The Work Thread 2 - Get back to work!

Fed up talking videogames? Why?
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Rocsteady
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PostRe: The Work Thread 2 - Get back to work!
by Rocsteady » Fri Jan 10, 2020 9:37 pm

I've only known female leadership in professional roles too.

My current workplace is dominated by women in the senior leadership roles. Most of them are strawberry floating great at their jobs and very personable etc, so I'm happy with the current situation.

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Lagamorph
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PostRe: The Work Thread 2 - Get back to work!
by Lagamorph » Fri Jan 10, 2020 9:49 pm

I've had male and female managers that were all equally naff, though by far the worst managers I've had were all male.

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That's not a growth
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PostRe: The Work Thread 2 - Get back to work!
by That's not a growth » Sat Jan 11, 2020 12:07 pm

Bit of a rant

Rather predictability, work have pretty much said they're not giving me a payrise any time soon. I was told a month or so ago (and I was shown a whatsapp message between my manager and the CEO confirming this) that if a certain customer paid their bill then they would look at the raise my manager has requested for me (and I haven't actually found out yet how much this is actually for - which feels stupid as I type this out, but all the conversations were rushed in hallways, or similar). They paid their bill just before Christmas (and I was given a bonus (£100) for my work on the report that lead to this payment - before we knew the payment was made), and now this week my manager is saying the department is not making enough money for people to get raises and he wants us to work overtime at least twice a week for the indefinite future (potentially up to 6 months +) so we can complete some ideas he has for new products and marketing. This is 3 times in the last 12 months my manager has said I'm getting a raise for it to be knocked back.

He hasn't fully quantified what work he wants to be done, when he wants it to be done by, and why he doesn't think it can be done by then during regular hours - it's more a knee-jerk reaction that he's going some rough ideas of things he wants to do, and doesn't feel they're happening fast enough. But he just keeps piling more and more things for people to do, never weighs up the workload, and expects everything to be done 'now' - and if it's not possible to get things done as quickly as he wants then that's our issue, and we just need to work more.

I keep being given more and more responsibility, and the range of the type of work I do just keeps growing. I started off essentially being a project admin, and now run projects, oversee people, oversee the set up of products and services, assist in marketing and website updates, assisting with sales and proposals (and overseeing proposals built by others), assist with and help run R&D projects, and am trying to completely re-designing a CRM/project management/asset management/ticketing system tool from the ground up because we are essentially a business within a business and can't find anything that covers everything we need in a single product - and especially one that the CEO would be willing to pay for.

There is minimal high level strategy, and we just have to keep adapting to each new idea he gets, and I continuously get crap for trying to be "too organised / going into too much detail" - despite me proving with my most detailed, yet more praised, work (the report previously mentioned) that you need a lot of raw organised data to create detailed dashboards and reports for customers (the only bit my manager cares about, but he just wants to the front end to 'appear' - when he see me working on the back end he complains it's overkill).

He also just blindly dismisses work I've done, without looking at it. We're at the beginning of a large project and we need to inform the customer how long it's going to take. This is not a simple question, as it depends how many customers they get, and how many locations they want to roll out to. But it also doesn't scale uniformly, as an initial set up of a customer takes longer than adding to an established customer. So I worked out how long each section takes, then created a calculator so you can hypothesise scenarios (such as, Stage 1: initial set up, Stage 2, 1 customer, 10 locations, stage 3: 3 additional customers, 7 locations each, Stage 4, customer 1 adds 25 locations - etc) and it calculates man-hours for you, based on our early tests. As I tried to explain it to his, saying I want to show him my working (as he's the primary on the project) - so we can set the customers expectations - his response was "I don't believe you", and hasn't look at it. (He has informed the customer how long I think it would be - but again with the qualifier that he doesn't believe me)

But despite all this extra work I'm doing the department's numbers are currently flat on last year. But my job isn't directly sales - so I feel a huge sense of resentment that I'm being asked more and more, but my compensation is essentially tied to other people's performance (excluding that bonus I got last month). But we have grown in other ways, and I was the one to figure this out. It could be argued our department has grown 50% in a year if you don't include a problem account that we're likely going to court over.

Apparently I'm due a 1-to-1 with my manager (the first time in 3 years they thought of doing something like this - they're very unorganised as a company), so I intend to ask specifically what milestones the department and I need to hit for me to get to a payrise, and how much this payrise would be. Issue being, and the reason I haven't pushed it before, is I'm almost certain there wont be answers for these and it's always down to how the CEO "feels" at that time.

I'm trying to look for other jobs, but there aren't many around here (especially this time of year, it seems). I had two interviews in Autumn and didn't get them - one because I went into too much technical detail in the interview (it was a simpler job that I do now, so I shouldn't have got carried away), and the other hasn't given me feedback despite multiple attempts to get some. I'm currently in the Manchester area, and I have some family in the South East that keep trying to convince me to move down there but the idea of moving when I haven't got a job is terrifying, especially if I can't land a job now I feel it's going to be just as difficult down south (and I beginning to feel I'm gooseberry fool at interviews, partly due to the irregular style of my job doesn't lead well to answering interview questions easily and concisely).

So yeah, like I said, bit of a rant.

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Rocsteady
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PostRe: The Work Thread 2 - Get back to work!
by Rocsteady » Sat Jan 11, 2020 12:11 pm

That sounds total bullshit. I'd definitely continue looking for other roles.

