By-Passing The Corporate Firewall

For almost two of the past three years, the Savage Chickens website was blocked by my corporate firewall. Categorised under "Adult Humour", even the embedded images in the e-mail I receive each working week day were disabled. However to by-pass this, you would just go and view the latest cartoon over on Tumblr. Doug Savage will be pleased to discover that changes to the corporate infrastructure now means I am able to visit his blog without issue and receive his e-mails with bright yellow Post-It Note image.

The cartoon are always brilliant but the work based ones in particular I can fully relate to. Sometimes I could just post Doug's images, as they reflect moments at my workplace (or work history).

This blog post is dedicated to Canadian and all round good guy Doug Savage. His daily cartoons get me though the working week. Sometimes I do not get the humour, perhaps lost in translation from North America over the Pond to the UK but his book is still one of my favourite items. I keep it at work, as a daily reminder not to take work too seriously, even if it does take up a big chunk of our waking hours.

Direct From The Top

There is a prize I have been lucky enough to gain at my previous two employers and hope to continue to repeat for the rest of my career. Rather superficial I agree, but the coveted e-mail from the CEO. Now I do not mean an e-mail that has been drafted by an Executive Assistant or Communications department but one typed by the fair hand of the man or woman at the top of the organisation. In both cases, they were received after I had left the employment of the company, so some of you out there may take dispute with my claims but I care little. I can only make these revelations now as both men have long since retired from their positions as the head of two multinational blue chip companies.

Of course, the CEO of any company would not be e-mailing me or even an ex-colleague directly. They would be following the chain of command. In the case of Microsoft, this was from CEO (Steve) to CFO (Kevin) and then down to Global Commission Director before moving across to the EMEA Director and getting to my boss (Operations Director) into my mailbox with some kind of urgent action attached.

When you work for the biggest microchip manufacturer on the planet with over eighty percent market share you are going to get law suits and you are going to get complaints. People will just complain directly to the CEO when their brand new gaming work station is failing due to the motherboard and processor. The man at the top believes it could potentially be a scam but passes the mail down to his directs, once it gets to the Global Support Manager it then quickly gets forwarded to the Support Centre Manager. A ticket is raised and followed up with the highest priority possible.

With websites such as CEO Mail it has never been easier to get your message to the man or woman at the top of an organisation. Plus with the advent of social media, people tend to vent on Twitter, hoping somebody somewhere will resolve their problem. This works sometimes but not always.

Business Doublespeak

Are there any jobs that do not involve business jargon? The marketing people would make you believe these buzz words have some special innate power to motivate employees beyond their standard capability. Moving working area for the fifth time, we headed to the front of the building, which gives a view of the car park and the M4 motorway in the distance. Making use of the whiteboards that had followed us to our new working homes, the decision was made by somebody to capture all the business jargon than is bounded about on a daily basis.

I suppose in the medical profession you have your own language and lawyers have their own language but perhaps only fair that corporate world create something of their own language. However, we just sell software, it is hardly Rocket Science.

Secret Santa Update

With so much going on outside work, this was perhaps the only Christmas gift I was going to purchase this year. (Putting to one side my donation to The Angel Tree.) I should really start by updating my list from my previous post. Last year my gift was a scarf, purchased at the last minute due to a abrupt change in the date of the Santa Exchange. I have no idea where that scarf is now, probably in a drawer somewhere in my bedroom. This year I probably received the worst Secret Santa gift ever.

I have drunk two "plastic" cups of coffee in my life. In the late 1980s in my youth, I was playing around with a vending machine at my parents work place in Marlow, during a family day and decided to try coffee for the first and only time. Fast forward almost 30 years and by mistake I entered the wrong code in a vending machine at my place of work. Most people would have just thrown the cup away and got the tea they were craving for, but not wanting to waste the beverage, I begrudgingly drank the coffee. Never again.

