Work is utterly shit. I came about as clsoe to walking out the other day as I ever have. If Pinklet was currently gainfully employed, I may well have done.
We are running a crappy old website and the more I read about creating beautiful, standards-based websites, the more I realise just how shit it is. We are running on version 1 of the platform our hosting company offers. EVERYONE else that hosts with them (including some pretty big high street names,) went onto version 2 of the platform FIVE YEARS AGO! Then the other day I overheard that we're not getting a new website, despite being promised one for three or more years.
Neil, who's the internet manager and my line manager told the boss that he was out of there this year if we didn't get a new site. He told me yesterday that he was going to hand in his notice today & give them 3 months, except we're currently off because of the snow.
Then there's the warehousing system. It runs on a 12 year old database (in computing terms, that's like driving to work in a horse and cart,) and something goes wrong with it every day and the company we get it from are notoriously bad at a)fixing it and b)getting in touch to tell me it's fixed.
I've struck up a friendship with one of the guys there over the last few months so usually I speak to him because a)he knows his stuff and b)he actually does the work and then (gasp,) tells me it's done! Amazing. Anyway he is a good guy and we're working on a little project of our own in our spare time. Unfortunately for me, he's off on paternity leave at the moment, so it's back to trying to get anyone to do anything.
I also overheard that there is no money for a new system, which annoyed me because our sister company has had not one, but two new systems in the last year. Maybe there's no money for us because their first system, which was sourced by the MD without my input, was complete shit and I think overall cost the company around 150, 000 by the time we got rid of it.
Also everyone's computers are old and shit. I upgraded one girl's to 1 gig of RAM, which was the maximum it could take. Just to put that in perspective, Windows Vista requires 1GB RAM minimum! Everyone complains daily how slow they are but there's no money for new ones. That wouldn't be so bad but when we moved to our new site a couple of years ago, the boss bought everyone new glass desks that no one needed or wanted because he thought they looked nice. They each cost 300, which could have gone towards new computers.
In addition to this he micromanages people - telling them how to design a website or graphics etc even though he has no training or clue. His business decisions make no kind of sense and he treats the place like his own little plaything, which I suppose in some ways it is, but that's not how you run a business.
The final straw was after hearing all this I got an email from the MD saying I needed to set up a meeting with a guy from the apple store in town as he wanted to buy a mac and could I make the network wireless please?
So apparently there's enough to buy him a Mac (a Macbook starts at over 900,). Making the office wireless would involve buying new hardware and could be very expensive, depending on how much of the building he wants to cover. I told him that I've had no training on Macs and if he wants me to support it, (the graphics guy is savvy enough to look after his,) then I will require training and it will make things more difficult for him to get on the network. (Mac fans - don't flame me with how easy it is to get Macs on Windows networks, as so far the two we run have been nothing but trouble.)
I'm going to spend a part of this evening writing my resignation letter, explaining in great detail why I'm leaving due to having to firefight ancient systems, the constant bungled management (We got sent home wed afternoon due to the snow. Next morning someone tried to phone the MD for 2 hours to find out if we should go in. He didn't answer.) IT being seen as a cost instead of the backbone infrastructure that enables people to work and I might add in the fact that he's such a cunt he's on a very short list of people I wish physical harm on. (I don't even kill insects so that's my equivalent of a fatwa.) I'm going to sit on it until I have another job, (we can't afford to be both out of work,) and really enjoy handing it to him when I do. I might even just quit to leave him in the shit. Or change all the passwords, then quit. Or fill his hard drive with child pornography, alert the authorities and quit.
Overall I'm fairly happy at the moment outside of work. I ache to be working as a freelance web designer/developer from home, but I'm still learning so that's a way off yet.
Here's some nice pics to soothe you after that tirade.
We are running a crappy old website and the more I read about creating beautiful, standards-based websites, the more I realise just how shit it is. We are running on version 1 of the platform our hosting company offers. EVERYONE else that hosts with them (including some pretty big high street names,) went onto version 2 of the platform FIVE YEARS AGO! Then the other day I overheard that we're not getting a new website, despite being promised one for three or more years.
Neil, who's the internet manager and my line manager told the boss that he was out of there this year if we didn't get a new site. He told me yesterday that he was going to hand in his notice today & give them 3 months, except we're currently off because of the snow.
Then there's the warehousing system. It runs on a 12 year old database (in computing terms, that's like driving to work in a horse and cart,) and something goes wrong with it every day and the company we get it from are notoriously bad at a)fixing it and b)getting in touch to tell me it's fixed.
I've struck up a friendship with one of the guys there over the last few months so usually I speak to him because a)he knows his stuff and b)he actually does the work and then (gasp,) tells me it's done! Amazing. Anyway he is a good guy and we're working on a little project of our own in our spare time. Unfortunately for me, he's off on paternity leave at the moment, so it's back to trying to get anyone to do anything.
I also overheard that there is no money for a new system, which annoyed me because our sister company has had not one, but two new systems in the last year. Maybe there's no money for us because their first system, which was sourced by the MD without my input, was complete shit and I think overall cost the company around 150, 000 by the time we got rid of it.
Also everyone's computers are old and shit. I upgraded one girl's to 1 gig of RAM, which was the maximum it could take. Just to put that in perspective, Windows Vista requires 1GB RAM minimum! Everyone complains daily how slow they are but there's no money for new ones. That wouldn't be so bad but when we moved to our new site a couple of years ago, the boss bought everyone new glass desks that no one needed or wanted because he thought they looked nice. They each cost 300, which could have gone towards new computers.
In addition to this he micromanages people - telling them how to design a website or graphics etc even though he has no training or clue. His business decisions make no kind of sense and he treats the place like his own little plaything, which I suppose in some ways it is, but that's not how you run a business.
The final straw was after hearing all this I got an email from the MD saying I needed to set up a meeting with a guy from the apple store in town as he wanted to buy a mac and could I make the network wireless please?
So apparently there's enough to buy him a Mac (a Macbook starts at over 900,). Making the office wireless would involve buying new hardware and could be very expensive, depending on how much of the building he wants to cover. I told him that I've had no training on Macs and if he wants me to support it, (the graphics guy is savvy enough to look after his,) then I will require training and it will make things more difficult for him to get on the network. (Mac fans - don't flame me with how easy it is to get Macs on Windows networks, as so far the two we run have been nothing but trouble.)
I'm going to spend a part of this evening writing my resignation letter, explaining in great detail why I'm leaving due to having to firefight ancient systems, the constant bungled management (We got sent home wed afternoon due to the snow. Next morning someone tried to phone the MD for 2 hours to find out if we should go in. He didn't answer.) IT being seen as a cost instead of the backbone infrastructure that enables people to work and I might add in the fact that he's such a cunt he's on a very short list of people I wish physical harm on. (I don't even kill insects so that's my equivalent of a fatwa.) I'm going to sit on it until I have another job, (we can't afford to be both out of work,) and really enjoy handing it to him when I do. I might even just quit to leave him in the shit. Or change all the passwords, then quit. Or fill his hard drive with child pornography, alert the authorities and quit.
Overall I'm fairly happy at the moment outside of work. I ache to be working as a freelance web designer/developer from home, but I'm still learning so that's a way off yet.
Here's some nice pics to soothe you after that tirade.
VIEW 10 of 10 COMMENTS
You're spot on, that was for NaNoWriMo. I got all excited, then very, very stuck. But hey, it was fun while it lasted.
Hope work's feeling a bit better.