![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
same_differenceBefore I start this I want to say that I know I am very lucky to have got a placement, and that I have been lucky in many ways with my placement especially compared with what Ryan and at have had to put up with at times. However, this is my Live Journal, and I'm welcome to rant on it.
Right where to begin. I think with the work. When I had the informal interview for this placement I was told I would be writing code to output NURB's (Non-Uniform Rational B-splines (They produce curves by creating a system of points with weightings. A line is put around the points and the weightings define how close to the points the line gets.) on to an interface and optimise them. I would be directly assisting my supervisor, and it would require me to do some extra learning but I would be using both the maths and the computing knowledge and skills I had learnt/developed through the process of doing my degree. I was specifically asked if this was something I actually wanted to do and was interested in as if I wasn't I wouldn't have been offered the placement.
When I started I was told that I wasn't going to be doing that but instead I would be writing bits of GUI, as they had decided to use some predeveloped code for the optimisation /maths side of things. Fair enough in terms of a business view, but annoying from mine, seeing as I was kind of looking forward to doing the original work. That and the fact that they were so concerned I was interested in the work at the interview only to have me do something else entirely when I started here.
11 Months on I'm still programming bits of GUI, admittingly there's a little more to the work than that, as I'm writing code to mine XML as well, but still it generally comes down to 'put button on screen, put label on screen...', gah. Perhaps it's good experience about what programming jobs are like.
Then again the way this work is done is bizarre. I have had one deadline in the whole time I've been here. At the beginning I get a vague description like 'produce a spreadsheet, with these few functions'. I spend some time writing it, make it work well, and fairly efficiently. Then show it to my supervisor who asks me to modify it to do something that while similar to the original is fundamentally different in terms of its philosophy. So I go away rewrite the bloody thing, come back get told to change it again, go away... spot the pattern. I've taken to getting my supervisor to explain what he wants four times, to make sure I haven't understood him (which I do regularly as he's not very good at explaining what he wants) and to try and avoid redoing lots, not that it makes any difference, as he'll ask me to modify anyway.
Of course all this is helped by the fact I don't know why I'm doing the work or how its going to be used. Writing code that must do something specific but work in the way that it could potentially interface with /anything/ else is certainly interesting.
Then there's the fact that when I started I was informed I was going to be producing stuff that might or might not be used, as they were still in meetings about how they planned to build the whole user interface, and that the rest of the other sites involved in the work weren't going to be starting it for 6-12 months anyway. When the decisions were made I was told to carry on with what I was doing (about 6 months in). I still have no clue how everything is supposed to work, but I suppose I'll be long gone before the final design is produced.
For the first 7 months I regularly asked for other work to do to vary what I was doing. I got given three things to do over this year: make a questionnaire for the placement students (present and future) in the group, produce a PowerPoint file giving a guide to the group, and design a poster of out code support process. I think the poster was the most useful thing I've done all year. I also joined the accommodation meeting for the office, and have done a little to do with that, of course it's a little meaningless as I'm in a group who focus is the office I rarely end up in thanks to hot desking.
Yes hot desking, brings me nicely on to the environment. I have been hotdesking since I started, which has meant I've spent up to an hour some days just trying to get a computer work on. I was told when I started that there was a shortage of space in the office. For the next four months more and more people were added to the aerodynamics section (that M&T in which I work is part of), including into my group. At one point there were close to 20 people hotdesking in out office. Meaning we needed 20% office to be out for all of us to get a desk. Do you know what it's like trying to race 20 people to a desk? Or what happens when traffic on my way into work makes me 20 minutes late? Of course it did get better when they found some space for some hotdesking PC's, which were in a completely different office to where my group were. And don't get me started about what it's like being in an office of 100ish people, plus PC's and computers on a hot day with no air conditioning.
I suppose its not all bad being a totally different office. Especially when you consider that I might not need to see anyone from my group for days at a time. That and the fact the while I have to clock in, the hours I clock are in no way linked to my wage, and that if I fail to clock in these 'exception report' things I've been told should be sent to me completely fail to materialise. I don't understand why, I don't care either. Yep the only way my hours get checked is when I send a spreadsheet (that I fill in) with my arriving and leaving times, to the head of my group who isn't in the same office as me, and who doesn't see me arrive or leave. I have made an effort to always be in the office for the correct amount of time, though occasionally I've got in late and not been able to make up the hours, but the only thing making sure I do is me. Hell the only reason I actually come in every day, is my conscience and the vague paranoia that my supervisor might try and find me on the day I decided to just stay at home. I have yet to not come in and say I have, though I must admit I have been tempted.
Then again I've taken more days off sick this year (maybe 8 or 9 in total) than I did in most of my time at school. Partly because the length of the drive is off putting when you don't feel well, especially if your queasy, but also because I have no reason to try and go to work if I feel ill anyway.
