450

hope you have digested your food when you read this because it might be about to come up when you read the next part. the new chancer gets paid £450 per day and most of the time the he claims for one day on the weekend as well as overtime. thats about £11,000 (~$18000) per month. that quite a lot more than i get paid. i wouldn't hire him to stack to toilet rolls in a supermarket, and i stacked toilet roll for a few years on the weekends while i was in high school and all the way through university, and i know whats involved. 


i am still tasked with fixing all their fuckups and today i had to go over to where all 3 chancers sit to ask about one server in particular, which was in a worse state than all their other work they have produced. one question about a server suddenly turned into them turning on me asking why i was questioning their work and where i was getting my information from to say that it was done wrong and needed re-installing from scratch. 


they clearly got very defensive and to be fair i would feel a little put out if someone came to my desk and told me i had done it completely wrong. on the other hand, no one comes to my desk saying i got it completely wrong because i went to school and have used the literacy skills picked up from reading 'spot goes to the farm' and 'the village with 3 corners' when i was 4, and am now able to read server build sheets as well as stories about billy blue hat and talking dogs. 
anyway i didnt rise to what they were saying to me and went back to my desk. 


about 2 minutes later the main chancer came to my desk and started up again. i let him off once already but i wasnt going to let him off twice. it goes against the 2 basic rules of contracting which is 1:contractors should be seen and not heard, and 2: never offer an opinion on anything unless specifically asked. 
i figured he was a contractor at my level and so the rules didn't apply to him and i gave him a very calm and considered critique of his justifications for his mistakes (ineptness) and the ad hoc, time wasting, confusing and "utterly pointless" process he and his fellow chancers were using and trying to impose on me and the other 2 guys in our team. the way you are doing it is clearly not working because if it was you wouldn't be in the situation you are in now of failing to deliver every piece of work. not 1 or 2, but every bit of work.

"you are needlessly duplicating information in your pointless spreadsheet and not using the server build sheets, which contain the definitive requirements of what each application team needs, which when they make changes to it, are not reflected on the spreadsheet you are using because thats a cut/paste of data at a point weeks before". 


"you wouldnt be picked up on all these issues if you used the server build sheets which contain all the information you need. there is no need for a seperate checklist. the buildsheet is your checklist, and the standard you are supposed to follow. as long as you do whats on the sheet no one can question anything you do". 


"i have no reason to record every tiny issue i come across on a server when i build it. i am not here to record trivial issues, we are here to build and deliver application servers to the business to the requirements they want, not what i choose, and no one is interested in an incorrect network or storage presentation during the build phase. they just want it fixed and expect us to use our skill and initiative and want their servers at the right time".


"i keep a note of current issues in my notebook and in my head. no i don't put it on a spreadsheet so everyone in my team can read it because quite frankly they are not interested and have their own work to do. when my team leader asks me the status of my various applications builds i can update him verbally and vice versa". 


i should have launched into a tirade like this and asked him "where did you learn your trade?!!"




the new project manager who i have my doubts about, sat with our team of 3 at lunch time and we briefly spoke about the issues. i didnt say anything harsh in front of him about the chancers, but when he asked me about various issues with the chancers, my silence and rolling my eyes should have spoken volumes and the fact that when he asked me what the specific issues were i was finding on the servers, there being mistakes on every single one, should have given him an idea of what was happening. 


i heard that 2 of the chancers are coming to contract renewal time at the end of the month. i will be astonished if they get renewed, but then again, i am astonished they were hired in the first place. completely utterly inept not just for someone you might pay £11000/month to, but to someone you would pay £11000/year. i guarantee we could hire a couple of grads straight out of uni that would work twice as hard for a quarter of the price. 


had to go to the gym tongiht. football got cancelled. some of the guys couldnt make it tonight and one of the guys went to see cannabis corpse, the death metal band tonight. i needed to get the aggression out, and i also was told that its likely i will have to work most weekends to clear up the chancers shit. 


apologies about the long post just venting. oh well, its not like you missed out on an action packed post. its not like my life is that exciting anyway. :-)


today i have mostly been listening janes addiction - irresistable force