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PostRe: The Work Thread 2 - Get back to work!
by Qikz » Mon Jan 13, 2020 8:00 am

fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck

I've gotta go back to work properly for the first time since the new year (the two days after the new year don't count). Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. I'm not ready.

The Watching Artist wrote:I feel so inept next to Qikz...
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Squinty
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PostRe: The Work Thread 2 - Get back to work!
by Squinty » Mon Jan 13, 2020 8:09 am

It felt like the weekend never happened. Woke up in a real panic at 4am, mind was going crazy about some Home DIY I haven't been able to do yet.

First world problems.

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Lagamorph
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PostRe: The Work Thread 2 - Get back to work!
by Lagamorph » Mon Jan 13, 2020 8:16 am

Heading down to the big fancy office in Dat London for a few days :datass:

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Kezzer
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PostRe: The Work Thread 2 - Get back to work!
by Kezzer » Mon Jan 13, 2020 8:20 am

welcome to hell

This post is exempt from the No Context Thread.

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Oblomov Boblomov
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PostRe: The Work Thread 2 - Get back to work!
by Oblomov Boblomov » Mon Jan 13, 2020 9:53 am

Bit later than usual but it's time for the first dump of the week. Already had one earlier this morning but that wasn't on the sweet, sweet company dime.

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pjbetman
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PostRe: The Work Thread 2 - Get back to work!
by pjbetman » Mon Jan 13, 2020 10:07 am

That's not a growth wrote:Bit of a rant

Rather predictability, work have pretty much said they're not giving me a payrise any time soon. I was told a month or so ago (and I was shown a whatsapp message between my manager and the CEO confirming this) that if a certain customer paid their bill then they would look at the raise my manager has requested for me (and I haven't actually found out yet how much this is actually for - which feels stupid as I type this out, but all the conversations were rushed in hallways, or similar). They paid their bill just before Christmas (and I was given a bonus (£100) for my work on the report that lead to this payment - before we knew the payment was made), and now this week my manager is saying the department is not making enough money for people to get raises and he wants us to work overtime at least twice a week for the indefinite future (potentially up to 6 months +) so we can complete some ideas he has for new products and marketing. This is 3 times in the last 12 months my manager has said I'm getting a raise for it to be knocked back.

He hasn't fully quantified what work he wants to be done, when he wants it to be done by, and why he doesn't think it can be done by then during regular hours - it's more a knee-jerk reaction that he's going some rough ideas of things he wants to do, and doesn't feel they're happening fast enough. But he just keeps piling more and more things for people to do, never weighs up the workload, and expects everything to be done 'now' - and if it's not possible to get things done as quickly as he wants then that's our issue, and we just need to work more.

I keep being given more and more responsibility, and the range of the type of work I do just keeps growing. I started off essentially being a project admin, and now run projects, oversee people, oversee the set up of products and services, assist in marketing and website updates, assisting with sales and proposals (and overseeing proposals built by others), assist with and help run R&D projects, and am trying to completely re-designing a CRM/project management/asset management/ticketing system tool from the ground up because we are essentially a business within a business and can't find anything that covers everything we need in a single product - and especially one that the CEO would be willing to pay for.

There is minimal high level strategy, and we just have to keep adapting to each new idea he gets, and I continuously get crap for trying to be "too organised / going into too much detail" - despite me proving with my most detailed, yet more praised, work (the report previously mentioned) that you need a lot of raw organised data to create detailed dashboards and reports for customers (the only bit my manager cares about, but he just wants to the front end to 'appear' - when he see me working on the back end he complains it's overkill).

He also just blindly dismisses work I've done, without looking at it. We're at the beginning of a large project and we need to inform the customer how long it's going to take. This is not a simple question, as it depends how many customers they get, and how many locations they want to roll out to. But it also doesn't scale uniformly, as an initial set up of a customer takes longer than adding to an established customer. So I worked out how long each section takes, then created a calculator so you can hypothesise scenarios (such as, Stage 1: initial set up, Stage 2, 1 customer, 10 locations, stage 3: 3 additional customers, 7 locations each, Stage 4, customer 1 adds 25 locations - etc) and it calculates man-hours for you, based on our early tests. As I tried to explain it to his, saying I want to show him my working (as he's the primary on the project) - so we can set the customers expectations - his response was "I don't believe you", and hasn't look at it. (He has informed the customer how long I think it would be - but again with the qualifier that he doesn't believe me)

But despite all this extra work I'm doing the department's numbers are currently flat on last year. But my job isn't directly sales - so I feel a huge sense of resentment that I'm being asked more and more, but my compensation is essentially tied to other people's performance (excluding that bonus I got last month). But we have grown in other ways, and I was the one to figure this out. It could be argued our department has grown 50% in a year if you don't include a problem account that we're likely going to court over.

Apparently I'm due a 1-to-1 with my manager (the first time in 3 years they thought of doing something like this - they're very unorganised as a company), so I intend to ask specifically what milestones the department and I need to hit for me to get to a payrise, and how much this payrise would be. Issue being, and the reason I haven't pushed it before, is I'm almost certain there wont be answers for these and it's always down to how the CEO "feels" at that time.

I'm trying to look for other jobs, but there aren't many around here (especially this time of year, it seems). I had two interviews in Autumn and didn't get them - one because I went into too much technical detail in the interview (it was a simpler job that I do now, so I shouldn't have got carried away), and the other hasn't given me feedback despite multiple attempts to get some. I'm currently in the Manchester area, and I have some family in the South East that keep trying to convince me to move down there but the idea of moving when I haven't got a job is terrifying, especially if I can't land a job now I feel it's going to be just as difficult down south (and I beginning to feel I'm gooseberry fool at interviews, partly due to the irregular style of my job doesn't lead well to answering interview questions easily and concisely).