I certainly haven't been overflowing with motivation, when I've been in work anyway. When I do get in early I normally spend the first two hours of the day too sleepy to do very much, and with no deadlines, and little variation in my work it's certainly easy to get distracted. Of course, now that getting a desk anymore isn't a problem I have little incentive to even get in at 8am (except that I can leave at 4:15 rather than an hour later and actually have more of an evening). Especially when you consider that to get in earlyish I have to be up at 6am and leaving at 6:55, that leaving just 5 mins later can add maybe 20 to 30 mins to my journey, but if I wake up at 8am, I can leave by 9am and have a nice relaxed traffic free journey into work getting in at about 9:45. I can then make up the hours by having a short/working lunch (which I normally do when Alex is busy) and by leaving an hour later, when the traffic is no better than at 4:15 anyway.
I don't even feel guilty if I don't work particularly hard. While I like my supervisor and boss, it's not then who pay me, so I don't feel guilty about taking money from them. I get paid by HR (I'm effectively free labour for M&T) and considering how much problems they've given me I certainly don't feel bad about not giving them value for money, so to speak. Considering that before I started I had to send in all my details, and fill in the relevant forms twice because the HR department at Filton incorrectly thought they were in charge of me (when it turns out its HR at the other UK site that is in charge of placement). That I spent the first month trying to get them to actually pay me, and the last 11 trying to get my payslips with any degree of regularity (or at times at all). That I've had my pay randomly increased and then put back with no explanation (I since found out my wage was never supposed to change, they have yet to get back to me about why it was, and why it was then undone). I've even been paid overtime, which I'm not supposed to get, on one bizarre occasion, and I've certainly never worked more hours than I had to. If they can't do they're job properly I see no reason to feel guilty about not working as hard as I should on mine.
I suppose if I'd worked harder I might have got more out of my placement, but I doubt it. They're has been 0 opportunities for any kind of training, and I get the feeling at times I'm only been given something to do, because they employed me and had to have me doing something. Now I have to turn 12 months of coding, sitting in the occasional pointless meeting, and designing posters to turn into a report and presentation to justify the university sticking with industrial placement on my degree certificate.
If it hadn't been for the mailing list, emails from P, the odd day I would hotdesk on to a PC with internet access, and my lunches with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
almosthonest (which his placement have unfortunately made rarer) I might have cracked a long time ago.
Now back to work modifying a piece of code I finished yesterday (read: rewriting 95% of to do something fairly different), and trying to not get distracted as normal by things like writing games, writing larps, writing D&D campaigns, and designing Magic decks 9all of which I have done lots of this year).
Right where to begin. I think with the work. When I had the informal interview for this placement I was told I would be writing code to output NURB's (Non-Uniform Rational B-splines (They produce curves by creating a system of points with weightings. A line is put around the points and the weightings define how close to the points the line gets.) on to an interface and optimise them. I would be directly assisting my supervisor, and it would require me to do some extra learning but I would be using both the maths and the computing knowledge and skills I had learnt/developed through the process of doing my degree. I was specifically asked if this was something I actually wanted to do and was interested in as if I wasn't I wouldn't have been offered the placement.
When I started I was told that I wasn't going to be doing that but instead I would be writing bits of GUI, as they had decided to use some predeveloped code for the optimisation /maths side of things. Fair enough in terms of a business view, but annoying from mine, seeing as I was kind of looking forward to doing the original work. That and the fact that they were so concerned I was interested in the work at the interview only to have me do something else entirely when I started here.
11 Months on I'm still programming bits of GUI, admittingly there's a little more to the work than that, as I'm writing code to mine XML as well, but still it generally comes down to 'put button on screen, put label on screen...', gah. Perhaps it's good experience about what programming jobs are like.
Then again the way this work is done is bizarre. I have had one deadline in the whole time I've been here. At the beginning I get a vague description like 'produce a spreadsheet, with these few functions'. I spend some time writing it, make it work well, and fairly efficiently. Then show it to my supervisor who asks me to modify it to do something that while similar to the original is fundamentally different in terms of its philosophy. So I go away rewrite the bloody thing, come back get told to change it again, go away... spot the pattern. I've taken to getting my supervisor to explain what he wants four times, to make sure I haven't understood him (which I do regularly as he's not very good at explaining what he wants) and to try and avoid redoing lots, not that it makes any difference, as he'll ask me to modify anyway.
Of course all this is helped by the fact I don't know why I'm doing the work or how its going to be used. Writing code that must do something specific but work in the way that it could potentially interface with /anything/ else is certainly interesting.
Then there's the fact that when I started I was informed I was going to be producing stuff that might or might not be used, as they were still in meetings about how they planned to build the whole user interface, and that the rest of the other sites involved in the work weren't going to be starting it for 6-12 months anyway. When the decisions were made I was told to carry on with what I was doing (about 6 months in). I still have no clue how everything is supposed to work, but I suppose I'll be long gone before the final design is produced.
For the first 7 months I regularly asked for other work to do to vary what I was doing. I got given three things to do over this year: make a questionnaire for the placement students (present and future) in the group, produce a PowerPoint file giving a guide to the group, and design a poster of out code support process. I think the poster was the most useful thing I've done all year. I also joined the accommodation meeting for the office, and have done a little to do with that, of course it's a little meaningless as I'm in a group who focus is the office I rarely end up in thanks to hot desking.
