Our generation's lack of work ethic and money skills.

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urvile

Golden Member
Aug 3, 2017
1,575
474
96
oh god Agile.
proj mgmt. run on chaos.

and if they're not green belts, at min, then why the F are you having them do Agile?!

Slightly OT.

Oh. no. It's not agile project management. It's Scrum. Vastly different from a traditional PM viewpoint. Which is why they had so much difficulty with it.

They are used to buy server -> install server -> configure server -> go to the pub and celebrate our glorious victory. It is clear concise steps and is ideal for a base lined waterfall style of project management.

We still create a schedule (typically this would exist as a backlog of items with times against them. Typically these times would be unrealistic but whatever) because you have to so you can quote the project but Scrum then gives you flexibility. So the client will get the best bang for their buck so to speak because at the end of the day it is all about the client.

This includes using automated QA like mocking and unit testing to cut dev time and remove professional testers because they cost a lot of money and that is typically the first thing the client doesn't want to pay for. Documentation falls into that category also. The company I used to work for didn't do anything unless the client was paying for it.

Once I worked on a major project that switched from waterfall to continuous integration half way through. Oh the humanity.

Personally I think agile has it's flaws in particular the way requirements are handled but it is useful for making sure the client gets exactly what they want. The last thing you want to do is deliver a system and have the client say "um this is not actually what we wanted" as my boss used to say at that point you have done your dough.

The thing is as soon as you go over budget you are funding the development with the company's profits and they don't like that very much.

What I am getting at here is the PM would rather fight us because

a) he or she didn't understand agile and

b) covering their arse this is important because if something goes wrong they need to be able to prove that they stuck to their traditional PM methodology. In other words they did their job. The last thing they want to do is get left holding the bag if the project goes over budget.

finally c) they don't want to admit they don't know what is going on

I could seriously go on about this crap all day but I won't.

Although to be fair. A lot of people did/do see agile as a cowboy methodology and these project managers we were working with would not have seen the value in it and in some ways it is a cowboy methodology. I spent years working under a very process heavy waterfall methodology and initially I thought agile was a cowboy methodology too. I didn't like it in particular the way it handles requirements as user stories.

After a while though I grew to love it. At least for software development. It cuts your costs and provides flexibility, bi-weekly sprint reviews etc. For things like systems engineering it can be problematic. OK that's it.
 
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kranky

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
21,014
138
106
I miss working from home fulltime, where I literally DID just roll out of bed and start working.

Regardless, I'm pretty fed up with IT in general and am so looking forward to retirement. If they want to coddle millenials, fine. If they want to put clueless MBAs in charge, fine. However, the thing that killed IT for me more than anything is probably the rise of the incredibly clueless and useless PM. I'm on a project now that has gone like this:

PM: "Please provide a task list for each environment of the migration project."
ICF: <provides task list>
PM: <sends spreadsheet with task list> "Here is the task list for the project. Please fill out columns C-J for each task: C) Status D) Duration E) Work (hrs) F) Start Time G) End Time H) Predecessor I) Successor J) Assigned Resource."

So let me get this straight and please, ATOT, tell me what I'm missing:

1. I provided the task list for the project plan
2. I receive the "project plan," which is literally a paste of the task list I sent.
3. I'm supposed to provide C) Status D) Duration E) Work (hrs) F) Start Time G) End Time H) Predecessor I) Successor J) Assigned Resource for each task.
4. From what I can tell from items 1-3 above, I'm actually developing the ENTIRE project plan. What is the "PM" supposed to do exactly?

Suffice it to say, I'm providing column E and he can figure out the rest and if he can't, well, too damn bad.

Well, in a previous job I had to develop project plans with that exact info (not as the PM but as the scheduler). 90% of the people on my projects loved me, 10% thought I was no different than a security camera looking over their shoulder and I could not overcome that perception.

I would never email someone to get that info. We'd sit down, talk about how they thought they might go about doing the project, then I'd go off and make a project plan based on what I heard - just the task list. We'd tweak the list to correct my misunderstandings, then define the Pred/Succ rules. Then the work hrs per task. At that point I could show them what the staffing need was and we'd tweak the plan again to help smooth out the peaks and valleys over the project duration. Then the PM would go about securing people to do the work, we'd plug in the names, and done. The people on the team liked that the project plan was THEIR plan, not something that a PM put together with little understanding of what it actually took.

