OT: Neutering pets

On Sat, 24 Jul 2021 11:26:27 -0600, rbowman posted for all of us to digest...

It's a challenge to get a raise!

I've always worked for companies that had an fairly private car park that is probably patrolled by security guards or CCTV.

However one company decided to use the large aircraft-hanger size computer hall (largely empty once they got rid of mainframe computers) to stage a computer "fair". They asked for volunteers to park off-site fr a couple of weeks, in another car-park about 15 minutes' walk away, to leave space for the visitors' cars. Anyone who did this would have their names entered in a raffle to win a bottle of champagne. It was highly suspicious that all the people who won the bottles of bubbly worked in finance, HR or one of the other ancillary departments, and that none of the software developers or testers (who were by far the majority) won a bottle. I suspect a fix :-)

I've never had the luxury of a 'what will it take to get you to stay?' response from HR. I've only left one company out of choice, and they were in dire financial straits after merging with a US company which it was later discovered had severe financial irregularities for which my company had to carry the can; I believe the MD of the US company disappeared and has never been seen again. The other two times I left a company it was through redundancy on both occasions - one time whole departments were "disposed of" which is tough but not personal; the other time they chose isolated people from all departments, so it was a case of everyone waiting at home to see if they got a "congratulations, you have been specially selected for our big prize - redundancy" phone call. I remember that the understanding was that you waited at home until 8:30 and then assumed you were safe and set off for work; my phone call came though at 8:29:30, so I thought I was safe...

Tekkie© snipped-for-privacy@comcast.net wrote

Only for useless bums like you.

I would probably have worked for a longer period of time if I could have just worked on what I wanted to. There was one aspect of the job that I purely hated. It was not like that for the first 15 years. Due to the reduction in manning we had to work in areas other than the ones I liked for 6 months out of every few years and my next term was comming up.

There is also the other difference: techies get job satisfaction out of an interesting technical challenge with furthers their or the department's knowledge, irrespective of whether it will profit the company; non-techies get job satisfaction of doing something which will make or save money for the company. Techies bore the pants off everyone with technical jargon appropriate to their area of expertise; HR, finance etc bore the pants off everyone with management jargon: blue-sky thinking, thinking out of the box, op-ex and rat-ex, leveraging (always pronounced the American way "levveraging" even by British people who would say "leeveraging" in any other context) and other such meaningless bullshit.

Where I worked one year there was a big purge of supervisors. They were told if they were still there at quiting time, they would have a job. One said that he hid so they could not find him.

I'm getting old and slow so I've been with the same company for over 20 years. When I was younger I was always looking for new horizons. The second company I worked for did go t*ts up after the oil embargo but several of us formed a new company and took off in a new direction.

I guess that was technically the third company. I'd worked a month for the Penn Central as it was spiraling down the toilet. If you cashed your check at your bank you had to have the funds to cover it in case it bounced.

I'm fortunate to be left to pursue my own projects. Some of them are actual contract items others are skunk works. More than once I've responded to the question 'how long would it take to do ...' with 'I did that last year. I just need to tweak it a little'

There are countless TV shows and Youtube channels based on this.

If I can't get there in a car I don't go there. I will not f*ck about trying to work out which train and bus to get where, when to be there, and sit around for hours because there wasn't one when I needed it.

I once applied for a job in a different department of the same place. The one I was in gave me a promotion not to move. Which was funny, because I didn't get the job, since there were over 250 applicants.

Eh?

Only if there's a lot of water inbetween.

Driving is far more convenient, you can stop at nice places along the way, where and when you want to.

I like driving. And it's not necessarily longer. There's no 2 hour check in. You can leave when you need to, not when the next flight does. Imagine both of us wanted to leave at the same time to get to the same far away place, you'd have to wait until the next flight, book in early, probably have to stop and change flights somewhere after going in the wrong direction, whereas I just drive.

There's a word for people like that.

How long?

I thought the 2 hours check in was worldwide. No idea what it's for as I've only flown once.

Better that than being bored sat still.

It is not 10 times longer. Take a look at some of the Top Gear races they did between cars and public transport.

What are the distances?

And I'd prefer 7 hours of driving to 90 minutes of flight, having to park the car somewhere, having to use the times they have available, paying more money, taking less luggage, not having the car with me when I get there, ....

I detest reading, they've invented TV. And before you say bring some, no. Not on a small screen and headphones, and I might not have anything I want to watch.

Across Europe.

A few years back I went to a family do in Germany.

Most people from England flew and hired a car, some took the Eurostar and hired a car.

I drove to Dunquerque, had a nice breakfast on a leiurely ferry, and drove on.

In reality. the journey times were all within half an hour of each other. There was no clear winner.

The "Eurostars" lived in London, and had no car, so they saved on time to the train, but lost out on train times. Everyone else lost out on getting to the airport, going through check in etc etc, going through customs at the other end and hiring a car locally.

I had to wait a short time at the ferry terminal, but customs was nonexistent.

I think that is a wise move. Even when I used to visit denmark and Sweden, for an extended stay taking your own car in the ferry was a decent option. I am not sure those ferries still exist though - nope. There are no passenger/car ferries going from UK to Scandinavia any more

I do have a journey time via calais for Copenhagen though. 24 hours non stop to Cambridge.

These days leaving out complexities of Brexit and Coivid, Id probably still drive if I had the time, and break the trip into 3 days

A few times a yer I make a trip From mid FL to south NJ. It is 17 hours driving, 1120 miles. I choose to drive. On my end, I' nearly an hour to the airport, on the other end, about two hours. Factor in parking for 2 weeks, either car rental or my friend picking me up an hour each way, driving is not so bad.