New Job ponderings

SixPapaCharlie

SixPapaCharlie

May the force be with you
Joined
Aug 8, 2013
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First Officer 6PC
Part one: Last Day Ponderings

Part two
First thing off the bat I literally have a job right now because of that Scrum Master cert I posted about. That cert that took 3 hours to get online watching videos. One little blurb on a resume and boom 30% raise (The world is effed up friends) I know not 1 iota more than I did before getting the cert but Certified Scrum master > 15 years of development and project management experience.

So I started along with 3 other consultants and on day one I had a mini panic attack when they showed me my seat. 12 people, 1 table elbow to elbow, back to back, very tightly packed in a hall that is an after thought at best. I don't like people in my space and if anyone farts, I am quitting on the spot I thought to myself.

I talked myself off the ledge because I want to buy an airplane in 17 months and it is looking good. So a fart here or there, I can over look.

Hands off
New gig has HUGE learning curve. I went from managing sub 100k projects to multimillion dollar projects (That's really why the pay and all but I would not have gotten it w/o the cert) I am budgeting, forecasting, managing, meeting, approving, driving, owning a lot of s**t. I have never been so busy and I miss posting on here but oh well. All this new stuff and 0 on-boarding. "Here's your desk, get to work. Figure out who you need to talk to you have a list of projects in your email, track down the project owners and go from there"

Thank God there were 3 others starting on the same day. We all, dear in the headlights struggled together and we are piecing it all together and we have formed a bit of a bond. One month in and we are starting to get our heads above water.

Consultants are Snakes (some are)
I ask another of the new guys "Show me how to log my hours" He does but asks why I only logged 21 hours. I explained I started on Wednesday.
I S**T you not he says "Well I bet you thought about work on Mon and Tue, Did you prep for coming on, did you plan your first couple days? You need to log that time. He told me I should never log less than 40 hours.
I did though because I am not stupid.

This baffled me: He says "I gotta go to a meeting" @ 11 am
Never came back. The following morning he shows me a video on his iPad of a batting cage and says check out my buddy hitting the ball yesterday Er I mean last night. I can see the video is titled blah blah batting cages. I look them up and they are an hour away and the video was clearly shot midday.
He is working another job from our office at the same time. I am not a rat but I think things will catch up with him.

First world problems
5 1/2 years working from home whenever I want has ended. I am glad I got that gift when I needed it most (pre school aged kids) but going to sleep at a normal hour, waking at a God forsaken one and driving in 5 days a week is soooooooooo... Actually not as bad as I thought. I sort of like it. I have so much to do at work and I need to be there to do it. The week actually goes by faster because I have a lot to do. I would like to be home but this is way less of an issue than I imagined.

I can't work from the FBO and take flying breaks though :(


All in all, I am
* grateful to have a job. No question I am fortunate beyond what I deserve by light years
* grateful that I am growing in my career for the first time in 5 years
* grateful that I am getting more quality time with the family since the quantity is reduced. I am really working on really engaging and trying to never be a passive dad

But mostly I am grateful that 4 weeks in to the new job, as far as I can tell, nobody has farted yet.

What more is there? :dunno:
 
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I think you're doing pretty well, Bryan! No one's farted yet!

But seriously, congrats on the new gig. Sounds like it's a good opportunity to build your skills and your resume... and you don't hate it so that's a plus too :)
 
It's kind of nice to have an office to go to. Getting there isn't always that pleasant, but I'd rather get my work one at work than at home, other that for that getting hit in the head by a hawk thing.
 
There is no on call or after hours here so leaving it at the office is really nice
 
Sounds to me like you're trying to tell yourself you love your new job.

Weeks go by faster? That means your life goes by faster. But, to each his own.
 
Cpt_Kirk said:
Sounds to me like you're trying to tell yourself you love your new job.

Weeks go by faster? That means your life goes by faster. But, to each his own.
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It is pretty boring when there is nothing to do. I don't think I love it. but it is better than I thought it would be. I am not a big fan of work in general. If the work day can go by faster, that's not a bad deal.
 
What's up with that Cheetos munching fat chick? She still fronting you off?
 
Unit74 said:
What's up with that Cheetos munching fat chick? She still fronting you off?
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She's ok. Well she is very nice and friendly but Likes to talk more than work and doesn't seem to notice if I have head phones on and set my status to do not disturb.

I like to keep about a 2 foot space around me and I get very anxious when anyone gets inside that restricted airspace. I think most people have one of these spaces right? :dunno:

She doesn't and doesn't seem to be aware that I am slowly scooting backward when she encroaches. There is a lot of touching which also causes me anxiety.

She is very friendly, just was raised with a different set of boundaries than me maybe.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
It is pretty boring when there is nothing to do. I don't think I love it. but it is better than I thought it would be. I am not a big fan of work in general. If the work day can go by faster, that's not a bad deal.
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But you need the money to buy lottery tickets to potentially finance your retirement. :yes:
 
4512.jpg

I can't say I've ever had great interactions with the consultants I've had to work with.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
... I am not a rat but I think things will catch up with him. ...
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I would suggest that you stay as far away from this guy as possible. Do not interact with him outside of professional necessity, do not be known as a friend of his. Know as little as possible about what he is doing and what time he is reporting.

