Job and General Employment Thread

[skullman80]

Is the last sentence a positive of efficiency or a dart of pointlessness...?

In my experience a little of both.

You get stuff done more quickly because there's less back and forth up front. It happens more day by day as opposed to one month solid in advance.

But you have a bunch of pointless meetings too.

The pointless meetings are my biggest issue. It's supposed to be a leaner process, but I swear we have more meetings now than we did before we did the whole agile/scrum stuff.

[faftorial]

Is the last sentence a positive of efficiency or a dart of pointlessness...?

In my experience a little of both.

You get stuff done more quickly because there's less back and forth up front. It happens more day by day as opposed to one month solid in advance.

But you have a bunch of pointless meetings too.

The pointless meetings are my biggest issue. It's supposed to be a leaner process, but I swear we have more meetings now than we did before we did the whole agile/scrum stuff.

And if I'm constantly being pinned down on how long something is going to take, then I''m going to pad my time.

[NTP66]

The pointless meetings are my biggest issue. It's supposed to be a leaner process, but I swear we have more meetings now than we did before we did the whole agile/scrum stuff.

Agreed.

[dodint]

I've started to get that awful anxiety feeling as it relates to work lately. I've always struggled with that, and it often flares up when I have upcoming travel/presentations on the horizon. It's a crippling thing and it sucks. Like no matter how good things have been going at work, you always feel like you're not doing well enough.

I feel you. I was like this for a while. Not so much anymore since work has taken a backseat to other stuff, but I know how you feel.

[mikey]

Is the last sentence a positive of efficiency or a dart of pointlessness...?

In my experience a little of both.

You get stuff done more quickly because there's less back and forth up front. It happens more day by day as opposed to one month solid in advance.

But you have a bunch of pointless meetings too.

The pointless meetings are my biggest issue. It's supposed to be a leaner process, but I swear we have more meetings now than we did before we did the whole agile/scrum stuff.

And if I'm constantly being pinned down on how long something is going to take, then I''m going to pad my time.

Yeah, like I'm just uncertain that whole Fibonacci stuff...the way it was explained to me is that 1 or 2 is like a typo...21 is like the rest of our lives. 13 is like a week and a half...

I don't know, obviously I'll give it a chance...but it doesn't feel like it's anything of great note...and maybe it's not supposed to be...but they moved both our new software development team (who brought in the whole agile/scrum stuff) AND our existing IT/development staff into the same pile now...plus me...a non-developer...

[mac5155]

Is the last sentence a positive of efficiency or a dart of pointlessness...?

In my experience a little of both.

You get stuff done more quickly because there's less back and forth up front. It happens more day by day as opposed to one month solid in advance.

But you have a bunch of pointless meetings too.

The pointless meetings are my biggest issue. It's supposed to be a leaner process, but I swear we have more meetings now than we did before we did the whole agile/scrum stuff.

I was a PrM so I was often the one who set the meeting cadence. Most of my devs liked me because I catered to their needs. They dont want meetings. They want to code. So I basically said, get together and pick one person to represent you in the meetings. It seemed to work, and I'd do my best to never schedule excessive meetings.

If you have a waterfall PM who is now your PrM/PO then yea, I would imagine it would be miserable for appdev

I'm a business architect now which is a whole new level of pointless.

[shafnutz05]

I've started to get that awful anxiety feeling as it relates to work lately. I've always struggled with that, and it often flares up when I have upcoming travel/presentations on the horizon. It's a crippling thing and it sucks. Like no matter how good things have been going at work, you always feel like you're not doing well enough.

I feel you. I was like this for a while. Not so much anymore since work has taken a backseat to other stuff, but I know how you feel.

Making a concerted effort to live in the moment.

[count2infinity]

Our VP (he doesn't have that title, but it's technically what he is) sits on the other side of my cubicle wall and I always hear him saying something that makes me bust out laughing... today we got an e-mail from purchasing about their new purchasing schedule and how they have a very heavy work load so please stick to the schedule and blah, blah, blah. For me, I never purchase things that are emergencies. I just submit the purchase rec, and when it gets ordered, it gets ordered, so my initial thought was: meh. This doesn't effect me.

He had a different reaction: "*sigh* Your entire job is buying sh*t. Just buy sh*t...." Had me chuckling.

[RonnieFranchise]

As a Supply Manager I can verify that people who wait till the last minute to issue a req then figure you can turn a 12 week lead time into the 3 they need and scream when you cant because “just buy sh*t” can go eff themselves.

Im sure thats where this stems from. Every company has them.

[mac5155]

Speed up that supply chain Franchise... let's go... Amazon will get it here Friday...