So yeah, like I said, bit of a rant.


Do you get decent sick pay? Go off with stress. Or make an injury up (that makes it painful to do your job).

Or you need to get some things out in the open during your 1 to 1.

What does your contract say about overtime? Paid or unpaid? Im assuming it's unpaid, and they say 'overtime should be expected from time to time' or some shite to that effect. Tell them in that 1-1 that you're only contracted to do occasional overtime, and anything beyond that should be paid. If they push you on it, start causing you problems, document EVERYTHING, then go see your doctor. They cant sack you (legally) while you're ill.

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Lagamorph
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PostRe: The Work Thread 2 - Get back to work!
by Lagamorph » Mon Jan 13, 2020 10:18 am

pjbetman wrote:
That's not a growth wrote:Bit of a rant

Rather predictability, work have pretty much said they're not giving me a payrise any time soon. I was told a month or so ago (and I was shown a whatsapp message between my manager and the CEO confirming this) that if a certain customer paid their bill then they would look at the raise my manager has requested for me (and I haven't actually found out yet how much this is actually for - which feels stupid as I type this out, but all the conversations were rushed in hallways, or similar). They paid their bill just before Christmas (and I was given a bonus (£100) for my work on the report that lead to this payment - before we knew the payment was made), and now this week my manager is saying the department is not making enough money for people to get raises and he wants us to work overtime at least twice a week for the indefinite future (potentially up to 6 months +) so we can complete some ideas he has for new products and marketing. This is 3 times in the last 12 months my manager has said I'm getting a raise for it to be knocked back.

He hasn't fully quantified what work he wants to be done, when he wants it to be done by, and why he doesn't think it can be done by then during regular hours - it's more a knee-jerk reaction that he's going some rough ideas of things he wants to do, and doesn't feel they're happening fast enough. But he just keeps piling more and more things for people to do, never weighs up the workload, and expects everything to be done 'now' - and if it's not possible to get things done as quickly as he wants then that's our issue, and we just need to work more.

I keep being given more and more responsibility, and the range of the type of work I do just keeps growing. I started off essentially being a project admin, and now run projects, oversee people, oversee the set up of products and services, assist in marketing and website updates, assisting with sales and proposals (and overseeing proposals built by others), assist with and help run R&D projects, and am trying to completely re-designing a CRM/project management/asset management/ticketing system tool from the ground up because we are essentially a business within a business and can't find anything that covers everything we need in a single product - and especially one that the CEO would be willing to pay for.

There is minimal high level strategy, and we just have to keep adapting to each new idea he gets, and I continuously get crap for trying to be "too organised / going into too much detail" - despite me proving with my most detailed, yet more praised, work (the report previously mentioned) that you need a lot of raw organised data to create detailed dashboards and reports for customers (the only bit my manager cares about, but he just wants to the front end to 'appear' - when he see me working on the back end he complains it's overkill).

He also just blindly dismisses work I've done, without looking at it. We're at the beginning of a large project and we need to inform the customer how long it's going to take. This is not a simple question, as it depends how many customers they get, and how many locations they want to roll out to. But it also doesn't scale uniformly, as an initial set up of a customer takes longer than adding to an established customer. So I worked out how long each section takes, then created a calculator so you can hypothesise scenarios (such as, Stage 1: initial set up, Stage 2, 1 customer, 10 locations, stage 3: 3 additional customers, 7 locations each, Stage 4, customer 1 adds 25 locations - etc) and it calculates man-hours for you, based on our early tests. As I tried to explain it to his, saying I want to show him my working (as he's the primary on the project) - so we can set the customers expectations - his response was "I don't believe you", and hasn't look at it. (He has informed the customer how long I think it would be - but again with the qualifier that he doesn't believe me)

But despite all this extra work I'm doing the department's numbers are currently flat on last year. But my job isn't directly sales - so I feel a huge sense of resentment that I'm being asked more and more, but my compensation is essentially tied to other people's performance (excluding that bonus I got last month). But we have grown in other ways, and I was the one to figure this out. It could be argued our department has grown 50% in a year if you don't include a problem account that we're likely going to court over.

Apparently I'm due a 1-to-1 with my manager (the first time in 3 years they thought of doing something like this - they're very unorganised as a company), so I intend to ask specifically what milestones the department and I need to hit for me to get to a payrise, and how much this payrise would be. Issue being, and the reason I haven't pushed it before, is I'm almost certain there wont be answers for these and it's always down to how the CEO "feels" at that time.

I'm trying to look for other jobs, but there aren't many around here (especially this time of year, it seems). I had two interviews in Autumn and didn't get them - one because I went into too much technical detail in the interview (it was a simpler job that I do now, so I shouldn't have got carried away), and the other hasn't given me feedback despite multiple attempts to get some. I'm currently in the Manchester area, and I have some family in the South East that keep trying to convince me to move down there but the idea of moving when I haven't got a job is terrifying, especially if I can't land a job now I feel it's going to be just as difficult down south (and I beginning to feel I'm gooseberry fool at interviews, partly due to the irregular style of my job doesn't lead well to answering interview questions easily and concisely).

So yeah, like I said, bit of a rant.


Do you get decent sick pay? Go off with stress. Or make an injury up (that makes it painful to do your job).