Yes hot desking, brings me nicely on to the environment. I have been hotdesking since I started, which has meant I've spent up to an hour some days just trying to get a computer work on. I was told when I started that there was a shortage of space in the office. For the next four months more and more people were added to the aerodynamics section (that M&T in which I work is part of), including into my group. At one point there were close to 20 people hotdesking in out office. Meaning we needed 20% office to be out for all of us to get a desk. Do you know what it's like trying to race 20 people to a desk? Or what happens when traffic on my way into work makes me 20 minutes late? Of course it did get better when they found some space for some hotdesking PC's, which were in a completely different office to where my group were. And don't get me started about what it's like being in an office of 100ish people, plus PC's and computers on a hot day with no air conditioning.
I suppose its not all bad being a totally different office. Especially when you consider that I might not need to see anyone from my group for days at a time. That and the fact the while I have to clock in, the hours I clock are in no way linked to my wage, and that if I fail to clock in these 'exception report' things I've been told should be sent to me completely fail to materialise. I don't understand why, I don't care either. Yep the only way my hours get checked is when I send a spreadsheet (that I fill in) with my arriving and leaving times, to the head of my group who isn't in the same office as me, and who doesn't see me arrive or leave. I have made an effort to always be in the office for the correct amount of time, though occasionally I've got in late and not been able to make up the hours, but the only thing making sure I do is me. Hell the only reason I actually come in every day, is my conscience and the vague paranoia that my supervisor might try and find me on the day I decided to just stay at home. I have yet to not come in and say I have, though I must admit I have been tempted.
Then again I've taken more days off sick this year (maybe 8 or 9 in total) than I did in most of my time at school. Partly because the length of the drive is off putting when you don't feel well, especially if your queasy, but also because I have no reason to try and go to work if I feel ill anyway.
I certainly haven't been overflowing with motivation, when I've been in work anyway. When I do get in early I normally spend the first two hours of the day too sleepy to do very much, and with no deadlines, and little variation in my work it's certainly easy to get distracted. Of course, now that getting a desk anymore isn't a problem I have little incentive to even get in at 8am (except that I can leave at 4:15 rather than an hour later and actually have more of an evening). Especially when you consider that to get in earlyish I have to be up at 6am and leaving at 6:55, that leaving just 5 mins later can add maybe 20 to 30 mins to my journey, but if I wake up at 8am, I can leave by 9am and have a nice relaxed traffic free journey into work getting in at about 9:45. I can then make up the hours by having a short/working lunch (which I normally do when Alex is busy) and by leaving an hour later, when the traffic is no better than at 4:15 anyway.
I don't even feel guilty if I don't work particularly hard. While I like my supervisor and boss, it's not then who pay me, so I don't feel guilty about taking money from them. I get paid by HR (I'm effectively free labour for M&T) and considering how much problems they've given me I certainly don't feel bad about not giving them value for money, so to speak. Considering that before I started I had to send in all my details, and fill in the relevant forms twice because the HR department at Filton incorrectly thought they were in charge of me (when it turns out its HR at the other UK site that is in charge of placement). That I spent the first month trying to get them to actually pay me, and the last 11 trying to get my payslips with any degree of regularity (or at times at all). That I've had my pay randomly increased and then put back with no explanation (I since found out my wage was never supposed to change, they have yet to get back to me about why it was, and why it was then undone). I've even been paid overtime, which I'm not supposed to get, on one bizarre occasion, and I've certainly never worked more hours than I had to. If they can't do they're job properly I see no reason to feel guilty about not working as hard as I should on mine.
I suppose if I'd worked harder I might have got more out of my placement, but I doubt it. They're has been 0 opportunities for any kind of training, and I get the feeling at times I'm only been given something to do, because they employed me and had to have me doing something. Now I have to turn 12 months of coding, sitting in the occasional pointless meeting, and designing posters to turn into a report and presentation to justify the university sticking with industrial placement on my degree certificate.
If it hadn't been for the mailing list, emails from P, the odd day I would hotdesk on to a PC with internet access, and my lunches with
almosthonest (which his placement have unfortunately made rarer) I might have cracked a long time ago.Now back to work modifying a piece of code I finished yesterday (read: rewriting 95% of to do something fairly different), and trying to not get distracted as normal by things like writing games, writing larps, writing D&D campaigns, and designing Magic decks 9all of which I have done lots of this year).
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-07-08 05:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-08 06:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-08 06:20 am (UTC)Even if the entire department rocks and life is great, you're guaranteed to be the placement student that ends up on Team Shit.
Placements always find a way to suck. ;)
no subject
Date: 2004-07-12 05:43 am (UTC)I knew your work wasn't exactly inspirational, but that just sucks. I gotta agree with Elmyra about the job thing tho! :)
At least it's almost over and you can get a month or two of well-deserved rest before uni starts again.
One more comforting thought: if you ever somehow get in a similar situation after uni, you can quit!