jacking in an IT career...

[vindaloo79]

Olivera said:

JaredVannett said:

Genuine question, what has been your experience with these types of perks?

Absolute st. It's the bottom line of £££ that primarily matters, after all I wouldn't be doing it otherwise.

I’m a bit embarrassed to say when I was contracting to a consultancy which were pimping a few of us out on a probably 3X our rate, with hotel and all meals extra. It was a nine month stay away engagement and I got to know the other consultancy guys and local pubs quite well.

The client had a mini games arcade with pool tables and Daytona racing, also some shooting games and I think a juke box/maybe it was just radio in the actual building.

But one of the other guys had no shame in us having a 20-30 min games break around 3:30 each day. It must have looked pretty bad when it was mostly us there and I often would avoid staying for long as I knew we were on a good crack.

The funny bit was they also had a physio and massuese and my fun loving mate even used to go do that once a week as it was cheap and seldom any permies dared.

But as we worked until around 6:30pm earliest most nights then I guess they shouldn’t be upset. Just it was quite telling that few people dared to use the facilities.

[JaredVannett]

Relatable?


Exhibit A:


Exhibit B:

[zippy3x]

As someone who's been writing user interfaces and apps for the last decade, that first video is shockingly accurate.

Even included the one that really gets my piss boiling "how do we know until we try", a conversation that usually ends up with me inviting someone to jump off the roof and fly and ends with me shouting "how do you know until you try"






and breathe....

[xx99xx]

PurpleTurtle said:

Blown2CV said:

the big 4 employ the cleverest graduates so they can then pass them off as consultants on 2k a day after a bit of training. Because they are clever good at bullstting and moving on before they get found out they can kind of get by on having no experience. The lesser consultancies get the cheapest possible people from the cheapest parts of the world, whether they are clever or not really, and whilst they bill out at far less money than the big 4, the cost almost nothing, and so coast on the incredible margins for a while, often reliant on one experienced person in a team covering for a ton of dolts and noobs. Both business models appear to rely upon just seeing how long you can get away with it for, until you get booted out. The number of times I have seen big 4 get booted en masse it is incredible.

FTFY.

I shouldn't really complain, I got my foot in the door of IT by getting on a graduate scheme sponsored by an in-house IT department, to fix the mess left behind by a load of Andersen 'consultants' who were really graduates with 6 months' experience but had the unwavering confidence that the best public schools gives you, even if you don't know your arse from your elbow.

I can relate to your edit. Our head of IT (a few years ago) or whatever they're called, of a large government organisation, was a bit useless and he left after 18 months. Before he was found out, you might say. He was a permanent employee.

I googled him and found his LinkedIn and he'd had about 15 previous jobs, none for more than 18 months. He moved to be head of IT at another government organisation (no doubt for more money because 'look at all my great experience').

Look at it differently and you might say good on him, he played the game and knew how to climb the ladder.

[Blown2CV]

to be honest i wasn't meaning the brightest grads are actually good at anything, but they'd get further than the sttest of grads... i don't think it's all total bullst, but no matter how clever you are, if you have no experience whatsoever you won't get far.

[JaredVannett]

zippy3x said:

As someone who's been writing user interfaces and apps for the last decade, that first video is shockingly accurate.

Even included the one that really gets my piss boiling "how do we know until we try", a conversation that usually ends up with me inviting someone to jump off the roof and fly and ends with me shouting "how do you know until you try"






and breathe....

lol, when you've reached the point where you've become nothing more than a mouse pointer it's time to leave.

[rider73]

i;ve got so sick of all the above - previous job was exactly like this, used to be great, then a new "digital transformation" team came along and spent millions on just changing a few colours, hiring contractors to waste time thinking about UI experience, and me with my job ending up me telling them at every single stand up and meeting that in my 28 years of front end development experience they shouldnt do 'x' but they try and fail and go on a "lessons learned journey" .......so they eventually move me aside via a "realignment of responsibilities" - so i left, and my recent job ,as a front end developer i got pawned off doing lots of back end sql stuff and infrastructure because the contractors who did that left and i knew how to do it.....dont mind that every now and again, but this was coming up to 6 months of it.....

so i applied for a jobs elsewhere and the first thing on their agenda, 6 competency questions about dealing with a manager or people who dont agree with you and how you deal with it, then 2 actual technical questions then that was the hour up, .........."oh do you want to ask anything.......we have another meeting to get to.........."

so thats it for me, i'm out of IT as of 31 oct.

honestly these past few years i feel a lot of people haven't a clue and hide behind all this "the process" "the methodology" and "buzzwords" because they dont want to actually think for themselves because they might actually have to make a decision based on knowledge, and they simply dont have it....

delivery drivers at tesco wanted ;-)

[JaredVannett]

rider73 said:

i;ve got so sick of all the above - previous job was exactly like this, used to be great, then a new "digital transformation" team came along and spent millions on just changing a few colours, hiring contractors to waste time thinking about UI experience, and me with my job ending up me telling them at every single stand up and meeting that in my 28 years of front end development experience they shouldnt do 'x' but they try and fail and go on a "lessons learned journey" .......so they eventually move me aside via a "realignment of responsibilities" - so i left, and my recent job ,as a front end developer i got pawned off doing lots of back end sql stuff and infrastructure because the contractors who did that left and i knew how to do it.....dont mind that every now and again, but this was coming up to 6 months of it.....

so i applied for a jobs elsewhere and the first thing on their agenda, 6 competency questions about dealing with a manager or people who dont agree with you and how you deal with it, then 2 actual technical questions then that was the hour up, .........."oh do you want to ask anything.......we have another meeting to get to.........."

so thats it for me, i'm out of IT as of 31 oct.

honestly these past few years i feel a lot of people haven't a clue and hide behind all this "the process" "the methodology" and "buzzwords" because they dont want to actually think for themselves because they might actually have to make a decision based on knowledge, and they simply dont have it....

delivery drivers at tesco wanted ;-)

How come you didn't stick with the backend stuff... not your thing? ... I've always had an appreciation of frontend/UI but within the first two years of my career I avoided it commercially because I quickly began to hate it due to the fact that everyone in the company and their mother has an opinion on it and where the search box should be

I enjoy dabbling in frontend for personal projects though.

[bmwmike]

Security can offer good variety especially for those with a dev background and a curious nature..

[Dynion Araf Uchaf]

I think this thread is more about how meaningless life is when you have a career that doesn't really add any societal value. 20 plus years doing one sort of thing is boring for anyone, but if you can't attach a meaning to it, or place some personal value on it you will end up hating it, whilst trapped because of the dollar.

Funnily enough I started in IT, hated it, although some of that was the companies I worked for, but mostly just not interested, and then went into automotive for 19 years, which I loved at first and liked for a bit, but then got very bored and frustrated at the end, largely due to corporate politics and a lack of meaning to work but also zero desire for the company to change.

Now I am back in IT, but with an automotive bent, 6 months in and it's got potential, but I can see the points others have made around clients and learning tech ( I am still not interested in tech) but luckily I am on the commercial side of tech, not the development side so I can fudge my way through that.

I also feel that I have now more career options should it all go belly up, automotive and IT so feel quite calm about things. ( helps a lot that my wife earns well, and we can live off her salary if the worst came to the worst)

I also work from home and have done for the last 12 years, I 'm lucky in that I've always been around for family occaisions and am involved in my kids lives. Which lets face it, is the main thing, everything else is just bullst or willy waving. It's your kids that will be looking in on you when you are dribbling in a wheel chair.