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Attitudes at Work (Read 30054 times)

Jaspersharpe

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#50 Re: Attitudes at Work
January 31, 2014, 09:29:46 am
I don't think the author has the first idea what most accountants actually do.

"here's a couple of carrier bags full of receipts and hand written invoices - can you tell me how much I should pay HMRC... tomorrow"

I can't see a machine doing that any time soon

Indeed, and that's not the half of it. A lot of my job involves helping people out of difficult situations and giving advice. The bean counting is what underpins the job and, of course, better software makes this bit easier, but it's hardly going to sit down and talk someone through the best option when they've not done a tax return for two years and have a Ltd company that's about to be struck off by Companies House. Every case is different.


Can they make a machine that is capable of going to the Sheaf, drink 10 pints of blonde and say cunt lots of times? Well until they can your job is safe ;)

Also correct. I've gained a fair bit of business from drinking in The Sheaf and The Broadfield.   ;)

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#51 Re: Attitudes at Work
January 31, 2014, 03:41:38 pm
. . .

Is it just me who finds that too many young people in the work place just haven't got any grit, application, discipline or work ethic? :whip: :whip:

I have a junior member of my team who has been disciplined, on performance management, given a warning as to their future conduct and yet they're still coming in 5 minutes late and leaving 5 minutes early and yet they still think that they're entitled to a training contract (which as any one in law will tell you, tc's are not in great supply).

Is this something that's widely recognised or am I maligning a generation on the basis of a little 'noise' emanating fro the bad cases we notice?

Move into the law, I presume you've been self medicating. 

A trainee solicitor in a reasonable sized firm outside London will probably be on £17,000 a year for two years, this is after 4 years of undergrad and then post grad study with fees (if you're starting now of >£40k without living expenses).

<30% of people who read law will practice as a qualified lawyer.  Rates in some practice areas for >+5 PQE will be around £30k.

As for hours, of late I've been averaging 50+ or even 60 hours per week of late.  When I worked in the criminal justice system when first called I regularly did 60+ hour weeks and the experience was invaluable.hen
When I see people expecting to obtain the experience and skills in 35+ per week and be partner by the time they're in their early 30's I do wonder whether they've got the abilities to even practice.

Maybe this culture of entitlement is limited to the professions (i.e law and medicine)


Culture of entitlement, or just a manifestation of the recognition that grafting your balls off (in the manner you describe above) is a mug's game, unless you're completely happy that your career is to be one of the most dominant things in your life? If so fair enough, but that's your choice. A lot of people don't see the point of grafting all hours for any job. People like me for instance. My career advice to anyone would be get a specialist trade (including the professions obviously) and then find well-paying work which doesn't require you to work your life away, i.e. work where you have control over the number of days you do - and then do the lowest number possible for the quality of life you desire to sustain. I find it hard to believe (but correct me if I'm wrong) that an experienced lawyer has to work as much as you describe to stay in a job - not that losing your job was mentioned as a reason. You must like (or are habituated to?) the long hours of graft. So either you like doing that or if you don't, you're either daft, or have a substantial drug/car/alcohol/holiday-house habit to sustain.
I don't have much admiration for people who relish working especially long hours. Especially if they moan about other people not wanting to do the same as them. Everything's a choice - you chose to graft your ass off, I don't believe working like a dog should be mandatory if you want to earn a decent wage and have a good quality of life. I earn not very far off 3 times your 'trainee solicitor' example and work 4 days a week, didn't spend 4 years paying over the odds for schooling and don't have to put up with ball breaking, stress inducing, health-damaging hours. I fell on my feet, but I'd still find well paid work elsewhere if I wasn't doing what I am.

Sometimes we disagree on certain points Pete, but I'm with you on this. Why would anyone work 60 hours a week if they didn't have to? I've worked 12 weeks this year and now have an annual income of about £15k. Life's waaaay better than when I worked 47 weeks a year and earned £40k+. Work enough and that is all.

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#52 Re: Attitudes at Work
January 31, 2014, 04:33:27 pm
I like the idea of earning enough in a month to live on for 11 months, however that's hardly how my line of work operates.

I perhaps could stick to 35 hours a week, but if I did the chances of a seat on the Board would not be great.

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#53 Re: Attitudes at Work
January 31, 2014, 05:23:07 pm
The notion that 50% of youngsters should go to University was fucking ludicrous in the first place.  It only served to degrade standards and inevitably led to the introduction of fees.  It was manifestly a  :badidea:

The target was ludicrous but the intent only matches us with our main national competitors (and the average number abroad goes up every year). Also it is often forgotten that the target included vocational training to HE levels (ie HNDs). If we have only 30% of the population educated to HE levels we can say goodbye to a lot of our economic growth, unless we import expertise like the yanks do. Standards have dropped too low in some areas and that is bad and should be stopped.

