USB boiler connection.

[Clive George]

Not all of them.

But how much money do you want?

[Tim Watts]

On Mon, 25 Jan 2010 14:44:06 +0000, "Clive George" wibbled:

Of course ;-)

Decent but not extreme... With the kids, flexibility[1] counts for a lot cf last lot of snow shut the school for a week and the trains were buggered for half that time.

[1] Real flexibility that doesn't piss people off, not the sort where a day off in 10 years is tolerated but any more and it's a begging exercise and everyone hates you. Working from home (without pissing people off) is also cool. I'd rather work for someone who docks a days pay but is happy about it rather than one where it's a huge favour to be granted to the unworthy and undeserving ;->

[Clive George]

Working from home is harder for a new person - consultant organisations do it but that's because you're supposed to actually be in client offices most of the time anyway so if they don't trust you then they wouldn't have hired you in the first place. Getting a day or two, or getting the chance to do it when eg snow has hit is rather easier - we did that with no problem.

I work at home full time, but they did know me before, I had 9 months contracting as a sort of probation, and it seems to work - but I'd not offer it to a new starter.

[Bob Eager]

Looks much more like TECO to me (anyone remember?). Or APL...

I personally do my scripting in REXX.

[geoff]

The same sort of story could have been heard at any of the GEC establishments on costs plus.

A haven for the cancer which became Marconi middle management who now drive around in Smart cars and whine at those who exceed the speed limit nor shoot burglars

[geoff]

In message , Tim Watts writes

Another problem is that good engineers used to find that the only way they could move up the ladder was to move into management - which they mostly didn't like, not were they very good at

[geoff]

In message , tony sayer writes

Its certainly not an easy option

especially when you become an employer

[geoff]

In message , Mark writes

You think ?

The money's not always there to take

... and employees have to come first

[John Rumm]

from more recent experience of GEC/Marconi, a fair amount of that attitude had started to wane in the engineering labs. Although it was still fairly well entrenched in some of the production and testing departments.

A good example was when a colleague of mine was working on the design of a part of the control system for a phased array radar back end (a combo of an embedded 68040 and Xylinx FPGA). Production were having difficulty getting prototypes off the line fast enough due to lack of test techs and also a high test failure rate, so my mate was seconded for a few days to assist. He soon discovered that many of the boards were failing on a test toward the end of the test spec because of a wrong component value (or tolerance) being used by the assembly line. So, since the full test procedure would take quite some time per board, he decided to expedite matters by doing that particular test first, so any affected boards could be turned round much faster for rework, and the full tests only needed to be done on those candidates that had a fair chance of passing. He turned round the backlog of 50 or so boards that had been stuck in production awaiting test for weeks in a couple of days.

This raised the curiosity of production manager who wanted to know how he had done it so fast. So he explained. The chap nearly had a fit! Went bright purple and started chewing him out, saying that he *must* do it

*exactly* as per the test spec - he was *absolutely not allowed* to deviate from it. Even when my mate pointed out that the test spec was a draft issue, and *he* was the one actually designing and writing it in the first place, and so got to decide what tests were included and in what order, he would still have none of it!

(Fortunately being a contractor, and not actually formally working for the production department, he decided that the simplest route was to simply ignore the ranting and raving, wander back to the engineering lab and print out a new draft with the tests in the order he wanted!)

[John Rumm]

followed by the tax man, bank manager etc. Its not uncommon for the directors to be on a lower hourly rate than the cleaners! (assuming they are not also the cleaners)

[John Rumm]

I think you will find yourself looking at that person each time you shave! ;-)

[John Rumm]

I was about to say, it sounds like that old definition of a "real programmer" as one who can accurately predict what actions would be taken upon typing their name into a TECO editor while in command mode!

I used to dabble with that on my Miggies.

[Tim Watts]

On Mon, 25 Jan 2010 20:03:16 +0000, Bob Eager wibbled:

Only reading the manual... Good old DEC.

DISK$SYSTEM:[SYS$SYSTEM.SYSTEM$IMPORTANT.DID_YOU_GET_THIS_IS_A$SYSTEM $DIRECTORY?.SYS$YOUARENOTWORTHY]SYS$BLOODY_IMPORTANT_$SYSTEM$_FILE.COM

DOS just seemed gay after that...

[Steve Firth]

Hmmm, I can recall waiting for the delivery of an avionics box build by GEC/Marconi. It was over a year late when we got it, and it was dragged into the lab, dumped on a table and the two guys delivering it started to walk off. "Oy!" we shouted "where's the documentation".

They replied that MoD had forgotten to specify documentation so they hadn't written any. If we wanted documentation that would form a separate contract.

[Tim Watts]

On Tue, 26 Jan 2010 00:41:14 +0000, John Rumm wibbled:

Nah - If I worked for myself, and had a school closure I'd set the kids to work. Daughter can fetch drinks from the fridge and my son will tell stories of dinosaurs to telemarketers on the phone until they die of old age.

Child labour is still legal isn't it? ;->

[tony sayer]

Twas ever thus ... the British disease .. piss poor management;(...

Perhaps matey should have been managing.. After all was he showing up the Wally who was -supposed- to be doing that?..

Sensible, lucky they had him there ...

Still, seen this all before .. and its still there ...

[Huge]

I'm afraid so.

"Control-] is not a TECO command"

[Bob Eager]

Or, more likely, just:

?ILL

[Mark]

Yes. I earn a lot less than I would if I was doing the same thing self-employed. And I can't claim expenses against tax.

If it was this bad no-one would do it.

[Man at B&Q]

You really are bitter, twisted and out of touch with the modern electronics industry.

But they do exist and there are companies that employ them and pay good wages, in the UK even. Some are even UK "owned".

MBQ