Unionisation & decimation.

>>14365

>"Give yourself permission to relax."

The only appropriate response to that is a massive fart.

One hour wanking sessions every day.

>>14370
Unfortunately you've transformed your office into the Children of God cult.

Daily Two Minutes Hate with films of rival companies.

In your shoes I usually adopt a "fuck it" mindset. If you don't get it it's not a big loss.

>>14289


You might be right that I'm just not relishing failing at an interview, but honestly if I don't succeed it's really just going to be because other people have more experience, which is hardly something I'll feel bad about. Maybe I just want it more than I'm telling myself. Perhaps this is more of an /emo/ thread than a /job/ one.

>>14290

That's exactly what I expected to do. I have no idea why I started to panic when I actually got the interview confirmation.

I don't have much help to offer but whenever I've done internal interviews, it's always been twice as nerve wracking as an interview at a new place.

I had to have an interview with my two most immediate managers for a promotion last year and I was a wreck. Totally bollocksed it. It messed with my head too much going from the usual relatively informal relationship we have to pretending it was all super serious. Still got the job like, the interview was a formality at most, but still. The whole vibe was just too incredibly awkward.

Anyway best of luck m8.

>>14293

>It messed with my head too much going from the usual relatively informal relationship we have to pretending it was all super serious.

I think this may be it. I work, laugh and joke with these people, they're my peers in all but title, so it'll be fucking weird to have to explain to them why I'm good for a job, when they already know exactly who I am and what I can do.

Also, the most important tool in the interview arsenal is embellishing or lying about experiences on the job, which is much harder to do when the interviewers were there with you.

>>14295

Do it anyway. The more obviously stuff they know you can't have been doing the better.

>>14283
> "must have a CS degree from a good uni"

This would really get my panties in a bunch if I could still bring myself to care about that kind of peacocking. Sure, good education helps and there's no denying that, but particularly once you deal with people who've been 'round the block a few times it becomes increasingly irrelevant. Most of the folks I work with (myself included) have a university degree of some sort, though only maybe 3/4 have one in CS. That said, there are absolutely brilliant folks who have no "formal education" and learned by doing.

Categorically if someone insists a candidate has a university degree, and even more so if it needs to be from a particular institution, when said candidate has several years of industry experience can go sit on it and swivel.

>>14282
>>14284
As someone who did a CS BSc at an ex poly and a postgrad research degree at a "good" Russel group uni (where I was involved with some of the undergrad teaching) I'm not convinced that "good" unis are necessarily any better than lower tier unis when it comes to bachelor's degrees.

In my experience it was actually the opposite. The ex poly was more focused on good teaching than research and hired lecturers who were actually interested in teaching and often had plenty of real world experience outside of academia. The Russell group uni had a great reputation for research and as a result hired career researchers who weren't interested in teaching undergrads, and it showed.

>That said, there are absolutely brilliant folks who have no "formal education" and learned by doing.

Nearly all the best CS people I knew in academia were self-taught amateurs before uni who would have gone on to be those people if they hadn't decided to go to uni

>>14285
>In my experience it was actually the opposite. The ex poly was more focused on good teaching than research and hired lecturers who were actually interested in teaching and often had plenty of real world experience outside of academia. The Russell group uni had a great reputation for research and as a result hired career researchers who weren't interested in teaching undergrads, and it showed.

This is something I noticed from outside of CS. I'd say that even at postgraduate level my experience with a Russell Group university was staff focused on their own work more than the needs of their students which, let's best honest, is what you associate yourself with a Russell Group for. It certainly bears out in the teaching/research ratio expected between the two types of institutions and as a result the kind of staff they attract. I was studying law so my undergraduate had teachers who either worked part-time as solicitors or were former quangos, the result was something that felt much more hands on and probably in line with what the students wanted.

