Reply to: How many days have you been on site with no access?

[hungry_hog]

thinking back in the mists of time as a consultant, my longest one was a telecoms company which sounds a bit like Mintish Belecom...was there 4 months and never got proper access. Had to meet my manager at the reception and get a paper pass each day. The projects were about as ordered as Brownian motion - lots of 1am finishes and slides being thrown in the bin. Place was full of MBA grads doing silly slides for management.

[CodeCobbler]

Oof, anything SC related its usually weeks to months. Its actually not as fun as it sounds, just incredibly boring. Some places have no/limited internet access or phone allowed. So its extremely boring sitting around waiting for access or for software to get installed. The last one it was 7 months, and I never got my requisite software installed by IT so I canned it, and did not renew much to their disappointment. Only so many times you can do coffee chat, check corp email, long walks before it gets to you. I did learn via linked in from another contractor that the software did eventually get installed, some months later.

[IVR247]

5 months - a pharma company in Dublin. The software I needed to write the code for the new system required a physical CDROM to be in the computer to prove you had a license. IT policy was no CD Drives in the desktops, so I twiddled my thumbs and chatted up the girls for months.

My favourite leaving memory was at a telco in Bracknell. Team leader, who I sat opposite told me I was to stay until 5pm, no way I was going to leave early on my last day. Turned out the IT guy that had the ticket to terminate my access was a friend of mine. He asked me when I wanted access revoked - so I said midday. I came back from lunch and - no access to the computer - Team Leader was SOOO pissed, but I left by 2pm.

[psychocandy]

3 weeks on this one. It's great when you'rr 100% WFH as atvleastbyou don't have to sit around twiddling your thumbs trying to look busy

Exactly -result that is.... Does my chunk in just sitting there for weeks on end

[Paralytic]

3 weeks on this one. It's great when you'rr 100% WFH as atvleastbyou don't have to sit around twiddling your thumbs trying to look busy

It looks like you've spent 3 weeks drinking before typing that!

[JamesCooperLiverpool]

3 weeks on this one. It's great when you'rr 100% WFH as atvleastbyou don't have to sit around twiddling your thumbs trying to look busy

[darmstadt]

On the flip side, has anyone EVER turned up on day 1 and had everything sorted for them?

Yes, practically every contract in the last 25 years has been like that

[hungry_hog]

On the flip side, has anyone EVER turned up on day 1 and had everything sorted for them?

Am in FS on the buy side. Day 1 everything was working. Login already set up. One hour to get a pass. All the access requests had already been raised, including most importantly the timesheet.
Before that a Swiss Bank which sounds like a courier company - they were similarly efficient.

I think the move to virtual machines has made it much easier, no more waiting for a brick laptop which weights more than a neutron star whilst having the power of a ZX81.

[vetran]

On the flip side, has anyone EVER turned up on day 1 and had everything sorted for them?

Yes actually it was in a quango, the infrastructure guys were seated behind me and the Infrastructure manager really knew where his towel was. I was logged on and working by 10:15 (first day start was 10am. so you could test your route).

Also in a large Electrical manufacturer. I had a laptop, user created and the Admin passwords before 11am. Sadly such competence didn't extend to the infrastructure I took over from a third party professional services team that couldn't wait to get out of there because they were exposed as incompetent.

Small consultancy in telecoms got my ltd's computer joined first day and logins for the systems in a week (they were someone big else's systems) I spent the first week shadowing an existing person fixing simple issues to learn the ropes on the systems.

When I was an IT manager my expectation was everyone got their equipment & paperwork first day and their IT induction (no Porn, No music, no Viruses etc) in the first week. Difficult to do when a bod turned up out of the blue because the manager thought we could just magic PC's and licenses out of thin air.

Its not rare that IT know what they are doing, HR & managers though!

[eek]

Yes - at a couple of US banks.

Obviously there were loads of access requests I had to make but that is standard at all banks.

Likewise first time at Microsoft everything done by close of play on day 1

Second time round Laptop was day 1 access to systems just took longer because people were away..

[TheDude]

On the flip side, has anyone EVER turned up on day 1 and had everything sorted for them?

Yes - at a couple of US banks.

Obviously there were loads of access requests I had to make but that is standard at all banks.

[ladymuck]

On the flip side, has anyone EVER turned up on day 1 and had everything sorted for them?

Yes. My second client (way back in 2005/6) and my current client.

Returning to a previous client doesn't count because my old account was just reactivated.

[SueEllen]

On the flip side, has anyone EVER turned up on day 1 and had everything sorted for them?

Yes but only in small companies when the person sorting stuff out is basically next to you.

[psychocandy]

On the flip side, has anyone EVER turned up on day 1 and had everything sorted for them?

[darmstadt]

Out of interest which bank?

In my experience the top American Banks are very slick with onboarding.

The European banks are a lot more sloppy.

No problems with European banks and I've done a lot of contracts at them, in fact I don't think I've ever had to wait for equipment or logon details or other requirements although I have had some very dire equipment provided.