Ten-year work anniversary on a Sunday

Yesterday marked my ten-year work anniversary. It was quite the unexpected milestone.

I used to be the person who held a job for two to three years. At this company, there have been many ups and downs that I have experienced and that I continue to endure. I am still kicking around.

I feel that I have stayed on for this long because my role seems to change every year or two. I also have established myself as a competent, reliable employee that I'm comfortable and my manager feels the same way about me. I also continue to pick up new skills and my job is still interesting to me.

Reaching this mark makes me look forward to a week more of vacation.

Interviewing skills and conversation

Last Thursday, my manager and I had an interview with a prospective intern. He is from my alma mater, which is a first.

He was polite and knowledgeable. My manager conducted the first half of the interview, as he had to leave to attend a meeting. I took over after that.

I like honing my interviewing skills. I don't like firing question after question, or going into a huge soliloquy. I'd rather have a conversation, which made it more comfortable for both of us.

When I asked if he had any questions towards the end of our time together, he truly opened up. I like when folks are comfortable with me, and vice-versa.

His writing and editing skills are superb. He'll do just fine.

He accepted the offer. I look forward to working with him soon.

Everyone's needs are so important... NOT!

I do not understand why folks at my workplace think that their needs are so important that they need to hunt me down in a room as I am training.

It happened last week with a software tester. The question could have waited. I told him that I was training and that I would have preferred an e-mail. Clearly, I had my student with me in the room that he barged into. Still, he came over and we talked about it, interrupting my class.

Yesterday, it was the peer who recently joined my team. I was training and she came knocking with her questions. She expected me to drop everything. I had to say that she was training, which meant nothing to her. On top of all of it, I told her that she needs to work on her communication skills. Her e-mail was highly confusing and talking to her confuses me even more every single time.

I hope that tomorrow is a better day. I feel like I need to hide away.

Last day for the incompetent employee

Wednesday was the day. The incompetent employee, who has been with us for over four months, was let go.

She was kind to send me an e-mail that it was her last day. She wants us to stay in touch. That's cool. She also let me know what she was working on. I wish she had done that more often while she was with us. Better late than never, as they say.

She's a sweet person. She just has learning issues and is not suitable for this position. My employer is going through cuts. Naturally, those who are not pulling their weight get let go first.

My manager says that I am safe. I have been on both sides of this fine coin. I tend to bounce back because my skill set is decent. I continue to learn to strengthen my skills.

I hope that she finds a job soon.

Incompetent colleagues

I work with a few bad apples. Otherwise, things are good at work.

First, there is a person who is older than I am. He is also a team lead like I am. He is highly incompetent. He didn't do his job on a straightforward task. It was to the point where I actually knew more about what he was supposed to do than he did. I don't even work in that area these days. I have dabbled in it in the past.

He blamed getting the information "at the last minute." I corrected him by saying that communication wasn't there between he and his teammates. Additionally, if he is going to write something that he is unclear about, he needs to ask.

Then, there's my incompetent colleague whom is supposed to take over some of my job responsibilities and isn't even close. She was asked by someone to provide status in an e-mail initially. This woman then pinged her on our corporate instant messaging app. The newish incompetent colleague ignored responding to both methods, as I had expected.

I asked her to write back. She said that she would do so "with [my] exact wording." I told her that she needs to think for herself. I'll need to have yet another talk with her. She is unfit for this position.

Finally, there is this woman who pinged my incompetent colleague. She assumed that our work needed to be done today. I asked her politely whether the deadline had changed. My team completes our work at least a day before the deadline, which would make it Thursday and not her made-up deadline of Wednesday. Luckily, the manager who is in charge happens to know how my team ticks and he is actually our manager. He said that we could take our time and that the deadline was indeed Thursday.

Ah, the joys of dealing with people who need help doing their jobs at the most basic level.

Issues with the new employee continue

I haven't talked about the new employee for a bit. She is definitely the most challenging person to understand. This post explores a lot of my thoughts that I have shared with various folks for the past month.

We have a new authoring tool that most of our team has been gearing up to move to. I have said to this person that she is not ready. She doesn't have the basics down with our current authoring tool. My team consisting of this woman and two students are staying on our current tool.

She is stubborn and adamant to learn the new tool. Her reasoning, according to what she told my two students, is that there isn't a relationship between the two authoring tools. Um, that's because you don't understand the existing tool well enough to see that your transition to the new one will be difficult if you don't have a decent foundation on how things work.

Before the Christmas holidays, I had instructions for my two students to look at the training materials on the new tool. I specifically told the new employee that she wasn't ready and to focus on learning our current tool. What does she do? She watched one of the videos on the new tool.

She has raised a number of red flags in my eyes. The first one occurred during her third interview (it was my second one with her) where she said that she was a "slow learner." I brought that up to my manager, but he dismissed it. He thought that the extra time she spends after work to learn would make her catch up.

I was right. Hiring a slow learning in an IT field is bad.