I'm not denying that what you do get with the more top-tier universities is opportunities, there were no career fairs and people coming down from an ivory tower to lecture at my former polytechnic and the library might've well have not existed outside of it's use for printing. Still, it did change my perspective on what a good school even is which like a workplace is more about the people who make it worth getting out of bed for.

>>14273

OP here. My last post regarding this tedious saga: they were nice enough to get back to me to say they'll "keep me in mind for future opportunities and would love to stay connected".

That they replied at all was a pleasant surprise, but time will tell if anything ever actually comes of it.

>>14286
>as a result the kind of staff they attract
I'm not so sure about that one. The academics at lesser universities would relish the opportunity to spend more time working on their own interests and less time teaching A-level standard material to an overburdened classroom. The problem is they can't afford to because they won't get funding for it since all that goes to the universities with a better infrastructure for research already in place.

It's a chicken and egg problem, but we definitely haven't reached an equilibrium where people are choosing to pursue jobs at a university with lower research expectations so they can focus on teaching -- at least not in the hard sciences. There are certainly academics who value teaching, but in my experience nobody seeks a job as a lecturer so that they can be a teacher.

>Is there a smarter strategy here?
Yes. Getting another offer first, but you know that already.

>>14217
That might be the most difficult question in the universe to answer. It's very individual. For me, it's all about what do I first think about when I wake up? Am I already gnashing my teeth about who I might deal with, and thinking strongly of a duvet day? Or am I getting up and at them?

I have considered this a lot recently, and have also reach my limit on what constitutes that balance. I quit my job (without having another one lined up) because I thought the balance was out - I'm quite sure I'll find something else. Time will tell - if I'm queueing up at the foodbank in two months time, I was wrong.

It really depends on what you want. My mum works two days a week, and it pays her bills and has enough left over for the things she enjoys, and enough of a savings account to retire whenever she feels like it. On the other hand, I have a pilot friend who works as much as he's legally allowed, on about 100 grand a year, but because he lives in a giant house, has two posh cars, and so on, he's actually struggling for cash sometimes - and if he lost his job he'd be fucked. If my mum lost hers, she'd basically not notice.

>>14219

>Is there anything wrong with just being comfortable?

Nothing at all, in fact I think knowing when you are is a very valuable lesson in life.

A great deal of people simply don't know when to step off the hedonic treadmill, and that's what causes them their greatest misery in life. I'm reaching the age that I see a lot of younger colleagues pass through my place of work, and it always gives me this weird mixture of amusement and resentment hearing them say things like "Oh yeah I mean I'm not planning on being here forever, I can't imagine working a place like THIS all my life". It occurs to me that they've not yet been through whatever it is that teaches you that lesson, and that it's going to sting when they realise they are going to end up working somewhere very much like this all their life; because ultimately, most jobs are a lot of the same old shit.

Finding somewhere you've got the right balance of elements to remain happy is vitally important, and sometimes that means making less money. One day you realise there's no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, it just goes on and on and on.

The question doesn't work because the two things aren't linear. I have a 'cool' career and as a result I work my arse off and get relatively shit pay for it.

What I've instead found is that as you rise the ranks into management you're increasingly not doing [subject] but back end corporate decision making and reporting. The kind of things that you really don't want to do but have to. That's more work than doing the things you're moderately interested in.

>>14224
I'm the opposite yet similar. I have a cool "career", but mostly sit on my arse yet get paid significantly more than the SA required amount. I'm not management and really don't want to be because, as you say, you stop doing the job and increasingly start having to do glorified paperwork. (Management should be a transparent shit umbrella, so you see the shit but don't have to deal with it.) I didn't "rise into management", I instead rose the "do the job" side of things, though the two get a little fuzzy at this stage. I'd rather go back to previous work[1], but the money is addictive and it fools me into thinking I'd be a fool to quit.

My opinion for >>14217, it's a balance. Do you have a family, do you have a mortgage, do you have other obligations or aspirations? Have you planned for your retirement financially? Sometimes sacrfices have to be made and needs must, and alternatives matter. If you could live your life and retire happy (this is not a given even if you own your property, c.f. fuel poorness in current pensioners).

