Originally posted by pjclarke
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"Having worked IT for hedge funds and private banks, the hardest part of the job for me was trying to find somewhere on the server to store their quite frankly massive downloaded porn collections. You could not hope to work for a more depressing bunch of people."
Originally posted by Stevie Wonder Boy -
However, something I LOVE is working Feb 29th.
Love watching all those permies working for free. Make a point of pointing it out to them.
Sadistic Bastard..........Comment
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""I have a friend who works at a telecom company and he tells me it's just as bad over there, so maybe this is typical of large corporations, not specifically banks"
Talking about 'empire building'. It's actually everywhere, nothing specific to banking.
There are different stages in the lifecycle of a business.
Business Life Cycle | 7 Stages | Business Development
And different individuals thrive in different stages.
For me, seed, start-up and growth are the most exciting. All working in the same direction, all pulling together. Competitive edge, get it up and running. Exciting, fresh, dynamic, chaotic. Perfect for contractors.
Then established. The need for process/the need for stability from the growth phase. The move to permies, to teams, start of empire building, bringing in new blood. Contractors not required as much.
Expansion. A different skillset. The ability to manage the existing status quo but drive forward. Political sensitivities / budgets / resources/ legacy/ politics. External companies/consultancies/contractors/people pulling in different directions/empires! Heady exciting stuff again.
Mature. Process/constraint/slow. Long term permies/contractors. Head down, don't rattle the cage. Dull, boring. Need dependable/level headedness/political stalemate....
Exit - Roller coaster. Redundancies/job losess/firings/collapse/ will the last contractor turn off the lights.....
Different people for different stages.What happens in General, stays in General.You know what they say about assumptions!Comment
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Althoigh you could say its another day we have to wait to submit our time sheets and get our grubby little hands on our hardly earned moneyOriginally posted by RSoles View PostOriginally posted by Stevie Wonder BoyComment
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Originally posted by pjclarke View Post1. Some process-knowedgeable twat with piss-poor technical skills knocks-up an in-house applet, probably on a spreadsheet, and shares it around, whereupon eventually...
2. Applet become business-critical, but a concrete refusal by brain-dead management to countenance a re-write to get it running properly means...
3. Out-sourcing to India, with all the afore-mentioned (by above article and comments) near-awesomely tulipe results, most of which is so badly done and time-consuming to produce that...
4. London-based contractors are brought in to "complete the process", which means, in reality, fashioning a framework of code that can be relied on to "wrap" the now-steaming pile of cyber-poo that the brain-dead management can now start claiming brownie-points for until...
5. The infrastructure eventually limps alongs like some zombie spastic afterbirth that requires more and more budget and churning hardware to survive, all with sluggish response times exceeding 5 minutes for even simple queries, just rolling and oozing and costing the earth -- on and on and on until...
6. One day, some process-aware dick has a bright idea and kicks off step 1 again
Coffee's for closersComment
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It is. But with an Ir35-tight contract, 'the term' is effectively the drop of a hat. So they're not breaking the contract, and being squeezed by the customer on price is just part of business - the moment the client/vendor are not mutually dependent, the less dependent one can start throwing their weight around.Originally posted by Scrag Meister View PostOriginally posted by MaryPoppinsOriginally posted by vetranComment
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What I hate is knowing I'm going to have to work half an hour extra to make my hours up when my train is late - and I was on the early train that I've got up half an hour early to catch....my quagmire of greed....my cesspit of laziness and unfairness....all I am doing is sticking two fingers up at nurses, doctors and other hard working employed professionals...
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You lot are either a miserable bunch or have had very bad luck. I love contracting. I spend my time being creative, looking at business problems and dreaming up solutions. I then engage organisational leadership to get their buy-in which enables me to cut through my techy colleagues' can't do attitude and establish a robust delivery mechanism. Once the project is set up, I hand it over to a permie colleague and move on with the satisfaction of a job well done.
I did wonder if I might be a 'process aware dick' but I'm not sure what an applet is and am not awfully good with spreadsheets. I much prefer a diagram representation set within a benefit realisation framework so it is quite clear how the return on investment is achieved.
What are you all complaining about?Comment
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