Back to the matter in hand, as it applies to my academic role, when I were a 'lad' in lecturing terms in the mid 80s through to the late 90s, in a good Poly then a new Uni, I had an easyish job with very high standards on accredited engineering courses (we failed anyone not up to the exams and one year that was 80%  for one course); we had very little bureaucracy, no emails, good admin support; Student Staff Ratios were in the low teens; nearly everyone was on a full contract and career grade pay was level with MPs and the pension was good and often enhanced when you left; experienced lazy staff used to play golf two days a week and not come in for 3 months over the summer; research or industrial links or consultancy was available and an enthusiastically followed path for most keen staff. Students pretty much all got good jobs and a good proportion were working on day release from good companies, like Rolls Royce. These days Im in Science: all the undergrad engineering courses I worked on have gone; six of my old engineering colleagues are left from 100 (a criminal waste for the nation); loads of staff are casualised and the full-time contractual protections are at threat from all sides; SSRs are now over 30; bureaucracy is massive and admin support has dropped (despite a huge growth in central admin numbers); pay has fallen back 20-30% on old equivalents; pension prospects look worse every year; hardly anyone takes their full leave; term-time working hours in my school average over 60; anyone young with no research income in Science are under so much pressure they better be super-robust or may as well leave lecturing now; all external income is super competitive but we still do well;  consultancy is almost dead due to institutional greed on their cut. Our institutional long term future is at threat: with cut-throat practices from some poor UK institutions; much cheaper and better courses taught in english in Europe and the growing online provision available for free from places like MIT. Hence I simply can't recommend UK academia as a profession unless someone really loves the job. In any case there are nothing like enough UK MSc students and PhD students to fill the next decade of retirements. The students are less good and less pushed than they used to be but still OK overall in Science and most get jobs OK. Yet in the University as a whole most seem to be choosing the wrong subjects to get the best employment prospects (and too many don't seem to care about what they do next at all) and even if they get a decent job its hard to justify the huge student debt these days being worth it (cf working first then building qualifications in work). Its all OK for me as I've done 30 years, I still enjoy the basic teaching and research am very efficient at what I do and have wangled good admin allowances for things I care about, and can move work to the evening or wet weekend go climbing on 1 in 5 sunny working days, plus I can easily afford to escape from the job soon but it makes me wonder about the future. My younger colleagues are surprisingly good but are being slowly ground down.

Other Universities further up the ladder have faired a little better but not that much more. People in other professions tell me similar stories of decline. The UK seems to have shifted from respect of the professional to a cult of the senior manager, often clueless and unaccountable for their actions and paid massively more than they used to be. For some its like the best of modern management theory never existed. The gap between top of career grade and the guy running my place used to be below double, now its over a factor of 6. In the old days most staff thought the top man did a good job and he knew most of them, these days its hard to think of an initiative that staff support, and only a tiny minority know him (and of those, for more than half the working relationship is hardly positive).

Rant over.

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#54 Re: Attitudes at Work
January 31, 2014, 05:31:29 pm
Steve, when you've finished your rant I want you to clear the tables in the JCR. :jab:

Seriously though, just wait for institutions like Bolton & Salford to go bust.

The expansion of higher education has many of the features of a classic bubble.

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#55 Re: Attitudes at Work
January 31, 2014, 05:44:36 pm
Ok..

I run a Climbing wall these days and make a whole pile of cash.


Hang on...


Not true,I make sod all. The Apprentices make more than me.
But, I'm happy.

I have, on the other hand, had a reasonably successful career as a Marine Engineer and it was anything but conventional.

I dropped out of sixth form (Maths, Physics, Geology and Design), during the Xmas holidays of my second year. In fact, I went to the Navy careers office and enlisted as an Artificer.

I had decided I couldn't stand one more day at school and the place I had secured at Loughborough (on my mocks) to read Geology could go hang.

Ironically, after 14 weeks basic training I was sent back to school for four years (at £112/month as I recall and it was an offence punishable by detention and fine to fail an exam (only two resists, too, or you were discharged or sent to be a mechanic). You did not miss a lecture, trust me and exams were Saturday mornings.

After some (7) years of service and several PQE's later, I went into civi street. I took my payoff money and spent it on HE and professional quals.

At the age of 26, I was a qualified Ships Master (restricted) and Chief Engineer (it is very rare to be dual qualified in the UK). I became the Captain of a Tall Ship ( the schooner S.Y. Dream). By the time I turned 30 I was a consultant Marine Engineer and Engineering Manager for a shipyard in Dubai, building Mega Yachts (greater than 50m WL AND 500 GT).

There's a purpose to this bear with me...

I became first Marine Division GM and then MD (on splitting from the parent company) of Romeo Marine LLC  at 32.

At 38, burnt out by 12-16 hour days and six day weeks (in fact in 2007 I had exactly 11 days off, canceling one holiday whilst in the airport long stay car park), I resigned and returned to the UK and set up my own consulting and surveying business. Which did very nicely, thank you, until my wife's cancer and that whole life changing thing (and losing everything I'd accrued) that many of you are familiar with from other ramblings.

And my point.

Finally.

Do not get hung-up on a university education!

I've had one hell of a life! And apart from a short stint at Southampton Institutes' Warsash campus, I've never attended Uni. There are almost always Professional routes to Incorporated or Chartered status, if you are good enough.
You don't need to borrow money to obtain a good career. If you have the gumption, you'll work and save and pay as you can. I found, that by working on the very large Private Yachts, I could make enough money to pay for education. It meant doing some pretty shite work, getting your hands dirty and months away, but it allowed me to take winters off to do courses/ski/climb etc.
All the way through, I've been free to change direction, never over invested in a particular avenue of study. Never stuck in a career I hated.

Even to the point, that in November 2012, after a year of preparation and on the eve of signing contracts to set up and run CMC Marine LLC's new UK operation (manufacturing and supplying Stabilisers and thrusters, to Sunseeker, Princess etc). Whilst sat in the METS show in Amsterdam. I (we, by then) just plain gave it all up to open a climbing wall instead.... 

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#56 Re: Attitudes at Work
January 31, 2014, 05:53:38 pm

Seriously though, just wait for institutions like Bolton & Salford to go bust.


Is Bolton & Salford one of those fancy law firms from down south?

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#57 Re: Attitudes at Work
January 31, 2014, 06:17:25 pm
Steve, when you've finished your rant I want you to clear the tables in the JCR. :jab:

Seriously though, just wait for institutions like Bolton & Salford to go bust.

The expansion of higher education has many of the features of a classic bubble.