So the question of balance is one up to you, with a whole lot of variables attached. And there is no right or wrong answer.

1) I used to work for a family company where I could see the daily take-in. They paid me what they could, I biked to work... I couldn't afford shit. Bit different now.

>>14049

Teaching is definitely a possbility. With an ever-increasing gap on his CV, OP will struggle to land a private-sector job worthy of his formal education, but all is not lost if he's still in his mid-20s.

In the mean time, I would go on the lookout for any job at all that gets you out of the house every day and gets you at least a few hundred quid a month. Two years is a long time to not be doing much of anything. It's not just two years of non-existing job experience, but possible employers will also be skeptical if you can just hit the ground running and get back into an everyday work routine from one day to the next.

There are jobs that can ease you back into a daily routine. You could do part-time work delivering food, or some low-level customer phone support. You don't have to work in a warehouse or supermarket.

There's a whole world of civil service jobs out there with an application process designed to cut out connections. If I remember right sifters and interviewers don't actually see your job history either because they certainly hired me with a year gap. Apply for HEO and at a push SEO unless you have management experience. Pay is shit but you can get a nice/work life balance in a very secure job that looks good on your CV if you ever want to escape, plus you're not selling rubbish to people all day.

If anything the problem we have is that not enough people apply and of those they seem unable to provide answers to the competencies so posts just go unfilled. I don't think it would be wrong if you asked for advice on competencies if you need it. Saged ticked because I don't know if I should be recruiting arse-pissers.

Here's a BBC News link about finding a job:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-53685650

My personal favourite part, and by favourite I mean I am enormously angry, is when they ask the recruitment consultant, the woman whose job it is to find you a job, the woman who works for the company that actively stands in the way of you finding a job on any job website, for tips on how to get a job, and she says:
>Corinne Mills suggests drawing on your personal network. Friends, family and acquaintances will collectively know hundreds of people, many of whom will be hiring.
So in other words, nepotism. These companies have fucked the job market so that you need to go to them, and when you go to them, they just say "hope you have a relative who can hire you because I ain't doing shit." Recruitment companies are like landlords; parasites who enrich themselves by making society worse. I despise them.

>>14179
It's much cheaper to have a staff referral scheme than to pay 15-25% of the starting salary to a recruiter.

>>14056
That doesn't explain how I got my first civil service job. My mate helped me fill out the applications. A few days later, I got a call from him saying he couldn't remember what Uni I went to. I told him, and later that day I was invited to an interview.

Reading your post now - I think he might have told his sifter mate to pick out the application that had my Uni on it.

>>14169
I'm not him, but I think you're asking two questions there. Could something be done to tax the elites in a way they can't get out of? Sure; of course it could. Will they allow such a thing to happen? Hahaha, lol, and lmao, in that order.

>>14171

I'm not so sure, I think we are going to start seeing a backlash over the nest few years as governments realise their committent to free market liberalism has let individuals and corporations become definitively more powerful than them.

For now the politicians are happy to take their bribes and back room deals, but when it really starts to threaten national interests or security concerns (and therefore, the political establishment's grip on power) I think the pendulum might start swinging back the other way, with governments trying to re-assert authority instead of being pushed aside.

>>14172
>I think we are going to start seeing a backlash over the nest few years as governments realise their committent to free market liberalism has let individuals and corporations become definitively more powerful than them.
I get the feeling that some won't realise that they've been feeding the crocodile and will happily continue to do it.

>>14172
I think that's already starting to happen. But I suspect it might already be too late. If nobody in the government showed up to work one day, I doubt most people would notice. If Google or Facebook went down for 24 hours, people would be kicking off within the first ten minutes. And if the people had to choose whose side they were on, I can't be certain that more than 50% of people would side with politicians.