From your original post, I infer that you are working as contract employees/consultants hired by one company to work for another. I have BTDT on very large projects and in senior management, and if I discovered that one of my contract employees was padding his time card, a lot of the s#1t would splatter from the fan onto the other contractors working for the same firm. Not that I would fire them all right away, but I would be watching very carefully and would be looking for an opportunity to replace them. I don't knowingly deal with people or organizations that I feel I can't trust. I don't have time for that. It's basically one strike and you're out.

And if it gets really bad or if the guy is actually working on one of your projects, you will have no choice but to report the situation to, first, your direct employer. If that doesn't produce results, report it to the company you're doing the work for. It's not some kind of cell phone cops & robbers game. It's white collar crime, probably felony fraud and you don't want to be an accessory or an accomplice. Things only get worse if you're working on projects funded with federal government money..
 
airdale said:
I would suggest that you stay as far away from this guy as possible. Do not interact with him outside of professional necessity, do not be known as a friend of his. Know as little as possible about what he is doing and what time he is reporting.

From your original post, I infer that you are working as contract employees/consultants hired by one company to work for another. I have BTDT on very large projects and in senior management, and if I discovered that one of my contract employees was padding his time card, a lot of the s#1t would splatter from the fan onto the other contractors working for the same firm. Not that I would fire them all right away, but I would be watching very carefully and would be looking for an opportunity to replace them. I don't knowingly deal with people or organizations that I feel I can't trust. I don't have time for that. It's basically one strike and you're out.

And if it gets really bad or if the guy is actually working on one of your projects, you will have no choice but to report the situation to, first, your direct employer. If that doesn't produce results, report it to the company you're doing the work for. It's not some kind of cell phone cops & robbers game. It's white collar crime, probably felony fraud and you don't want to be an accessory or an accomplice. Things only get worse if you're working on projects funded with federal government money..
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Those were kinda my thoughts.
We are on different projects w/ no crossover.
 
What type of contracts are we talking about here? Project T&M with fee caps? Service contracts? Are you generating billable hours?
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
Those were kinda my thoughts.
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Good.

Another thought I had after posting: Fill your your time sheet in intervals no longer than 5 minutes, regardless of what the common practice is. Maybe even one minute intervals. That sends a message that you are concerned with accuracy where larger intervals start to feel sloppier and sloppier, more like aproximations and estimates. If the s#1t does hit the fan, someone will be auditing all of your time sheets, looking for evidence of fraud.

I'd also sharply limit personal emails and web browsing on company time, even on indisputably virtuous activities like POA. All of that can also be construed as theft from your customer and it will be if they decide they want to get you.
 
If one of my employees filled out a timesheet in five minute intervals, they would probably be fired out of safety before accounting lynched them first.
 
Sac Arrow said:
If one of my employees filled out a timesheet in five minute intervals, they would probably be fired out of safety before accounting lynched them first.
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We're supposed to have .1 hour resolution... so 6 minutes :mad2: In practice, nobody is ever closer than .5 hour.
 
Sac Arrow said:
If one of my employees filled out a timesheet in five minute intervals, they would probably be fired out of safety before accounting lynched them first.
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Well .... there is that. :wink2: But my point is still valid IMO: The time sheets ought to communicate that the contractor takes the reporting seriously and tries to be as accurate and detailed as possible.

Actually, though, his time sheet is probably processed online/electronically so no humans would necessarily be annoyed.
 
Work environment reminds me of the movie "Boiler Room"
 
airdale said:
Well .... there is that. :wink2: But my point is still valid IMO: The time sheets ought to communicate that the contractor takes the reporting seriously and tries to be as accurate and detailed as possible.

Actually, though, his time sheet is probably processed online/electronically so no humans would necessarily be annoyed.
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I guess it depends on the industry. In mine, 1 hour increments are standard, and the guys you lock in a cage and throw meat to are expected to bill out a full 40 hours a week or close to it. Most contracts are on a fixed fee basis anyway so billing precision and accuracy is generally not important from a client's perspective.

But let's say I'm doing something on an open T&M. I'm not going to bill for a ten minute conference call. After a few of those or a string of stupid five minute questions I'll ding them an hour.
 
Congrats on the new job!

(I do not miss the days of having to account for my time though.)
 
Sac Arrow said:
I guess it depends on the industry. In mine, 1 hour increments are standard, and the guys you lock in a cage and throw meat to are expected to bill out a full 40 hours a week or close to it. Most contracts are on a fixed fee basis anyway so billing precision and accuracy is generally not important from a client's perspective.

But let's say I'm doing something on an open T&M. I'm not going to bill for a ten minute conference call. After a few of those or a string of stupid five minute questions I'll ding them an hour.
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When I've done independent contracting, I generally charged by the day. It takes some overhead to come into the office, and most tasks I've taken on were much longer than a phone call or one meeting. An 8 hour day was expected, and was usually exceeded at least a little. Tasks were generally measured in weeks.

When I've done government contracting, time sheets are heavily regulated by the "other" FARs, and saying you worked 8 hours when you didn't (repeatedly) can land you in the slammer.
 
I dunno. I guess I must not be being clear. What I am trying to suggest is that 6PC should try to make his time sheets cause a potential auditor to conclude that he is detailed and scrupulously honest in the charges he makes to his customer. This is a low-cost defensive maneuver for the situation where this other fraudulent bozo is caught and all of their time sheets get audited.

For example, to Sac Arrow's point, aggregating phone calls and charging an hour is probably just fine in a normal environment. But for 6PC, I'd encourage actually keeping track of the phone call times and either recording them individually on a time sheet or keeping a backup file to support the one hour charge. Nothing bad will happen if he does that, the effort to do it is minimal, and it might reduce or eliminate s#1t sticking to him after it leaves the fan. Said briefly: a CYA maneuver.

I don't think that the probability of this being a big deal is high and the probability of the bozo getting caught is probably 50/50 at best, but where risk mitigation is cheap it is sensible to do it.
 
A tourist walked into a pet shop and was looking at the animals on display.
While he was there another customer walked in and said to the shopkeeper, ”I’ll have that monkey please”. The shopkeeper nodded, went over to a cage at the side of the shop, and took out a monkey. He fit a collar and leash and handed it to the customer, saying, ”That’ll be $5000”. The customer paid and walked out with his monkey.
Startled, the tourist went over to the shopkeeper and said, ”That was a very expensive monkey. Most of them are only a few hundred dollars. Why did he cost SO much?” The shopkeeper answered, ”Ah, that monkey can program in ‘C’ very fast, tight code, no bugs, well worth the money.”
The tourist looked at the monkey in another cage. ”That one’s even more expensive – $10,000! What does he do?” ”Oh, that one’s a C++ monkey; he can manage object-oriented programming, Visual C++, even some Java. All the really useful stuff,” said the shopkeeper.
The tourist looked around for a little longer and saw a third monkey in a cage of his own. The price tag around his neck read $50,000. He gasped to the shopkeeper, ”That one costs more than all the others put together! What on earth does he do?” The shopkeeper shrugged and said, ”Well, to tell you the truth, I haven’t actually seen him do anything, but he says he’s a Maximo consultant.”
 
Sac Arrow said:
What type of contracts are we talking about here? Project T&M with fee caps? Service contracts? Are you generating billable hours?
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Nah, just my time by day.
I have 4 projects spanning 2016

On Friday, I put time spent on each project by day.
 
airdale said:
Well .... there is that. :wink2: But my point is still valid IMO: The time sheets ought to communicate that the contractor takes the reporting seriously and tries to be as accurate and detailed as possible.

Actually, though, his time sheet is probably processed online/electronically so no humans would necessarily be annoyed.
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We work with a development firm and write up Not To Exceed contracts.
They say it will take 5 mil to do this project, we negotiate that back and forth and then I get the statement of work.

My job is to break it into 2 week chunks and report progress, defects, issues, scope changed to my VP. My role is also to encourage the Dev team to remain on target and schedule although having a not to exceed contract sort of helps there a lot.

My time is not a major concern at a detail level. They just want to know how it is impacting the budget and does it on a weekly basis agree w/ what I projected initially.
 
AggieMike88 said:
Work environment reminds me of the movie "Boiler Room"
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Very similar. I will upload a photo of our work space.
That said we have about 30 of those Digital mix-n-match coke machines, so a large portion of the day is determining the perfect percentages of the various syrups to create the best possible combination of flavors to keep up our motivation.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
We work with a development firm and write up Not To Exceed contracts.
They say it will take 5 mil to do this project, we negotiate that back and forth and then I get the statement of work.

My job is to break it into 2 week chunks and report progress, defects, issues, scope changed to my VP. My role is also to encourage the Dev team to remain on target and schedule although having a not to exceed contract sort of helps there a lot.

My time is not a major concern at a detail level. They just want to know how it is impacting the budget and does it on a weekly basis agree w/ what I projected initially.
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What sector of industry is this for? Manufacturing? Transportation? Video Games?
 
Nah, medical side of life. Which is where I spent all of my career w/ exception of my last gig. We work with hospitals and supply / service providers to lower hospital spend by negotiating contracts w/ suppliers and service providers.
 
One thing I learned when the time tracking gets ridiculous is not to discount the time spent context switching.

It may have only taken me five minutes to type a command and fix your piddly problem that couldn't wait, but you derailed a two hour planning session and I had to get back in the zone.

Guess who's getting charged? And it's not the project that gave proper time to plan and execute.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
inflatable sheep and other assorted inflatables
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Sounds like Wyoming.

Where men are men, the sheep run scared, and children go around saying, "Are you my Dahahahahah-dee?"
 
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