Thanks for the reminder I forgot that change. We used to have staff rooms where they served food and a club where one could play snooker or take part in the team crossword solving whist swapping tips and stories from the day. JCRs were for the toff institutions. These days I eat in a canteen with a few diehards and the "customers" and most others stay at their desk with sarnies

The expansion of UK HE is only bubble like in that we currently increasingly produce the wrong sort of HE for a new really shit price and much more so for those at the bottom of the pile (who seem too dumb to realise this as yet). A huge section of our income comes from overseas students and that is also a big difference with when I started and is why the budgets still balance with government cuts (the average non-UK fee, non-government, ie external income, slice of the income pie is nationally over 40% now) . My thesis is that UK HE business will continue to hold at least the next few years. Firstly as UK government investment is stupidly low compared to our competitors and will change for the better as its an easy win in balance of payments terms (we are a multi-billion pound export industry at present but that relies on people wanted to come to the UK rather than go else where). Also the local and worlldwide demand for HE trained employees is still growing strongly but I expect that will start to change type over the next decade as online provision improves. I would like to see (and expect the home student market to follow) more vocational routes so we have fewer clueless teenagers (those without rich parents) choosing a course on a whim at 18 that leaves them with huge debt levels and potentially with bankruptcy at some stage in the future.

Central Lancs and Salford have plenty of good bits still,  I know as I know people who work there; you're showing your prejudices there. The big surprise is that London Met with massive financial problems and repeated huge fines is still going despite all the huff-puffing about Universities being allowed to fail.

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#58 Re: Attitudes at Work
January 31, 2014, 07:20:22 pm
Interesting thread.


... just a manifestation of the recognition that grafting your balls off (in the manner you describe above) is a mug's game, unless you're completely happy that your career is to be one of the most dominant things in your life? If so fair enough, but that's your choice. A lot of people don't see the point of grafting all hours for any job. People like me for instance. My career advice to anyone would be get a specialist trade (including the professions obviously) and then find well-paying work which doesn't require you to work your life away, i.e. work where you have control over the number of days you do - and then do the lowest number possible for the quality of life you desire to sustain.

I wish you'd been my careers teacher. I often wonder if I've fucked up - I did physics at uni, now doing a PhD. I really enjoyed undergrad and the PhD is ok - which is all great - but I have no idea what I want to do afterwards, I only know that I'm unconvinced by the prospect of a normal, full-time career. Until recently I'd never considered that stuff like access work offshore would actually be incredibly lucrative in terms of how much you can earn in a short space of time. Anything more vocational, or unusual, like that or offshore geophys was given fairly short shrift in both my school and home environments - intentionally or not I feel I was brought up to feel that there is a two tier system with 'proper' careers and 'other shit', only to realise that the 'other shit' is actually liable to be a better way to facilitating the lifestyle I want to lead. I think there should have been much more talk in school careers about how jobs, careers paths, training etc fits with potential lifestyles, which was almost invariably overlooked at my school in favour of pushing you towards academic performance and the traditional career choices. I have no idea how this fits with careers stuff at other schools though.

100 8a.nu points for anyone who can tell me what job I should do that's vaguely interesting, sustainable long-term and allows me to not do too much work!

I don't have much admiration for people who relish working especially long hours. Especially if they moan about other people not wanting to do the same as them.

+1.

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#59 Re: Attitudes at Work
January 31, 2014, 07:49:44 pm
Interesting, sustainable long term and not too much work (most of the time) pretty much describes what I do now (and according to that household earnings percentile thing I'm ridiculously rich (I'm really not)).

However, as I posted earlier, it's not always been that way.

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#60 Re: Attitudes at Work
January 31, 2014, 08:07:42 pm

Interesting thread.


... just a manifestation of the recognition that grafting your balls off (in the manner you describe above) is a mug's game, unless you're completely happy that your career is to be one of the most dominant things in your life? If so fair enough, but that's your choice. A lot of people don't see the point of grafting all hours for any job. People like me for instance. My career advice to anyone would be get a specialist trade (including the professions obviously) and then find well-paying work which doesn't require you to work your life away, i.e. work where you have control over the number of days you do - and then do the lowest number possible for the quality of life you desire to sustain.

I wish you'd been my careers teacher. I often wonder if I've fucked up - I did physics at uni, now doing a PhD. I really enjoyed undergrad and the PhD is ok - which is all great - but I have no idea what I want to do afterwards, I only know that I'm unconvinced by the prospect of a normal, full-time career. Until recently I'd never considered that stuff like access work offshore would actually be incredibly lucrative in terms of how much you can earn in a short space of time. Anything more vocational, or unusual, like that or offshore geophys was given fairly short shrift in both my school and home environments - intentionally or not I feel I was brought up to feel that there is a two tier system with 'proper' careers and 'other shit', only to realise that the 'other shit' is actually liable to be a better way to facilitating the lifestyle I want to lead. I think there should have been much more talk in school careers about how jobs, careers paths, training etc fits with potential lifestyles, which was almost invariably overlooked at my school in favour of pushing you towards academic performance and the traditional career choices. I have no idea how this fits with careers stuff at other schools though.

100 8a.nu points for anyone who can tell me what job I should do that's vaguely interesting, sustainable long-term and allows me to not do too much work!

I don't have much admiration for people who relish working especially long hours. Especially if they moan about other people not wanting to do the same as them.

+1.

Look at Yachting.

Seriously.

Not the 30' plastic pots we call yachts here, the bloody great cruise-ship type yachts you'll find in Antibes. With brains, you would soon make Captain or Chief Eng (normal salaries €9000-15000 PCM). Even a Deckhand has a starting rate of around €2000 PCM. Around double the rates for the Merchant Navy at large. As previously stated, I quite often worked from Monaco Grand-prix until September, then took the winter off.
Not knowing anything about ships is not a major handicap.
 