She has been with the company for over two months. She cannot grasp simple things like knowing that the entire team is away on an all-employee meeting, which means that the team will not respond to her e-mails. She couldn't attend because she had a medical appointment that day and worked from home. Yet, she constantly sent out e-mails and even texted one of my students over work when she got to this offsite meeting that was not urgent. She does not take into consideration whether folks are physically able to respond to her e-mails. She is only thinking about herself.

Most of our department has to do a test that grants you access to this new tool, but for the production (live) environment. I said to this new employee that her main focus is to get up to speed with work so that she takes over one of my documentation software release duties. Her deadline is later than everyone else's to do this test. My manager made the same comment in a departmental meeting last Thursday.

What does she do? The following day, she takes this test. She hasn't gone through all the training materials or videos. She just did the test over and over again (you select either one answer or some combination) until she passed it.

I was annoyed. I told her so on Monday. The fact that she just asked for access to the test environment and was absolutely afraid to even log on was a joke. Now, she has access to a production environment where she could mess up everything with her current "knowledge" that she allegedly proved to possess on this test.

I told her she put the cart before the horse.. How meaningful are the answers that she memorized to ultimately pass this test? Not all that meaningful at this stage.

She doesn't listen. She has difficulty comprehending simple concepts. Yet, she does whatever she feels like.

She pointed out that she's not a linear learner. Yep, it shows. She is all over the map to the point where none of us truly knows what she is thinking. She has no sound judgment about much.

I had a talk with my manager on Monday night. I told him that my students and I have been drilling her with exercises and explaining concepts in multiple different ways. It is the plan that he first devised. It doesn't appear to be helping. I levelled with him and said that she wasn't a fit for this job. He nodded.

The problem is that the company is under a hiring freeze. We let her go and I am back to doing everything. I personally don't want her becoming a permanent employee at this company. She is not pulling her weight. I don't always want to be saving the day because we can't get another employee to fill the void.

On Tuesday, my manager wrote an e-mail to her and copied me. It was a snowday. He basically reinforced that she needs to work on understanding concepts and her job. All of us have noticed that she is great at memorizing, but does not understand what she is spewing out. She doesn't have critical thinking skills. She can't think for herself.

I had this chat with my guy when we were in the States. He agrees that it's probably better to get rid of her than having her pull down everyone.

The current plan is to have my students work with her on simulating a documentation release. We are assessing how she will do within the next two weeks. I have a feeling that she will be at the level that she is currently at -- slow and incompetent.

She's a nice person. She's just not suitable for this job.

New job opportunity closer to home

I haven't been actively looking for a new job these days. Often, recruiters will contact me.

It happened again. A recruiter contacted me through e-mail. This time, it's for a position that targets a few skills from my past. I also get complete control of how I want my department to grow.

More importantly, this company is located in the same city in which I reside. It would take me fifteen minutes to get to work.

Should I get this position, I wouldn't have to commute on a toll highway for nearly an hour. Wow!

I decided to go ahead with submitting my resume. I have a phone interview on Monday. I need to find past and present samples of my work.

I'm optimistic. A change may be what I need these days.

Drama with the new diva

The new writer, who is supposed to be seasoned, is causing quite a bit of drama. She's a diva.

On Monday, her desk didn't have a chair. Instead of looking for one, she decided to sit at another desk in a different area.

In our office, we have various neighbourhoods. You belong a specific neighbourhood. She went into a completely different one. The manager there had to ask my manager who she was.

She has since sat there all week. She didn't tell anyone why until my manager asked her. He figured out that she had moved due to her chair disappearing.

He told her that he got a chair. She didn't move back. She then cited that it was dark over in our area and she needs natural light.

Then, there is the review process. I have told her that her work goes through a peer review first (me) before it goes to a technical person. She doesn't seem to get it. I have gone through this procedure numerous times.

My manager has told me that he is seriously considering canning her. I told him last week that she's not the right fit for us. The burden will hit me yet again. Instead of doing what I need to do, I will probably continue to do development work.

This new writer is actually causing more grief than needed. She disappears for a couple of hours each day and has dragged a number of folks to join her.

Tomorrow is a new day. Let's see what happens.

Passed the first stage of my interview... yay!

This post is an update on trying my hand at applying for a new job and being the interviewee. I haven't been in this position for over seven years.

On Thursday afternoon, I had a phone interview. I was notified of it on Wednesday. The agency representing me is pretty thorough. The resource manager taking care of me let me know what questions were going to be posed. What I didn't have any time to do was to send my answers to him. Work is busy to begin with. The last thing I feel like when I am at home is to write bucketed answers to questions.

I felt good during the interview. The hiring manager flat out told me that he wanted me back for a second interview. My resource manager told me that this company rarely tells candidates about coming back for a second interview. Normally, the hiring manager thinks about it for a day. Sweet!

The hiring manager felt that my skills were a perfect fit and told me that he liked how confident I was.

It was a good day.