Thursday 22 January 2009

Annoyed

Thursday 22 January 2009
Those of you who have been reading for a while will know that my job was at risk of redundancy last year and, although it now isn't, I'm not happy where I am but feel unable to leave for various reasons.

I work for an IT department who have various customer organisations who we provide various levels of service for - from support to development and they purchase our time annually. I'm the web developer for the team and have been involved in many projects over the last seven years and have never once missed a deadline or failed to deliver what was asked of me.

However, like all organisations ours is a hotbed of office politics and one Manager in particular is hell-bent on Empire building. This particular Manager works for one of our Customer organisations and, for historic reasons, does not like our department (basically because we make his lot look bad as we're good at what we do).

Anyway, said Manager was at the head of the movement to get rid of me. I was particularly pissed off with him because over the last three years I've continuously covered his butt and saved him when three Managers in a row quit running his web services section. He's never had cause to complain about my work (but he does constantly slag off our whole department whenever he gets the chance.)

So, cutting a long story kinda short, he has recruited a team of developers which is totally ridiculous because he has a team he can use (the one I work for). This is of no surprise to me, I've not only been aware of them arriving, he's had me down there talking to them and passing on knowledge.

The one thing that saved my job last October was my knowledge of a product called SharePoint. If you don't know what that is don't worry and if you do surely you're too geeky to be reading my blog LOL. All you need for the purpose of this rant is to know that I've worked with SharePoint for five years now, been on several training courses and have done a lot of 'fit for purpose' testing around it so I think I can say I'm an expert.

And that fact is known across all of our Customer Organisations.

In fact I was in a training session all day yesterday for the handover to our team of the SharePoint project that saved my job.

Yesterday was also the day that a call was logged with our Helpdesk regarding SharePoint by a member of said Managers team. Someone who obviously has no clue about SharePoint, and I mean no clue, and who, when I spoke to him on the phone obviously did not want to speak to me at all and was INCREDIBLY cagey about what they want to do.

I'm just really, really pissed off at being constantly ignored by these idiots. They have zero knowledge about this product, they know that I do have extensive knowledge yet they absolutely refuse to acknowledge my existence.

For some reason I'm feeling particularly sensitive today and have been fighting tears of frustration. I don't care what they think about me, I just hate being in a place where people can get away with behaving like this. The project I'm working on was commissioned by the CIO who is the boss of the Manager I've been discussing so I know that I'm okay for now, I just wish that someone would put him in his place.

Thank god it's Thursday and I'm outta here for three days now. I think I just need a bit of a break from all of this - maybe it's the events of the last three months of last year finally catching up with me. The bad news is I have no holiday left until it resets on 1st April so I can't even take some time out.

Well done if you've read to the end of this - I'm not usually one for self-pity but, as I said, today I'm feeling a little overwhelmed for some reason.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Office politics are the worst. I'm not surprised you're annoyed, I'd be furious in the same situation.

BTW, DH was on a SharePoint course in Reading yesterday, same one maybe?

Kathy A. said...

{{{{{{{{{{hugs}}}}}}}} Sounds like you need one I am so sorry that things are not going well. It is so frustrating when hard work and experience are not appreciated. Hang tough!!!

Sheila said...

((hugs)) Don´t let the b*$!ards get you down!!!
Have a great weekend instead :)

Erin (moviemuse) said...

Everyone needs a whine and a hug every now and then. {{{hugs}}} It catches up with all of us every now and then. And office politics suck, no two ways about it. Hang in there! Hope you enjoy your weekend.

Anonymous said...

My husband is a programmer. Well he isn't since he has to spend my time as a project manager than he does actually programming. He's been working with computer languages since the 70's and I am sure he thinks in those languages and then converts to English to speak to the lesser mortals in his life.

Anyway, the one thing he loathes about his job is the office politics. He says so many people come into the industry now without the necessary knowledge. They are very insecure so the way they compensate is by trying to get rid of anyone that can show them up.

Last year they had a lot of Indians brought over to take over the British peoples jobs. These guys were so incompetant that the British guys had to do a lot of "mopping up". One of the Indians actually stood in a meeting and claimed my husbands work as his own. My husband had to show the documenting to prove it was his work.

Gosh, haven't I waffled on to tell you that office politics stinks and it's usually incompetent people that make it miserable for everyone else.

Andrea

Trish said...

You are too nice. This is someone that will end up hanging himself if you leave him to his own devices. So let him. Stop helping him out. If you have a good relationship with the CIO, capitalize on it. If he sees you get along with his boss he may just back off

 

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