Many varied aspects to that industry, brokerage is lucrative too (both charter and sale). Being based around Antibes/BCN/Palma/Italian riviera is pretty damn handy for Sport and the Alps/Pyrenees!

You would have to work hard though.
Compensated by spending your evening with a G&T in a bar half way up Capri...

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#61 Re: Attitudes at Work
February 01, 2014, 12:45:42 am
Genuine question this but do employers now use the 'has a degree', even if it's a 3rd in Theology for a job in something totally unrelated, as a CV filter? I suppose I'm thinking here about either entry level jobs or those for which the candidate is well qualified through prior experience, rather than e.g a doctor or a physicist where you'd hope the candidate has a degree in physics (shit examples but you know what I mean). I've heard folk say that it's an example of someone being able to apply themselves etc. but in my case I know I didn't very much.

In my day (early 90's) it was always 'when you go to uni' while at college doing A levels. Not 'if you decide to go'. I definitely wanted to, and coming from a family where no-one had, my parents wanted me to and made sure I could - but the question was never even a question - and while I'm really glad I did for the great 3 years of life it gave me in Wales, I'm sure academically or career wise it did me no favours. I reckon a couple of years on a building site would have been much better preparation than going straight from school / home to living a free and easy life with a grant, student loan, parental financial aid etc. where it was brilliant to just be out of school, able to get pissed, go climbing, meet people, girls, free of the historical school bullies, buy vinyl, play records in nightclubs for hundreds of adoring fans, go to the beach, get pissed again, be dead cool etc. with no-one getting on my case at all. I was definitely bright and clever but the pull of the freedom was too strong.

I leave the 3rd off my CV when I write BSc Zoology (Hons) - and yes there are (Hons) in spite of a dissertation resubmission that was still 8000 words short. Started at Microbiology but the maths involved in genetics and biochemistry had me vexed. I had vague ideas of working in conservation but even then it was a lot to do with voluntary work and the debt didn't allow it. Took me ages to work my way up and out of it but only by putting myself in the right place and working hard / smart am I now in a position I'm proud to be in career wise and doing pretty well out of it. Don't know about fate but it seems to have been a good path for the stuff I've done and learned along the way. The only thing I'd change is to have grafted a bit harder at the study if only to know more about the subject I really enjoyed.

Careers advice was a joke before I embarked on this too - I was just about scraping a C at maths even then, did work experience in a forensic pathology lab / mortuary when I was 15 and had medicine in my mind, found the maths too hard to do Physics a level and abandoned the medicine idea, but even so all you got was vague advice about filling in a UCAS form. You could argue that it's not for someone else to tell, but I was still a kid at 15

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#62 Re: Attitudes at Work
February 01, 2014, 06:20:48 am

Do not get hung-up on a university education!


Totally agree with Matt on this. I haven't set foot in a classroom of any sort since I was 16 (now 50.) A few months ago I chucked my last job to take a break. In mid-January I started applying for new things again and it looks like I'm going to be offered the first thing I applied for on Monday despite being up against 9 short-listed candidates who all have uni qualifications for the position and are at least 10 years younger than I am. I'll admit I was rather gobsmacked when I found out on Thursday (one of my referees contacted me just before the firm rang me) but it is very reassuring to find that 30+ years of accumulated experience can still be competitive with tertiary education. All this after I was told I'd never get a decent job in Australia at 50 without formal qualifications as well... :P

 

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#63 Re: Attitudes at Work
February 01, 2014, 08:23:37 am
Perhaps part of the problem with attitudes at work is that in some places employees are now viewed as an expense rather than an asset to be invested in as employers seek to cut costs and maximise revenue to keep the share holders happy.

Doesn't do much for morale.

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#64 Re: Attitudes at Work
February 01, 2014, 09:14:53 am
I currently have 5 trainees/apprentices working for me.
It hasn't been too bad finding good young people with a realistic work ethic.
I have only had two bad apples come on board that wanted lots of money quick and couldn't be bothered to train (or even pretend they wanted to train)

I do however have a lad working for me who I thought was going to be a nightmare, he hates the physical outside part of our job so I sat him down and asked him what he liked and didn't like about the job. He loved the cad/3d modelling side of things in the office.
He has since gone on to be one of the best 3d modellers in Revit I have ever seen!!!

As an employer you shouldn't give up on everyone as I think Charlie Brooker was on to something when he spoke about aspirational media setting unrealistic goals for young people now. There are some losers out there that have no work ethic, but I'm happy to say that they are in the minority.

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#65 Re: Attitudes at Work
February 01, 2014, 09:29:50 am

Seriously though, just wait for institutions like Bolton & Salford to go bust.


Is Bolton & Salford one of those fancy law firms from down south?

Its a building society that got above its station with a series of leveraged takeovers in Lutonium.

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#66 Re: Attitudes at Work
February 01, 2014, 09:50:58 am
Hi Offwidth - interesting posts. I'm a senior (in position anyway!) academic at a successful but non Russel Group university and we're thriving at the moment. Our bread and butter are UK students (and a bit of research) and the former are increasing and with it our staff, facilities and investment.

Its not all rosy - those working in the arts and social science faculties are looking over their shoulders.. And (sorry Sloper) its not necessarily the 'media studies' et. al. that are suffering its modern languages, fine arts, - classic arts subjects if you like.

I oppose the way fees have been re-structured (that is a complete other debate not to talk about here - yet) - BUT... they have led to improvements. Due to things like the KIS database and the 'compare the market' type websites for potential students - we (academics) all have to up our game when it comes to the NSS (national student survey), and all the other metrics we have to acquire (ie employability, contact hours etc... blah blah). So - students definately get a better experience in our institution than they did 2, 3 or 4 years ago. Feedback is given on time - in detail. Gone are the days of last min changes in assessment or timetabling.. all these things have to be well planned and executed - and this results in a better student experience.