Or you need to get some things out in the open during your 1 to 1.

What does your contract say about overtime? Paid or unpaid? Im assuming it's unpaid, and they say 'overtime should be expected from time to time' or some shite to that effect. Tell them in that 1-1 that you're only contracted to do occasional overtime, and anything beyond that should be paid. If they push you on it, start causing you problems, document EVERYTHING, then go see your doctor. They cant sack you (legally) while you're ill.

This is wrong. It absolutely is possible to legally sack someone whilst they're off sick, it just takes longer and is a bit more complicated.

Lagamorph's Underwater Photography Thread
Zellery wrote:Good post Lagamorph.
Turboman wrote:Lagomorph..... Is ..... Right
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Lagamorph
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PostRe: The Work Thread 2 - Get back to work!
by Lagamorph » Mon Jan 13, 2020 10:18 am

pjbetman wrote:
That's not a growth wrote:Bit of a rant

Rather predictability, work have pretty much said they're not giving me a payrise any time soon. I was told a month or so ago (and I was shown a whatsapp message between my manager and the CEO confirming this) that if a certain customer paid their bill then they would look at the raise my manager has requested for me (and I haven't actually found out yet how much this is actually for - which feels stupid as I type this out, but all the conversations were rushed in hallways, or similar). They paid their bill just before Christmas (and I was given a bonus (£100) for my work on the report that lead to this payment - before we knew the payment was made), and now this week my manager is saying the department is not making enough money for people to get raises and he wants us to work overtime at least twice a week for the indefinite future (potentially up to 6 months +) so we can complete some ideas he has for new products and marketing. This is 3 times in the last 12 months my manager has said I'm getting a raise for it to be knocked back.

He hasn't fully quantified what work he wants to be done, when he wants it to be done by, and why he doesn't think it can be done by then during regular hours - it's more a knee-jerk reaction that he's going some rough ideas of things he wants to do, and doesn't feel they're happening fast enough. But he just keeps piling more and more things for people to do, never weighs up the workload, and expects everything to be done 'now' - and if it's not possible to get things done as quickly as he wants then that's our issue, and we just need to work more.

I keep being given more and more responsibility, and the range of the type of work I do just keeps growing. I started off essentially being a project admin, and now run projects, oversee people, oversee the set up of products and services, assist in marketing and website updates, assisting with sales and proposals (and overseeing proposals built by others), assist with and help run R&D projects, and am trying to completely re-designing a CRM/project management/asset management/ticketing system tool from the ground up because we are essentially a business within a business and can't find anything that covers everything we need in a single product - and especially one that the CEO would be willing to pay for.

There is minimal high level strategy, and we just have to keep adapting to each new idea he gets, and I continuously get crap for trying to be "too organised / going into too much detail" - despite me proving with my most detailed, yet more praised, work (the report previously mentioned) that you need a lot of raw organised data to create detailed dashboards and reports for customers (the only bit my manager cares about, but he just wants to the front end to 'appear' - when he see me working on the back end he complains it's overkill).

He also just blindly dismisses work I've done, without looking at it. We're at the beginning of a large project and we need to inform the customer how long it's going to take. This is not a simple question, as it depends how many customers they get, and how many locations they want to roll out to. But it also doesn't scale uniformly, as an initial set up of a customer takes longer than adding to an established customer. So I worked out how long each section takes, then created a calculator so you can hypothesise scenarios (such as, Stage 1: initial set up, Stage 2, 1 customer, 10 locations, stage 3: 3 additional customers, 7 locations each, Stage 4, customer 1 adds 25 locations - etc) and it calculates man-hours for you, based on our early tests. As I tried to explain it to his, saying I want to show him my working (as he's the primary on the project) - so we can set the customers expectations - his response was "I don't believe you", and hasn't look at it. (He has informed the customer how long I think it would be - but again with the qualifier that he doesn't believe me)

But despite all this extra work I'm doing the department's numbers are currently flat on last year. But my job isn't directly sales - so I feel a huge sense of resentment that I'm being asked more and more, but my compensation is essentially tied to other people's performance (excluding that bonus I got last month). But we have grown in other ways, and I was the one to figure this out. It could be argued our department has grown 50% in a year if you don't include a problem account that we're likely going to court over.

Apparently I'm due a 1-to-1 with my manager (the first time in 3 years they thought of doing something like this - they're very unorganised as a company), so I intend to ask specifically what milestones the department and I need to hit for me to get to a payrise, and how much this payrise would be. Issue being, and the reason I haven't pushed it before, is I'm almost certain there wont be answers for these and it's always down to how the CEO "feels" at that time.

I'm trying to look for other jobs, but there aren't many around here (especially this time of year, it seems). I had two interviews in Autumn and didn't get them - one because I went into too much technical detail in the interview (it was a simpler job that I do now, so I shouldn't have got carried away), and the other hasn't given me feedback despite multiple attempts to get some. I'm currently in the Manchester area, and I have some family in the South East that keep trying to convince me to move down there but the idea of moving when I haven't got a job is terrifying, especially if I can't land a job now I feel it's going to be just as difficult down south (and I beginning to feel I'm gooseberry fool at interviews, partly due to the irregular style of my job doesn't lead well to answering interview questions easily and concisely).

So yeah, like I said, bit of a rant.


Do you get decent sick pay? Go off with stress. Or make an injury up (that makes it painful to do your job).

Or you need to get some things out in the open during your 1 to 1.

