The Mock Turtle

Good luck, skips!

I am two days into my new job. It is a start-up company, tiny but thriving, and with a lot of potential. It’s a breath of fresh air after working the last 13 years at the equivalent of a corporate giant.

Good luck, Skips!

That sounds really positive, Dande - I bet your experience will be invaluable. I’m glad it’s all worked out for you!

All the best of luck Skips

New job sounds good Danders - I love a start up and have worked for several over the years (until they either unfortunately fold or are so successful they get bought by a bigger fish (software/IT))

I'm so glad you're enjoying it, Dande!

And the best of luck, Skips.

I've not had any feedback at all, which I think is pretty poor considering it was nearly a week ago and they said they wanted someone to accept an offer before Christmas and there would be second round interviews. If I were applying through an agency I would chase them, but it's a faceless HR portal that we use to apply for internal roles. It's no longer listed on the job boards, but that could just mean it's reached an application deadline.

Yeah, I didn't get it, they told me by zoom today. They did say in January that we will look at areas I would like to develop and make an action plan for 2021 but my lack of management experience meant they didn't want to take it to second round interview (the post holder will have about 5 people they would manage).

I'm sorry to hear that Skips

I'm sorry, Skips.

I’m sorry too, but having applied for it should stand you in good stead in the future, and you can use it to ask for more training/exposure to the right people, etc. It does suck though.

I'm really sorry Skips. Ella's right though - definitely take them up on the action plan in the new year.

You're right, it's an opportunity for me to see what training etc I can get and I plan on getting a meeting in the diary early doors of January. They also asked me to have a think about what I would like to do long term so they can give me the right tools and hopefully a move in the right direction.

Do take them up on that.

I've had some (very protracted developments) here if anybody is bored enough to read this. The secondment I mentioned in the other thread back in October ended up not happening because they wanted to turn it into a promotion instead; this is obviously good, but it meant an awful lot of people having to get involved, and it went all the way up to the Board a couple of times, which is ridiculous.

Initially I turned it down, because they were insisting that I take on a new, much worse, contract, as part of the deal. We have some UK sites outside London, and the employees at those sites have much worse terms and conditions than we do in London, because there is the need to be much more competitive in the City. All of their benefits are worse, and I'd have lost a lot in terms of pension contributions, potential redundancy payouts and other things. (They did offer to pay me a bit more to cover this, but I really didn't want to work for a different entity of my firm for reasons I won't bore you with, so I said no.) They were really surprised by this . Anyway, after weeks of back and forth, they agreed to let me keep my existing contract including my length of service, location, etc*. Yay for negotiating .

A couple of weeks ago they wanted to announce my appointment (internally, I mean; nobody else gives a shit), and were asking me to accept the role formally. I said I couldn't do that without a job description. My manager (who is lovely, but a lazy sod) cobbled something together from a different job with loads of important things missed out. It was an utter shambles. We had a call today, and I updated the job description to say what I want it to say, and I'm hoping he will approve it next week so I can get started.

What a palaver. It's still a big secret .

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.



* good news in case there are redundancies, and who knows these days?

Congratulations! Well done for sticking to your guns and I hope your new JD is approved soon.

Congratulations and well done. It shouldn’t have to be this hard or complicated or messy and it’s a good job you are all over this stuff.

Well played and congratulations!

Nice work, Ella!

Thanks, guys! It’s taken so long that any excitement wore off weeks ago, and I am quite daunted, but about a year ago I was ready to quit this job, so I’m really glad to have the opportunity to try something new without having to leave (yet).

There is some awkwardness in that a guy who was my peer, who joined one day after I did, and is quite a lot older, will now report to me. He’s a bit of a troublemaker*, and the reporting line was his own choice (he’s alienated everybody else), but I know he’s going to be hard work.



* not deliberately, but he is very much not neurotypical, and he winds a lot of people up.

Well done Ella. That's great you got what you wanted on your own terms.

Good job, Ella!