Salaries have dropped relatively - and as a senior academic - my salary is less than an MP, a deputy head teacher.. (certainly less than a Doctor!)... there are no social club benefits etc.. any more.. we do have a coffee room - and lunch times and morning tea breaks are maintained (and important - the informal chatter about teaching and research is where much is done).. Administration has grown and grown. It now seems to exist for its own existence - that may be institution specific in some ways.. But I love my job for the mental freedom it gives me with regards to my research. It is in many ways like being self employed with a salary.

Sloper - I don't think there will be many HE closures. Universities operate as independent companies with many internal units/divisions etc.. and if one or two parts are not performing - they get cut. What you may find is more specialisation (which I think could be a good thing) - rather than Uni's cashing in and running degrees on everything, I think there will be a rationalisation and certain universities will specialise - and become centres of excellence in their own right. You can already see this via the investment in certain institutions. Portsmouth for example (a fine institute - but not one of the top 20 etc..) has over the last 5-10 years invested in its Astrophysics dept.. and now has a large tower block full of people cast from the Big Bang Theory (a sweeping generalisation ;) )... not something you might associate them with.. Edge Hill is pumping loads of money in to certrain areas at the moment - Geography/Earth Science there has just had new labs/buildings/etc.. etc... developed and its recruiting staff (not really sure why they're doing that - but thats what thye're doing!)..


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#67 Re: Attitudes at Work
February 01, 2014, 02:37:39 pm
Thanks tomtom

I see where you are coming from and I could almost describe my own institution in the same way if I'd gone in a particular direction and didn't see how good things were before; some of my younger colleagues in offices next door feel a similar way as you. However my career followed a different route. I was always keen and enthusiastic and departments back then were incredibly static (I didn't fancy a 10 year apprenticeship before they let me become a course leader for instance) and I was a little unlucky with my industrially linked research, as during and following my PhD mass restructuring of solid state research facilities in industry and rationalization of government funded research centres (down to good old Maggie) led to a huge increase in competition for an increasingly small industrial collaborative market, especially in my area of expertise, III-V materials. At the same time some research colleagues were stitched up by their supervisors and I did my best to help and through that I became involved in what was then APT (an academic trade association which paralleled NATHFE but without their mad politics). In APT I was almost immediately thrown into the world of institutional strategy and tactics as it related to staffing and contracts and was on working terms with management from the Principal downwards. Later this grew to an involvement with national level work (in AUCL, then AUT and UCU). I also jumped at an offer to work with some new collaborative partners in Malaysia in the early 90's and with my University validation services in general. Through these I've traveled a lot, seen HE across Europe and Asia, and became friends with some very rich men who ran big business (including a bit of HE) very efficiently. I got to run courses the way I thought they should be run with improved student support and engagement, improving output success in a real way without diluting quality. I continued in research, albeit in more of a hobby sense, mainly helping out in research groups led by others. I went climbing a lot to keep me sane given the high and potentially stressful positions I got myself into and helped by the flexibility of my role (I could move work to chase the best times for this, whilst more standard colleagues delivered lectures) and the ready supply of keen student climbing partners.

Through all this experience I now see increasingly significant risks to the comfortable life some academics are lucky enough to lead. Most institutions can indeed restructure fast (I was a victim of that several times due to a huge reticence of government to even mildly control/fund who studies what (medicine and education are two obvious exceptions), as we suddenly lacked UK school leavers willing to study engineering at my place, despite our team doing a real good job in an area where the country always snapped up our graduates and having great industrial links and hugely successful overseas income. So I've seen how fast the comfort can disappear and with how little warning: we made a millionaire academic redundant with pension enhancements who went to Durham and made millions more. It also happens in little ways when illness or family problems mean that going the extra mile, that is regarded as a norm in the job these days, becomes difficult.

The biggest key risk is that fees are now simply not value for money for a very significant number of students (possibly even a majority) and this could hit any area in most of out institutions, as even the proper high level vocational degrees from medicine to MPhys need extra years of study. Students don't realise this yet in large numbers but I think they will soon and then the comfortable HE fee income will need supplementing again from an unwilling government.

The next risk is some new and very serious competition and this is in two parts. The first and biggest long term are the MOOC internet courses backed up by the availability of an international army of casualised academic teachers, treated increasingly badly by UK Universities and Colleges (oh the wonderfully flexible zero hour contract!). Even the best students cant teach themselves as efficiently as when they interact with experts... I was the top student in my year at my school and was a Cambridge undergrad and even I gained massively from good teachers. This is why HE exists despite the huge information available to-hand for those that want it and whom in theory could teach themselves. Its why something like the OU style model is needed, as quality internet education inevitably takes off, as interaction is essential but this interaction can be done partly now over Skype. The UK is reacting fast by setting up its own MOOCs but it is sadly often trying to do it top-down by  forcing academics' involvement; and because they don't understand the lessons of the OU many are trying to do it too cheaply which simply means it wont work well. The second part of the competition is over the English Channel as you can study on as good if not better a course for much less money, in English; and even the French now do this (they all compete with our overseas market as well as taking UK students).

The next risk is short termism and bean-counting in research and a continuing lack of proper tax incentive for development. Every few years the greatest minds in the UK are involved in a pointless increasingly time-consuming and expensive paper chase to rank each other. Its nice to know we do OK but journals tell us that so do we really need to spend this much cost and effort measuring it and does this really benefit us compared to our colleagues in other countries? Cutting research budgets (tiny on a national scale) that help drive recovery and future success to help balance sudden and serious problems in national budgets is almost as stupid as cutting funding for tax collectors: 0/10 for government in both respects here. Development has been a constant scandal in the UK since I started. To follow on from our brilliant research when will the UK learn from the best international practice and insist on its application across all HE. A few institutions in the UK fly in the face of the headwind by being generous to very high quality staff but institutional greed and tax structures hold most of us back.