What does your contract say about overtime? Paid or unpaid? Im assuming it's unpaid, and they say 'overtime should be expected from time to time' or some shite to that effect. Tell them in that 1-1 that you're only contracted to do occasional overtime, and anything beyond that should be paid. If they push you on it, start causing you problems, document EVERYTHING, then go see your doctor. They cant sack you (legally) while you're ill.

This is wrong. It absolutely is possible to legally sack someone whilst they're off sick, it just takes longer and is a bit more complicated.

Lagamorph's Underwater Photography Thread
Zellery wrote:Good post Lagamorph.
Turboman wrote:Lagomorph..... Is ..... Right
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gaminglegend
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Location: North East, UK

PostRe: The Work Thread 2 - Get back to work!
by gaminglegend » Mon Jan 13, 2020 11:12 am

Anyone had any luck of moving out of retail management into something else? I’ve had a few training manager interviews but to no avail.

I did a short trial course with an ‘expert’ who was supposed to help a group of people do this, but ultimately
the tasks/ideas he had were things I’m already doing and I felt a bit redundant. (Of course it was also to sell his course at the end)

I’ve multiple variations of my CV to factor in different skills for differing roles but after getting nowhere wonder if actually my CV is the problem..

Check out the GRCADE Beer Money Thread - Free shares & Bank Switch Offers £££! :msgreen:
https://grcade.co.uk/t:the-making-beer-money-thread
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Clarkman
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PostRe: The Work Thread 2 - Get back to work!
by Clarkman » Mon Jan 13, 2020 11:45 am

gaminglegend wrote:Anyone had any luck of moving out of retail management into something else? I’ve had a few training manager interviews but to no avail.

I did a short trial course with an ‘expert’ who was supposed to help a group of people do this, but ultimately
the tasks/ideas he had were things I’m already doing and I felt a bit redundant. (Of course it was also to sell his course at the end)

I’ve multiple variations of my CV to factor in different skills for differing roles but after getting nowhere wonder if actually my CV is the problem..


What kind of roles are you interested in/applying for?

Here's some insight from someone who spent 6 years in recruitment, regarding transferring into a new career path:

- If you're applying for advertised positions, a vast majority of the time, recruiters will be looking for direct previous experience of equivalent roles, rather than thinking about transferable skills. If you're coming from outside a career path/industry, you should expect to be competing at a disadvantage.

- The most success comes from proactively researching the work histories of people who work in the roles/fields you want. Reach out to them over LinkedIn and ask how they got their foot in the door at the new business.

- Follow through on this logic by emailing companies/people you want to work for, whether they have advertised positions or not.

- Don't expect to continue a management level position. This is something you are likely going to need to be flexible on.

- Figure out how you're going to stand out. The high street is collapsing and there's an abundance of ex-retail workers looking to shift away. What is your USP? Is there something you're passionate about which will make you memorable?

pjbetman
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Joined in 2017

PostRe: The Work Thread 2 - Get back to work!
by pjbetman » Mon Jan 13, 2020 4:53 pm

Lagamorph wrote:
pjbetman wrote:
That's not a growth wrote:Bit of a rant

Rather predictability, work have pretty much said they're not giving me a payrise any time soon. I was told a month or so ago (and I was shown a whatsapp message between my manager and the CEO confirming this) that if a certain customer paid their bill then they would look at the raise my manager has requested for me (and I haven't actually found out yet how much this is actually for - which feels stupid as I type this out, but all the conversations were rushed in hallways, or similar). They paid their bill just before Christmas (and I was given a bonus (£100) for my work on the report that lead to this payment - before we knew the payment was made), and now this week my manager is saying the department is not making enough money for people to get raises and he wants us to work overtime at least twice a week for the indefinite future (potentially up to 6 months +) so we can complete some ideas he has for new products and marketing. This is 3 times in the last 12 months my manager has said I'm getting a raise for it to be knocked back.

He hasn't fully quantified what work he wants to be done, when he wants it to be done by, and why he doesn't think it can be done by then during regular hours - it's more a knee-jerk reaction that he's going some rough ideas of things he wants to do, and doesn't feel they're happening fast enough. But he just keeps piling more and more things for people to do, never weighs up the workload, and expects everything to be done 'now' - and if it's not possible to get things done as quickly as he wants then that's our issue, and we just need to work more.

I keep being given more and more responsibility, and the range of the type of work I do just keeps growing. I started off essentially being a project admin, and now run projects, oversee people, oversee the set up of products and services, assist in marketing and website updates, assisting with sales and proposals (and overseeing proposals built by others), assist with and help run R&D projects, and am trying to completely re-designing a CRM/project management/asset management/ticketing system tool from the ground up because we are essentially a business within a business and can't find anything that covers everything we need in a single product - and especially one that the CEO would be willing to pay for.

There is minimal high level strategy, and we just have to keep adapting to each new idea he gets, and I continuously get crap for trying to be "too organised / going into too much detail" - despite me proving with my most detailed, yet more praised, work (the report previously mentioned) that you need a lot of raw organised data to create detailed dashboards and reports for customers (the only bit my manager cares about, but he just wants to the front end to 'appear' - when he see me working on the back end he complains it's overkill).

