Tuesday 4 December 2012

New Company Culture... be Obstructive


It is a new world we live in, with new rules and new concepts... Here's a concept for you... I mentioned a few weeks ago I was working on the Raspberry Pi at work...

Well, that work is near completion, so I went to ask "Where are the Pi's belonging to the company?"... Since we've been working exclusively on hardware I bought and brought in, I thought it a little strange we've still not seen any actual kit belonging to the company.

And the answers I got, from two different individuals, begger belief... First I was told... "We're not ordering anything until its all proven they can work"... They do work, and the Raspberry Pi use is only a stop gap measure whilst the real hardware team work on things, but we need to do a demo of this for a trade show in February and the real hardware will not be ready until June, so the idea was to use the Pi and get proof of concept and demo done...

Well, the proof of concept is ready, we just need real company Pi's to run it on for the demo... I point this out.



"Well, we can't just order them, they have weeks and weeks lead time on RS & Farnell".... he is right, they do... "so we've not bothered to order them yet, until the lead time gets shorter"... The logic of this one started to make me boil.  They take a lot of time to deliver, so we won't order until the time to wait is shorter... so rather than wait and get that time over with so they turn up soon ish, they're waiting to wait for their wait... and then ordering them whilst not waiting... the logic... just... makes me cry... Order the things now, get them in the pipeline, then IF we can't get them before January 14th, hit ebay.

Or, better yet, order them from ebay sellers (like I have personally) now and get them next week (like I did and my boss did and the head if IT did and the hardware department did)... No, we can't use a company credit card on ebay... You don't you tard, you use the credit card with PayPal, which is safer than you're clearly aware of with your "t'internet is too new" attitude.  Get with the times, order the things on ebay... No...

Right, I'll order them, and the company can give me the money back as petty cash, or in my next pay day... "No because"... get ready for it... he actually said this... "no because that looks like the company is buying you special toys".

Special Toys... And buying Me...?... So, I bought something the company needs, which I already own and hence don't actually need any more of, and then I charge the company for the equipment it will own and he says it looks like the company buying me toys.

So, at this point, I went to ask a higher power... A director no less... His attitude...

1. We can't buy them until you prove their purpose
2. We shouldn't be using your personal ones
3. We can't buy off of ebay.

So... I'll just delete all this work then, put a hammer through my own personal Pi and wait for Farnell or RS, with the huge long lead times?

And, this whole they won't pay for things on ebay... I bought a book, £45 worth... It proved so useful the company simply took the receipt and paid me the difference back in my wage packet... WHAT IS DIFFERENT BETWEEN THAT AND MY BUYING THESE PI'S AND CHARGING IT BACK?

I swear to god, when you're bringing into your work better tech than they purchase and you are offering every possible avenue to not block work and progress, and all you get is slogging messy stupid obstructive attitudes it really sucks the life out of your efforts.

I have just had a massive rant about this situation to my manager, his answer... go and tell the original idiot I was ranting... Not tell him why, not empathise with my frustration, or even just tell me to calm down, no, his answer was... "haha, he's ranting"...



It is all so tiresome... If I just didn't bother, NOTHING would get done around here... and with NOTHING getting done, I'd be the first fired, this is the irony of it all.

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