The next risk is the overseas market where size for size (with maybe the Australians) we are the most successful in the world so to encourage this we recently decided to change student visa regs and send scary xenophobic messages to places like India and China about the new visa controls and how not to expect to get a job in the UK afterwards (even though UK organisations and companies are desperate for the best skilled workers that UK HE isn't producing in large enough quantities). Also everyone else in the world is chasing this market as well so we cant afford to shoot ourselves in the foot.

The next risk is killing the goose that lays the golden eggs: academics in HE has been responsible for one of the largest efficiency improvements ever demonstrated in the public sector. Student Staff ratios have doubled or tripled over the decades of mass expansion, standards broadly held up, and student satisfaction has improved. There are problems in a few places (less free choice for the lowest grades and more vocational alternatives please) but the predicted catastrophe of expansion (from the likes of Sloper), because those of average intelligence (proles) were said to be not up to or have nothing to gain from HE, never happened.  Anyone with half a brain could have realised this catastrophe wasn't likely, as the dimwits from public schools always did OK and vocational routes through industry gave hard working average folk a backdoor to HE which worked. Most staff love teaching and research as long as they don't get messed around too much in doing it, yet of course the opposite is happening: huge increases in bureaucracy to measure and squeeze out ever more efficiency. A more efective solution to improvement is of course is to cut central admin and most of this faceless measurement ('of pigs with intent to fatten them when they actually need food') and treat staff as professionals and talk to them and require them to report direct response from stakeholders (eg meet student reps and deal with problems now, not fill in massively duplicated questionnaires that highlight a problem after the student has graduated). Pay and pensions are not what drive most academics but when linked with ever increasing workload and decreasing academic freedom we do reach a point where the best start to look elsewhere.

The final big risk is what I see as worsening leadership in most HE. If things worked well our leaders would be all over the news and behind the scenes dealing with these issues, they used to do this in the good old days when risks were much less serious and they were paid much less, but when was the last time you saw a VC on the TV doing anything like this (a few on the especially mad student visa issues maybe)? I also see a sharp decline in good management practice locally and a 'them and us' attitude developing that worked oh so well in UK manufacturing in the 70's (my union, UCU, doesn't always help here either). Partly this is because the incentives for VCs and senior staff work the opposite way to what they should: they join a cosy executive club that applies lazy methodology fed from government toadies in UCEA (and certainly no boat rocking) and get paid handsomely irrespective of what happens and often collect a knighthood when they retire. The same story is occurring in some NHS management (where the commentator Roy Lilley is a beacon of common sense in what they should be doing instead) and in some of the Civil Service and some Local Government and some of the bigger companies in the private sector.

Things are not without hope and I still broadly like my job but I feel there will be a lot of upheaval at the end of this decade and I really cant see many of the the current batch of VC's steering through this with any real courage. Survival of HE establishments will be more based on inertia and avoidance of national negative headlines than good management. Management outwith HE is in many parts an eqivalent national scandal that needs a hard evidenced based reboot. In the meantime young folk need to be aware of all this and understand that taking on massive debt to get a job to work themselves into the ground for an organisation that doesn't give a fuck about them isn't a way to live their lives. They need to be careful where they spend time and money and be flexible in outlook and seek the good organisations that will look after them (and likely thrive) and ignore the bad ones that will likely bite the dust.

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#68 Re: Attitudes at Work
February 01, 2014, 08:14:23 pm
Ok... I know it's a bit early.. And we didn't do them last year..

But..

Best non climbing thread of 2014 on UKB nomination.... this one...

And I can see it getting even better. Who said Internet forums were dead...

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#69 Re: Attitudes at Work
February 01, 2014, 09:31:33 pm
I always like to avoid the whole getting fired thing, by seeing it coming and having a good, loud, Diva-esque walkout instead...

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#70 Re: Attitudes at Work
February 02, 2014, 07:53:27 pm
...

I wish you'd been my careers teacher. I often wonder if I've fucked up - I did physics at uni, now doing a PhD. I really enjoyed undergrad and the PhD is ok - which is all great - but I have no idea what I want to do afterwards, I only know that I'm unconvinced by the prospect of a normal, full-time career. Until recently I'd never considered that stuff like access work offshore would actually be incredibly lucrative in terms of how much you can earn in a short space of time. Anything more vocational, or unusual, like that or offshore geophys was given fairly short shrift in both my school and home environments - intentionally or not I feel I was brought up to feel that there is a two tier system with 'proper' careers and 'other shit', only to realise that the 'other shit' is actually liable to be a better way to facilitating the lifestyle I want to lead. I think there should have been much more talk in school careers about how jobs, careers paths, training etc fits with potential lifestyles, which was almost invariably overlooked at my school in favour of pushing you towards academic performance and the traditional career choices. I have no idea how this fits with careers stuff at other schools though.

100 8a.nu points for anyone who can tell me what job I should do that's vaguely interesting, sustainable long-term and allows me to not do too much work!

You haven't fucked up by going through HE you've just given yourself plenty of options in life, from low-paying bog standard work with low commitments to high-paying high commitment work. Some people only have the first option. Sure that might mean it's taken x number of years to get to where you are and you might not know what to do but guess what - hardly anyone knows exactly what to do next. You'll quickly realise (if you don't already) once you finish your academic life that you're well placed to do what you want. Just a case of trying a bunch of things that appeal and seeing what you feel like sticking with and where that leads you. It's the unexpected branches and taking of opportunities which give interest to life. You'll always be able to re-train and find another way instead of getting stuck in a 9-5 unless you really need the security of a stable job (family, kids, other commitments etc.); and having that highly-skilled physics background is only going to make adding on re-training and qualifications that much easier. So it's just a matter of making money, while working out what you like and don't like on the way!