He also just blindly dismisses work I've done, without looking at it. We're at the beginning of a large project and we need to inform the customer how long it's going to take. This is not a simple question, as it depends how many customers they get, and how many locations they want to roll out to. But it also doesn't scale uniformly, as an initial set up of a customer takes longer than adding to an established customer. So I worked out how long each section takes, then created a calculator so you can hypothesise scenarios (such as, Stage 1: initial set up, Stage 2, 1 customer, 10 locations, stage 3: 3 additional customers, 7 locations each, Stage 4, customer 1 adds 25 locations - etc) and it calculates man-hours for you, based on our early tests. As I tried to explain it to his, saying I want to show him my working (as he's the primary on the project) - so we can set the customers expectations - his response was "I don't believe you", and hasn't look at it. (He has informed the customer how long I think it would be - but again with the qualifier that he doesn't believe me)

But despite all this extra work I'm doing the department's numbers are currently flat on last year. But my job isn't directly sales - so I feel a huge sense of resentment that I'm being asked more and more, but my compensation is essentially tied to other people's performance (excluding that bonus I got last month). But we have grown in other ways, and I was the one to figure this out. It could be argued our department has grown 50% in a year if you don't include a problem account that we're likely going to court over.

Apparently I'm due a 1-to-1 with my manager (the first time in 3 years they thought of doing something like this - they're very unorganised as a company), so I intend to ask specifically what milestones the department and I need to hit for me to get to a payrise, and how much this payrise would be. Issue being, and the reason I haven't pushed it before, is I'm almost certain there wont be answers for these and it's always down to how the CEO "feels" at that time.

I'm trying to look for other jobs, but there aren't many around here (especially this time of year, it seems). I had two interviews in Autumn and didn't get them - one because I went into too much technical detail in the interview (it was a simpler job that I do now, so I shouldn't have got carried away), and the other hasn't given me feedback despite multiple attempts to get some. I'm currently in the Manchester area, and I have some family in the South East that keep trying to convince me to move down there but the idea of moving when I haven't got a job is terrifying, especially if I can't land a job now I feel it's going to be just as difficult down south (and I beginning to feel I'm gooseberry fool at interviews, partly due to the irregular style of my job doesn't lead well to answering interview questions easily and concisely).

So yeah, like I said, bit of a rant.


Do you get decent sick pay? Go off with stress. Or make an injury up (that makes it painful to do your job).

Or you need to get some things out in the open during your 1 to 1.

What does your contract say about overtime? Paid or unpaid? Im assuming it's unpaid, and they say 'overtime should be expected from time to time' or some shite to that effect. Tell them in that 1-1 that you're only contracted to do occasional overtime, and anything beyond that should be paid. If they push you on it, start causing you problems, document EVERYTHING, then go see your doctor. They cant sack you (legally) while you're ill.

This is wrong. It absolutely is possible to legally sack someone whilst they're off sick, it just takes longer and is a bit more complicated.



In a sense that they can sack you but it's unfair dismissal? (EDIT: When thers a clause for paid sick leave)

User avatar
Lagamorph
Member ♥
Joined in 2010

PostRe: The Work Thread 2 - Get back to work!
by Lagamorph » Mon Jan 13, 2020 5:13 pm

pjbetman wrote:
Lagamorph wrote:
pjbetman wrote:
That's not a growth wrote:Bit of a rant

Rather predictability, work have pretty much said they're not giving me a payrise any time soon. I was told a month or so ago (and I was shown a whatsapp message between my manager and the CEO confirming this) that if a certain customer paid their bill then they would look at the raise my manager has requested for me (and I haven't actually found out yet how much this is actually for - which feels stupid as I type this out, but all the conversations were rushed in hallways, or similar). They paid their bill just before Christmas (and I was given a bonus (£100) for my work on the report that lead to this payment - before we knew the payment was made), and now this week my manager is saying the department is not making enough money for people to get raises and he wants us to work overtime at least twice a week for the indefinite future (potentially up to 6 months +) so we can complete some ideas he has for new products and marketing. This is 3 times in the last 12 months my manager has said I'm getting a raise for it to be knocked back.

He hasn't fully quantified what work he wants to be done, when he wants it to be done by, and why he doesn't think it can be done by then during regular hours - it's more a knee-jerk reaction that he's going some rough ideas of things he wants to do, and doesn't feel they're happening fast enough. But he just keeps piling more and more things for people to do, never weighs up the workload, and expects everything to be done 'now' - and if it's not possible to get things done as quickly as he wants then that's our issue, and we just need to work more.

I keep being given more and more responsibility, and the range of the type of work I do just keeps growing. I started off essentially being a project admin, and now run projects, oversee people, oversee the set up of products and services, assist in marketing and website updates, assisting with sales and proposals (and overseeing proposals built by others), assist with and help run R&D projects, and am trying to completely re-designing a CRM/project management/asset management/ticketing system tool from the ground up because we are essentially a business within a business and can't find anything that covers everything we need in a single product - and especially one that the CEO would be willing to pay for.

There is minimal high level strategy, and we just have to keep adapting to each new idea he gets, and I continuously get crap for trying to be "too organised / going into too much detail" - despite me proving with my most detailed, yet more praised, work (the report previously mentioned) that you need a lot of raw organised data to create detailed dashboards and reports for customers (the only bit my manager cares about, but he just wants to the front end to 'appear' - when he see me working on the back end he complains it's overkill).