[nocera]

I'm taking an employee assessment for a new job within my company. Some of the questions are fairly complex algebra. I sucked at algebra even when I studied it daily and that was almost 20 years ago. The assessment says I can use a calculator but do not use the internet.

So they just want me to get this wrong then?

[mikey]

This sequence happened (scum/agile related) today:

- Got meeting invite at noon today for a 1 pm meeting that was blocked off for four hours (lol).
- I do not generally participate in meetings that are during lunch hours as I find that to be unnecessary.
- We're in a new office and I don't know what every single room is called or where it is, this says "IT Room", so at 1:01, being a good boy, I take a walk around and can't find it or a room with anyone in it...
- 1:05 I do another lap, now openly asking people in the open office just what the hell the "IT room" is...no luck on finding anyone.
- Return to desk and continue to plan and draw up user story "trees" for lack of a better term so that I can be organized and effectively make this app without a lot of follow-up nonsense or piecing things together in meetings. I want to be prepared, no dilly dallying.
- 1:53 a very annoying woman who laughs after every. single. thing. she. ever. says. ever. comes up to me and goes, "oh look, I found mikey" and I'm thinking "you found me?!?!" but I was like, "whatever, what do I have to do, where do I have to be...?"
- She proceeds to tell me that their lunch (started at 11:50) ran long because they were eating all you can eat Pol Pot or something stupid...I didn't care what they were eating, also, shut up.
k.

- So we start the scum planning meeting. The first 24 minutes (I started clocking this) was just aimlessly moving cards around on the screen, switching back and forth between two presenters, each of them asking for permissions to do some unnecessary task that definitely should have been done way beforehand.
- The next two hours (I've started watching a USHL game on my tablet, as I've yet to speak) are filled with idle or circular conversation, occasionally voting on the damn Fibonacci numbers...which bother me because they're not proportional to the time. I'm really ******* good at math because numbers are proportionate to one another and I can size that up easily...a 1 or a 2 takes three minutes to fix, but a 3 is like half the day...? get bent.

- Finally, I had just had enough and got up and left...I went immediately to the CFOs office (who is really in charge of operations, but it's not fully recognized) closed the door and started with, "I can't believe that *gesturing back from whence I came* is allowed to continue!" and then went on a ~12 minute rant about what a sick joke that is and it's insane that anyone in there could think they're even trying to work and if they are and coming away with that should feel very bad about themselves...it's one thing if you're not trying, God knows, with how often I go out on weekdays that sometimes I come in and just waste the day, it happens...but I'm not trying there. They're trying and this is the result. It's a complete joke store.
- So, he's laughing and agreeing with me and I leave citing that "I had to go throw up for a while"

- I come back from getting water a few minutes later, and the CFO is standing in the door of the President's office with our legal counsel sitting in there and the latter motions for me to come in...so I'm like, "ah ****, I'm gonna have to give them that whole rant too?" ...or am I about to get "the talk"...
- The legal counsel goes, "[The CFO] relayed to me what you said...and you passed. You don't need to get some dumb certificate about being a scum master, we just need some ass**** in the room that can get some organization to that group and push them...I couldn't agree more with you and what you said...if you think you can fix it, you have free reign to do so - but be cognizant of the rules of the agile/scum stuff, you can't burn their world down, but you can do whatever is reasonably necessary to get that going...
- The President - who loves this stuff and is all about it - was a little taken aback by everyone agreeing with me and was basically told to stand down. She can help me in terms of guidance of the process, but we want someone that wants a team to be productive and mikey has a proven track record of getting production out of his teams in the past...

TL;DR: I flipped out about dumb, slow, and unorganized my first scum meeting was and was immediately promoted to scum master, apparently...

[Dickie Dunn]

Jesus Christ who has time to read a post that long

[mac5155]

I did and Im not sure it was worth it.

[MR25]

TL;DR is mikey hated the thing, complained about it to the CFO, CFO brought concerns higher, mikey is now project lead?

[willeyeam]

tldr

mikey hated a process
mikey ***** about it
mikey was put in charge of the whole process that he hates
mikey thinks he won

[mac5155]

Lol

[dodint]

legit lol @ willeyeam.

[blackjack68]

After a 2.5 month process, I was named Director of Marketing and Development today. It’s been a stressful couple months and now I look forward to the challenge.

[dodint]

Congrats!

[faftorial]

[skullman80]

Congrats @blackjack68

[Freddy Rumsen]

Congrats!

[NTP66]

Congrats!

[NTP66]

tldr

mikey hated a process
mikey ***** about it
mikey was put in charge of the whole process that he hates
mikey thinks he won

The real TL;DR: