On the way to being replaced by artificial intelligence. Sweet.
Not here though mate.
Who on here works with taxes and financial affairs?
Last day today then off for two weeks, which coincides nicely with the bank holiday, so my next day in is 27th August.
I'm a twit
Interesting day today. Easy enough time on the phones but there was one claimant I skipped calling on the grounds that his Islamophobia would become a nightmare to organise an appointment around.
I had my mid-year review today. I told them I'm bored and that the shitty salary was beginning to annoy me (they were threatening to upgrade us six months ago, to contextualise that a bit), and they just said 'Well yeah...' and told me I'm too young to settle there anyway. Sorted.
I have an interview somewhere else next week, and me leaving will probably end up forcing the salary upgrade. Go Team.
What's it for?
Lewis donning it.
Policy analysis stuff, which is probably the best path for me because 1) I don't have a scientific background; and 2) I don't want to live/work in London.
I need to find something else in London. My boss is ridiculously lazy and has incredibly poor decision making skills. I was excited by the prospect of a blank canvas, but now I realise that some canvases are blank for a reason.
I fancy making good money again so may have to go corporate.
Just write to you know who, make it about 50,000 words and say you refuse to work in London. He'll start you ten minutes later.
Invade everywhere I'd imagine.
Basically not pretending to be a global power. I don't think the answer was necessarily a shit one. The problem was that their follow-up question was, knowing what I know about them, what can they do about it? Had I given a n00b answer like Iran or 'hybrid warfare' I could have said something that sounded clever; but as a follow-up answer to mine you're stuck with 'You tell me mate not a lot I imagine'.
That's a fair assessment. We might be top of the European pile (or second to Switzerland) but we don't have the sway without the colonies.
You're welcome
Still going strong in current job but I think I might just give it until the New Year then look for something a little better. It's a difficult place to judge as it can be mad busy one minute, dead the next and the area is starting to grind on me. £15 taxi single fare to the nearest town, nearest shop a good thirty minute walk away, bus stop a good twenty. It bugs me that if I have a day off then I either stay in or have to make a day of it and not having anywhere to gatecrash after work is slightly annoying.
This week I've been on the main pass more which is good but I really lack the 'bounce' that I have on my own section and actively have to think about the dishes I'm playing due to being unfamiliar with them. It doesn't help that I don't actually like too much of what we serve but menu change in a few weeks so it'll get interesting again, I hope.
£2.5k wage rise for merely existing.
Of all the countries I look after, ze Germans are really beginning to piss me off. One thing I didn't quite have nailed about their national character is that because they live by ze rules and don't have a jot of creativity in them, it also causes them to cry like little girls, proper bawling, in the event that anything goes wrong. Even the French are mature enough to realise that shit happens (particularly when dealing with spare parts) but if the same thing happens in Germany they get a 20,000 word expert report from independent expert Dr Helmut von Frankenstein and expect full costs, then send empty threats about court action when we lol them off.
Poland is the best country to deal with. Those guys know the score.
Saw the automation do its thing today. Very odd setup where we have to confirm it's doing the right thing. I had no problems so I reckon by December they'll be pitching that to our overlords. Some of the old guard are moaning and refusing to work with it.
4 days off now. Pool filling up in the back garden as we speak. Everything needed for a barbecue in.
Confirming it's doing the right thing is you training it to replace you.
Capacity release mate. Totally different. Can reallocate him to do high value activity.
Current job has hired a couple of people from my old place, but that was alright because they're all decent sorts. Thought they were about to hire an absolute cretin we know without having bothered to ask any of us what he's like but thankfully he doesn't seem to have got it.
It's genuinely made my Friday.
Basically, our main job is keying information from one form to another. It's dumb but DWP would very much like to keep their data and not hand it off to any third party. Hence, 120 or so of us are copy and pasting our way through most of the day. The AI they've set up wants to do that. It's currently a 1 to 1 situation where a desktop effectively covers one operator. If it was going solo, it'd probably equate to five or six people working 12 hour shifts with no breaks. So, yeah, not gonna wipe us out. There's also the added complication of our contract with DWP being up in two years. And DWP have to approve this.
As for other shit, we've already transitioned into working the phones. I don't think that's got much more scope but who knows what the DWP will decide to do with our contract and workloads. And whether our company decides to secure work elsewhere.
Oh shit, I'd have automated that ages ago. Perfect candidate for RPA. You don't need ai for that from your description.
You wonder how they manage to fuck up these IT projects despite spending a bajillion pounds while taking longer than your average government lasts and then you find out they're paying hundreds of people to manually edit the DWP database in 2019. My word.
We're on Windows 7.
And our special printer has been bust for six months.
I had a cunt with Windows 95 a couple of weeks ago.
Actually, RPA does sound like what's going on.
@Lewis I'm on Windows 10 now. And our printers are also terrible. A case can be made for not printing at all, really.These tools also automate interactions with the GUI, and often do so by repeating a set of demonstration actions performed by a user.
We are in the middle of doing this for some of our more 'brainless' activities as a toe in the water for future development. Unfortunately we kept it in house (read cheap) and the dev process has almost been going on a year. This is only for some report running and formatting too.
I wanted to laugh at this corporate wank but I think I have said pretty much all of this when talking about it.
Probably better, no? No more updates to deal with.
It's why we're moving to 10. That's a lot of new equipment in such a short space of time, too.
Finally had my classroom computer upgraded to Win10 (last one done I think) but annoyingly when I want to switch to project what’s on my screen it displays fine on the board but my screen goes to like 800x600 res and hides the bar at the bottom. Nothing’s ever straightforward.
Yeah, I have to say this to most of the teams to get them to work with us. "It's not about replacing your job, it's about giving you more time to do the core activity"
In reality, we are hiring X number of people to download files, do a bit of formatting then start the work. The first bit takes 90% of the time which means we need more people doing mechanical stuff and waiting for systems to load.
Who knows what will happen when we actually are able to add some intelligence on top. At the moment, it's only the brainless, rule based stuff that can be automated but the potential is limitless.
We haven't hired anybody new in over three years so it's clear which way the wind's heading with this place. Plus every company bulletin contains something about supercomputers or AI learning.
From my experience, unless you're in a FAANG company, that's not reality for most companies. AI and supercomputers are miles away.
I'm off today but as of next Monday I am being moved onto the sauce section for two weeks so I'll get to do some actual proper cooking during a service. This is the part I've been waiting for as I'm convinced I can do it. I can do the simple stuff like burgers and fish etc but steaks are a weakness as I've only really cooked them for myself. It seems like it'll be easy but steak nights on Thursday's get slammed so doing so many should be interesting.
Something is definitely happening behind the scenes that I'm unaware of, old head chef returned off his travels, new head chef about to go on his hols after two other chefs come back, one of whom has an op so will be out of action for two months which has opened the door for me somewhat. I reckon I could potentially get to Jnr Sous by January and I have a slight hunch that that's what work think too as they seem to be asking me to do more and more.
This weekend was carnage though and the heat just kills you.
Back to work today. 90 minutes of being told results were crap, you've got to do better and we're going to be keeping a closer eye on you now, a break, an hour of being patronised and then an 'ice breaker' activity with new staff in department. I did at least get some time to get some work done for myself. More of this shit tomorrow.
I spent the whole day sat next to someone who smelled of sick. Count your blessings.
We had a new lad start today and it’s not busy enough for him so I informed the higher-ups that I’m not training a potential replacement and they can rethink that idea. Interview Wednesday anyway so hopefully that’ll be that issue solved.