He also just blindly dismisses work I've done, without looking at it. We're at the beginning of a large project and we need to inform the customer how long it's going to take. This is not a simple question, as it depends how many customers they get, and how many locations they want to roll out to. But it also doesn't scale uniformly, as an initial set up of a customer takes longer than adding to an established customer. So I worked out how long each section takes, then created a calculator so you can hypothesise scenarios (such as, Stage 1: initial set up, Stage 2, 1 customer, 10 locations, stage 3: 3 additional customers, 7 locations each, Stage 4, customer 1 adds 25 locations - etc) and it calculates man-hours for you, based on our early tests. As I tried to explain it to his, saying I want to show him my working (as he's the primary on the project) - so we can set the customers expectations - his response was "I don't believe you", and hasn't look at it. (He has informed the customer how long I think it would be - but again with the qualifier that he doesn't believe me)

But despite all this extra work I'm doing the department's numbers are currently flat on last year. But my job isn't directly sales - so I feel a huge sense of resentment that I'm being asked more and more, but my compensation is essentially tied to other people's performance (excluding that bonus I got last month). But we have grown in other ways, and I was the one to figure this out. It could be argued our department has grown 50% in a year if you don't include a problem account that we're likely going to court over.

Apparently I'm due a 1-to-1 with my manager (the first time in 3 years they thought of doing something like this - they're very unorganised as a company), so I intend to ask specifically what milestones the department and I need to hit for me to get to a payrise, and how much this payrise would be. Issue being, and the reason I haven't pushed it before, is I'm almost certain there wont be answers for these and it's always down to how the CEO "feels" at that time.

I'm trying to look for other jobs, but there aren't many around here (especially this time of year, it seems). I had two interviews in Autumn and didn't get them - one because I went into too much technical detail in the interview (it was a simpler job that I do now, so I shouldn't have got carried away), and the other hasn't given me feedback despite multiple attempts to get some. I'm currently in the Manchester area, and I have some family in the South East that keep trying to convince me to move down there but the idea of moving when I haven't got a job is terrifying, especially if I can't land a job now I feel it's going to be just as difficult down south (and I beginning to feel I'm gooseberry fool at interviews, partly due to the irregular style of my job doesn't lead well to answering interview questions easily and concisely).

So yeah, like I said, bit of a rant.


Do you get decent sick pay? Go off with stress. Or make an injury up (that makes it painful to do your job).

Or you need to get some things out in the open during your 1 to 1.

What does your contract say about overtime? Paid or unpaid? Im assuming it's unpaid, and they say 'overtime should be expected from time to time' or some shite to that effect. Tell them in that 1-1 that you're only contracted to do occasional overtime, and anything beyond that should be paid. If they push you on it, start causing you problems, document EVERYTHING, then go see your doctor. They cant sack you (legally) while you're ill.

This is wrong. It absolutely is possible to legally sack someone whilst they're off sick, it just takes longer and is a bit more complicated.



In a sense that they can sack you but it's unfair dismissal? (EDIT: When thers a clause for paid sick leave)

No they can still sack you without it being unfair dismissal. They can potentially sack you on capability grounds if you're on long term sick with no return to work in sight for example.
Or if you're undergoing a disciplinary, being off sick wouldn't stop the process.

Lagamorph's Underwater Photography Thread
Zellery wrote:Good post Lagamorph.
Turboman wrote:Lagomorph..... Is ..... Right
User avatar
That's not a growth
Member
Joined in 2008

PostRe: The Work Thread 2 - Get back to work!
by That's not a growth » Mon Jan 13, 2020 5:56 pm

pjbetman wrote:
That's not a growth wrote:Bit of a rant

Rather predictability, work have pretty much said they're not giving me a payrise any time soon. I was told a month or so ago (and I was shown a whatsapp message between my manager and the CEO confirming this) that if a certain customer paid their bill then they would look at the raise my manager has requested for me (and I haven't actually found out yet how much this is actually for - which feels stupid as I type this out, but all the conversations were rushed in hallways, or similar). They paid their bill just before Christmas (and I was given a bonus (£100) for my work on the report that lead to this payment - before we knew the payment was made), and now this week my manager is saying the department is not making enough money for people to get raises and he wants us to work overtime at least twice a week for the indefinite future (potentially up to 6 months +) so we can complete some ideas he has for new products and marketing. This is 3 times in the last 12 months my manager has said I'm getting a raise for it to be knocked back.

He hasn't fully quantified what work he wants to be done, when he wants it to be done by, and why he doesn't think it can be done by then during regular hours - it's more a knee-jerk reaction that he's going some rough ideas of things he wants to do, and doesn't feel they're happening fast enough. But he just keeps piling more and more things for people to do, never weighs up the workload, and expects everything to be done 'now' - and if it's not possible to get things done as quickly as he wants then that's our issue, and we just need to work more.

I keep being given more and more responsibility, and the range of the type of work I do just keeps growing. I started off essentially being a project admin, and now run projects, oversee people, oversee the set up of products and services, assist in marketing and website updates, assisting with sales and proposals (and overseeing proposals built by others), assist with and help run R&D projects, and am trying to completely re-designing a CRM/project management/asset management/ticketing system tool from the ground up because we are essentially a business within a business and can't find anything that covers everything we need in a single product - and especially one that the CEO would be willing to pay for.

There is minimal high level strategy, and we just have to keep adapting to each new idea he gets, and I continuously get crap for trying to be "too organised / going into too much detail" - despite me proving with my most detailed, yet more praised, work (the report previously mentioned) that you need a lot of raw organised data to create detailed dashboards and reports for customers (the only bit my manager cares about, but he just wants to the front end to 'appear' - when he see me working on the back end he complains it's overkill).

