Cummings' Jobs Advert

[Sway]

Tuna - fking ouch!

I'm currently having fun with our merger/"synergy" team in the States. All fking useless, operating from it seems an old Mckinsey playbook from the 90s.

They want me/us to completely bin the programme that's lead us turning from a loss making business with 15% market share, to a four times the size profit making business with 30% market share over the last few years - so that we can follow their very carefully designed, massively bureaucratic structure that's a painting by numbers, one size fits all scheme.

Yeah, fking right chaps.

[FiF]

Don't even talk to me about arrogant McKinsey feckers, paint by numbers indeed. Gets interesting when you talk to previous victims. Led me to an ah'm oot decision, best ever move.

[Sway]

Oh, it's not just Mckinsey...

As I mentioned earlier, there's a whole fking industry taking the best and brightest - and absolutely removing anything that made them any bloody good by turning them all into identikit drones working off the playbook...

I try not to hate the player. As I get older, it gets easier.

Dodged a few bullets when younger though, thanks to some sage advice from someone who's become a very good friend. With very little interaction, he twigged a lot about 'who' I am, and made me aware of some of the temptations that would likely fall in my path.

[anonymous-user]

JPJPJP said:

His aspirations are very high and he (rightly imo) points out that if the UK continues to merely make incremental improvements in some key areas (education, science & project management in particular), other countries will eat (more of) our lunch. Multiple references to the few massively ambitious projects that have worked in the last 60 or so years is an indication of the level of aspiration he wants to surround himself with. Many will debate whether that is necessary, or desirable. But not many have as much of the governments' ears as he does.

In his job ads he says "If you think you are such a company and you could dual carriageway the A1 north of Newcastle in record time, then get in touch!"

We all know that China could & would dual an equivalent stretch of road in less time that it would take for 'stage 1 of the introduction to the terms of reference for the definition of the variables to be discussed for inclusion in the opening stage of the feasibility study' to be drafted here in the UK. Whilst there are many reasons for that, not all of them are sound in the world Dommie boy wants to play.

I get this entirely but until we stop thinking that the graduates of Eton are somehow better than us and deserveing of our respect because their parents were wealthy enough to afford the fees, we're always fked.

[anonymous-user]

silentbrown said:

fblm said:

Randy Winkman said:

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy currently has no black senior civil servants at all. Not one. And they have 100+ senior civil servants.

You sound surprised. If my GCSE maths hasn't failed me then, given that 97% of the population are non-black, the probability of there being no black people in any random sample of 100 people is about 1 in 20. How many CS departments are there?

I suspect it's the urban-centric nature of Goverment that makes that surprising. In London, 13% of population is black (2011 figures).

As an aside, how many black members of the NFU? (membership 55,000)

Huh? The CS, like most london based employers, hire from all over the country. The black population of London is irrelevant to the probability so it shouldn't surprise anyone unless they've never travelled beyond the m25.

[Kent Border Kenny]

princeperch said:

That's all well and good, but it's the system we have at the moment.

A huge number of central gov depts employ ex city types in law, accountancy, IT, and national security, but that leads to the situation we are in at the moment. A workforce of already rich white middle class people, and a steam of grievances from bame staff members when they are passed over for promotion/bonuses or feel they are being harassed and victimised by their managers at work. I see it daily.

There’s a bit of a “no true Scotsman” fallacy in there. I’m from a working class background, but because I’ve been able to do well people will now say that I’m not working class, so should be passed over by someone from the same school who didn’t manage to do very well.

It doesn’t seem a great way to organise things.

[B'stard Child]

Digga said:

Dr Jekyll said:

Eric Mc said:

The description of the people he seems to want indicates to me that the "weirdos" he'd end up with would be exactly the WRONG type of people to lead teams, work in groups, exercise "people" skills etc.

Might be the right type of people to get some actual work done though.

People who are alergic to organising meetings for the fking hell of it, tend to get more actual work done.

