Whoop whoop! The Good News Wins.

The company I work for has been valiantly weathering the financial crisis storm (as they are all currently attempting to do) and being a UK based financial services firm this has not been easy. Luckily for them they started off-shoring most of the operational stuff to SA about 18 months ago, so they had already benefited from the cost cutting and stream lining exercise and where settled and establish when this hit. But even so things have been nerve wracking. Buckles have had to be tightened, budgets and head counts frozen. And the sad reality is that retrenchments have had to be made. Also as resignations have come in those resources have not been replaced. W e have lost whole departments and are running a VERY tight ship now.

We are down to 9 in IT now from an original 25 or so about 2 years ago. (We had been down to 7 until recently when we insisted we actually couldn't function like that.)

Anyway, I started there in June last year, so have not even been there a year. I never had my probation review after my first 3 months and when my then new IT Manager started at around that time and I mentioned this in our first meeting he joked, 'Oh well, consider this your exit interview then'. (I laughed but was a tad freaked out anyway - we are now good friends though and) he has since left and we now have no IT Manager. I took over some of his duties, as well as taking on many of the tasks of the one developer who left (mostly the sys admin and support parts of his role, not the serious dev part) and the tasks of the Office Admin and Support Job coordinator and well general IT flunky and dog's body.

It's been busy and often stressful (especially the monthly billing! Much swearing and cursing around that, but the 'Nebraska sized' stored proc billing query does help), but I like working there and it is very convenient (a few kms from both home and the boy's school) and it really suits my lifestyle (I work from 8:00 - 16:00). It is a fun, interesting and vibrant group of people too and the work is varied and interesting. So I have just kept quiet, sucked it up and done my job. I have also kept trying to keep the guys here motivated and not let any more of the really good guys try to leave!


Well we have just had a PA season, with feedback which was due on Friday. (I have been so busy I only did my PA reviews an hour before they were due!). There were issues with the system too so I had to do some rapid virtual tap-dancing and running up and down coordinating and begging and coercing devs to help fix it pronto. Including literally running to my desk and tripping over a wire and coming THIS close to face planting on the corner of my desk! But we pulled it off and it seemed to work, in a very bespoke and clunky way anyway.

I have been worried that our department is being seen as unapproachable, harried and unresponsive (because we are frikken busy and simply under resourced and moral has been a bit low at times). So was concerned about the kind of feedback we'd get this time around. Really all I have wanted is to keep my job. I do need it!

Well I was called in today. With me being me (and after that previous experience at my last job where I was crapped on for EVERY LITTLE THING - it was seriously ridiculous. I worked harder than ever there and it was truly thankless, I HATED that job.) I was a bit paranoid, thinking I was going to be chastised for Internet browsing, or something even worse... I didn't even want to think it.

So I slunk in to be told I got great feedback from the PA 360 degree reviews and they are happy with what I have been doing and that I have 'made a huge difference to the face of IT' and everyone is happy. So they want to formalise my new role and change my title to recognise it and said a communication out to the company so that everyone knows. So I am not only keeping my job, but getting a promotion to official 'IT Team Leader' and a 5% increase.

I am very happy!