As I was growing up, the coffee drinkers were my Dad, and my sister Samantha. Everybody else is a tea drinker. My wife Michelle is a coffee drinker. Although she tends to restrict herself to coffee purely in the morning, as a "wake up juice".

So you can imagine my horror to be given this package when opening my Secret Santa gift in front of colleagues (including working from home S, whom was on webcam via Skype for Business on a Microsoft Surface Pro).

What further condemns this initial offence, is that our colleague J had thought up the initiative of listing our wishes onto a whiteboard to give the everybody the inspiration they needed.

Battle Cry

Conversation Killer

Whenever you meet new people, eventually the conversation turns to your occupation, your career. The question can come as simply as "What do you do?". I try and consider my reply before engaging my mouth but there is no alternative way of sugar coating my job. "I'm a Business Analyst for a global software company". Unfortunately it is very difficult to spin my job in any other way. Sure, there are variants but they just make the job appear more junior than it truly is, such as Reporting Analyst or even Sales Operations Analyst. The truth is very few people understand what the Sales Operations department in a multinational organisation actually do. Maybe I just need to be a little more creative with what I say I do to make a living.

Previous Occupation

Proving Your Doubters Wrong

There is no greater feeling than proving your doubters, the haters wrong! Showing them that you can smash all their preconceived ideas into tiny little pieces. In any struggle there is a turning point. A call to arms, a wake up call! Mine comes in two parts. Firstly to be told by one of your nearest and dearest - "What miracle do you expect to happen in the next three months that has not occurred in the last five?". A moment which had a multitude of thoughts running through my brain at a thousand miles. If I did not doubt myself already, I was heading for a full on crisis of confidence.

Generally I listen to BBC Radio 2 in the mornings on the short drive (four miles) to the office. Unable to recall if it was because Richard Allison was stepping in for Chris Evans or Chris had played a really old song I did not know or like (or maybe even both) I switched over to Time 106.6 FM. The local Slough station.The song that just began was Hold On by Wilson Phillips. Made more famous in recent years by being featured on the soundtrack and movie itself - Bridesmaids. Listening to the song lyrics intently for perhaps the first time in my life, stuck at the London Road traffic lights, I sought inspiration from the opening lines

I know this pain
Why do lock yourself up in these chains?
No one can change your life except for you
Don't ever let anyone step all over you
Just open your heart and your mind
Is it really fair to feel this way inside

Something clicked, not sure how, or why or exactly when. I went into work with a different perspective. To focus on the key tasks and complete them to the best of my ability. To let all the other distractions, issues and headaches take a backseat. With the grace of God and with a gritted determination I not only met expectations, I exceeded them.

Secret Santa History

Of the the many traditions at this time of year, a rather modern phenomenon is Secret Santa. The staple of not just many work places around the globe but many large families also to relieve the burden of expensive gifts for the many. I only learnt about the process while at college, as we used the same system to purchase Christmas presents between a large group of friends. This ensured a level playing field in terms of budget and ensured everybody got a gift.

I thought it would be useful to record gifts from Secret Santa past from my working life after University. Looking back, perhaps I should have posted a blog post each December (when I was lucky enough to be in joyful employment!).

2004 - My first Christmas at my new workplace was without participation of Secret Santa, due to the fact that I started on 16th December. Too late to be included, I would have to wait for next year for my first official working participation in the event.
2005 - Chocolates & How to survive a robot uprising by Daniel Wilson - blog post
2006 - Homer Simpson dashboard buddy - still boxed and unused at my parents home - blog post
2007 - unable to recall gift I was given
2008 - no secret santa took place at my employer
2009 - unemployed during Christmas period
2010 - employer did not carry out secret santa
2011 - cuff links
2012 - Arsenal Desk Calendar
2013 - Touring England boardgame

There you have the comprehensive list from the last decade of my Secret Santa haul, most items I have kept, purely for nostalgic reasons. Although I wish I could work out what I got in December 2007. I know the event took place

Bad Day At The Office

We have all had those days when nothing appears to be going right. I mean, pick up a £7.24, 500 ream of A4 80gsm office paper instead of your £499 Apple iPad 2.

[Courtesy of Simon Ricktets via Twitter]

All Good Things Come To An End

I am feeling very much mixed emotions as I leave Microsoft today. I was sad to be saying goodbye to some good friends but first and foremost, good people. These are the people that have been with me on the journey over the past two years. The highs and the lows. However, in December last year we were informed that our jobs were effectively being outsourced to India. The only saving grace was the fact that we had two years to find alternative employment elsewhere. The next stop was Chennai, and I had no desire to be on that plane or train (even if relocation had been an option, which of course it was not). As you can imagine, some members of the team took this better than others. Some of the older members of the team with family and long-term financial commitments were worried. I was looking on the positive side. After all, in many similar situations, you do not get the generous notice period of twenty-four months to find a new permanent position. However in the short term, there were going to be changes and while my wife would say, "the only constant in life is change", this change was a leap into the unknown.

We all knew that our jobs would not last forever. This is the whole idea behind contracting, the ability to switch people to different roles or disband them all together and relocate your entire function offshore. Perhaps we all got too comfortable and were just rather shocked by the news, thirteen calendar days before Christmas. Stability is important for everybody, no matter their station in life. The Operations Team had been relatively stable over the past eighteen months with only one departure in that period. That changed almost overnight with ten leavers in just over a month. We were saying goodbye to an experienced member of the team every week. By mid-May the makeup of the team had completely changed with many new starters and only a handful of the original team remaining - many of whom had started a long time before me.

Many years ago when I took the first steps in my humble career I had one goal. To work for not just the biggest companies in the world but leaders in their field, the innovators, the trendsetters. I have achieved this goal in recent years, working for the leading technology companies of our age. With Intel and now Microsoft on my CV, many doors will open. People did ask me why I decided to leave a permanent position at Intel, to take up a contract position at Microsoft. One of my previous managers had said to me, that when considering any role, think long-term. Will your next job you have an offer for, help you secure the job after that. I knew with a tech giant, household brand on my CV, securing the next position, even in this rather difficult climate would be ever so slightly easier. While the story ends here rather abruptly and the dream of a blue badge role never materialised, I feel I made a difference and had a positive affect on both the people around me and the organisation as a whole. I feel I also tried hard to secure a role within the organisation long term, by applying for over forty roles within the UK and the US but to no avail. As my Dad would often say to me, when another rejection was received in the post (or via e-mail in recent times), "Their loss, son!"

Probably for the first time in half a decade, I will be keeping in touch with a small group of my work colleagues. Many live in (or just outside) Slough, so there will be no difficulty keeping in touch but ultimately we became good friends outside of work over the course of my time here. This was perhaps the reason to disband the team was so difficult to swallow. We had just reached the point where everybody was getting on extremely well and performing their duties with the utmost diligence. Nevertheless, I am sure I will see them on a regular basis, many have already left and two ex-colleagues even made a guest appearance for lunch today.

It was a great relief to leave the building, having signed off all of my outstanding CRM cases and re-conciliations to a colleague, hand my badge to my manager and walk out the revolving door for the last time! I took a long deep sigh, one adventure had come to a close and a new adventure would begin in earnest on Monday morning. Nothing lasts forever but it was great while it lasted. I will take away some great memories with some great people at this place. Did I live the dream? No, not quite but I grew to understand the dream was possible, just not here and most importantly not here right now.