My path looks something like this (with a few injured stints of doing nothing in-between!):
Leave school @ 16 without any academic qualifications of worth.
1 year apprentice woodsman/estate maintenance worker.
Sacked-off place on a 2 year gamekeeping course and joined the army.
10 years in infantry, finished off in a recce team - loads of unforgettable jobs, places, people and experiences.
3 years instructing as an MIA in N.Wales.
2 years traveling and climbing, including 7 months climbing/skiing in NZ. In-between various trips I worked as a van courier in central London to pay for the traveling.
Got rope access and NDT quals, moved to Canada. 4 years in Canada/US working rope access NDT, and also as a mountain safety 'advisor' and long-line emergency medic for oil exploration companies in remote terrain. Both ace jobs, hanging out in nowhere-ville Canadian and US back-country, from perma-frozen northern Canada, to Utah, Wyoming and Colorado at 13000 feet fucking around in helicopters and stopping Mexicans falling off cliffs.
2 years jobbing around in UK rope access.
3 years rope access manager for a large industrial services company.

I've been taking OU courses towards a degree in Environmental Management and Technology for a few years but it's on hold at the mo. Not sure where to go next! - I actually love the idea of something more science-based but realise I don't have the background or education without properly re-training, so that's probably what I'll pursue.

Ref your points about '2 tiers', I think there is an undercurrent of status snobbery in this country, including around the subject of what work you do. Not sure where this originates. In Canada there didn't seem to be anything like the same status vibe that you get from some people here - there I couldn't tell much difference in attitude between Canadians from all walks of life and different vocations and professions (not saying it's all rosy). Here I'd say there's a more overt sense of snobbery/division between the trades and some professions. Maybe here the attitude stems in part from it being that bit more difficult to compete for limited resources on an overcrowded isle.

Don't know how much of a pure academic or how much of a 'get your hands dirty' type you are - have you thought about 'applied physics' work? Must be loads of interesting jobs where you can use pure physics in a practical role. For high-pay/low-commitment/high time off there's advanced NDT or other surveying work, using rope access. It could lead into other, engineering type work. You'd easily earn 50+ grand a year as a Time of Flight or Phased Array inspector on the ropes, with 6 months off per-year, working all over the world on interesting industrial projects such as refineries, chemical plants, ships, offshore rigs, power stations etc. It needs a certain type of character - careful, attention to detail, quite geeky and meticulous. ToFD/Phased Array with rope access is in high demand. It takes a bunch of experience working with standard UT first before you could get qualified for ToFD though. If you got to L3 asap (possible inside 3 years) you'd be set up to earn as much as you wanted and work as little as you want - lots of companies will snap your arm off if you have advanced NDT quals (or even just UT/LPI with some companies) as well as a L3 ticket because it shows you don't need baby-sitting on the ropes and will get the access side of the job things done quickly and competently.
I was close to the bottom rung in the NDT world but still earned lots of money, went to lots of interesting places and found the work interesting. When I first started I wondered if I'd like working on massive industrial sites but I ended up finding I enjoyed, in a perverse way, the contrast of spending a week crawling/hanging around inside the toxic guts of a refinery in the middle of the night and then being out in the mountains mixed climbing, on the crag rock climbing, or skiing the next week. And I find it keeps things interesting for me to mix up the scenery and the type of people I meet. It can be hard to find common ground with some people in the oil/petrochemical/power industries but there are plenty of interesting folk with interesting stories to tell, especially the more you travel.


abarro81

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#71 Re: Attitudes at Work
February 02, 2014, 10:07:27 pm
Cheers for the useful advice from all those replying to my post. I find it really interesting seeing the jobs path/progression that different people have taken, damn good thread.

Pete: NDT was something I'd wondered about recently whilst wondering about access, since it looked more like the kind of stuff I'd enjoy than other access work.

Don't know how much of a pure academic or how much of a 'get your hands dirty' type you are

I guess this is part of the problem with not knowing what I want direction to go in - I'm still working this kind of thing out. Or maybe it's just that my preferences are changing. Certainly the bits of my PhD which I enjoy the most at the moment are the days where I'm in the lab, actually doing experiments, making and testing things. The days in the office I find kind of dull most of the time, which is pretty much the opposite of how I was most of the way through undergrad. (Although 'getting my hands dirty' might be an inopportune phrase given that most of my lab work is in a cleanroom or a glovebox!) I find the lab days have a nice mix of mechanical, routine tasks with the need for enought thought that it doesn't get boring and the hours fly by in comparison to when I'm at my desk. From a brief google stuff like Time of Flight looks like it might similar, I'll keep having a look into that kind of thing. Do/did you find the NDT work interesting? Also, how did you get into it - it seems like the requirements to get any of the qualifications include a period of work experience, but presumably it's hard to get any work without having the qualifications?

When I first started I wondered if I'd like working on massive industrial sites
This too - I have no idea if I'd love or hate this, and whether I'd like something like the offshore lifestyle, but it doesn't seem particularly easy to 'try before you buy' with something like offshore.

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#72 Re: Attitudes at Work
February 02, 2014, 10:15:45 pm
A more focussed question for you Barrows. Had any 'Eureka' moments in your research yet? They're generally rather dull in context (think man looking at graph and going huh - rather than man mixing chemicals, Big Bang and a diamond appears in a test tube...) but they give me a real buzz... its probably why I love research. I love figuring stuff out and the spiralling realisation of how important it can/could be...

Like a drug in some ways...

