Feel better now?

I could pass on quite a lot of experience, incidentally. But much of it is quite specific to air traffic control, so it would be of little use to yourself. A pity, indeed.

Nope

You've made a statement that when challenged, have come back with a failed attempt at sarcasm.


Pathetic

you missed d

d. Underachievers - They justify this by telling anyone who will listen that it's not important and they value their integrity and they measure success on different criteria. Clearly to succeed you need to sell your soul.



We recruit on two main factors aptitude and attitude, having the correct knowledge plays a much smaller part.
Not having the correct knowledge can be addressed not having the other two would mean someone wouldn't get through the front door.

We are there to do a job, sometimes that can mean working weekends, working evenings and even working when you are on holiday. Having said that, I'm not taking my phone away with me this year!

Does all that make you a mug or someone who cares and is passionate about what they do?

OP you're staring out in your career. Suck it in, build a reputation as someone who is committed to getting the job done. Then if you don't get the recognition you deserve, take your skills and the work ethic learned to someone who will recognise it.

We don't have a cafeteria, sorry.

My statement was entirely sarcastic. Nothing failed about it. With 15000 posts, I imagine you'll be back in short order to throw out another few ad homs, however, so I'll leave it at that in anticipation. Insulting strangers on the internet, eh? What's the word you would use?

Pommy - definitely difficult work. In the end I left because I wanted a career change, but I definitely wasn't a jaded ex civil servant. In fact, I was on one of the new variable contracts, which I didn't believe put me in a great position. I was young enough to leave so I did. I definitely don't regret it, but my statement, which swerni seems to have taken real personal offence to, is that despite great talent, it's not always as easy as work hard and get ahead.

To be honest, I base that more on my mother's experience than my own. She was great at her job, always moving up, then got TUPE'd and had a direct manager that bullied her so badly she took depression. The financial situation was such that she had to cling on for redundancy. That's jaded me more than anything, though I accept it's not the norm.

I do realise there's a correlation between hard work and success, generally. I suppose I just mean... Make sure you know your hard work will be appreciated. It isn't always!

Where? If it wasn't for your closing line, I'd have assumed you know nothing of sarcasm, given your persistent misidentification thereof. Watch you don't wear out that F5 key, by the way. (See - that's sarcasm.)

Employment is an equitable exchange of your labour for specific number of hours a week. If you do any more then you are effectively giving your time for free to someone else. For your line manager and shareholders/owners thats a great thing. They can dump extra work on you knowing full well that you will use your own time to make up the slack. For you that is a bad thing because it will become expected of you in the long term if DONT work those extra hours and project fails who do you think will shoulder (some of) the blame.

Unless you have something in your contract that guarantees that you will get x bonus for completing y project then i would say reduce your hours worked and manage the expectations of your line better.

So my question is what could you be doing to better yourself/improve your life in the hours that you worked for that company that you were not paid for ? You cant get the time back and they are never going to retrospectively pay you.

I got out of IT about 3 years ago because the good times had gone and I dont want to be working nights/weekends for nothing or pennies or with the promise or a payrise/promotion/words (often broken) of a line manager or HR rep (unlikely in the current climate but always dangled in front of us to make sure a project was completed on time).

I dont regret my 15 years in IT, I can do stuff that most of my colleagues take twice as long to complete or cant complete because they dont have the knowledge. I jut want to be able to leave at the end of the day without having to worry about some ones code or have to deal with a young PM that cant manage a project effectively. I start a 9, have an hour lunch and leave between 5 and 5:30 and I work very occasionally (maybe twice a year ?) a few hours at a weekend. I earn about 80% of what I did in IT, but the stress is 100% less.

I've not read all of the posts here (trying to avoid the bickering) but in my experience (15 years in IT) I would suggest:

1. You are flexible with your working hours when required (sounds like you are)

but

2. You are involved in all estimates and timescales so that you are not working to unreasonable deadlines.

If you are respected, you should be able to say when you can deliver by (in a normal-ish working week) or that you need more time or more resources. Being asked to do 6 days work in 5 is reasonable to hit a deadline in my opinion. Being asked to do 10 days work in 5 means you either need more days or more people. If this was a one-off I'd bust a gut to hit it, but not on a regular basis.

ooo000ooo!

If you're estimating how long a job will take, reckon it to be 6 days and hope to hit the deadline in 5 it'll probably take 10 and not work.

Sorry to sound so negative, it's just I've been haggled down on estimated hours in the past to my cost. If your gut feeling is 6 days it probably is. Trying to work faster normally slows things down.

Unless of course working fast involves removing all the distractions such as group meetings, support calls and having to deal with accounts...