IT/Software career thread: Invert binary trees for dollars.
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Big Phoenix
Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
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Come into work and find out my boss was laid off yesterday and i have a meeting with the ceo at 3.
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Big Phoenix
Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
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Seemingly uneventful.
Looks like the ceo just wanted to see if they missed anything on my boss' exit interview. Guessing this is part of a larger cost cutting measure by the ceo. Theyve already made some small changes to reduce cost but the ceo did mention he wanted to combine my boss' with that of someone retiring next month. Old boss was related to the previous ceo so wouldnt be surprised if there had been some favoritism pay wise.
Really bad timing for him to get laid off though. He just got married a few weeks ago.
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TJT
Mr. Poopybutthole
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Palum
what Suineg set it to
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TJT
Mr. Poopybutthole
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Built out a tool for our leadership to show real time office utilization by extracting site keycard logins and comparing it to active headcount from our HRIS based on office location. Kind of annoying as the two systems didn't share either our internal employee ID nor had a common system value really. But I got it sorted out through some sorcery.
I had a good amount of historical data access here surprisingly so it covers the weekly office attendance since 2021. We maintain offices in Singapore, Austin, Bay Area, Boston, Sweden, and London.
The results were fucking lol. <10% office utilization at every single office outside of specific event weeks where most hands were on deck for this or that. I've never seen the numbers straight before even though we all knew it was pretty grim. We're looking at closing all offices except the one in the Bay Area (where most of our C-Suite live of course). At this point the messaging is very clear. Getting everyone back in the office is not happening. No matter how badly middle management and leadership want it. I had to be onsite last week for a few days like I do every quarter or so. 90 minutes of commuting in shitty Austin traffic both ways and I objectively complete maybe 1 thing a day. As opposed to 5+ things a day I complete at home with no distractions or commuting.
My prediction is that the Bay Area office and maybe another small site will be purchased or repurposed. The secondary site will just be for the IT people who have to manage physical hardware and the internal (non-product/client facing) server infrastructure. As mailing millions of dollars in hardware and bulk orders of laptops to some IT tech's apartment is clearly a bad idea and probably illegal anyway.
Offloading office space you own though is going to be real real hard in this market.
I had a good amount of historical data access here surprisingly so it covers the weekly office attendance since 2021. We maintain offices in Singapore, Austin, Bay Area, Boston, Sweden, and London.
The results were fucking lol. <10% office utilization at every single office outside of specific event weeks where most hands were on deck for this or that. I've never seen the numbers straight before even though we all knew it was pretty grim. We're looking at closing all offices except the one in the Bay Area (where most of our C-Suite live of course). At this point the messaging is very clear. Getting everyone back in the office is not happening. No matter how badly middle management and leadership want it. I had to be onsite last week for a few days like I do every quarter or so. 90 minutes of commuting in shitty Austin traffic both ways and I objectively complete maybe 1 thing a day. As opposed to 5+ things a day I complete at home with no distractions or commuting.
My prediction is that the Bay Area office and maybe another small site will be purchased or repurposed. The secondary site will just be for the IT people who have to manage physical hardware and the internal (non-product/client facing) server infrastructure. As mailing millions of dollars in hardware and bulk orders of laptops to some IT tech's apartment is clearly a bad idea and probably illegal anyway.
Offloading office space you own though is going to be real real hard in this market.
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Lunis
Blackwing Lair Raider
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DA still going strong for me, 2-3 hours a day for an extra 1.5-2k a month isn't bad. I have 2 referrals left, DM me your email if you're interested. Way it works is once I send the referral you will get a qualification test for 'AI Chatbot Comparisons Task'. Basically you prompt the chatbot for something and it generates 2 responses, you rate them on a sliding scale. It's a short quiz on how you do it, about an 8 page guideline giving you all the details, it's open-book so its not too hard. If you're familiar with ChatGPT it should be a breeze.
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I'm the testing lead/manager/whatever at a small company. 15-20 engineers on the relevant team. So, lots of wearing different hats.
Let's say development work on a feature is going to require downstream changes to testing and documentation. Who's responsibility is it to ensure those downstream changes are properly planned and tasked? The feature owner? The project manager? Those two might be the same person in some orgs. Or are testing and documentation responsible?
I'd say it's ultimately a collaborative process once you get down to the design and planning phase, but the initiative should be taken by the feature owner.
I have a project manager trying to tell me it's other way. And all I keep thinking this is his explicit reason for existing.
What am I getting wrong here? I'll fully admit, due to small company itis, we do a lot of shit backwards or just plain wrong. Especially when it comes to processes and organization. So maybe I've just gotten to used to "how we do it" and it's actually wrong.
Let's say development work on a feature is going to require downstream changes to testing and documentation. Who's responsibility is it to ensure those downstream changes are properly planned and tasked? The feature owner? The project manager? Those two might be the same person in some orgs. Or are testing and documentation responsible?
I'd say it's ultimately a collaborative process once you get down to the design and planning phase, but the initiative should be taken by the feature owner.
I have a project manager trying to tell me it's other way. And all I keep thinking this is his explicit reason for existing.
What am I getting wrong here? I'll fully admit, due to small company itis, we do a lot of shit backwards or just plain wrong. Especially when it comes to processes and organization. So maybe I've just gotten to used to "how we do it" and it's actually wrong.
Mist
Eeyore Enthusiast
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Ah yes.. the Certification dance. This year I had pop up on my yearly "goal requirements" going to get three certifications, one which was essentially my exact job, then certifications on the two biggest products we sell. They are also essentially over glorified vocabulary and memorization tests. They kinda make sense if you're a newb to the industry, haven't been in sales before, and/or have no idea about the products when you come in the door..... I've been in the IT Cybersecurity industry over a quarter of a century, I've been in sales over half that time, and I've been selling these particular products to my company's largest customers for over 3 years now. Exactly what is the purpose of making me go take three exams (each of which I blistered through and passed in around 10 minutes each)???
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