But if you're not getting that buzz - then don't stick in research... What does it feel like? (if you were going to ask!) Well its a bit like love - in that you know when you've had it and not really sure when you've not :)

As you progress in an academic/research career that buzz still exists and surfaces from time to time - but it does get more progressively buried in administration and other shit :)

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#73 Re: Attitudes at Work
February 02, 2014, 11:45:31 pm
I find the lab days have a nice mix of mechanical, routine tasks with the need for enough thought that it doesn't get boring and the hours fly by in comparison to when I'm at my desk. From a brief google stuff like Time of Flight looks like it might similar, I'll keep having a look into that kind of thing. Do/did you find the NDT work interesting?
I stopped NDT around 2010 when I started the manager's job. I did find it interesting yeah, in a semi-autistic 'same thing over and over but must do this thing right' kind of way. It's similar to how you describe your experiment tasks - mechanical and straightforward as long as you do it correctly and pay attention. Normal thickness testing, which is what almost everyone does on the ropes, is very basic in practice and you could give the UT meter to anyone and they'd be able to take readings. But to do it properly on safety-critical equipment there's more to it than just holding a probe against some steel. The meter has to be properly calibrated and re-calibrated, you might be working on 350 degree pipes in a refinery and need particular bits of kit and ways to overcome the circumstances, you need to fill out accurate reports, and there could be serious implications if you get lazy and start to cut corners. I'm not saying it's anything approaching rocket science - it isn't and there are some real cowboys doing it, especially on the ropes where people get away with more becasue they can't be as easily checked up on. But it's involved and varied enough to make the day interesting and, in combination with the sometimes challenging access and the work environment (confined spaces, perhaps breathing apparatus or filter mask due to hazardous atmosphere, darkness, heat or cold or just plain physically awkward or in an exposed position), it can turn what is a basic procedure into a satisfying challenge with a safety critical purpose and the need to do a thorough job in order to satisfy the client - normally a rushed plant engineer in the middle of a busy plant shutdown. As you get higher up the food chain (ToFD and Phased Array) you get a higher quality of inspector.

I still supervise the occasional UT inspection when I don't have any other L3 supervisors available. The most recent job involved the inspector ab'ing into a 30m high vessel, approx 2.5m inside diameter, to check every support ring at 2m vertical intervals. The vessel filtered Sodium Hydroxide on a chemical plant where we have a lot of work. Headtorch and some lighting dangled in from above, escape mask carried but not needed to be worn because they washed out and atmospheric tested inside. The inspection took a few hours, he was also taking photos to show the condition of any interior nozzles, support rings and any defects noticed etc. - it's typical for the plant engineer to want a photographic record because you're often the only person to ever see the equipment up close. Then he'd spend a few hours writing up the readings from the meter onto schematic drawings, attach the photos and compile an electronic report for the client, or send the data to the office for the office wallahs to make the report.

There are all sorts of other more advanced ultrasound testing techniques, such as angle beam and immersion testing but they don't get used on the ropes for obvious reasons.

Another inspection trade I supervised recently was a laser scan of the interior of a 20m high stainless vessel which had become very slightly warped from the interior mixer arm becoming unbalanced and twatting the vessel walls. The inspection equipment was pretty high-tech and expensive, and the job involved shooting a laser beam balanced on a gimble at a hand held detector and plotting approx 600 different points on the vessel wall. Again done by abseiling into the vessel. Don't know too much about this method but I'd have thought it's highly paid, in demand and straightforward enough for a tech savvy person to learn how to do.

Quote
Also, how did you get into it - it seems like the requirements to get any of the qualifications include a period of work experience, but presumably it's hard to get any work without having the qualifications?
You can take the courses without any work experience (Lavender in Penistone are excellent), and then try to get a company to take you on and build up your hours. This is what I did - Lavender course in UT and LPI but I went straight to Canada and got work, I ended up working on UT jobs straight away with a L3 who was also qualified. So I got my hours pretty quickly. Not sure how easy it is to start in the UK. Another way would be to just try to get hours at any ndt company on foot before trying to get rope work, could be the easiest way to get to the more advanced techniques quickly.


When I first started I wondered if I'd like working on massive industrial sites
This too - I have no idea if I'd love or hate this, and whether I'd like something like the offshore lifestyle, but it doesn't seem particularly easy to 'try before you buy' with something like offshore.
[/quote]

The typical site is smelly, dirty, dangerous, busy and noisy with lots of ways for the unaware to get hurt. You tend to get home with grime to be washed off. They're also populated by fat rough-arsed construction industry tradespeople - enlightened/progressive it aint. But I like the contrast with other sides of life and I don't ever try to pretend it's pretty.
I never wanted to go offshore becasue I earned plenty onshore and got to go home at night or the weekends. Offshore is great money if you can stand lots of time away (I had more than my share from the army). Sounds very boring if the weather's poor though. And yeah it can be tough to break into the offshore industry in the UK from what I hear, although ndt quals and being a sound person probably opens a lot of doors  - better to ask others on here who know the offshore trade.

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#74 Re: Attitudes at Work
February 03, 2014, 01:30:42 am
Pete, thanks for your in depth posts. They're very helpful... I'm in a similar situation, my plan when I moved back to Aus I tried to join the Army as a parachute rigger. Aced every single test and interview but was rejected by medical staff because I fractured my heel in 2012. Went to a specialist who said it was 100% and backed me up when I appealed the rejection. Got rejected again. I'd been planning on joining for the past few years whenever I'd move back.

Now, I'm kind of just bumming around working part time so I can climb as much as possible. Rope access has definitely been an idea for a couple of years now. It's an industry that definitely appeals to me yet I feel as though it will be quite hard to break in to without any other trade background/training...

 

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