Quote, Unquote

[denny]

A nice summary of an issue, taken from the london.pm mailing list (from a thread about on-call rates and working hours):

IME, too many UK companies want endless commitment from their staff and are prone to seeing their staff as shiftless wasters who will abuse any opportunities to slack off and who need to be kicked to work hard. The truth, IMO, is that most people want to do their jobs properly, not least because it is important to their self esteem. This isn't made easy if management gives you no credit for that attitude and wants to whip you to make you do things when you'd happily do them with proper co-operation from managers.
--Bruce Richardson

Comments

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

with proper co-operation from managers.

This being the kicker, of course.

I do slack off at work, mostly out of frustration because my periods of productivity are curtailed by uncooperative attitudes and poor communication elsewhere in the organisation.

[quantumlotus.livejournal.com]

This is kinda off topic, but you're one of a handful of people who I know tha tlive in the UK. HAve you heard about this?

"And a company in Buckinghamshire, England, announced in February it would start selling a Russian-invented MP3 audio player made to the specifications of an ammunition magazine to fit into an AK-47 assault rifle."

Does it have good memory capacity? How much is it? Sounds like fun, but you could never take tht bitch on a plane.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

Googling (http://www.google.com/search?q=mp3%20ak-47%20buckinghamshire&ie=UTF8) finds the same press release in a lot of different locations, but no trace of the company itself. I'm mildly suspicious - if this thing exists, surely the 'net is going to be their main distribution channel?

[nullstr.livejournal.com]

Heh, the company I work for was bought out today by our main customer. The (former) owner quoted such a high price for the Intellectual Property rights that they snapped up the whole lot.
The justification was, ostensibly, that the company is dynamic, highly-skilled and innovative. Yet, the presentation by the new boss was chock-full of MBA marketing crap. It was REALLY painful.
It's *possible* that the new management will be intelligent and inventive, and keep things flexible, but I'll not hold my breath.
It seems in general like there is some sort of "Corporatitis" which plagues larger companies (Google being an exception (http://www.matr.net/article-11128.html), apparently).
Time for me to get the hell out :)

Any further with the ?Bath/Bristol job?

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

Bath. They decided they had enough non-remote applications to keep them happy.

[nullstr.livejournal.com]

Do you know of RackSpace? Based this side of London. Motto: "We never go down on you", apparently, heh heh.

Met an old friend last night who said it a great place to work. Seems like vaguely your line of work.