Anyway, while a tax on net worth probably wouldn't go anywhere, negative interest rates are very nearly the same thing and they've been proposed a few times.

>>14168

If you're still around, software lad, I stuck a temporary email address at the bottom of this post. I was hoping to ask you how you came about finding this niche and if anything similar might apply in my field off .gs.

Not meaning to e-stalk or take up your time, so no worries if you'd rather not, I just thought I'd give it one bump in /*/ and then leave it.

>>14124
ha, no. I'm not the phantom echoer, that's the two muppets in adjacent cubicles in another building (continent). My audio is peerless.
I suspect the 4 foot separation between speakers and mic helps, as does the carefully arranged anechoic arrangement of crap filling my office.
I have no doubt that Nigel is a poorly endowed prick though.

>>14125

Either you're causing an echo, or you're causing everyone's audio to be really choppy because of the echo cancellation cutting in and out.

Just buy some headphones, Nige.

>>14126
I work in a team which includes several engineers who have spent years fighting echo cancellation problems in conferencing systems. If my mic was pissing them off, I would hear about it instantly.
Teams may be wretched in many ways, but on the machines we use, it does echo and background noise cancellation tolerably. That said, my Thinkpad is about to be refreshed by something from Dell, so I imagine it'll all go to crap and I'll have to go back to headsets.

>>14126
Also, I live on mute, as I'm not a cunt and I often have nothing to say.

>>14120
>>14121

Thanks for the tips.

What I do is when I'm slacking off at work I go and waste time on the internet. I'm guilty of posting here now that I work from home but in the beforetime I would browse industry websites and various philosophical think pieces about life that I could get away with at work.

I don't see why FT would give you this, do they have a section on it?

My work is very weird, in that it seems to be being run with the explicit aim of making sure nobody ever has to do any work. I come here to complain about the twats who do nothing quite often, but whenever I'm busy, this seems to be a great affront to the corporate philosophy, like I'm not supposed to be doing anything either. Anyway, I have a lot of free time when I'm sitting at a desk doing IT support, and once I've read all the worthwhile stories on the BBC website, I will then migrate to theregister.com, which has news from the IT world. And that's all I really do, industry-wise. They don't want me going to trade shows and things, because then I wouldn't be at work, playing the glorified receptionist and surreptitiously looking at britfa.gs on my phone.

There are probably people on Twitter you could follow who would keep you abreast of NHS developments, but if you're a brain surgeon or something, I think you just have to read real research and you'll know better than me where they keep that stuff.

If there's some kind of professional registration for your workplace, they'll usually have newsletters and what have you. the IBMS send out a magazine every month to registered scientists.

Also your boss probably gets a shitload of junk-mail magazines that are intended to flog new equipment, but they do have useful things in sometimes, so ask him to pass them on to you instead of putting them straight in the bin.

But overall I don't think you need to bother unless you've got designs on being some kind of top manager exec type who makes decisions and all that. Personally I couldn't give a fuck, I just want to get paid.

>>14036
Thanks for your insight. To be honest a DevOps role is something I've had my eye on. Not just for the pay but because as said, my role as a (mostly) manual tester is rote by nature, boring and stagnant. Do you have any advice please for someone with my skillset (or lack thereof) in pursuing a devops career?

It feels incredibly daunting, but on places like reddit I'm seeing people 'go from qa to devops in a year' so it can't be impossible...

>>14050
I can help with that; my job title is Head of DevOps for a big organisation.

1. Learn to script - python is great. You need to be able to automate almost anything you used to do on a command line. I can recommend educative.io

2. Do cloud stuff in your spare time. Get both the basic AWS and Azure accounts. Learn how to deploy a basic Windows and Linux server - then do it purely via code. You'll want to learn Terraform as it's almost an industry standard now, but Pulumi is also being strongly adopted. AWS is still way better than Azure and used in more companies, but in the beginning that matters less.