There is no doubt that, for some time, we've had a period of different governments but the same st running in the background, by the same civil servants. The hive mindset might benefit from a shake up.

Working in a multinational corp I tend to resort to pictures - no complicated words to read and easy to understand

My own personal rule is a powerpoint presentation should be no longer than one slide (if I can't get the message across clearly in one slide I'm fked - adding more is unlikely to help)

I've had several managers who've looked at my calendar and said "how can you have so much free time"

My response "it's not "free time" it's "working time" my biggest problem is you filling it with "non value adding meetings"

The normal response to that is they try to fill it with meetings - if I can't make a difference they get declined after a while they
give up

I have an inbox and a cc inbox

Any emails addressed to me go in the inbox - any emails where I am cc'd go in the cc inbox

Inbox get responses very quickly

cc inbox - err not actually worked out why I have it - when they are 3mths old they get deleted automatically - perhaps I should have set the rule up to go straight to delete.........

[B'stard Child]

JustALooseScrew said:

Sway said:

This.

Plus, a lot of disruptive free thinkers aren't going to get better money elsewhere - because they don't conform.

Certainly, for me there was simply no chance I'd have had any longevity or success at one of the 'names' - and yet I've had a fruitful and pretty successful career so far. I've focused on working for companies who do want someone like me - rather than becoming something I'm not (where all my innate USPs will by default disappear).

Plus, there's a huge amount of people who aren't motivated solely by the size of the paycheque - as long as the paycheque is, to quote old RR "sufficient".

All day long, I really suffer from this 'problem' - I'm just not motivated by money. It's a fking curse.

I just want enough to live - piss around with stty cars and not worry

I was trying to explain to a senior manager who doesn't understand what makes me tick - I need my work to be fun ie I need to enjoy it - when the fun stops I normally change jobs - I might as well have be speaking greek.............

[anonymous-user]

B'stard Child said:

...
Inbox get responses very quickly
...

Never looked at mine for most of my career. I figured if it was important they'd call. It worked until about 2010 when people seemed to lose the ability to speak on the phone. I did 2 more years and retired from the rat race. F that!

[B'stard Child]

fblm said:

B'stard Child said:

...
Inbox get responses very quickly
...

Never looked at mine for most of my career. I figured if it was important they'd call. It worked until about 2010 when people seemed to lose the ability to speak on the phone. I did 2 more years and retired from the rat race. F that!

I'll make that my belated 2020 NYR - eventually they will make me redundant might help speed up the process

[Tuna]

To the complete surprise of no-one whatsoever, the fightback starts:

Telegraph said:

Government distances itself from Dominic Cummings' job advert as MPs accuse him of 'subverting due process'

(From here https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/01/03/go... )

article said:

Last night senior cross-party MPs, trade unions and employment industry also bodies raised concerns about potential breaches of equality and data protection laws.

Stop the change! How dare he! It's a travesty!

[Halb]

Sway said:

Anyone else read the blog post and suddenly gain an interest in working in the public sector?

I did...

Not going to though, current job is too much fun. Definitely count as a weirdo and misfit without a "traditional" background that would typically be valued in the application stage.

Crikey it's appealling though.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/blogs.spectator.co.uk...

Only just seen it on the beeb website.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-50978329
Instantly thought of here.

[Randy Winkman]

fblm said:

silentbrown said:

fblm said:

Randy Winkman said:

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy currently has no black senior civil servants at all. Not one. And they have 100+ senior civil servants.

You sound surprised. If my GCSE maths hasn't failed me then, given that 97% of the population are non-black, the probability of there being no black people in any random sample of 100 people is about 1 in 20. How many CS departments are there?

I suspect it's the urban-centric nature of Goverment that makes that surprising. In London, 13% of population is black (2011 figures).

As an aside, how many black members of the NFU? (membership 55,000)

Huh? The CS, like most london based employers, hire from all over the country. The black population of London is irrelevant to the probability so it shouldn't surprise anyone unless they've never travelled beyond the m25.

