Job woes/wins

[EEVILMURRAY]

So who's working from home next week?

 

SOCIAL DISTANCING! FUN AT WORK! 

Workers at their desks n' shit need to be 2m away from everyone else (which the self isolating bit has helped with, would be impossible otherwise). I pushed the communal printer away from my desk, hopefully I won't have to move my stuff.

 

The below video will be, I think, an accurate representation of what I will be doing next week, the current team roster:

• B (senior) - leaving by end of week, so is effectively off the phones / winding down her duties to hand over to new girl S
• S1 - not properly trained, so won't be on phones
• J1 - self isolated herself last week because her boyfriend's co-worker was confirmed covid-19. parent.
• H - off for 8-12 weeks recovering from surgery, full time, duties being covered by J2
• J2 - part time, parent of 6-ish month kid, dunno what her childcare arrangements are, may not be coming in
• S2 - two kids, most likely not coming in on Monday
• R - one kid, coming in Mon-Tue, off after that

Depending on how their schools are playing it (I don't think we're considered key workers as we're not patient facing secretaries) I'm going to be the only active secretary on our team in the office, as parents are allowed to "work from home", which means possibly all the phone calls, mail sorting / scanning / sorting prescriptions / sending out sample forms etc will fall to me. I'm checking on Monday how shafted I'm going to be

 

 

 

 

[MindFreak]

I'm working from home already (we were ordered to do that Thursday last week). It's alright but I can't work when my son's awake so I split my day into three: 6-8 work, 12-14 work and then 19-21 work. It's not a full day but it's the best I can do. My wife is home at 16 but then I do some exercising and make food, "usually".

Also, I found this both fun and true:

Twice a day I have to attend a status meeting. -_- 

[Goafer]

I work from home anyway, so not a lot has changed. The only difference now is that all meetings need to be remote and we're essentially banished from head office. Not sure what the office staff are doing, but I think most have been sent home and a few are going in in shifts to keep an eye on the office.

As our business relies a lot on remote working, we're pretty well prepared for the changes.

Edited March 21, 2020 by Goafer

[Raining_again]

work for the nhs, was a bit sick on mon/tue, and stayed at home. dont have covid but bosses are panicking.  most likely going to receive the at risk letter soon so i'll have to isolate for 12 weeks.  Don't think my boss wants to spend the money/can be bothered to have me do at least some work at home.... so i don't know what money to expect as pay :/ 

[Ashley]

56 minutes ago, Raining_again said:

work for the nhs, was a bit sick on mon/tue, and stayed at home. dont have covid but bosses are panicking.  most likely going to receive the at risk letter soon so i'll have to isolate for 12 weeks.  Don't think my boss wants to spend the money/can be bothered to have me do at least some work at home.... so i don't know what money to expect as pay :/ 

I can't recall, are you Northern or Republic? If Northern I believe you should fall into the category that will allow you to get 80% of your salary. 

[EEVILMURRAY]

On 21/03/2020 at 8:57 AM, EEVILMURRAY said:

SOCIAL DISTANCING! FUN AT WORK! 

Workers at their desks n' shit need to be 2m away from everyone else (which the self isolating bit has helped with, would be impossible otherwise). I pushed the communal printer away from my desk, hopefully I won't have to move my stuff.

The below video will be, I think, an accurate representation of what I will be doing next week, the current team roster:

• B (senior) - leaving by end of week, so is effectively off the phones / winding down her duties to hand over to new girl S
• S1 - not properly trained, so won't be on phones
• J1 - self isolated herself last week because her boyfriend's co-worker was confirmed covid-19. parent.
• H - off for 8-12 weeks recovering from surgery, full time, duties being covered by J2
• J2 - part time, parent of 6-ish month kid, dunno what her childcare arrangements are, may not be coming in
• S2 - two kids, most likely not coming in on Monday
• R - one kid, coming in Mon-Tue, off after that

Depending on how their schools are playing it (I don't think we're considered key workers as we're not patient facing secretaries) I'm going to be the only active secretary on our team in the office, as parents are allowed to "work from home", which means possibly all the phone calls, mail sorting / scanning / sorting prescriptions / sending out sample forms etc will fall to me. I'm checking on Monday how shafted I'm going to be

I checked all dis with my senior on Monday, who said she would be picking up the majority of that work, whilst I admire her resolve, I'm not sure if it could be done as there are other departments she might have to do this for also, but I still have to man the phones with the new starter and email queries to the sec working at home to chat with their consultant about, to feed back to me if necessary (piece of piss) so was expecting my duties to be expanded, which I didn't mind as such, just wanted the heads up.