Time To Move On

There comes a moment in every job when you know it is the right time to move on to a fresh new challenge. In my case, the penny dropped on Wednesday 12th December 2012 at precisely 14:23 (GMT). Our team received a notification from the senior global director (based over in Redmond, Seattle) on the next step of the Incentive Compensation journey. Unfortunately for some twenty of us, we were being told our destination was only eighteen months away. All our roles and those of sister teams in Asia and America were all being relocated to Chennai (formerly known under the colonial name of Madras) in the outsourcing capital of the planet, India. The clock was well and truly ticking. Short term meanwhile, we would have a new boss and be working in a slightly different way for a different company, effectively keep an old bespoke system running until the new system was put in place for FY15 (Fiscal Year 2015 - July 2014 to June 2015).

It took me over six months to finally find a path out but ultimately I am thankful I was able to secure a permanent full-time position. I handed in my notice on Friday 14th June but gave the exceptional five weeks' notice. There were a few reasons for me to give the extra five days grace to my employer. Firstly I was leaving at the crucial end-of-year payout period, the busiest period in the year with a strict deadline to meet. Secondly, I did not want to leave with work unfinished and in an ideal world actually hand over some knowledge to other members of the Operations Team. We have to remain professional throughout our careers, even if in reality you want to book all remaining eight days of holiday and effectively give just two weeks' notice.

As you can imagine, turnover has been extremely high since January 14th (the effective first day of our new contract with a new employer). While it has been hard to say goodbye to some good friends, I have been pleased that they have been able to find new opportunities elsewhere. The prevailing thought in the back of my mind, as we said farewell to yet another long-serving experienced worker, was when will it be my turn? With such a high turnover of staff, new starters have been joining on a regular basis. Some good, some not so much.

The recruitment process for any firm has to be rigorous, more so for a team in global transition as we have tight deadlines and no space for water carriers. When I joined the firm, I had to undertake a timed Excel test under exam conditions on a laptop with no internet access. Had I failed the test, I would have been politely told to go home and failed to have the opportunity to perform in a face-to-face interview with the hiring manager.

Unsure of the reasons but the Excel Test was now sent to candidates to their personal e-mail address at home for them to complete in their own time. While still required to be completed in thirty minutes, being completely unsupervised, it is impossible to confirm with any degree of certainty if the potential employee has completed the test without any outside guidance. If they passed the test, how could we be sure they would cope in the pressurized office environment with weekly if not daily deadlines.

I strongly believe that no matter how long (or little) you spend in a job, you should aim to have made a difference. To have changed processes, to have improved performance, to provide a better service to the end customer. I feel in my rather short career history, I have fulfilled this aim. However, with my role here at the biggest software manufacturer in the world, I feel I am leaving a little earlier than perhaps I should. Yes, I have achieved a great deal but I felt I could have achieved so much more. Such a shame that my career ambitions have taken me elsewhere. The reality is though I have achieved a lifelong ambition. To work for a company that everybody knows. To work for a company that advertises on not just television, but the cinema, on billboards, and in the press.

Butter Fingers

On Thursdays I receive my weekly job alert from Monster. Probably one of the better job boards on the internet today (particularly in the UK) and the main reason I find myself working for my current employer. However, sometimes when you skim through the list of vacancies, you realise that there are some links you will just not bother clicking on. How can a professional person make such an elementary mistake?

Job Mis-Description

Having moved jobs multiple times in my career, I have tended to see several job descriptions of positions I have held. It is always interesting to look back and see your previous position seeking applicants. It was an ex-colleague, whom highlighted to me the job specification for the job we both used to do several years ago. When I read the professional document, I just had to chuckle to myself. It was not just the fact that minimum requirements had been dropped but proof that I was well over qualified for the position, even back then. Further more, the story on the page was much a world away from life in the office in the actual day-to-day role.

you won’t just have all the resources you need at your fingertips, but the team environment to motivate you to take charge of and develop your own progression.

The Team Ethic

As we enter what is described as a quiet period after the quarterly payout, members of my team like to express their creative energies. The result was the following on a spare whiteboard lying around the office.

One of the artists, uploaded the image onto Facebook and tried to find me to tag me in the image. "Andrew, I cannot find you?". My response was, "Fantastic, that means my privacy and security settings are working perfectly!"

