I had the incredible chance to join 75 women from 9 different countries all working for my company for a networking & workshopping event this week.
I loved the opportunity, and meeting colleagues from all over Europe, making connections (and shocking a few people as well).
But damn, am I freaking tired. I have peopled too much.
And next week I have to people again a lot, for a whole 4 days.
Send help.
I am at the 'If I read one more work email, I'm going to lose it' end of the week.
FFS .. why is 2026 the year of 'everything is pants on fire urgent, and oh sorry we didn't get this to you till 5.4 seconds before it needs to be rolled out'.
My Belgian engineers have been complaining about my Romanian engineers and designers delivering crap plans.
I am reviewing plans made by Belgian designers and engineers, supposedly reviewed by the lead engineer, and I am just sending them back with so many issues.
As the design manager for the project, I cannot let such pile of steaming shit go out, not even for a work in progress, still to be fully coordinated design.
There is some clashes and issues, and then there is not looking at all at what other people are doing, not loading a structural model to see where structural elements are, and not giving a fuck about consistency.
#WorkingToot #WorkRant #WorkToot #EngineerFrustrations #EngineerRant
Yes, boss, our system is complicated. But you could actually trust us to do our jobs instead of trying to understand what you don’t need to get into the details of.
And no, AI is not the fucking answer!
Plan for today. Chill walk. 2 hour meeting. Back in the office for lunch.
Except it lasted 5 fucking hours.
And in more work frustrations, colleagues reinventing the wheel.
Omg we reinvented the gantt chart to estimate how manu hours a project will take!
Omg we reinvented how to update cost estimates based on old prices plus inflation (instead of just calling our cost managers, that is part of their work)
I had to look the translation up, because the issue with speaking several languages is that sometimes the more appropriate word (both in sound, description and connotations) only appears to exist in one language.
I am so fed up with architects (of the designing buildings kind) being such chapuzas (bunglers) in their job and just doing some extremely shoddy work.
Mandatory office days.
All team meetings happening in the main office.
Not having an overview of the planning.
The office is so full that people are working in the call pods, the informal meeting spaces and the cafetaria.
Gotta love this bullshit.
Luckily I am usually early enough I can get a desk. But it is so noisy that I have noise cancelling headphones on all the time. Really fostering collaboration and communication 🤣
This week I will be spending about 9h commuting 3 days to the office. Because I am required to attend meetings in the main office.
I did not sign up for this. I am attached to a satellite office that's only 30-35mins commute each way. But I won't be compensated for the additional 6h I am "expected" to give up from my personal time.
My engineers cannot work with
- word
- excel
- revit
- autocad
- PowerPoint
So I really wonder wtf they can do.
The depressing reality of a hotel "gym".
Another gloriously stupid decision at work.
Starting november we have to reserve our desk using an app (not Outlook). OK. Fine.and don't forget to "check in" when you arrive.
On top of that, all meeting rooms will now be reserved exclusively via that same app. That is not linked to Outlook. That has no "schedule assistant" to plan meetings.
So now I need two tools, extra time, and some additional cursing, to plan a fucking meeting.
And they kindly ask that people go to the office more often!
Oh yes, my office will be moving and downsizing from 108 desks to 66,snd cutting meeting space in half as well. But return to the office, please!
After a week off work, "only" 145 emails & 15 teams messages...
Team day in the office. For several teams. Which means there are not enough desks. Which means people are hunkered in meeting rooms. Which means I got to kick people out of the room I luckily booked yesterday to have my lunch time online meeting...
Also got shit done this morning. Will get shit done this afternoon.
Why on earth do we come to the office again?!
Ah, the low harddisk storage warning again.
Coworker vibed a script to check the tags set on the aws providers we use throughout the codebase, and to correct them.
First, completely duplicated existing functionality - which he wrote(!) a year ago.
Second, overwrites correct tags with outdated info (which he should know)
Third, dropped several existing tags which were there for reasons
Fourth, created 10+ pull requests and just assumed everything was well.
But the script did include a lot of colours and emojis. So I guess it has that going for it.
(first) work frustration of the day:
Colleague request feedback on presentation for a training regarding quality in projects. Presentation is hosted on a sharepoint page (aka a collaborative platform). Colleague does not give rights to add comments to the 50-count slide deck.
Which means I have three options:
1. Write my comments in an email, referring to each slide
2. Write my comments on the slides (as comments, obviously), try to extract them into a file (not a native feature I think?) and send that.
3. Write my comments (as comments), save the file to my cloud storage, and share the file.
Because fucking Digital Team coworkers can't be arsed to use the fucking digital tools we have properly.
#WorkingToot #WorkToot #WorkMusings #WorkRant #WorkFrustration
After Monday's 6.5h of meetings, yesterday I had only 5h (and I managed to skip 1h) and today it's another 6.5h planned.
Kill me now.
#WorkingToot #WorkRant #WorkToot #EngineerFrustrations #DesignManagerFrustrations