Then Boris dropped his lockdown bomb.

Now those who aren't working at home have been split into two teams, each team is doing 2 days in, 2 days off alternating, with the time off paid. Which from a time spent doing work, does work out "better" for me as I'm going to have 2-3 days at home a week painting models over those who will be working from home all week. It's the invariable amount of emails I'll have in the 2-3 days a week when I have to come into the office.

[Raining_again]

13 hours ago, Ashley said:

I can't recall, are you Northern or Republic? If Northern I believe you should fall into the category that will allow you to get 80% of your salary. 

Im in the north, so under uk rule yes.  Have heard about this 80% thing but don't know how/when itll be implemented here.  We are the uk's forgotten, slightly backwards cousin lol

 

They havent even sent the social shielding letters out yet ffs 

[Ashley]

9 minutes ago, Raining_again said:

Im in the north, so under uk rule yes.  Have heard about this 80% thing but don't know how/when itll be implemented here.  We are the uk's forgotten, slightly backwards cousin lol

 

They havent even sent the social shielding letters out yet ffs 

@Blade did a pretty good explanation of it here: 

As far as I'm aware the letters haven't gone out at all, but yeah I fully expect Northern Ireland to get it last. They seem to be really dragging their feet with certain things (see also: freelancers).

[Raining_again]

I'm NHS staff so there is a possibility that ill get full sick pay anyway, but maybe not considering this is a whole new issue.  I rang 111 and asked them where the letters were coming from... i know friends in England have got theirs and they are from NHS England... but we dont have a governing overall NHS trust for NI. 

He palmed me off and just said they'll come in 1-2 weeks.  1-2 weeks i could be fucking infected and its too damn late at that point.  

[Ashley]

Ah that sucks. I believe my nan hasn't got hers yet so maybe they're just going out in batches, but 1-2 weeks is way too long.

[Raining_again]

1 hour ago, Ashley said:

Ah that sucks. I believe my nan hasn't got hers yet so maybe they're just going out in batches, but 1-2 weeks is way too long.

I'm hoping that they are just being cautiously optimistic, i intend to ring my doctors surgery on Friday if i haven't heard anything.  I suspect that's where they are coming from here.  It's not even a question of whether i fall under the criteria, its just making sure my bosses are happy enough with how the policy is being followed. I would say that the stress on the postal service is absolutely crazy and like you say they're probably going out in batches! The whole situation is making me hella stressed and i know I'm not the only one! 

[Happenstance]

Well there we go then, the furlough hammer has come crashing down on me. Understandable of course (although I do think they’ll finally realise how much I do in the weeks heading up to the school reopening) but it’s a bit of a shame that I will only be on the 80% from the government and the school don’t seem to be topping up the remaining 20% like some places.

[EEVILMURRAY]

On 31/03/2020 at 1:24 PM, Happenstance said:

Well there we go then, the furlough hammer has come crashing down on me. Understandable of course (although I do think they’ll finally realise how much I do in the weeks heading up to the school reopening) but it’s a bit of a shame that I will only be on the 80% from the government and the school don’t seem to be topping up the remaining 20% like some places.

I've not seen many places topping it up at all, one place (I heard somewhere) was taking it to 90%, a Games Workshop chum said they were taking it to 100%, but they can bloody afford it.

[Raining_again]

My boss has assured me that ill get full pay.  I don't know how much i trust that though o_O

 

(i work for the nhs in a service that's still running, but i'm on the at risk register)

[Ashley]

8 minutes ago, Raining_again said:

My boss has assured me that ill get full pay.  I don't know how much i trust that though o_O

 

(i work for the nhs in a service that's still running, but i'm on the at risk register)

That's some good news. When is your next pay date so you know whether it's happening? 

[Raining_again]

17 minutes ago, Ashley said:

That's some good news. When is your next pay date so you know whether it's happening? 

