{"id":397,"date":"2011-09-08T09:29:57","date_gmt":"2011-09-08T08:29:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.squage.com\/site\/?p=397"},"modified":"2011-09-12T09:57:34","modified_gmt":"2011-09-12T08:57:34","slug":"18-days-leaving-corporate-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.squage.com\/site\/2011\/09\/08\/18-days-leaving-corporate-life\/","title":{"rendered":"18 Days: Leaving Corporate Life"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>And so it is nearly upon me.  The day where I hand my office pass in to my boss, clear down my desk and head out of the building for the final time.<\/p>\n<p>At times like this it&#8217;s hard not to think about the things I&#8217;ll miss about my current corporate life.  Harder still to avoid pondering those things I <i>won&#8217;t<\/i> miss.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Why don&#8217;t you write a blog entry talking about some of those things now, Pat?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>GREAT IDEA!  Let&#8217;s go:<\/p>\n<p><big><b>Key Things I&#8217;ll Miss<\/b><\/big><\/p>\n<p>This is pretty obvious: the people and the pay.   Ok, so this section appears ludicrously small in comparison to the one below, but that&#8217;s because it&#8217;s much more fun to write rants :-)<\/p>\n<p><big><b>Key Things I&#8217;ll Not Miss<\/b><\/big><\/p>\n<p><b>IT Systems<\/b><\/p>\n<p>From computers I&#8217;d struggle to get Doom running on even with a special boot disk, though &#8220;rich&#8221; web-based systems that require $3 million worth of hardware and software to poorly emulate the old robust thick client systems \/ the perfectly functional old web pages that could keep themselves within 2MB a page, to centrally-enforced software rollouts that turn your PC into a tin box with flashing lights on it (&#8220;What do you <i>mean<\/i> you guys install software on your development PCs?&#8221;).<\/p>\n<p>Corporate IT Systems, from what I gather, suffer from the following two issues:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The slow and complex nature of changing, testing and approving new systems across a huge organisation<\/li>\n<li>A new solution often being a result of golf matches with suppliers rather than what&#8217;s measurably best.  <i>(This is of course a joke and in no way is Pat trying to suggest that A new solution often being a result of golf matches with suppliers rather than what&#8217;s measurably best \u2013 Squage)<\/i>. Er, that&#8217;s literally just what I wrot-<i>(<b>SHUT UP<\/b> \u2013 Squage)<\/i>.  Ahem.  Yes, there is no second bullet point.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Bureaucracy<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Want to copy a file over here?  Sure!  You just need to:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Raise this EU Change Request form<\/li>\n<li>Raise this separate USA Change Request form (5 days&#8217; notice at least)<\/li>\n<li>Get the appropriate approvals from all appropriate parties (and some inappropriate ones)\n<li>Load the file into the &#8220;here&#8217;s the only place you&#8217;re allowed to have stuff copied from&#8221; area<\/li>\n<li>Raise the paperwork to have it copied to the staging area (make sure you perform the appropriate file labelling and promotion first)<\/li>\n<li>Raise the paperwork to have it moved to production (up to 5 days&#8217; notice)<\/li>\n<li>Make sure you&#8217;ve got the appropriate Service Centre Supervisor confirmation as we&#8217;re not in the 1 month that doesn&#8217;t involve some kind of &#8220;Freeze Period&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Make sure your previously approved system architecture document won&#8217;t be affected so you might want to involve the IT Policy Specialist to review your change.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I LOVE BUREAUCRACY.<\/p>\n<p><b>Business Speak<\/b><\/p>\n<p>I agree that in order to sing holistically from the same hymn sheet, we often need a heads together in order to ensure the important items are on our radars from the get go.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps using metaphors can incentivise a quick win when trying to action an idea shower into deliverables in the office going forward.<\/p>\n<p>But heads up folks, I want to touch base with you on this: it only takes a bit of blue sky thinking in this space to realise using these low hanging fruit can damage your ability to articulate clearly.<\/p>\n<p>I just don&#8217;t have the bandwidth to cope with it all cascading down to me, I can&#8217;t even be bothered to drill down into what wrong-sides me about it most. <\/p>\n<p>If I could just get my ducks in a r<i>(OK, STOP THIS NOW \u2013 Squage)<\/i><\/p>\n<p>Ok, sorry.  I must mention this though: my favourite BS phrase still has to be this, which was uttered only once to my knowledge by a former manager:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We need to take the chastity belt off this project&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>To this day, I still shudder to think of the manager strapping the project down and giving it a good seeing to.  Think <i>that<\/i> dream in Office Space. &#8220;Yeeeeeeahhh&#8230; I&#8217;m gonna need you to go ahead and be delivered by Q4&#8230; don&#8217;t move&#8230; yeah that&#8217;s it&#8230; keep that deadline right&#8230; there&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll leave that image with you.  Hope it pushed the envelope.<\/p>\n<p>BYE!<\/p>\n<p>Pat<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>And so it is nearly upon me. The day where I hand my office pass in to my boss, clear down my desk and head out of the building for the final time. At times like this it&#8217;s hard not to think about the things I&#8217;ll miss about my current corporate life. Harder still to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,12,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-countdown","category-ravings","category-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.squage.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.squage.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.squage.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.squage.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.squage.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.squage.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":402,"href":"https:\/\/www.squage.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397\/revisions\/402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.squage.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.squage.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.squage.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}