I give up!
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I was hired by a company for my gap year at uni to help them develop a system to improve there reporting basically. A month in I have completed it but they won't use it because it is not "fully supported". Come on at what point did they think in house software written by a gap year student was going to be fully supported! I am now 4 months in, since I finished there system I have done nothing but type number into excel which is apparently "experience". I mean come on I am wasting a year sat in an office doing excel now instead of development! ARGHHHHH I am a BSc Computer Science student by the way predicted a first class degree and I am now stuck doing this crap!
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I was hired by a company for my gap year at uni to help them develop a system to improve there reporting basically. A month in I have completed it but they won't use it because it is not "fully supported". Come on at what point did they think in house software written by a gap year student was going to be fully supported! I am now 4 months in, since I finished there system I have done nothing but type number into excel which is apparently "experience". I mean come on I am wasting a year sat in an office doing excel now instead of development! ARGHHHHH I am a BSc Computer Science student by the way predicted a first class degree and I am now stuck doing this crap!
Welcome to the real world. Sucks, doesn't it?
Panic, Chaos, Destruction. My work here is done. Drink. Get drunk. Fall over - P O'H OK, I will win to day or my name isn't Ethel Crudacre! - DD Ethel Crudacre I cannot live by bread alone. Bacon and ketchup are needed as well. - Trollslayer Have a bit more patience with newbies. Of course some of them act dumb - they're often *students*, for heaven's sake - Terry Pratchett
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I was hired by a company for my gap year at uni to help them develop a system to improve there reporting basically. A month in I have completed it but they won't use it because it is not "fully supported". Come on at what point did they think in house software written by a gap year student was going to be fully supported! I am now 4 months in, since I finished there system I have done nothing but type number into excel which is apparently "experience". I mean come on I am wasting a year sat in an office doing excel now instead of development! ARGHHHHH I am a BSc Computer Science student by the way predicted a first class degree and I am now stuck doing this crap!
Welcome to the real world! Get used to it: 50% or more of the code you write will never be used in anger: look at how a "normal" user of (say) Word or Excel operates - they use a tine amount of the facilities available. Think of it this way: 1) You are getting paid to sit on your thumb. 2) You can put this on your CV without actually lying and it will look good. 3) You can use the time to learn something useful, and get paid for that as well.
Real men don't use instructions. They are only the manufacturers opinion on how to put the thing together. Manfred R. Bihy: "Looks as if OP is learning resistant."
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I was hired by a company for my gap year at uni to help them develop a system to improve there reporting basically. A month in I have completed it but they won't use it because it is not "fully supported". Come on at what point did they think in house software written by a gap year student was going to be fully supported! I am now 4 months in, since I finished there system I have done nothing but type number into excel which is apparently "experience". I mean come on I am wasting a year sat in an office doing excel now instead of development! ARGHHHHH I am a BSc Computer Science student by the way predicted a first class degree and I am now stuck doing this crap!
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I was hired by a company for my gap year at uni to help them develop a system to improve there reporting basically. A month in I have completed it but they won't use it because it is not "fully supported". Come on at what point did they think in house software written by a gap year student was going to be fully supported! I am now 4 months in, since I finished there system I have done nothing but type number into excel which is apparently "experience". I mean come on I am wasting a year sat in an office doing excel now instead of development! ARGHHHHH I am a BSc Computer Science student by the way predicted a first class degree and I am now stuck doing this crap!
I spent a few summers in college doing QA. :(( I will never EVER do that again.
Somebody in an online forum wrote:
INTJs never really joke. They make a point. The joke is just a gift wrapper.
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I spent a few summers in college doing QA. :(( I will never EVER do that again.
Somebody in an online forum wrote:
INTJs never really joke. They make a point. The joke is just a gift wrapper.
I think the only good thing about this job so far is codeproject isn't blocked! I understand that not all the code I write will be used but to get someone to write it and then say well we can't use it because an employee made it what the hell! Lol I made it for them at there request. I swear the worlds backwords at times. Well the excel I am doing is basically data input and is just painfully boring, I can't change formulas etc becauseeeee all there cells are locked and protected. I can't even center the text in a cell for god sake! I just don't know what to do stick it out typing in numbers for another 6-8 months or move on and try to find more relevant experience. I know I can put this on my cv but I want to learn and experience a proper development environment and this just isn't it!
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I was hired by a company for my gap year at uni to help them develop a system to improve there reporting basically. A month in I have completed it but they won't use it because it is not "fully supported". Come on at what point did they think in house software written by a gap year student was going to be fully supported! I am now 4 months in, since I finished there system I have done nothing but type number into excel which is apparently "experience". I mean come on I am wasting a year sat in an office doing excel now instead of development! ARGHHHHH I am a BSc Computer Science student by the way predicted a first class degree and I am now stuck doing this crap!
I had a similar experience from my gap year from D'oh Montfort. I used the time to get paid, not spend much time at the office, and drink a lot. But you sound considerably more driven than I was. If it is that bad I would say complain to whoever is supposed to be monitoring you from the university. One of my duties on my year was to maintain a time recording system that had been written by a previous gap year student some years before. Ownership of it simply passed to each new student each year. I would suggest going to whoever is handling you at the company that they can do something similar with this, and that you can fully document the system so that any handover would be seamless and shouldn't interrupt their support of it in any way. I would also suggest that you learn the difference between there, their, and they're before writing anything further to be handed in for assessment.
Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends.