I got paid as normal at the end of march, but it was for the month of march, of which i worked... i don't see until the 28th if i get paid or not lol eek.  I asked boss to let me know so i could have as many of my bills delayed or whatever, but i haven't heard back yet.  Just gonna have to avoid spending for as long as possible and hope for the best! 

[Ashley]

So as I've had to cut my trip short I'm trying to find some work again. I've done a bit of work this week through a contracting company I used to work with and had intended to do some remote work with while travelling. Spoke to a few recruiters yesterday and ended up with three potential options (none are guaranteed at this moment, but I think all are likely). 

• One place through the current company but the work itself sounds kind of boring (its not development work essentially)
• Another with a place I interviewed for last year and turned down (for various reasons) and again, not really doing development work
• Another place that seems to be more development and internal training but is outside of London (and so am I atm) and once remote working ends would be 2 or 3 on site

First one waiting for the contract to be signed off and if that goes through it would likely start on the 20th. Last one the interview is on the 21st. Could do with the interview being before really.

The last one sounds the most interesting but also the most demanding, the first one is probably the path of least resistance as I'd be with the same company that I may need to keep a relationship with as I might need to do some work while travelling. Trying to decide between whether I want a job that interests me or just take something that may not be a big ask for the time being.

[EEVILMURRAY]

14 hours ago, Ashley said:

The last one sounds the most interesting but also the most demanding, the first one is probably the path of least resistance as I'd be with the same company that I may need to keep a relationship with as I might need to do some work while travelling. Trying to decide between whether I want a job that interests me or just take something that may not be a big ask for the time being.

If circumstances were different in the country, I would recommend going for the third option, more interesting and looks like better prospects. Being as things as they are I would go for the more comfortable option, because fuck knows what's going to happen.

[Will]

I've had a pretty crappy couple of months on the job front. It became clear about a week into the job I started at the end of last year that the CEO was about as dishonest as you can get and the promises of the new role were pretty much non-existent. I started looking for something new pretty much instantly but the industry is tiny here and it takes a long time for anything suitable to come up. I was going to have to put up with it for as long as it took to find something new.

At the end of March, the lockdown started in Singapore and we went into working from home. A few days in and the CEO calls to tell me my position was being eliminated. I'd made it through a number of rounds of interviews for a new role but things had totally ground to a halt with all of the restrictions. On top of this, I'd now lose my visa at basically the worst time possible. I've spoken with basically every company operating in the games industry here since then and pretty much everyone has a freeze on hiring.

I decided to send a random email to an HR guy for one of the bigger game developers just to see if they had anything going that might be suitable. He got back to me almost instantly with a role that seemed to fit and we set up some interviews. Three rounds and six people later I finally got an offer to join them this morning.

PHEW!

Now just need to sort out the paperwork and officially accept, but after the stress of the last few months and the letdown of the company I moved to, it feels great to be rejoining a proper game developer again.

[Will]

In further news...

When they called to make the offer they said there was no way they could match my last salary and would I be willing to negotiate? Of course, that wasn't great to hear but at this point in time, I thought it was something I'd just have to accept so said I could definitely be flexible on the salary. This morning I got the full offer letter and they've actually managed to give me a 5% increase. Very happy right now!

[Ashley]

1 hour ago, will' said:

In further news...

When they called to make the offer they said there was no way they could match my last salary and would I be willing to negotiate? Of course, that wasn't great to hear but at this point in time, I thought it was something I'd just have to accept so said I could definitely be flexible on the salary. This morning I got the full offer letter and they've actually managed to give me a 5% increase. Very happy right now!

Stop being so good at this!

And congrats.

[Ashley]

"Sod it, I'll bill them for an hour" - Me after spending 20 minutes emailing my boss about a client. 

I set up a spreadsheet last week that updates based on the various timesheet spreadsheets I need to fill out so now I have a running total of how much I've earned this month. It's meant every time I update a timesheet I open up the spreadsheet too and watch it increase as there's a slight delay while it does the calculation. 

[Ashley]

[Dufniall]

On 24-6-2020 at 6:15 PM, Ashley said:

I second that! Might elaborate a bit later, but Jesus am I fed up with my job.

[Ashley]

I've moved onto: