The 'I work in I.T' thread

[Rob]

How things feel sometimes


View attachment 1735495

I f**king hate that whenever anyone tries to create a repository for some sort of information it always ends up outdated, unmaintained and just some random silo of information that dies, and you still don’t end up with something that you need.

Heard myself saying on a call the other day ‘oh we need somewhere to put all this info’ and just thought to myself don’t even go there….. (even though it’s actually needed 😂)

The moment people started creating multiple ways to save/share files in windows it all went down hill.

Sharepoint
OneDrive
Teams ‘files’

f**k. Sake.

The worst is when you’ve got a proper job folder setup in sharepoint and some mutant creates a ‘teams site’ for collaboration. Die.

 

[ChrisR]

Or someone starts saving things to a personal OneDrive that you can’t access.

I just hate it all 😂

 

[Advikaz]

Share point is surprisingly s**t i find

Sync issues
Sync delays
File path limits
Site size limits
Native ability to drive map 💩

Meh

 

[Louis]

We still have experimental reports on a onenote that was never transitioned.

 

[Donny_Dog]

 

[botfch]

The American overlords in work have come up with a list of words we can’t use in file names in case they cause offence.

Two of which are “slave” and “master”.

Two weeks ago all the servers, vm’s and file systems got renamed and none of them now work.

They’ve now decided it’s actually ok to offend people as it’s costing money so everything’s been changed back but it still doesn’t work.

 

[KitsonRis]

The American overlords in work have come up with a list of words we can’t use in file names in case they cause offence.

Two of which are “slave” and “master”.

Two weeks ago all the servers, vm’s and file systems got renamed and none of them now work.

They’ve now decided it’s actually ok to offend people as it’s costing money so everything’s been changed back but it still doesn’t work.

I remember having to do this back in 2020 when it all kicked off for all our code base and repositories. Couldn’t have slave, master, black lists, white lists. Still have some of the words kicking about which is apparently ok now.

And in a previous job we were the Image Analysis team so someone thought it was hilarious to shorten all folder names to “AnalImages” in shared directories.

 

[Ray Gin]

The American overlords in work have come up with a list of words we can’t use in file names in case they cause offence.

Two of which are “slave” and “master”.

Two weeks ago all the servers, vm’s and file systems got renamed and none of them now work.

They’ve now decided it’s actually ok to offend people as it’s costing money so everything’s been changed back but it still doesn’t work.

We’re not allowed to call transformers trannies anymore.

I wish i was joking 😂

 

[Krarl]

The American overlords in work have come up with a list of words we can’t use in file names in case they cause offence.

Two of which are “slave” and “master”.

Two weeks ago all the servers, vm’s and file systems got renamed and none of them now work.

They’ve now decided it’s actually ok to offend people as it’s costing money so everything’s been changed back but it still doesn’t work.

Go woke, go broke

Wait until they find out about mongoDb

 

[charltjr]

Ah yes, good old naming conventions.

Had a couple of servers at a previous place of work, ASMAB and ASMAC.

First one was short for “All Senior Managers Are b******s”

You can guess the other one yourself 😂

 

[charltjr]

Having the usual fun at my place.

We were bought about a year ago by a private equity shop and merged with a complimentary company in the same sector. Unusually, they don’t do the exact same stuff as us and the products mesh together nicely which will improve cross-sell. Actually a smart move for once!

That said, We’ve still gone through the usual 12 months of offshoring and cost cutting, and in the last all hands call they announced the grand strategy was to invest in the products to boost sales, and then sell us in 2 to 3 years time.

I know exactly what that means in reality. It means massive cost cutting, probably another wave or two of offshoring, and essentially tarting up the product without fixing any of the underlying issues while trying to cross sell across our new, larger, existing customer base.

It’s not something I want to be involved in. The constant stress of wondering if your neck is next on the chopping block plus the obvious reduction in quality that we’re going to get from having already got rid of almost all of our experienced developers. Also all the UK devs are already gone and they are really struggling to recruit offshore replacements meaning the team is down to only two thirds of the expected headcount. It’s basically been a clusterfuck. What a shock!

The morale in my customer success team is hideous. We’re starting to see people going off sick with stress and overwork, which is inevitably going to lead to people leaving. I just need to stick it out for one more year and I’ll be in a position to pay off the mortgage. I can then take whatever job I want as long as it pays a half decent wage and not worry, so frankly I’m in an extremely fortunate position as long as I can see out the next year while planning for my exit.

Fun times!

 

[Advikaz]

Having the usual fun at my place.

We were bought about a year ago by a private equity shop and merged with a complimentary company in the same sector. Unusually, they don’t do the exact same stuff as us and the products mesh together nicely which will improve cross-sell. Actually a smart move for once!

That said, We’ve still gone through the usual 12 months of offshoring and cost cutting, and in the last all hands call they announced the grand strategy was to invest in the products to boost sales, and then sell us in 2 to 3 years time.

I know exactly what that means in reality. It means massive cost cutting, probably another wave or two of offshoring, and essentially tarting up the product without fixing any of the underlying issues while trying to cross sell across our new, larger, existing customer base.

It’s not something I want to be involved in. The constant stress of wondering if your neck is next on the chopping block plus the obvious reduction in quality that we’re going to get from having already got rid of almost all of our experienced developers. Also all the UK devs are already gone and they are really struggling to recruit offshore replacements meaning the team is down to only two thirds of the expected headcount. It’s basically been a clusterfuck. What a shock!

The morale in my customer success team is hideous. We’re starting to see people going off sick with stress and overwork, which is inevitably going to lead to people leaving. I just need to stick it out for one more year and I’ll be in a position to pay off the mortgage. I can then take whatever job I want as long as it pays a half decent wage and not worry, so frankly I’m in an extremely fortunate position as long as I can see out the next year while planning for my exit.

Fun times!

My situation isn’t dissimilar to this.

Got purchased by a big American firm who’s grown hugely in the last few years. All extremely disjointed.
They didn’t have a ‘my team’ and only made three people redundant across the whole company in the merger.

But we are also owned by a large PE firm and the expectations boggle the mind.

I think we will get sold again in around 2 years or so. I’m not too concerned as I doubt I’ll be there then anyway, and I make the company more than pretty much any other single staff member.

There’s been positives and negatives. Everything is a mess and communication internally is horrific. However wages are improved and ability to ‘move up’ is definitely broader.

I’m not entirely miserable, but not all that happy either. If and when the job market improves, I may consider a move. Probably self employed tbh.

 

[Rob]

We’re not allowed to call transformers trannies anymore.

I wish i was joking 😂

In an attempt to stop you from trying to f**k them?

 

[Ray Gin]

In an attempt to stop you from trying to f**k them?

Probably not mate

 

[Donny_Dog]

You I.T losers worked from home during covid yeah?
You've claimed your £140? got until saturday (I think). Easy enough to do.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2025/04/covid-tax-relief/

 

[Donny_Dog]

How much are you using AI? Which ones? What for?

I was on the train to London last week and I socially engineered/stalked the woman sat at the table in front. Just by watching through the gap in the seat.
She was "head of process excellence" for a global drinks firm. A big role, I dare say. She spent 25% of her time on ChatGPT helping her construct emails to large audiences. Along with creating an agenda for a workshop.
It was the first time I'd seen someone use it (outside of I.T and mates, just for the laugh).

I find I use it to reaffirm learning. Stuff I've forgotten or partly known about. It cuts my Google time down.
I asked it to play the role of interviewer and provide a score/feedback after a mock interview. It actually helped me prep for a new role (I got it as well). And this really has accelerated my use of it now. It's amazing tbh.


I stick to chat gpt, but fancied giving Grok a try, pre-tarriff nonsense.
Just noticed WhatsApp has meta AI, but we didnt get off to a good start...

 

[charltjr]

It saved me hours today converting some gnarly database views from MySQL to PostgreSQL. Didn’t get everything right because it didn’t know the schemas but when I asked it to correct one example based on the schema it did it. Nothing I couldn’t have done myself with Google and time, but it was a great help.

Also used it to write me answers for the wanky questions on my last appraisal. Fed it the question and the values and behaviours from our mission statement shite and told it to generate me an example response. Perfect business bullshit every time.

 

[Matt Cup]

Our company is developing its own AI system which I presume is using some of Copilots AI tech rather than a ground up build. I won’t be using it though.

I just use Chat GPT for prompts and ideas on my yearly review as I’m not the best at embellishing things.

 

[hopgop1]

Has anyone ever setup on their own as a "consultant" (no idea if that's the correct word in this case) for smaller businesses that don't have their own dedicated IT staff? Or know how hard of a market that would be to crack, even just on a local level? Not trying to be a millionaire, just earn enough to sustain it as an only income.

I think I've decided that longer term I don't want to be stuck in the corporate ladder, my job is quite comfortable aside from the stressful periods, but I'm starting to really hate it, and I don't really see another way out without throwing my experience away. I think with some more skills on the networking side, I'd be able to cover most bases a small-medium business would need before they start hiring their own dedicated IT staff.

Would need to build up a decent savings pot anyway and even then see if it was possible to drop to working 3 days a week while I got things going, so not likely to be possible for a few years yet.

 

[Donny_Dog]

Missed your ask, for some reason.
I had my own consultancy and contractor gig 15+ years ago and it was hard then. So much so, diversified into reselling.

If you want the change and graft then being at an MSP does bring new challenges, chance to meet new folk and businesses/industries.
Its a far cry from being your own boss as a contractor though, as it still has employment security.

If you were interested in starting out as a gun for hire (presuming that's what you mean) just aim your contractor CV at areas you're strong at. Go for fixed term roles etc. I'd try not to be jack of all trades. Especially if you're weak on networking. Learn it yeah, but don't align your CV to it.

 

[Advikaz]

This one hit me right in the feels

 

[ChrisR]

Although seems stuff is coming back up after Cloudflare’s little whoopsie

 

[Oggy997]

We're two weeks away from deploying business Central in place of navision, and I'm trying to migrate the whole companies reporting into a saas environment too, so loads of oauth/rest config, using sharepoint/azure blob for storage (basic auth)

They've decided that now is also the time to migrate users to 365, with a helping hand of additional mfa security / conditional access being deployed.
They deployed these on a Friday, as you do.
So after recovering from all of that. I go to test some sales reporting that I've migrated....

One record. One f**king record in the test system

Get fucked.

 

[charltjr]

What the hell is going on with trying to recruit high-quality staff these days?

We’re following our usual tried and tested method. We get CVs submitted, we screen the CVs, we then do an introductory phone screening assessment, people who pass that come in for a full face-to-face interview and some technical tests.

Out of the five candidates we’ve interviewed over the last two weeks, four have absolutely crashed and burned on the technical tests despite their CVs and interviews stating that they had the relevant skills. Two absolutely crashed and burned in the interview as well, but since we had them in, we thought we may as well get them to do the tests.

We’re left witn one candidate who doesn’t meet all of our requirements but might be okay. This is from a pool of probably in excess of 100 CVs.

People who claim to have Linux and SQL experience really shouldn’t struggle with writing an extremely basic select query or with identifying simple Linux commands. I‘m talking “select <columns> from <table> where length of string less than seven“ here. I honestly don’t mind if people are missing those skills, we’re looking for diagnosticians who can really get a grip on nasty problems so the rest we can train, but don’t lie about your skills FFS.

What the hell is going on, are you guys finding the same thing? Is it that people are just now so reliant on Google and ChatGPT that nobody is actually learning any skills?

Anyway, if anybody knows of a decent candidate who wants a hybrid role (two days in the office) based in Bristol as a senior tech support analyst slide into my DMs. It’s genuinely a pretty good company to work for, a nice environment and good people. Fintech experience preferred, but the single most important things are they must be experienced and comfortable diagnosing and working on complex bespoke applications where you cannot simply google the answer.

 

[Oggy997]

Let me know pay banding, I could be interested.

Drop table customers ;

 

[Donny_Dog]

What the hell is going on with trying to recruit high-quality staff these days?

We’re following our usual tried and tested method. We get CVs submitted, we screen the CVs, we then do an introductory phone screening assessment, people who pass that come in for a full face-to-face interview and some technical tests.

Out of the five candidates we’ve interviewed over the last two weeks, four have absolutely crashed and burned on the technical tests despite their CVs and interviews stating that they had the relevant skills. Two absolutely crashed and burned in the interview as well, but since we had them in, we thought we may as well get them to do the tests.

We’re left witn one candidate who doesn’t meet all of our requirements but might be okay. This is from a pool of probably in excess of 100 CVs.

People who claim to have Linux and SQL experience really shouldn’t struggle with writing an extremely basic select query or with identifying simple Linux commands. I‘m talking “select <columns> from <table> where length of string less than seven“ here. I honestly don’t mind if people are missing those skills, we’re looking for diagnosticians who can really get a grip on nasty problems so the rest we can train, but don’t lie about your skills FFS.

What the hell is going on, are you guys finding the same thing? Is it that people are just now so reliant on Google and ChatGPT that nobody is actually learning any skills?

Anyway, if anybody knows of a decent candidate who wants a hybrid role (two days in the office) based in Bristol as a senior tech support analyst slide into my DMs. It’s genuinely a pretty good company to work for, a nice environment and good people. Fintech experience preferred, but the single most important things are they must be experienced and comfortable diagnosing and working on complex bespoke applications where you cannot simply google the answer.

