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What am I missing???

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    What am I missing???

    Have spent 8 weeks at my current client. I life is easy I can do the work standing on my head and stress levels are sub zero. I am surrounded by clever guys for a change, so no pressure there.

    However everyone is running round screaming how busy they are. They have 50 odd sites around the UK and insist on going to at least 4 of them a week... I am doing my bit although I am trying to keep as low profile as possible as there are several guys trying to get promotions and I dont want to get anywhere near them till they are safe. Not that the atmosphere is catty just that there are some obvious problems in the pipeline (to me anyway) and at least one of the new managers to be owns the blame for an all mighty atomic clusterfsck and I really don't want to be the guy that points at the elephant and screws up his chances...

    1) Am I looking at a bunch of great liars that are all as chilled out as me in the back ground?
    2) Are these guys really not working as smart as they should? Tasks that I look at and sort out in 5 minutes take them two weeks. Even if I strain to be slow its only going to take a morning...
    3) If I am comfortable and happy in my lot do I really want to open this can of worms?

    There is always strife... Where is it? Why hasn't it found me yet??

    #2
    Originally posted by bobspud View Post
    Have spent 8 weeks at my current client. I life is easy I can do the work standing on my head and stress levels are sub zero. I am surrounded by clever guys for a change, so no pressure there.

    However everyone is running round screaming how busy they are. They have 50 odd sites around the UK and insist on going to at least 4 of them a week... I am doing my bit although I am trying to keep as low profile as possible as there are several guys trying to get promotions and I dont want to get anywhere near them till they are safe. Not that the atmosphere is catty just that there are some obvious problems in the pipeline (to me anyway) and at least one of the new managers to be owns the blame for an all mighty atomic clusterfsck and I really don't want to be the guy that points at the elephant and screws up his chances...

    1) Am I looking at a bunch of great liars that are all as chilled out as me in the back ground?
    2) Are these guys really not working as smart as they should? Tasks that I look at and sort out in 5 minutes take them two weeks. Even if I strain to be slow its only going to take a morning...
    3) If I am comfortable and happy in my lot do I really want to open this can of worms?

    There is always strife... Where is it? Why hasn't it found me yet??
    Presenteeism, walking around carrying an important looking piece of paper, going to meetings all over the place; looks like they're all BSing to get promotion. Sad, really.
    And what exactly is wrong with an "ad hominem" argument? Dodgy Agent, 16-5-2014

    Comment


      #3
      Originally posted by Mich the Tester View Post
      Presenteeism, walking around carrying an important looking piece of paper, going to meetings all over the place; looks like they're all BSing to get promotion. Sad, really.
      Was afraid you were going to say that... It's not often I get a good gig but I am going to struggle to look busy with the amount of work they are giving me.

      Comment


        #4
        Originally posted by bobspud View Post
        Was afraid you were going to say that... It's not often I get a good gig but I am going to struggle to look busy with the amount of work they are giving me.
        Open at least two command line screens, download a couple of editor tools like Notepad++, XMLPad, set up a batch script that runs meaningless queries all day, ctrl+c some difficult and completely irrelevant code from the web and ctrl+v it into your editor, always have a registry editor screen and a performance monitor running, walk everywhere with a piece of paper in one hand and your phone in the other, fill up your outlook diary with stuff, take a long tulip a couple of times a day, pile up some coffee cups on your desk and if someone wants to talk to you, tell them you can spare 5 minutes tomorrow morning at 0855. Keep invoicing.
        And what exactly is wrong with an "ad hominem" argument? Dodgy Agent, 16-5-2014

        Comment


          #5
          WMTTS

          tail -f /var/logs/apache2/access_log is useful too. Just leave it running on your screen and it'll always look like you're in the middle of something.

          Comment


            #6
            Originally posted by Bunk View Post
            WMTTS

            tail -f /var/logs/apache2/access_log is useful too. Just leave it running on your screen and it'll always look like you're in the middle of something.
            need to remember to account for the log cut over as well. Those were the days wish I could go back to hands on technical shizzle its so much more fun than architecture...

            Comment


              #7
              To avoid IR35, I always insist on having my own machine, and software. I tend to have one or two machines Data loading/Cleansing, and the other to prowl the internet looking for people who are wrong.

              Comment


                #8
                Originally posted by Old Hack View Post
                To avoid IR35, I always insist on having my own machine, and software. I tend to have one or two machines Data loading/Cleansing, and the other to prowl the internet looking for people who are wrong.
                Must be very busy then

                Especially around here.

                Comment


                  #9
                  Originally posted by Bunk View Post
                  WMTTS

                  tail -f /var/logs/apache2/access_log is useful too. Just leave it running on your screen and it'll always look like you're in the middle of something.
                  while true;do banner Bored...;sleep 2;done

                  Other thing to do in Unixland for a laugh is echoing stuff like 'NFS Critical Error 65 - call IBM, rebooting partition....' to your colleagues tty when you know he's working on an NFS issue...

                  "Oh no, it's rebooting; WTF is NFS Error 65, anyone know?"

                  Hehehehe...

                  Comment

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