Occupational Hazard

I am sure in millions of offices around the globe, this error appears and it is frustrating for the end user. However, when you work at the software manufacturer and are just accessing one of the many internal sites, you really do want throw your desktop machine out the window and into the little crater of snow outside.

The Trials Of Two Blogs

My original intention with this professional blog, was to have somewhere to post my geeky work based musings. My personal blog, Human Nature would at times get bogged down in technical related postings and my mainstream audience began to turn off. This separation worked well back in 2008 and 2009 when I had both the time and inclination to update a secondary blog. Even though entries were scarce and I had very little commentary to give on my very average work place. Now in present day 2012, I find it difficult to have time to update just my personal blog on a regular basis. It is impossible to manage another.

I am making a major effort with my personal blog. I know, as I start my thirties life will be changing dramatically over the next few years and I have an overwhelming desire to record as much as I can. While work is of course important, I find there is little commentary I can add that is not already being discussed elsewhere. (I should clarify that with some excellent work related blogs but all I could find was this - Letters Of Note and even this is not exactly fully work related).

Hopefully I will make time for a few posts from time to time, there are a few I have in my head, which I really need to get down onto paper and then onto the world wide web. For now at least, goodbye to the few people that actually read this blog!

Living The Dream

If you had told me in June 1992, when I the proud owner of a Packard Bell Legend 386 SX 33Mhz desktop computer, that eighteen years later I would have the chance to share the air with the boffins that developed, not just the processor, but the board, the graphics, the sound card. What dreams may become!

Getting Back On Track

After several months away, I am back. I am putting a focus back on my career and trying to move things forward even if some would dare to say I have taken several steps (if not years) back.

Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.

I consider myself both lucky and blessed to have made it through some rather difficult times in recent months. As difficult as it can be, I am trying to stop looking back and analysing the past, I can do nothing to change, what has been, what was said, what was done. I need to refocus all my energies on my new job, my new responsibilities and my future. This of course is much easier said than done, but I have a few ideas and am in discussions with family, close friends and colleagues on the next steps. There is a great deal to be done and time is not on my side. This is the moment - Carpe Diem!

The Next Chapter

To say the last four months have been easy would be the understatement of the decade. In fact, since touching down from Valencia my life has been anything but a piece of cake. I thought the holiday would have given me the chance to recharge the batteries and come back with a clear perspective. Instead, I found myself soon deciding that it was time for a change.

Eleven days after making that decision, the result of a chain of events compelled me to make another more immediate decision. Back then, I was unsure if it was the right thing to do. Validation felt a long long way off. (If at all ever possible, would I come to regret this forever?)

I suppose my initial problem was I was naive to think I would be back in employment as quickly as before. Last time around, my spell of unemployment was a short lived two weeks. A holiday if you will. Even though there were so many more opportunities out there, it is just a shame that there were hundreds more applying for each position.

I got an interview, got complacent invested too much into this one opportunity and then had to go back and start all over again once the rejection came through.

I applied for a position back in mid November, one of several that day and it was quickly forgotten about. As I had not heard back from anyone, I assumed that it was just another case of a rejection. If you do not hear from us, you should consider your application unsuccessful. No news is bad news, so to speak. You can imagine my surprise to get a phone call around 10am on the first officially working day of 2010. I swiftly arranged an interview for the next day. When I only heard back to say that other candidates had been delayed due to the adverse weather conditions, I resigned myself to yet another rejection in waiting.

You can therefore imagine (or not) my surprise to finally be offered a position this afternoon. The fact it was via e-mail threw me a little but it was the news I had been waiting for and I walked straight into the lounge to share the news with my Mum and youngest sister.

A fresh start, a blank page, a new routine, new people and a new challenge. Yes you may have heard all this before, but maybe this time around, I will build a reputation for all the right reasons.