True. But pretty much all of the BEIS senior civil servants will be based in London and I do think it's relevant that they don't represent the people in the streets outside. Whether there might be 3% or 13% black, the fact that it's zero is surely of some note? Zero is a big number.

[Dr Jekyll]

Randy Winkman said:

True. But pretty much all of the BEIS senior civil servants will be based in London and I do think it's relevant that they don't represent the people in the streets outside. Whether there might be 3% or 13% black, the fact that it's zero is surely of some note? Zero is a big number.

But do they represent the people with good qualifications at the time they were recruited into the fast stream?

[Countdown]

Tuna said:

PSB1 said:

I don't claim that this is unique especially, but it really chimed in with my experience that organisations and programmes expend most of their time and effort navel gazing.

A nice counter example is an organisation I recently worked for, run almost exclusively by Oxbridge educated individuals, and advised by leading academics and experts. They have just had to write off a hundred million pound 'transformation' project - all carefully planned for and designed. The monoculture of thought and reliance on traditional organisational structures led to a protracted and very expensive complete failure.

You can recognise the same patterns in government every day.

What kind of projects have been successfully implemented which have been staffed by "wierdos, misfits, people who never went to University"?

Projects failure isn't restricted to just the Public Sector. It's possibly more noticed in the Public Sector because the size of the projects carried out tends to be so big). I'm not saying there isn't a place for wierdos and misfits somewhere in the CS, (our IT team is full of them) but it's not likely to improve the CS in any significant way.

[Sway]

Countdown said:

Tuna said:

PSB1 said:

I don't claim that this is unique especially, but it really chimed in with my experience that organisations and programmes expend most of their time and effort navel gazing.

A nice counter example is an organisation I recently worked for, run almost exclusively by Oxbridge educated individuals, and advised by leading academics and experts. They have just had to write off a hundred million pound 'transformation' project - all carefully planned for and designed. The monoculture of thought and reliance on traditional organisational structures led to a protracted and very expensive complete failure.

You can recognise the same patterns in government every day.

What kind of projects have been successfully implemented which have been staffed by "wierdos, misfits, people who never went to University"?

Projects failure isn't restricted to just the Public Sector. It's possibly more noticed in the Public Sector because the size of the projects carried out tends to be so big). I'm not saying there isn't a place for wierdos and misfits somewhere in the CS, (our IT team is full of them) but it's not likely to improve the CS in any significant way.

Apollo.

Plenty of weirdos and misfits, as well as plenty who didn't go to uni as it was before uni was deemed necessary for absolutely everything.

Pretty sure the Manhattan Project was similar.

Both required doing things very differently to how they'd been done before - otherwise they'd have either taken too long, or not happened at all.

ARPA/DARPA?

Oh, and pretty much every properly successful project I've been involved in. Won a reasonably prestigious national award for my employer, using a team lead by me (no uni - dropped out after a year of Photography) and fifteen others who ranged from a couple of old Poles who were simply incredible at physical problem solving, a physio turned veg chopper, and a few middle aged farm hands...

[Tuna]

Sway said:

Apollo. .

Says it all that people assume a modern government quango would be capable of landing on the moon.

[anonymous-user]

Bletchley Park
The SAS
Motorsport teams.

[Sway]

jsf said:

Bletchley Park
The SAS
Motorsport teams.

I thought of BP straight after hitting submit.

The very definition.

Turing was absolutely shunned by society - yet the government were more than happy to utilise him for the war effort, before discarding like a wk rag.

[Countdown]

Sway said:

Apollo.

Plenty of weirdos and misfits, as well as plenty who didn't go to uni as it was before uni was deemed necessary for absolutely everything.

Sway said:

Pretty sure the Manhattan Project was similar.

Both of those were projects that had 10's of thousands of people working on them. A quick google (and from my own knowledge of history) most of them were well-known scientists and academics. Why do you say that the majority were weirdos and misfits?

I'd also suggest that the majority of Government work is administrative in nature not technical or scientific.