Nice people thread part 3- Nice as pie

PasturesNew

fc123 wrote: »

I have lots of news (good news) but am not coping with it all very well.....I think I only cope when facing adversity and monumental obstacles (I also think I have used the wrong words but you get the jist ) and it has cumulated into 100% creative block......which is A Very Bad Thing for my brain to have right now considering what is going down.

Failure is easy to cope with; we expect it, we've had it.
Success is scarey - because then you have to meet the expectations of others

fc123 wrote: »

...the P Up has made everything mental. It has changed everything and I should be excited but I am just terrified now.

You've reached that age, when you really want a cardigan ... and why oh why didn't the P opportunity come along 20 years ago

It's natural to be scared of everything. That's why people invented the internet, so we can all be scared together and hide from the real world

PasturesNew

Re GCHQ - the answer to their recruitment/retention issue is obvious.... they're trying to attract the wrong people. If they recruited people who were 50+ they'd not be bothered to move elsewhere. And these days there must be plenty of 50+ people beavering away and not even touched by the GCHQ recruitment drives, which are probably done at Uni Jobs Fairs.

They could even take some old C# and COBOL type programmers and put them on an intensive updating course for 3 months... I bet there are loads on the dole that'd be up to the job... but they don't fit the tick boxes.

lostinrates

so FC needs to be made feel grim to work well?

hmm, the question is do we help with that?

PasturesNew

I'm still plugging away at what I do... populating a database... that's now had a bunch of updates sent to me that I need to implement (across 3 sites) ... and then, just now, some updates to the updates. No instructions/clues... it's a good job I'm vaguely confident I can make up what to do and probably be right.

But, things seem to have reached some tipping point. Traffic's high, stuff's good.... income's flying. But, still living day by day, waking up every morning and wondering if today will be the day the goose that lays the golden egg has died in the night....

michaels

Hmm - FC I think you need to think seriously not about the day-2-day stuff but the 'what do I want stuff' - I am guessing that the reason you do it is the enjoyment of designing and seeing your stuff look good on people rather than any desire for world domination (I may be all wring here). So the question is how can you secure a long term future doing what you want - do you run with all the opportunities available now to try and get yourself in to a secure position that will let you carry on designing even if not everything is successful (in which case I suggest you 'farm out' some of the managing stuff) or do you deliberately throttle back and keep to a scale where you can manage everything yourself and keep full hands on control but then risk being in trouble after one bad line. I don't know what the answer is but I suspect in the middle of the whirlwind it is very hard to get that perspective - would it be a disaster if you took a week off, visited a nice island and had a good mull?

michaels

I'm not sure you are right PN - I am sure the majority of jobs there are for uber-geeks but there is no doubt also a roll to manage, direct and think the slightly bigger picture thoughts that are above the code level which I suspect you would be very good at.

michaels

It is interesting how resistant people become to change - our neighbour was very against our extension as it would reduce his view from one window and his daughters' thinking of their inheritance seemed to worry that it would lower the value of his property. However in reality everyone who buys on the street wants to extend and so setting a precedent blocking extensions would actually have been much more detrimental.

More localism would also have blocked a controversial project recently that was eventually approved on appeal where the wider community almost certainly gain a little but a small minority of locals are adversely affected - it will be interesting to see how it pans out.

lostinrates wrote: »

Possibly into areas where neighbours realise oif they block down the road's plan, down the road will block theirs.

e.g. here, other people have suggestted we do a part of our plan. We hadn't said it was what we wanted to do, we've let everyone else think its their idea. None of my neighbours are anything but enthusiastic...helped because one has an application of their own they came to run by us, and all the others have ''potential''.

In my area if the choice were down to neighbours alone it would be crazy to block anything that was not a genuine infringment of your property/life and there is a huge potential for bungalow gobbling. ATM outside the very, very pretty vilage there are tiny post war bungalows on HUGE plots, where as their are, in the next village, huge houses on ridiculously tiny plots. Neither particularly benefit the area aesthetically, but the big plots could take bigger/more housing and still be vastly superior. There are maybe four of these bungalows....each would be mad to forbid it on others be cause they are far enough apart for it to make very little difference to them and it would increase options for themselves. New housing cxould better ''fit into'' surroundings and/or be eco friendly/cheap to run. Under current planning there is no option for development their, I think its likely our neighbour hood would on balance see it as a good thing to have some development there.

PasturesNew

michaels wrote: »

I'm not sure you are right PN - I am sure the majority of jobs there are for uber-geeks but there is no doubt also a roll to manage, direct and think the slightly bigger picture thoughts that are above the code level which I suspect you would be very good at.

But I'd not get in there either. I've no experience within the industry, nor with their technologies, nor any management (people) experience whatsoever.

And stuff like that is vital tick boxing to get in.... I am just d4mned good at what I do, but what I do isn't what they need/want/do.

It's a bit like telling a bank manager of 10 years that they'd be great at a job managing an amusement arcade because they're both money related

LydiaJ

I suspect that PN may be right, and that the stuff she is good at is not quite what GCHQ want people to do for them. I think her bank/amusement arcade analogy is probably spot on. Although I have slightly more faith than she does that they would be open to employing somebody with a non-standard career path if they happened to have the right skills.

PN, if your fairy godmother could wave her wand and make an ideal employer knock at your door with a job offer tomorrow, what would the offer be?

PasturesNew

LydiaJ wrote: »

PN, if your fairy godmother could wave her wand and make an ideal employer knock at your door with a job offer tomorrow, what would the offer be?

I don't know. Work hours really chew up your whole life. There are so few days off. I'm really enjoying my 'break' after more than 30 years of getting up early, not getting home until it's dark, turning out in the dark in the mornings in the freezing cold and rain .... it's horrid.



I never had anybody to come home to, so it was always coming home to a cold/dark house, to cook/eat dinner for one. I need more daytime freedom, to see the sun, than a job gave me.