3. Learn how to build pipelines and run CI/CD toolchains - again, you can do this in Azure DevOps or AWS CodePipeline.

4. Learn to Docker and Kubernetes.

>>14051
There's lucky that the other two of you work in incredibly relevant roles.

Thanks a lot for the help, really appreciate it. It feels good to have point 1, mostly, down already. I also have the AWS Cloud Practitioner although that's quite the meme cert I'm aware.

One question; I was told there is no such thing as a 'junior' dev-ops engineer, as the field itself requires a level of knowledge that a typical junior XYZ wouldn't have yet. Is that true? Or are there some forgiving entry level devops roles?

>>14051
Just a tiny question: what's the diffrerence between sys admin, DevOps and SRE in your mind?

>>14053
Version 0. System Administration
Version 1. DevOps
Version 2. DevSecOps
Version 3. Site Reliabilty Engineering

I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that SRE is a better practice than DevOps, because it is very well defined - there is an actual book and set of definitions - Google have done a superb job with it. There are huge overlap in the ideas - SRE is an instance of DevOps.

SRE solves some of the problems that people have conceptually when they encounter DevOps ideas for the first time. Most advanced technology organisations who have adopted DevOps principles have seen the issues around information security (and have therefore adopted a more DevSecOps mindset) and are rapidly moving toward SRE, because operationally it is better.

So to answer your question precisely - it's a progession and it's somewhat difficult to skip the stages. If you know nothing about the challenges around development and system administration, then you're unlikely to appreciate DevOps. If you haven't done DevOps, then you're unlikely to appreciate why you want to quickly get to DevSecOps. If you haven't seen any of these challenges in a production environment, then SRE will seem quite academic.

In the current climate, employers in most fields are desperate for staff and can't afford to be picky. I think you're better off being straight rather than trying to hide anything - it won't come back to bite you in the arse, you probably don't want to work for someone who would discriminate on health grounds and there are loads of jobs going at the moment if it falls through.

>all the time with doctor's notes, for a long term disability that my managers were aware of

I would still tell a prospective new employer. What else are you going to tell them that you did all day the last few years or however long you were at your old job. You didn't just play hooky, you had valid reasons to be off work. Even if they let you go. Honesty is still a currency at job interviews, at least if you can offer a reasonable explanation.

Do make sure to emphasize that your health problems are behind you now, and that it was really just some improbably bad luck that you were gone from your work repeatedly. Maybe even get a note from your doctor confirming that you're all better now.

>>14031
> Do make sure to emphasize that your health problems are behind you now

I would lead with that when/if you bring it up. Something to the effect of "Though it is behind me now thanks to the fantastic treatmeant I received from XYZ, I was forced to take extended time off which I communicated to my managers at the time". Rephrase that, of course, but you get the gist. Depending on how competitive your field is you want to make sure that the person reading your CV (if it's a machine, then god help you) is forwarned of any red flags so they can contextualise them before they form an unfavourable opinion.

We (more or less) only hire people with a few years experience, and for those we only call on the references if they make extraordinary claims: "I worked in the maintenance crew for the Eiffel Tower and single-handedly dismantled and re-riveted the structure in under 6 hours while a team of painters did their thing to keep up".

But your mileage may vary by a country mile depending on your industry.

>>14032

>if it's a machine, then god help you

I generally don't apply for jobs where HR think they can't even be arsed to have a human working out if you're a promising candidate. I know that that increasingly rules out a lot of major companies these days, but I've found that I am most comfortable working for smaller companies anyway, where people are a tight-knit group and aren't at the whim of management many levels of hierarchy above them. Smaller companies haven't quite adopted that technology yet in large numbers.

I applied for a job at a big tech service provider before the pandemic, and I got an e-mail telling me to call a number for a phone interview. Which turned out to be fully computerised. What the actual fuck. I hung up about four or five minutes in, after a few somewhat inane questions their computer saw fit to ask me, because if they can't find the time to talk to you on the phone in person, i.e. if no actual fucking human at their company can manage to take ten minutes out of their day to have a personal chat with you, then they aren't worth my time either.


