Fancy a Career move . . . ?

[parametric]

This just in via my contact at NI . . . . .

We are recruiting for our R&D team in the Native Instruments London office: 3 x C++ Engineer, Agile QA and Senior Scrum Master / Agile Lead.

native-instruments.com/en/career-center/london/

I KNOW we have some clever people in here . . (down amongst the bits and the bytes) - so might be of interest . . . .

DOUBTLESS - there will be staff-discount on PRODUCT to be had too

parametric

[Derek]

Could be an interesting prospect, but “nah” to London!

[SysExJohn]

Looked interesting ... initially but, like Derek, "Nah!" to London, I've wasted enough of my lifetime commuting to that place.

Then I had to look up what a "scrum manager" was and so on.
What the hell does Native Instruments have to do with the game of rugby, I thought.

I'm so out of touch with the world of business these days ... and, anyway, who wants a depressed, grumpy old fart as a work colleague?

[Saul]

Well Sasha could do the Scrum Manager/Agile bit but C++ is out and anyway she also has had enough of commuting into London. However this is a job that could mostly be done remotely. The Scrum Manager bit is really another term for Project Manager which is mostly paperwork so maybe a couple of days in the office would work.

[parametric]

I would have thought so too, Saul . . . .

Perhaps a once a week visit to HQ would be enough?

Surely video-conferencing has been a reality for some time - and think of all the Air-Miles-pollution that would be saved,

flying hither and yon' for "meetings" . . . .

Downside would be that there would be no Retaurants to wave that expense account at, and no one to have lunch with -

if you are working from home . . .

Chris

[EX5_etc]

Could be an interesting prospect, but “nah” to London!

Why, what's wrong with London? Too much smog?

DrF

(ps. To answer Saul request from a few days ago: I do receive emails about threads I may have posted on or started but not that many.)

[Derek]

Wales? London? No Contest!

[SysExJohn]

Why, what's wrong with London? Too much smog?

No, but exhaust fumes are pretty awful. Choking around King's Cross, pretty bad all the way along Euston Road.
I just don't want to waste 3 hours or so a day pressed up against a proportion of the great unwashed, having garlic breath or cigarette fumes blown in my face any more.
Part of one of my journeys for a few years back was Finsbury Park to Moorgate. So full there was never a seat, and so packed there wasn't even room to put a briefcase on the floor between people's feet.
Driving in as an alternative was a nightmare, and finding somewhere to park was horrendous, not to mention expensive.

There's got to be more to life than that, hasn't there?

[Derek]

Spend a day in London, and then blow your nose and see what comes out into your handkerchief.....

I spend a lot of time on business in Farnborough area (just outside of London) and it reminds me why I live where I live. My Farnborough colleagues ask me how long it takes to get there. I say “ 5 hours”. They say “gosh, you must hate that? “ I reply “I come down here twice a month [on average]. Over the course of a month, I probably spend less of my time in a car than you..... And I get paid for my travelling to get here in work’s time, not my own. My home to journey time in Wales is 7 mins by car, 20-30 mins if I cycle depending on the wind!.

Green and pleasant land (which means it rains a little)? Check!
View of the sea from my Garden? Check!
Excellent quality of life? Check!
Etc, etc.

[Saul]

I spent 9 years of my life dispatch riding around London and I remember when I would get home my face looked like I had been working down a coal mine. The pollution was awful back then and I am talking 30 years ago. I can only imagine what its like now!

Sasha did nearly three years commuting into London and that was more than enough for her. The commute was around 45 minutes each way by train but there was hardly ever a seat and it was the worst line in the country (Southern Rail) so trains either didn't run on time or didn't run at all. Often she would get into work ok but coming home there would be hold ups because there was no train driver available, there were problems on the line or they were on strike. Bloody nightmare and she had to pay £450 a month for the privilege.

Now we live 15 miles from the coast and work from home. Just makes so much more sense and our quality of life has improved immeasurably

[parametric]

completely agree.

I commuted to EC1V for 28 Years - and now try and stay away from London as much as I can . . . . . Gigs and Concerts excepted.

I don't GET the fascination - unless it's the availability of somewhere different to go for lunch each day?

The TORTURE of commuting seems a high price to pay IMO.

