RSSI am tired and not satisfied…
Apr 16
Rubbish, Work office politics, rant, Work 4 Comments
I have just came out from a long OTy[1] weekend, and when I said long I meant a 19-hour rally with 3 hours of sleep. All because the project I am with has once again been selected for a security audit and an internal audit will be conducted today.
The unplanned rally is caused by the short notice given to the project and the not-so-good state of our security documentation. Before somebody starts that it is our fault for not updating the security docs as we go along then please give us a charge number for that kind of work before you start pointing fingers. In typical corporate wheedling and cajoling, they (meaning the powers that be, or the power trippers as i call them) say that these should be part of the “continuous improvement” (CI) budget of the project. REALITY CHECK: WHAT CI BUDGET? We are on a fixed time arrangement with the client and just trying telling the client that “we would allocate a portion of the time you bought to spend on security work that is not part of the contract you signed, and thank you for understanding.”. Couple this with the fact that we are running overbudget for the things that the client actually paid for! It doesn’t take a super sleuth to figure out that we are between a hard rock and a PHB.
To make matters worse, I am not satisfied with the output because we are tasked to churn out security documentations “aligned” with the corporate “version”. No thank you because
- I don’t believe the return of investment on those documentations is significant.
- The template documents provided are either not enough or an overkill.
- The person who created those template documents should stop using PCP. Reformatting them to look professional entails too much work.I reserve the right to save my co-team members from the atrocities of using too much colors in a document, and loud ones at that.
- If I am going to churn out security measures, then I will at least have the decency of believing those are practical and not just for show.
Why did I go through it? Because of pressure to pass the audit since the whole office accreditation can go up in smoke for failing the external auditors, and I don’t have the heart to add more stress on my manager. She already has enough problems on her plate regarding the project going over-budget and CMMi (yes, that effectively makes it a four-letter word) demands for full compliance.
19 hours and we aren’t even halfway the 100% completion mark. I know I told my manager that what we are targeting now is just damage control but it is really disheartening whenever I see the completion ratio for the project. And after that I also need to consider going back to reality that I am also over-budget on the client deliverable that they want me to submit by end of this month. 🙁
End of rant for now. I need to check what else I can finish before the internal audit today.
[1] OTy, n., Short for O-Thank you, the free version of overtime.
ciao!
May 10, 2007 @ 15:02:23
i really hate it when Apples gets too tangled up with work… imagine, she gets to work around 8 in the morning, leaves 7:30 or 8 in the evening, and continues work at home until about 10pm!! grabe… and all this because her manager is too lazy to properly delegate work… tsk tsk tsk…
May 13, 2007 @ 08:34:58
hi chris,
i can relate because my long hours are also long but i try to minimize them. i get to work at around 7AM (door-to-door shuttle service picks us up at 5:45AM, or 6AM during school breaks) and maybe spend 15 minutes to eat breakfast. then if we have a service at night I have to leave at 6PM so I can arrive at 9PM here in our home, otherwise 10:30 is going to be earliest I can arrive and get to sleep at 11:30. what a vicious cycle. 🙁
but i still believe that work-life harmony (yes, I did not say balance since that is currently impossible) is still possible. as a visiting executive stated it: **N will suck the life out of you if you let it. however i still wish somebody out there in the top management will listen that macro management does not always apply cleanly to the micro level!
i heard that the group apples is in has some great processes but she may belong to the exception since that is a large group. i had a team mate who got transferred there and she even said that people in that group are able to slack off. for me slacking off in the office means banging heads with external parties so we can implement what top management wants us to implement. *ugh* im already racking up a bad reputation as somebody hard to deal with because of being ‘sobrang makulit at demanding”.
but be thankful that apples know how to stop at 10pm. it means she still has some form of control on her life. she just needs to exert a little more force to make it better. i think she can already delegate on her own. /evil-laugh
ciao!
May 13, 2007 @ 09:30:24
well, that is the problem… stopping at 10pm, i mean… i have to literally drag her off her monitor by then, or else, she’d be there all hours of the evening till morning, but still drag her ass of early to get to work… *sigh*
May 13, 2007 @ 10:13:55
patay tayo dyan. pero as long as she can protect her weekends then i think that would be acceptable.
yabang ko, i cant even protect my weekends. but then i am in the support role and i am getting it easy right now. no more calls at 2am. hehehe.
ciao!