He also just blindly dismisses work I've done, without looking at it. We're at the beginning of a large project and we need to inform the customer how long it's going to take. This is not a simple question, as it depends how many customers they get, and how many locations they want to roll out to. But it also doesn't scale uniformly, as an initial set up of a customer takes longer than adding to an established customer. So I worked out how long each section takes, then created a calculator so you can hypothesise scenarios (such as, Stage 1: initial set up, Stage 2, 1 customer, 10 locations, stage 3: 3 additional customers, 7 locations each, Stage 4, customer 1 adds 25 locations - etc) and it calculates man-hours for you, based on our early tests. As I tried to explain it to his, saying I want to show him my working (as he's the primary on the project) - so we can set the customers expectations - his response was "I don't believe you", and hasn't look at it. (He has informed the customer how long I think it would be - but again with the qualifier that he doesn't believe me)

But despite all this extra work I'm doing the department's numbers are currently flat on last year. But my job isn't directly sales - so I feel a huge sense of resentment that I'm being asked more and more, but my compensation is essentially tied to other people's performance (excluding that bonus I got last month). But we have grown in other ways, and I was the one to figure this out. It could be argued our department has grown 50% in a year if you don't include a problem account that we're likely going to court over.

Apparently I'm due a 1-to-1 with my manager (the first time in 3 years they thought of doing something like this - they're very unorganised as a company), so I intend to ask specifically what milestones the department and I need to hit for me to get to a payrise, and how much this payrise would be. Issue being, and the reason I haven't pushed it before, is I'm almost certain there wont be answers for these and it's always down to how the CEO "feels" at that time.

I'm trying to look for other jobs, but there aren't many around here (especially this time of year, it seems). I had two interviews in Autumn and didn't get them - one because I went into too much technical detail in the interview (it was a simpler job that I do now, so I shouldn't have got carried away), and the other hasn't given me feedback despite multiple attempts to get some. I'm currently in the Manchester area, and I have some family in the South East that keep trying to convince me to move down there but the idea of moving when I haven't got a job is terrifying, especially if I can't land a job now I feel it's going to be just as difficult down south (and I beginning to feel I'm gooseberry fool at interviews, partly due to the irregular style of my job doesn't lead well to answering interview questions easily and concisely).

So yeah, like I said, bit of a rant.


Do you get decent sick pay? Go off with stress. Or make an injury up (that makes it painful to do your job).

Or you need to get some things out in the open during your 1 to 1.

What does your contract say about overtime? Paid or unpaid? Im assuming it's unpaid, and they say 'overtime should be expected from time to time' or some shite to that effect. Tell them in that 1-1 that you're only contracted to do occasional overtime, and anything beyond that should be paid. If they push you on it, start causing you problems, document EVERYTHING, then go see your doctor. They cant sack you (legally) while you're ill.


I get SSP - so not worth being off.

Get get paid my regular rate for over time, but my issue is them trying to force me to do 10+ hours of over time a week - especially when expectations haven't been set, and they haven't explained why over time is essential.

User avatar
Green Gecko
Treasurer
Joined in 2008

PostRe: The Work Thread 2 - Get back to work!
by Green Gecko » Mon Jan 13, 2020 6:03 pm

They should change your contract to include and guarantee the hours, including increasing your holiday entitlement by the same amount. Even for permanent roles I think it's perfectly reasonable to look at the contract again every 12 months. Contracts these days can be anything from 28 days, 3 months, 6 months, 12-18 months and rarely any longer than that. So why is "permanent" any different? Let's be real, there's no such thing as "permanent job". The employment rights for a 3 month contract and a permanent one are almost identical; all you might get is a yearly rise of a few % (generally just in line with inflation or NMW/NLW increases, which anyone should expect) and extra holidays.

To be honest, it's obviously dangling the proverbial carrot. I've been in this situation so many times, many of which I haven't moved forward with because I could see it happening (as a freelancer). The only way to negotiate with permanent role however is to find another offer. People in long term contracts/jobs etc feel like there isn't anything they can do and that's the way it works, it's either "take it like it is or it's your job". Well, if there's another job possibility, that dynamic gets totally flipped on its head and its interesting how the tone changes. Obviously there's no guarantee it'll work out but management are going to do nothing at all unless you present them with a bigger problem which is hiring somebody else. Obviously, this only works if you're a good employee.

Most managers in my experience believe they're are doing their job - "management" - by making vague gestures about possible wage increases or things getting better when they aren't getting better. It's literally their job to maintain the status quo including the budget for salaries. It's their no.1 goal to keep everything the same. It's cycling uphill.

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User avatar
Qikz
#420BlazeIt ♥
Joined in 2011

PostRe: The Work Thread 2 - Get back to work!
by Qikz » Mon Jan 13, 2020 6:39 pm

I made it through the day thank god. It wasn't overly busy but everyone on the phone was so rude and impatient. It's the polar opposite to December when everyone is perfectly happy.

Someone complained at me within 5 minutes for taking last week off and doing the same next year :lol:

The Watching Artist wrote:I feel so inept next to Qikz...
User avatar
Squinty
Member
Joined in 2009
Location: Norn Oirland

PostRe: The Work Thread 2 - Get back to work!
by Squinty » Mon Jan 13, 2020 6:45 pm

Qikz wrote:I made it through the day thank god. It wasn't overly busy but everyone on the phone was so rude and impatient. It's the polar opposite to December when everyone is perfectly happy.

Someone complained at me within 5 minutes for taking last week off and doing the same next year :lol:


My first call of today was someone going absolutely strawberry floating bananas at me. Just got them off the phone quickly so I didn't have to listen to their bullshit. Not a great start.


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