Do you work? ... In work?

Francie Barrett

ryo.jodeci wrote: »

Yes we were talking about that. It's just that I sit right next to my manager who seems to live in a pretend world that we're all busy. Being on BBC is fine, but actually taking in a laptop and using it in front of her could look like I'm trying to shake her out of a fantasy world she's in!

This doesn't make any sense.

Any manager I have ever had would never wanted their staff to be looking idle. When the shoe has been on the other foot, I would have felt the same. It would look bad for me as a manager if my direct reports were sitting around on BBC all day. If things were quiet, I would still want anyone I was managing to be building up their personal skills even, rather than be faffing around on Youtube or whatever.

Berserker

ryo.jodeci wrote: »

Hi ongarboy, you might be right in terms of me needing to move. I would probably have to take a pay cut to do that, which is probably the main reason I haven't yet.

Be very careful with this. How are you going to phrase your decision to move in an interview? You run the risk of coming across as a difficult candidate. People hire contractors to come in and do a specific project. Picking and choosing your work isn't an option.

Francie Barrett wrote: »

This doesn't make any sense.

Any manager I have ever had would never wanted their staff to be looking idle. When the shoe has been on the other foot, I would have felt the same. It would look bad for me as a manager if my direct reports were sitting around on BBC all day. If things were quiet, I would still want anyone I was managing to be building up their personal skills even, rather than be faffing around on Youtube or whatever.

Depends on the organisation Francie. I've worked as a manager/lead in software development in the kind of organisation that the OP works in and they just keep rolling these contracts. We had a reporting project that renewed every six months. The work was an absolute joke. Two grads could have done it with minimal guidance but the bosses always opted for two daily rate contractors instead, which cost upwards of €1K each per day, for six months. Four months of that project were spent on QA, the same tests repeated each time, with little to no chance of any issues and any issue could be resolved in a few minutes. Those contractors spent a huge majority of that project doing absolutely nothing. Some complained about it, others accepted that they had drawn the short straw and did their time on the project.

TrustedApple

Hi all

Myself in a american corporate culture company.

They had jobs for everyone before the layoffs.

There was person to stick stickers on to the laptop.

One person to cresh cresh hard drives.

Haveing people to box something up then another to ship it and then another to enter into the system.
.
Another person went around with a hand scanner scanning mobile phones all day.

There people were all Sr it jobs. I left very confused and said the money that is being wasted here.

Sent on how it's done in the eu and we're to save money.

4 months later 60% were let go....

Woops....

Jim2007

Francie Barrett wrote: »

This doesn't make any sense.

Any manager I have ever had would never wanted their staff to be looking idle. When the shoe has been on the other foot, I would have felt the same. It would look bad for me as a manager if my direct reports were sitting around on BBC all day. If things were quiet, I would still want anyone I was managing to be building up their personal skills even, rather than be faffing around on Youtube or whatever.

You need to get out more :-)

There are situations where the business accepts that having this support around is just another cost of doing business and they have no interest in what you do the rest of the time so long as you are there to pull them out of the hole when things go pear shaped.

This kind of thing is typical in invest management where very large figures can be lost in a few hours - it is not at all unusual for companies to loose several millions when key systems go down, so paying a contract 2k a day as insurance is peanuts.

OMM 0000

This is a funny thread.

I moved to management around 10 years ago. Previous to this I was in software development.

Since becoming a manager I definitely feel like I do less work, although in reality it's just a different type of work with less intensity but longer hours.

So as a developer I'd spend the day concentrating, writing code, fixing code, researching how to do something. The day would fly and there was usually always something to do.

As a manager it's a little different. When things are running smoothly and everyone around you are happy, there is less intensity/stress in my day. It's much easier to sit back and just let things move along. Especially if you use the 'one weird trick' I use which is to only hire good staff. Then being a manager becomes quite 'easy' as good people tend to manage themselves.

Management and software development are very different, and they both have their stresses and responsibilities. But being a manager overall is much more stressful as the manager is to blame when things go wrong. Also, when our salaries are paid late, the manager gets paid last. So being a manager feels less stable.

I'm rambling so to get back to the question:

I was more busy *at work* when I was a developer. I always had stuff to do and the day flew by. I felt like I was always learning and improving.

As a manager I tend to work at a less hectic level, but *I'm always working*. My day doesn't end at 6. There is always something I need to think about, or some pending issue I know I need to navigate carefully. There's also a lot more things to worry about, as developers tend to be oblivious to the workings of a company, and how precarious cash flow is.