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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 252 responses total. |
kentn
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response 105 of 252:
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Feb 1 01:49 UTC 2019 |
New boss is here. Seems reasonable so far, though she hasn't said
much. She's worked for this company for 16 years prior to this gig, so
I hope knows how things should work. Old boss said he'd give me a call
sometime and I told him okay. Probably wants to know how this project
is going. Aside from working 4 straight weeks every day to halfway keep
up, it is close to done. Can you say "death march?" Delivery is Feb 14
or maybe a day or two later. Everything is programmed and validated
so it's just those last minute changes we need to get past.
IBB I haven't had time for much of anything around the house, like
chores and relaxing.
IBB we'll never get paid for all the overtime we've put in.
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walkman
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response 106 of 252:
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Feb 9 12:24 UTC 2019 |
The lesson I learned by observing the media and the "man on the street"
reactions to job cuts, unpaid overtime, etc is this:
If you make a decent living and don't work for a union or work in some
god-awful coalmine no one gives a shit what you go through.
That said, I was spared being cut. My department was given the all clear
by the president of the company. Next week all departments are going to
be reorganized. The fun never ends and if you complain, "you should be
grateful for having a job." It's far too early in the economic cycle for
this greed and exploitation.
The media excitement over "the gig economy" where you deliver groceries
or taxi people with no benefits while an app company makes billions is
the future. If you sell everything, invest in a lucrative investment
fund and live in a van, you could do gigs and collect food stamps. It's
the future for millenials. Sign up for the new green deal. Be a hero. My
advice to generation z: learn a trade. Fix furnaces or replace plumbing.
Corporate America is a race to the bottom unless you are a management
type who can live with firing single moms with 3 kids.
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tod
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response 107 of 252:
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Feb 10 06:45 UTC 2019 |
Whatever happened to "mansplaining"?
That was a real friend-maker culture.
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kentn
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response 108 of 252:
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Mar 14 00:26 UTC 2019 |
Okay, IBB, this place drives me nuts. I got put on another study and
nothing much is getting done. People say they're programming but I
don't see the results. So I asked for a few more programmers, got 3
contractors. Then 2 of them got pulled back to their previous work so
I put the other guy to work and he got a few things working. However,
today we found out we've got to change a lot of things and do even more
work, so I asked for a few more programmers and all I got was "I gave
you 3 the other day." Of course, 3 became 1 so that didn't help as
much as 3 so that's what I told this so-called boss (same level as I
am). So, I think it's time she started running this project and see
what happens to her. Supposedly this is the most important project
around, but not when some other project needs people then it's the
most important project. I keep having to work weekends and things at
home are falling apart even more than before. So, I'm not all that
happy right now. Our client likes to dump more work on us that we have
people to do it and then they say 'hire more people.' But, as I noted,
people are leaving every month. And replacements take time to come up
to speed. So, that isn't working. I'm mostly tired all the time and
unmotivated. I'd like to work for a company that treats people with
respect and work in environment that isn't about blame but about fixing
things if they aren't working. Thankfully, the lead programmer that was
out sick for a month came back today, so he can start dealing with the
nonsense I've been dealing with. On the plus side, I fixed a couple
Unix issues today for people and that was okay. Just that it came at
the expense of other work I'm supposed to be doing.
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papa
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response 109 of 252:
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Mar 14 15:47 UTC 2019 |
You have my sympathy. Sounds like a pathological work environment.
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kentn
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response 110 of 252:
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Mar 16 01:19 UTC 2019 |
Thanks. Waiting for the end of days here. It's two days later and
very little got done. I know people are waiting for the end of the
study so they can jump in cause problems but we don't have time
for new validation program development. Today I got word that 4
of the people helping just became potential programmers for other
projects on a moment's notice, so now we are going into the final
phase without the people we need to do the work, and we only
have 5 days to do everthing. So far they've been working on it
for 9 days and aren't done yet. So that doesn't bode well.
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tod
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response 111 of 252:
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Mar 16 04:32 UTC 2019 |
re #110
Sounds horrible
What kind of methodology do they use and is there a program owner who
tracks resources?
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kentn
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response 112 of 252:
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Mar 17 14:32 UTC 2019 |
It's clinical study reports and data. Several different statistical
procedures and models are used. We'll determine if a drug is
significantly better than its alternative.
Yes, resources are tracked by management above me. We meet regularly to
see how things are going and so far it is "not well."
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tod
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response 113 of 252:
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Mar 18 23:48 UTC 2019 |
Hang in there
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kentn
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response 114 of 252:
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Mar 19 03:05 UTC 2019 |
Thanks, Tod. So far we are making some progress. Lots of changes
at the last minute, lots of comments to fix, etc. But, we've got
people working on things even though they aren't doing very well with
their programming (we move some things to others who have more time or
experience so that things might get done on time). Many hands make
light work out the impossible sometimes. We'll see. Why in the world
can't people be more about problem-solving than blaming, I don't know.
One of the best jobs I ever had was had a culture of problem-solving and
trying to make sure things got fixed and didn't happen again, rather
than trying to find blame. Oh well. The idea is if we can get our
validation programs working now, they might work, without much change,
when we get to the end of this thing. It is a Byzantine system and set
up we have to work in and that confuses people a lot. I'll be working on
training for it in month so we can get people off to a better start and
provide more guidance when they hit snags. Unfortunately the system is
one that can take years to learn the details of (long learning curve).
I've been working in it for a total of 10 years now.
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papa
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response 115 of 252:
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Mar 25 22:57 UTC 2019 |
resp:113
tod, I apologize (to you and everyone) for posting a private message here,
but I haven't recieved a reply to e-mails sent to both tod@grex.org and
treasurer@cyberspace.org, and I know you follow this conference item.
I made a PayPal payment for a 1-year membership back in December, but my
name is still not on the members list. Someone told me you are the Grex
treasurer responsible for handling membership payments. Please let me
know if there's anything more you need me to do to process this.
I'm sad because I'm not a Grex member.
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tod
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response 116 of 252:
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Mar 26 18:09 UTC 2019 |
I'll look into this for you. Thansk for bringing it up.
I have no idea where those email addresses are forwarding to.
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papa
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response 117 of 252:
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Mar 26 23:06 UTC 2019 |
resp:116
Thanks! Let me know if there's any information you need.
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kentn
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response 118 of 252:
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Mar 30 20:15 UTC 2019 |
If the payment came to PayPal, that account used to email some people,
including me. If I knew about things like this I'd usually fix them
up right away. But I don't get the e-mails any more and it's harder
for me to find out what is going on, and work has been a hellish mess,
so I haven't dug into things further. The people that get e-mails
when there's a status change in PayPal is an option on the account, I
think. At the very least, treasurer@grex.org should be in the list.
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papa
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response 119 of 252:
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Mar 31 12:36 UTC 2019 |
cross got my membership fixed-up. Thanks! I'm not sad anymore.
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tfurrows
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response 120 of 252:
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Apr 9 13:23 UTC 2019 |
Grex seems to be having network problems, which makes me :(
I'm not sure what's going on, which makes me more :(
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cross
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response 121 of 252:
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Apr 9 14:13 UTC 2019 |
It seems to be ok now, but yeah, something was really bad about
an hour ago.
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papa
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response 122 of 252:
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Apr 13 10:28 UTC 2019 |
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kentn
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response 123 of 252:
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Jul 18 01:06 UTC 2019 |
Work continues to be a real mess. Now we have a lot of programmers
who don't check their program logs and then we have errors and warnings
all over the place. It's taking time to fix, and of course the timelines
got over a month shorter last week, so it's like the client is trying to
work us to death. But, the log issues are ours to fix, unfortunately.
Not sure what to say other than they push people too hard to get things
done in a short time and then people start skipping steps. I've been
preaching about log checks now for 4 weeks and it's still happening.
I guess people like playing with the manager to see if he notices (he
does). Next will be 1:1s to see what is going on and if it keeps
happening it will become a performance issue. I hope it doesn't go that
far. I have one programmer who doesn't like unix and can't deal with it
although the rest are fine with what they need to do on the server. He
refused to let me show him how to make it easier (shell features,
aliases, and simple editor).
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bwh
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response 124 of 252:
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Jul 18 01:33 UTC 2019 |
"doesn't like unix" ... "refused ... to make it easier". My guess is that
person is either just frustrated or hates to accept something they griped
about is just different not bad. A gentle nudge may be in order.
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kentn
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response 125 of 252:
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Jul 18 02:10 UTC 2019 |
Yeah. We were told by the client to do everything on the unix server
and this basically forces him to work there. I'll see where he's at
tomorrow, mentally, and if he wants I can get him set up so he can work
reasonably well from the command line. It is a requirement of his job,
so he'll need to adapt and find a way to do his work.
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tod
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response 126 of 252:
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Jul 18 03:09 UTC 2019 |
Can you tie log checks into log feeds to some sort of alert automation?
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kentn
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response 127 of 252:
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Jul 18 22:57 UTC 2019 |
It's difficult with the system we use to do anything after then run in
an automated way. We can't change the system, for one thing. However,
we can check all the logs in a directory with one of my scripts quite
easily.
Again, we are dealing unix and the majority don't want to deal with it,
and that includes running scripts.
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papa
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response 128 of 252:
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Jul 20 08:35 UTC 2019 |
ISB it's been fifty years since humanity first set foot on the Moon and
nobody's been back in forty-seven years.
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tod
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response 129 of 252:
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Jul 21 05:20 UTC 2019 |
Artemis will change that
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