The years of discontent, 2022/23

[Aufc]

21 hours ago, Monkey Tennis said:

Teaching is rather different from most of the roles described above.  

Yes, there's a 35 hour contract, and yes, most people will work a bit more.  Other professional positions might carry an expectation of additional hours, but they might also feature things like bonuses, and nowadays, might feature flexibility in terms of compressed hours, working from home, flexi-time etc.  Teaching doesn't really afford much of this at all.

 

21 hours ago, Gaz said:

This is spot on.

A few folk saying it's all about give and take. I've got about three or four hours' worth of marking to do over the next couple of nights. Presumably I'll be able to finish at 12 on Wednesday. Not sure what my pupils will do right enough when they arrive for their scheduled classes and I'm at home on the PS5

Fucking hell. It is about give and take. You get 6-7 weeks off in a row over summer plus other various holidays throughout the year so surely that is the give and take? There are clearly pros and cons to every job, however, you are making out like teachers are really hard done by. 

[Genuine Hibs Fan]

1 hour ago, Bonksy+HisChristianParade said:

About 95% of big 4 employees are utter wanks so it doesn’t surprise me tbh.

Will agree with this. After I came back to the UK was stuck working in a call centre, not able to get interviews for stuff I wanted and applied for a grad scheme at a big 4 because "it would look good in the CV" or whatever. Spent two utterly miserable years there and now do more or less the same job in house elsewhere and it is 100x better because you're not surrounded by them.

You've got the absolute psychopaths who buy into it all and then the miserable ones who won't leave because every time they get an interview elsewhere some partner will make some promise about better treatment which never comes to pass. 

[KD1711]

2 hours ago, Bonksy+HisChristianParade said:

About 95% of big 4 employees are utter wanks so it doesn’t surprise me tbh.

We had a system called gems where you got £5 worth a month and folk can award you them, loads of folk in my intake bragging about the amount of gems they had been awarded but when you actually worked it out for all the unpaid overtime they did they were being shafted big time. 

Majority of my intake were all private educated wanks with no sense of reality, some genuinely believed the work they were doing was meaningful and impacted society. 

[KD1711]

27 minutes ago, Genuine Hibs Fan said:

Will agree with this. After I came back to the UK was stuck working in a call centre, not able to get interviews for stuff I wanted and applied for a grad scheme at a big 4 because "it would look good in the CV" or whatever. Spent two utterly miserable years there and now do more or less the same job in house elsewhere and it is 100x better because you're not surrounded by them.

You've got the absolute psychopaths who buy into it all and then the miserable ones who won't leave because every time they get an interview elsewhere some partner will make some promise about better treatment which never comes to pass. 

Can only second what is said here. 

I was on a training course one week which is clearly scheduled in our diaries and some of the folk in our class were doing getting hounded to do tasks for managers despite clearly being booked elsewhere, and they thought it would bode well for them to do the work rather than pushing back.

One guy in my previous office did 600 hours unpaid overtime from January to November of last year to make manager which is a grand total of 4k payrise.

Some folk brag about the hours they work like it is a personality trait, one guy in the office got asked if things were okay at home from his manager as he ONLY did 140 hours unpaid overtime.

Get in the bin. 

[ICTChris]

When I worked for a large financial firm, my manager did loads of unpaid overtime, early starts every day and late finishes, always available etc.  She got a bonus big enough to buy her a Porsche, although she eventually was off with exhaustion for a while.

[Bonksy+HisChristianParade]

23 minutes ago, Genuine Hibs Fan said:

Will agree with this. After I came back to the UK was stuck working in a call centre, not able to get interviews for stuff I wanted and applied for a grad scheme at a big 4 because "it would look good in the CV" or whatever. Spent two utterly miserable years there and now do more or less the same job in house elsewhere and it is 100x better because you're not surrounded by them.

You've got the absolute psychopaths who buy into it all and then the miserable ones who won't leave because every time they get an interview elsewhere some partner will make some promise about better treatment which never comes to pass. 

Don’t get me wrong, from a CV perspective it’s definitely beneficial. You also gain more exposure to listed clients, IFRS, & more complex accounting issues which a lot of big employers prefer, especially in the financial services sector. I probably would have applied had I not been put off by the 3 million stage application process.

I spent three years in classes with hordes of them through in Edinburgh though and it was more than enough tbh. 

One thing I found a bit mental was that if someone on the Indian outsourcing team performed well the senior in the UK was able to reward them by way of cake rather than any sort of financial incentive. One guy I met said he very seldom handed out any cakes and seemed to be proud of this fact.
 

 

[KD1711]

10 minutes ago, ICTChris said:

When I worked for a large financial firm, my manager did loads of unpaid overtime, early starts every day and late finishes, always available etc.  She got a bonus big enough to buy her a Porsche, although she eventually was off with exhaustion for a while.

Was quite routine for folk to be off with stress in our office as well, expected as part of the job. Pretty mental when you look at it.

[Monkey Tennis]

7 hours ago, hk blues said:

 

One of the other posts mentioned something about teachers striking to get paid for the current unpaid hours - I doubt this is really the case.  

I doubt it too.