Any PM who would simply email someone that table and ask for the info doesn't understand how project plans work. Our projects were 3-5 years long so the natural tendency was for people to say "I have plenty of time, what's the rush". But the projects I worked on were much more likely to be on track than the ones where the PM felt the people on the team could manage their own schedules.

The downside for the team was they had no way to BS me. If you told me last week you had finished X and this week you told me you had another week to go to finish X, I had to get into what happened. I never got anyone fired, but a couple people, including a PM, quit when they couldn't BS me and my reports kept showing reality and not the made-up progress they wanted to show.
 
Feb 25, 2011
16,888
1,535
126
"Lack of work ethic and money skills?"

Speak for yourself, dickwad.

Also, it was the Boomers who invnted credit cards because they thought bell bottoms and pet rocks were sensible purchases.
 
Reactions: destrekor and Kaido

Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
68,327
12,559
126
www.anyf.ca
My 20 year old nephew seems to have trouble keeping a job. He's certified to do core drilling which pays really well, and he's already been through several mines now. He'll last a week or two then either quit or get fired. One job he even asked for a day off within his first run of shifts! You just don't do that lol. So they fired him. I feel bad for him, I want him to succeed, but he just keeps doing bad mistakes like that. It's not easy working a 2 week run of 12h shifts though. I think it just exhausts him mentally and he can't handle it and does not think long term, such as all the time off he will also get. Not too many jobs have 10+ weeks off per year.

Drilling makes such good money too, you'd think he would use that as a motivator. He's was making more money as a rookie than I am 15 years into my job. I would seriously consider that career path if I lost my current job since I doubt I'd find anything here in tech that pays what my current job pays. You can make 6 figures drilling. It is tough being away from home for those stretches though. Not for everyone.
 
Reactions: Pohemi

Dr. Detroit

Diamond Member
Sep 25, 2004
8,249
701
126
My 20 year old nephew seems to have trouble keeping a job. It is tough being away from home for those stretches though. Not for everyone.

Hear me out on this...

Maybe he needs to find a career where 4 tens or 5 eights is the requirement!
 

Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
68,327
12,559
126
www.anyf.ca
Hear me out on this...

Maybe he needs to find a career where 4 tens or 5 eights is the requirement!

Yeah that's what I am thinking. There is not much in his field though. He also tried university and it was just not for him, which is going to make it very hard since most jobs require uni/college. The only reason he got into mining is because of the high demand, and he only needed like 12 weeks of college.

But yeah he needs to figure out what he wants to do, and stick to it.
 

lxskllr

No Lifer
Nov 30, 2004
57,915
8,180
126
Sounds like he's screwed to me. If he's gonna be a tradesman, he'll have to accept long hours on occasion. Sounds like he just doesn't want to work. A couple years of 12hr shifts I can see getting old, but quitting after a couple weeks? C'mon...
 

JEDI

Lifer
Sep 25, 2001
29,391
2,736
126
My 20 year old nephew seems to have trouble keeping a job. He's certified to do core drilling which pays really well, and he's already been through several mines now. He'll last a week or two then either quit or get fired. One job he even asked for a day off within his first run of shifts! You just don't do that lol. So they fired him. I feel bad for him, I want him to succeed, but he just keeps doing bad mistakes like that. It's not easy working a 2 week run of 12h shifts though. I think it just exhausts him mentally and he can't handle it and does not think long term, such as all the time off he will also get. Not too many jobs have 10+ weeks off per year.

Drilling makes such good money too, you'd think he would use that as a motivator. He's was making more money as a rookie than I am 15 years into my job. I would seriously consider that career path if I lost my current job since I doubt I'd find anything here in tech that pays what my current job pays. You can make 6 figures drilling. It is tough being away from home for those stretches though. Not for everyone.
thats all he does? drill holes in concrete?

i've core drilled.. but only 1" holes so i can pass a pipe though it.

hm.. does he also need to check structural integrity before drilling? (i probably should have done that :embarrassed: )

i've done a month of 12hrs x 7days for 4 weeks straight in IT.
yeah, i got paid but after 2 weeks, it got OLD!
(if the company REQUIRES that i work 12x7 when i was hired for 8x5, then you're going to pay me)

edit:
why was this 5yr old thread necro'd?
new user spam?
 
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Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
68,327
12,559
126
www.anyf.ca
Yeah it's for mining exploration that he drills so it's very deep holes. Sorta similar to oil drilling, but totally different kind of rig.

It's a trade that is super in demand right now, but it's not that easy either. The faster you can drill the faster they can analyze the area for veins and the faster they can decide where to expand the mine, so time is a big essence.