Self sage for thread derailment.

>>14029
Don't you have a work mate? Give their details and let them act as your previous manager.

I'm just weaseling my way out of a similar pickle myself, with the exception that my option A turned out to be de facto permanent so it became a no-brainer for me.

That 18-month contract really is a big leap of faith, isn't it? Or are you confident you'll walk straight into further work (if you need it) after that term ends?

Similarly, if that fixed-term job (or others just like it) are going to continue to be available to you, then where's the harm in pushing for management role, and just keeping contracting as a back-burner option? Like you said, it is your career ambition, but if you've had a small taste of corporate work and don't like it, it might be best to find out if management is right for you sooner rather than later.

>it has become a job
The worst. Hopefully you get some respite and some clarity before too long.

>>14017
Ah it's the opposite; I'd commit to working there for 18 months minimum as part of the contract but it's a permanent posting so I could stay forever if I was so inclined. In theory management jobs could open up in office and thereby dodge the 18 month handcuffs but I doubt it will happen so soon after a round of recruitment unless I kill someone.

The harm comes from staying in my job now while I wait for an offer on management somewhere. That would likely be January before I pull it off.

I think only you can answer how much you want to commit to the corporate management thing. You say it's your career goal, but it doesn't sound like you're very much into that side of the game.

For me, I'm at a point both mentally and financially where I will always chase the fun or interesting rather than the lucrative. I could/should be chasing bigger upper management or even board positions, but I think once I'm taken away from the actual work we do, once my boots are off the ground and sat in some corner office, I know it'll become work, as you say.

I suppose it depends how much freedom you'd have in the latter role, leading a project can sometimes be as good as working it. I'm not really supposed to wander around sites the way I do, but it's my job and nobody can or will stop me. If your environment is a bit more limiting then perhaps the honest work is the best route.

If you are honest with yourself and find that the true driving force is that you just think you "should" be climbing the ladder, because thats what your peers are doing, then it's time to take a step back and take stock.

You'll have to do your best as a freelancer of sorts to get started out in this sort of field. You have to build up a portfolio you can demonstrate to potential employers before they'll even look at you.

My missus has made her living as an artist for most of the last decade, and she'd probably be able to wipe the floor with most of the cunts who actually get the jobs. But when 90% of your paying work was porn they don't seem to think it counts. Nonsense if you ask me, it just shows she knows where the business is.

>>13917
Nice. I do have a decent portfolio, for illustration and animation. Not enough widget-y things for graphic/UI design. Can you ask your missus where she found her work?

>>13918
If you go in Reddit there's quite a few subs for artists open for commissions. It seems Septics have a lot of disposable income to throw at fantasy porn

>>13920
Wipe them out, all of them.

If I'm not mistaken those schemes actually don't effect whether or not you receive any benefits. Assuming of course you're looking for work off your own back, and you are, aren't you, Anon?

JETS is voluntary, so unless your claimant commitment specifically mentions going on courses or schemes that are recommended to you, then you just need a plausible reason why you think it's unsuitable for your needs.

It helps if you've got something else that sounds like a plan, whether that's a sector you're trying to get into or a course you'd like to go on. It doesn't have to be a great plan, but having something you can vaguely make progress towards is a useful distraction technique.

The Work and Health Programme is mandatory and can involve you being referred to JETS, but only if you've been claiming benefits for more than 24 months.

If you're serious about scrounging, get intimately familiar with the the Advice for Decision Making documents. They are in effect the rulebook for the benefit system. Quoting a paragraph from them can cut through a massive amount of bullshit if you aren't arsey about it. Get to know the mandatory reconsideration process, because it's your first line of defence if your Work Coach starts making up their own rules.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/advice-for-decision-making-staff-guide

https://www.gov.uk/mandatory-reconsideration