented to a level of detail they had never seen before.

They immediately descoped, descoped, descoped to which there were only four simple functional changes to make. I did a POC on all four 4 weeks ago on a sandbox using their PAAS.
With an estimate of no more than one man to do the four items, I am sat at home again today with nothing to test as they have failed to deliver yet again. To make it worse, the head developer stops at evey single question, preferring to completely stop sending me an email saying 'I think it's X but you need to make the decision, so I have stopped'. The guy has absolutely no fricking idea on how joins work in a database. This has gone on for 3 weeks and so far he has done 2 hours worth of work (I imagine it's longer). I cannot by pass the process & because it's cloud infrastructure I cannot even configure another server and say 'fook you' & deploy a shadow BI system.

I've just POC'd the work I've waited for, for 4 weeks. Lo and behold, he's set the initial configuration table up incorrectly, so when he does get around to finishing it 'later today' I expect to see an email asking 'Is this it then?' because he is truly that thick.

Escalation email methinks.

I've just spent a week convincing the PM that a sandbox is a worthwhile idea; all he's been saying is 'yes but then we risk getting blamed if something is wrong with it'. My position; 'yes, we risk getting blamed. We ALWAYS risk getting blamed. The only way to avoid the risk of getting blamed when projects go wrong is to go and sign on the dole; and then we get blamed for being parasites living off the state.' The man needs to grow a pair.

[Scoobos]

You remind me of myself; if I can dare be so cocky to assume so.

I'm guessing you're not money motivated and remain passionate about your work.

That puts us in the minority.

I'd quit too, especially given your sterling history.

[TestMangler]

You remind me of myself; if I can dare be so cocky to assume so.

I'm guessing you're not money motivated and remain passionate about your work.

That puts us in the minority.

I'd quit too, especially given your sterling history.

Surely, he'll get paid in Euros ?

[MyUserName]

I have hated one place I worked at, it was back when I was a permie. I was marked down in my appraisal for not fixing a bug. The bug was caused by rounding a number down ... it was not a bug it was the law of ******* maths.

Manager could not understand and insisted it was a bug and blamed me for having 'poor problem solving ability'. I wrote examples using numbers less than 10 and he honestly did not understand it, his manager was spineless and did nothing. My wife was genuinely concerned I was on the brink of depression and phoned some old friends and asked them to come over now and then to cheer me up.

The guarantees I made myself when I began contracting is that I will never:

Be in a position where someone can bully and walk all over me
Let work make me feel that way again.

I would leave the place ASAP. If it is bothering you then it is only going to get worse.