Recruitment in tech is hard work nowadays. It was bad, around the time of "computeach" and every other whiffer offering training to this degree for road workers and cleaners.

But I totally concur that today, recruitment is a bind. I place massive emphasis on retaining what we have, despite bean counters thinking there are many people waiting behind the one that are in post.

Most, if not all private sector benefits have levelled out. People won't necessarily want to move for £5k. After tax, it's f**k all when you're a middle earner. What's the point.
So there is a constant soup of half-wits, failures and chancers floating in the linkedin sea. The good ones are rare diamonds in the rough and when you can catch one, you try your hardest to keep them.

 

[charltjr]

Circa £40k depending on experience. Pension contributions matched up to 5%, private healthcare, usual ”bolt on” salary sacrifice benefits if you want them (dental, various other insurances, cycle to work, car through Tusker)

 

[Advikaz]

Few things in the mix

There’s not a lot of jobs around (cheers Labour) so the market is flooded, people just applying for everything and everything.

Many are writing cv’s with ai and they don’t make any sense.

Most of the people I meet are really poor communicators and genuinely poor candidates in general.

It’s hard I think for recruiters (who are also generally s**t) to cut through the crap.

It’s a double whammy as the good candidates are often lost in a sea of cv’s. And a good cv means absolutely nothing.

 

[charltjr]

Recruitment in tech is hard work nowadays. It was bad, around the time of "computeach" and every other whiffer offering training to this degree for road workers and cleaners.

But I totally concur that today, recruitment is a bind. I place massive emphasis on retaining what we have, despite bean counters thinking there are many people waiting behind the one that are in post.

Most, if not all private sector benefits have levelled out. People won't necessarily want to move for £5k. After tax, it's f**k all when you're a middle earner. What's the point.
So there is a constant soup of half-wits, failures and chancers floating in the linkedin sea. The good ones are rare diamonds in the rough and when you can catch one, you try your hardest to keep them.

Totally agree, we have really good staff retention. We’re just coming out of the other side of a messy takeover and merger, but a merger which was actually sensible in that it wasn’t just merging with a direct competitor and then cutting everything. In our case they merged us with a complementary business which has given us huge cross-sell potential. Crazy idea 😂

It’s obviously still been rocky, but coming out the other side now.

 

[Advikaz]

Recruitment in tech is hard work nowadays. It was bad, around the time of "computeach" and every other whiffer offering training to this degree for road workers and cleaners.

But I totally concur that today, recruitment is a bind. I place massive emphasis on retaining what we have, despite bean counters thinking there are many people waiting behind the one that are in post.

Most, if not all private sector benefits have levelled out. People won't necessarily want to move for £5k. After tax, it's f**k all when you're a middle earner. What's the point.
So there is a constant soup of half-wits, failures and chancers floating in the linkedin sea. The good ones are rare diamonds in the rough and when you can catch one, you try your hardest to keep them.

It’s funny how many recruiters who still can’t fathom why I won’t go to London for another 10k a year ? 😂😂😂😅😅😅

f**king train ticket costs more than that. Plus there’s the stress of it all.

If we were talking another 50-60k a year then maybe it’s worth it. But you get ass raped by tax.

 

[Advikaz]

Totally agree, we have really good staff retention. We’re just coming out of the other side of a messy takeover and merger, but a merger which was actually sensible in that it wasn’t just merging with a direct competitor and then cutting everything. In our case they merged us with a complementary business which has given us huge cross-sell potential. Crazy idea 😂

It’s obviously still been rocky, but coming out the other side now.

Funnily enough we’ve just done a merger and started another one.

Fun….

 

[botfch]

A lot are using ai to answer questions during initial teams interviews as well, we’ve recently moved to face to face interviews only now.

 

[charltjr]

A lot are using ai to answer questions during initial teams interviews as well, we’ve recently moved to face to face interviews only now.

Do NOT get me started. We have an offshore unit in Bangalore and they are totally incapable of stopping the candidates gen-AI-ing their way through the assessments. It makes it impossible.

We’ve had to deploy a tool now, hackerrank I think it is, which monitors for everything like that. Tests forced to fullscreen, if you move out of the window it’s flagged for cheating etc. It’s really good, is definitely catching people out.

 

[KitsonRis]

Or when you get asked to look at CVs, recommend they don’t get through but the recruiter says “yeah we will have them”….but I found out they left their first grad scheme less than a year as it turns out they were let go due to performance problems and you want to employ them? Ok then.