I think it was pretty much just about wanting pay to keep up with inflation better.

[mathematics]

I didn’t work for one of the big four, but for Morgan Stanley. They were decent to work for, made sure I had everything I needed from day one and their training was good. They looked down on working past your hours, preferring that you just got your shit done on time.

That being said, I still jumped ship as soon as I could: an incredibly stressful environment that didn’t suit my “goals and values”.

[TxRover]

58 minutes ago, KD1711 said:

Was quite routine for folk to be off with stress in our office as well, expected as part of the job. Pretty mental when you look at it.

I think it comes down to a mindset that those management types bought into. The concept that you need to stress and test employees, in a similar manner to how doctors are made to work long shifts and such during their training and internships. It comes down to people deluding themselves that their jobs are as important as someone like a doctor, so they have to use similar tools to weed out the weaklings. Then it just devolves into a “mine is bigger” contest.

[Monkey Tennis]

21 hours ago, virginton said:

Compare and contrast their paid/unpaid leave policies next and then get off your cross. 

Nobody's on a cross.

Why do you feel the need to be such an arsehole in every discussion?  It's a bit weird and unnecessary.

 

Of course teachers' generous holidays offset some of that.  I wouldn't claim otherwise.  The fact that they're fixed, however, does dilute the advantage of them a little.

Edited March 8, 2023 by Monkey Tennis

[TxRover]

1 minute ago, Monkey Tennis said:

Nobody's on a cross.

Why do you feel the need to be such an arsehole in every discussion?  It's a bit weird and unnecessary.

Without offering a diagnosis, intermittent explosive disorder fits the bill.

[Monkey Tennis]

2 hours ago, Aufc said:

 

Fucking hell. It is about give and take. You get 6-7 weeks off in a row over summer plus other various holidays throughout the year so surely that is the give and take? There are clearly pros and cons to every job, however, you are making out like teachers are really hard done by. 

I wasn't making out any such thing, so do calm down Old Chap.

I was merely highlighting a feature.

Edited March 7, 2023 by Monkey Tennis

[DeeTillEhDeh]

1 hour ago, Monkey Tennis said:

Nobody's on a cross.

Why do you feel the need to be such an arsehole in every discussion?  It's a bit weird and unnecessary.

 

Of course teachers' generous holidays offset some of that.  I wouldn't claim otherwise.  The fact that they're fixed, however, does dilute the advantage of them a little though.

There's always been a hint he was in the profession at some point.

[vikingTON]

1 hour ago, Monkey Tennis said:

The fact that they're fixed, however, does dilute the advantage of them a little though.

Perhaps we should just change the thread title to 'Teachers Being Ludicrously Out of Touch', because it really doesn't. 

[ICTChris]

Are there any polls of public support for the teacher’s strike?

[Aufc]

2 hours ago, Bonksy+HisChristianParade said:

Don’t get me wrong, from a CV perspective it’s definitely beneficial. You also gain more exposure to listed clients, IFRS, & more complex accounting issues which a lot of big employers prefer, especially in the financial services sector. I probably would have applied had I not been put off by the 3 million stage application process.

I spent three years in classes with hordes of them through in Edinburgh though and it was more than enough tbh. 

One thing I found a bit mental was that if someone on the Indian outsourcing team performed well the senior in the UK was able to reward them by way of cake rather than any sort of financial incentive. One guy I met said he very seldom handed out any cakes and seemed to be proud of this fact.
 

 

I think this is a false economy though as the younger people don’t get to to see these parts of the job and get stuck doing meaningless tasks so actually learn f**k all. Even the seniors will only get to see a smaller part of the job as they are so big that they are spread across various team members.

I genuinely don’t know why some companies put that big 4 is a requirement but it’s a lot of shite (this is someone who spent 2 years at a big 4 firm). Luckily I joined as a senior so avoided the shitty tasks but most of the younger members were useless and their work basically consisted of copying what was done last year and if they couldn’t get the information then they wouldn’t have a clue. 
 

There is a phrase that gets chucked about that “accountants know the value of everything and the meaning of nothing”. This rings true for a lot of “proper” accountants i come across. 

[Sergeant Wilson]

My rule of thumb is, if you can't do the work in the normal hours and can't think of a way to achieve that, then you're shite at it.

[19QOS19]

5 minutes ago, Sergeant Wilson said:

My rule of thumb is, if you can't do the work in the normal hours and can't think of a way to achieve that, then you're shite at it.

Certainly been the case at Palmerston this year. 

[Monkey Tennis]

22 minutes ago, virginton said:

Perhaps we should just change the thread title to 'Teachers Being Ludicrously Out of Touch', because it really doesn't. 

Oh it does you know.

I'm not saying this to the accompaniment of violins because I recognise that the  holidays are terrific.

However, I have genuinely profound regret that I couldn't follow Queens to Denmark with my mates 15 years ago.  That would have been brilliant.  It seemed incredible at the time that we'd qualified for Europe and I knew then, as now, that it was an opportunity that was very unlikely to ever return.  

in almost any other comparable job, I could have gone.  In this one, I couldn't.  Having fixed holidays, even long fixed holidays, has drawbacks.