I think there ought to be tax-breaks for firms to move out of London . . . .

LEAVE London for the residents and TOURISTS . . .

The Tubes and Buses would then easily cope with the reduced load WITHOUT huge investment . . . .

It's time the NONSENSE of getting 3 million people to their desks by 9am every day was laid to rest . . .

Has NO ONE heard of video-conferencing (If you really Must)

(Just my opinion - of course)

parametric

[Saul]

Yeah it's funny but I remember many years ago all the talk was of the paperless office and video conferencing and THAT was before we even thad the proper tech to do it all with. These days it is so easy to talk to people face to face via Skype or some other video chat service. I do it with the REVO1 guys in Canada and it works really well, even with the time difference. So there is no need at all for many people to go anywhere near their office.

The real crux of the matter is businesses are still stuck in the last century. They think that as they are paying you then you should be at a desk in an office every day. Even though a lot of people carry on their day to day work via mobile phone, answering texts, emails and calls. In effect we HAVE mobile offices so WHY are people still forced to go through this charade of commuting and being in the office by 8-9am every morning?

I can work from anywhere in the world where there is a half decent internet connection and/or mobile signal and I am pretty sure a large percentage of the worlds working population could do the same thing. Surely we need to move on and embrace a new work/life balance?

[parametric]

Ok . . .

I probably forgot to emphasise the fact that in MY particular situation in Tech Support, I really actually NEEDED to be there,

"on-site" to solve problems - swap out faulty modules etc, so it was often PHYSICAL in nature -

which can't really be done remotely.

As schedules, particularly in a recording environment tend to be TIGHT - it was preferred that my "problem-solving"

would take minutes from a 3-hour session, rather than hours - or "Sometime tomorrow"

Nevertheless, If those that could work remotely were "not around" - my commute would have been more pleasant . . .

(he said, selfishly . . )

parametric

[SysExJohn]

My observation is that some managers don't feel like managers unless they have their staff assembled around them.

Others measure their 'level of importance' by thenumber of staff they can show other managaers they 'own'.
(And many do think in terms of 'ownership'.)

Yet others don't believe you're working unless they can see you're working, with some reason, because some employees, allowed to work from home, simply can't manage their time, or feel it's a licence to 'skive off'. And I've seen of few of those who can't even keep their minds on the job when they're actually sitting at the desk at work.

Now if everybody could be trusted to put in the time, matters might change.

I do remember a very successful homeworking group called, as far as I remember, F International (or something like that), made up entirely of women programmers who had taken maternity leave. (we're going back to the early to mid '70s.) They were an incredibly effective software creation force within the now non-existent International Computers Ltd. (ICL) for whom I wasted 20 years of my life in a so-called 'career'.

Bitter? Me? You bet your bloomin' life I am!

For more than a year I used to commute from Peacehaven in East Sussex (where I was 'redeployed' to to work on a project which ran into trouble) into the ICL building on Euston Road near the old Capital Towers. Left home around 6:30 to arrive, if all went well, around 9:00.
I'll leave you to guess whether things often went well.
Journey home? Well, Saul's already talked about Southern Region.

Like Chris, doing support meant actually 'being there' and often going from the Euston office to London based customers to fix problems.

Commuting into London? Nah! Mug's game.

[EX5_etc]

I had no idea that life in London could be that bad. But then it's a big city and not much different than other big cities in Europe or the USA or Asia.

When I lived near Los Angeles there was a time that lasted a little over a year when I was stuck in traffic for hours, if I made the mistake to miscalculate my routes or if there was an accident or for whatever reason. Four lanes in one direction, plus the fast lane for green cars, filled with cars, forming 5-mile long lines, traveling bumper to bumper at the amazing speed of 0 to 3 mph or so. That would last for a couple of hours frequently. Until I moved to a different area and changed my schedule.

Then I moved near Pittsburgh and found out that they have a traffic problem too. Way too many cars, very small roads, closing of lanes for repairs during weekends at noon when a lot of people go out for shopping, etc.

Now I live in a village and only visit Pittsburgh once every 5-6 weeks. It does make a difference.

Somehow, somewhere, we made a mistake in the way we developed our civilization. And I don't see it corrected any time soon.

Regards,
DrF