Half the problem is the younger candidates are just work shy.
“You need to get this done, get in the office and sort it and if it’s not done then come in every day until it is sorted”
“But it’s my working from home day, I can’t come in”
Get fucked.

 

[Krarl]

What the hell is going on with trying to recruit high-quality staff these days?

We’re following our usual tried and tested method. We get CVs submitted, we screen the CVs, we then do an introductory phone screening assessment, people who pass that come in for a full face-to-face interview and some technical tests.

Out of the five candidates we’ve interviewed over the last two weeks, four have absolutely crashed and burned on the technical tests despite their CVs and interviews stating that they had the relevant skills. Two absolutely crashed and burned in the interview as well, but since we had them in, we thought we may as well get them to do the tests.

We’re left witn one candidate who doesn’t meet all of our requirements but might be okay. This is from a pool of probably in excess of 100 CVs.

People who claim to have Linux and SQL experience really shouldn’t struggle with writing an extremely basic select query or with identifying simple Linux commands. I‘m talking “select <columns> from <table> where length of string less than seven“ here. I honestly don’t mind if people are missing those skills, we’re looking for diagnosticians who can really get a grip on nasty problems so the rest we can train, but don’t lie about your skills FFS.

What the hell is going on, are you guys finding the same thing? Is it that people are just now so reliant on Google and ChatGPT that nobody is actually learning any skills?

Anyway, if anybody knows of a decent candidate who wants a hybrid role (two days in the office) based in Bristol as a senior tech support analyst slide into my DMs. It’s genuinely a pretty good company to work for, a nice environment and good people. Fintech experience preferred, but the single most important things are they must be experienced and comfortable diagnosing and working on complex bespoke applications where you cannot simply google the answer.

3 people in my team are currently being made redundant, 1 of them has an abundance of Linux and SQL experience

The issue with that is that he smells like someone is dying and he sweats chipfat. I'd have said send me a link so he can apply, but I don't want to impart that on anyone I may meet

Most people with that experience that aren't in employment are absolute dog shite and there's always a catch

 

[Advikaz]

Or when you get asked to look at CVs, recommend they don’t get through but the recruiter says “yeah we will have them”….but I found out they left their first grad scheme less than a year as it turns out they were let go due to performance problems and you want to employ them? Ok then.

Half the problem is the younger candidates are just work shy.
“You need to get this done, get in the office and sort it and if it’s not done then come in every day until it is sorted”
“But it’s my working from home day, I can’t come in”
Get fucked.

The generations below are fucked tbh.

Most of them are completely useless.

Uni grads are the worst.

 

[botfch]

The generations below are fucked tbh.

Most of them are completely useless.

Uni grads are the worst.

Our latest placement student pretty much said he can’t do anything without using ai.

That said I hope we offer him a job tho because unlike the rest of them he’s decent bloke and doesn’t start crying if the phone rings.

 

[Oggy997]

3 people in my team are currently being made redundant, 1 of them has an abundance of Linux and SQL experience

The issue with that is that he smells like someone is dying and he sweats chipfat. I'd have said send me a link so he can apply, but I don't want to impart that on anyone I may meet

Most people with that experience that aren't in employment are absolute dog shite and there's always a catch

I didn't think I was swearing that bad tbh bud

 

[KitsonRis]

The generations below are fucked tbh.

Most of them are completely useless.

Uni grads are the worst.

I was a grad once, I want to say I wasn’t useless. But finding a non useless grad is impossible. I did a year in industry before going to uni and then worked there every summer at uni so I had some form of working experience.

@botfch how did the placement student expect to make the tea and coffee with AI?

 

[Advikaz]

I was a grad once, I want to say I wasn’t useless. But finding a non useless grad is impossible. I did a year in industry before going to uni and then worked there every summer at uni so I had some form of working experience.

@botfch how did the placement student expect to make the tea and coffee with AI?

Once upon a time a uni degree was worth something. These days (as it stands) they’re not. 99% of them.

Taught out of books that are 20 years out of date, by lecturers that if they were that good they’d be earning 100’s of K doing it themselves.

The whole uni thing has been devalued, people just want experience now. And reading out of a book doesn’t give you that. You’d be better of starting on the service desk and getting paid and learning.

All it appears to give the current crop is a tonne of debt and a misplaced sense of entitlement. They still start at the bottom anyway. Just with a shed load of debt around their ears and a few sexually transmitted diseases/liver damage.