If I recall he was doing PQ cores which are some of the larger ones, so they can be quite heavy.
 
Reactions: Pohemi

KMFJD

Lifer
Aug 11, 2005
29,975
45,160
136
At his age i'd gone through College once and thought i had found my career only to go back to college 2 more times and change careers a couple more times.
 

right_to_know

Member
Nov 19, 2015
78
14
71
Does anyone else find that this current generation of young people (30 and under) and even some older people, lack any desire to save money or invest?
It's funny revisiting this comment due to how the world turned out.
Here's my 2p.

Savings rates were held artificially low for a decade after that OP meaning if you saved money in the bank you weren't getting your fair shares worth while western states were busy printing money and using it to fund all sorts of nonsense.
If you could get a mortgage in a steady job then you might have come out ahead.

Other western states look like they've have had their currency devalued compared to the US for whatever reason.

Investments need an investment into learning how it works and could just as easily lose your money if you weren't careful.

Buying precious metals come with their own risks and sometimes extra taxes.
How are you meant to verify it's pure how will the person your selling it to verify it and the costs of all that.
Not to mention security and storage plus all the stupid laws attacking cash making sales even more of a problem.

All the cheap stuff from china would make saving money bad when you could buy all you needed. Graphics card prices were reasonable up until the late 2010s.


The welfare and subsidies systems in various countries penalize members of the public for saving money which incentivizes against saving.
 
Reactions: Red Squirrel
Mar 11, 2004
23,247
5,690
146
It's funny revisiting this comment due to how the world turned out.
Here's my 2p.

Savings rates were held artificially low for a decade after that OP meaning if you saved money in the bank you weren't getting your fair shares worth while western states were busy printing money and using it to fund all sorts of nonsense.
If you could get a mortgage in a steady job then you might have come out ahead.

Other western states look like they've have had their currency devalued compared to the US for whatever reason.

Investments need an investment into learning how it works and could just as easily lose your money if you weren't careful.

Buying precious metals come with their own risks and sometimes extra taxes.
How are you meant to verify it's pure how will the person your selling it to verify it and the costs of all that.
Not to mention security and storage plus all the stupid laws attacking cash making sales even more of a problem.

All the cheap stuff from china would make saving money bad when you could buy all you needed. Graphics card prices were reasonable up until the late 2010s.


The welfare and subsidies systems in various countries penalize members of the public for saving money which incentivizes against saving.

Its not welfare that's to blame, but subsidies for the wealthiest that is effectively making it impossible for many people to save money (and its not because they're incentivized to not save but because many cannot due to various debts - student loans, medical debt, and plenty of other like how its difficult for people to afford a car without taking out a long term loan, let alone while trying to afford housing costs as well), while the wealthiest amass more wealth than they can even spend. And we're subsidizing them to amass more, when we aren't straight up redistributing our wealth to them via insane tax cuts pushed for by conservative politicians. Conservatives also are the ones howling about raising interest rates so they're to blame for that as well, because they'd rather pour money into wall street where they can get bailed out if they intentionally fuck things up.
 
Mar 11, 2004
23,247
5,690
146
yeah, i'm not sure if this has been posted or not because i'm a lazy bastard but....

View attachment 93566

someone's lazy alright, lazy in paying workers what they are worth


Its hard work to be that greedy. Plus, look, sometimes they face scrutiny for it and so they have to take private jets and helicopters just so they can move about in peace!
 

Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
68,327
12,559
126
www.anyf.ca
yeah, i'm not sure if this has been posted or not because i'm a lazy bastard but....

View attachment 93566

someone's lazy alright, lazy in paying workers what they are worth


It seems what lot of companies are doing now is running on skeleton crew as normal. So everyone has to work a little harder because every department has several people short, and it's just normal now.

Even if they paid more, the real issue is inflation though. Something needs to be done about that. it needs to stop being so normalized. Target inflation numbers should be 0% or lower. With automation and outsourcing more or less being the norm for long now, products and services should be cheaper every year as the automation investments pay off, not more expensive.
 
Reactions: Pohemi

Torn Mind

Lifer
Nov 25, 2012
11,838
2,702
136
Fiscal behavior has a cultural influence and the general American is loose goosey with spending.

East Asians are cent counters, where a difference of even 50 cents is the difference between a transction made or avoided.

Homeownership is a legal trap where you gradually let everyone know you have targetable equity for a lawsuit. Also, it really isn't ownership like owning personal private property.
 
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