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I had a similar experience from my gap year from D'oh Montfort. I used the time to get paid, not spend much time at the office, and drink a lot. But you sound considerably more driven than I was. If it is that bad I would say complain to whoever is supposed to be monitoring you from the university. One of my duties on my year was to maintain a time recording system that had been written by a previous gap year student some years before. Ownership of it simply passed to each new student each year. I would suggest going to whoever is handling you at the company that they can do something similar with this, and that you can fully document the system so that any handover would be seamless and shouldn't interrupt their support of it in any way. I would also suggest that you learn the difference between there, their, and they're before writing anything further to be handed in for assessment.
Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends.
lol if I was writing something other than a rant I assure you I know the different variations of "there". I am also at the lovely uni of D'oh Montfort. The course is probably easier than my A-Levels! That isn't a bad idea in terms of the next student looking after it. I will have to bring that up.
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I was hired by a company for my gap year at uni to help them develop a system to improve there reporting basically. A month in I have completed it but they won't use it because it is not "fully supported". Come on at what point did they think in house software written by a gap year student was going to be fully supported! I am now 4 months in, since I finished there system I have done nothing but type number into excel which is apparently "experience". I mean come on I am wasting a year sat in an office doing excel now instead of development! ARGHHHHH I am a BSc Computer Science student by the way predicted a first class degree and I am now stuck doing this crap!
Sounds like you need to make it clear to management that you want to be a developer, not a data entry clerk (which I'm sure they could hire at a much lower salary than a developer's anyway). If they still won't do anything about it then look to move on ... it's still the start of the university year, you can find somewhere better for 10 months and it will still be worth it.
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I was hired by a company for my gap year at uni to help them develop a system to improve there reporting basically. A month in I have completed it but they won't use it because it is not "fully supported". Come on at what point did they think in house software written by a gap year student was going to be fully supported! I am now 4 months in, since I finished there system I have done nothing but type number into excel which is apparently "experience". I mean come on I am wasting a year sat in an office doing excel now instead of development! ARGHHHHH I am a BSc Computer Science student by the way predicted a first class degree and I am now stuck doing this crap!
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Sounds like you need to make it clear to management that you want to be a developer, not a data entry clerk (which I'm sure they could hire at a much lower salary than a developer's anyway). If they still won't do anything about it then look to move on ... it's still the start of the university year, you can find somewhere better for 10 months and it will still be worth it.
The problem I am having,and I have been looking, is that most positions are either for the summer or for the year. Now I can't do a year now as it will land bang on the start of my 3rd year and if I wait till the summer that's another 8 months away! It's a bloody annoying situation! I'm sure you know what it's like I joined with high expectations then get shot in the foot after a month. I am 23 so a bit older than most uni students and I want to work and learn, I've had enough of drinking to much every weekend, I want to now make a career. It's just one of those mornings!!
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Well, I'm writing in Perl under Solaris 8, neither of which are on my CV. But it's what the customer wants. Sigh. In my spare time I am writing all sorts of nice C# and .Net 4 stuff. That *is* on my CV :)
Your doing almost exactly like me in the day I do data input when I am supposed to be coding and at night I do coding when I am suppose to be sleeping!
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I was hired by a company for my gap year at uni to help them develop a system to improve there reporting basically. A month in I have completed it but they won't use it because it is not "fully supported". Come on at what point did they think in house software written by a gap year student was going to be fully supported! I am now 4 months in, since I finished there system I have done nothing but type number into excel which is apparently "experience". I mean come on I am wasting a year sat in an office doing excel now instead of development! ARGHHHHH I am a BSc Computer Science student by the way predicted a first class degree and I am now stuck doing this crap!
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Your doing almost exactly like me in the day I do data input when I am supposed to be coding and at night I do coding when I am suppose to be sleeping!
10 years ago I worked for a very large global company (no names on here) in my sandwich course year. The first month was hell as I was literally doing nothing, absolutely nothing. My manager was a different site and found it difficult to manage me remotely as he was often in meetings or busy with his own work. I was a nervous 21 year old and decided to do something about it and looked around at the rest of the team and what they were doing - project management. I arranged a one-to-one with my manager and explained that so far, it wasn't working. Rather than wait for him to suggest an alternative and I told him what I thought I could do for the remaining 11 months. I decided I wanted to shadow/help/work with the project managers in the team I sat with. Because I had already spoken to them, and they agreed I was able to spend the next 11 months learning some invaluable skills. Although I am now a developer, it taught me what projects manager have to do, and what they need to get from the developers they work with. There is no doubt about it, the experience made me a better developer. Further, actually having the balls to speak up taught me something more important, stand up for yourself, make yourself counted, make what you want, happen. So your product isn't used. So what. Did you learn anything from it - e.g. new development technique, new way of coding perhaps? What would you differently if you had to do it again? Look around you, what else is everyone doing that can give you more knowledge? What else could you be doing? What else do you want to learn before your year is out? 100% you need to speak to your manager, but rather than say that you are not happy, offer an alternative about what you could do instead. It's up to you to make it happen
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10 years ago I worked for a very large global company (no names on here) in my sandwich course year. The first month was hell as I was literally doing nothing, absolutely nothing. My manager was a different site and found it difficult to manage me remotely as he was often in meetings or busy with his own work. I was a nervous 21 year old and decided to do something about it and looked around at the rest of the team and what they were doing - project management. I arranged a one-to-one with my manager and explained that so far, it wasn't working. Rather than wait for him to suggest an alternative and I told him what I thought I could do for the remaining 11 months. I decided I wanted to shadow/help/work with the project managers in the team I sat with. Because I had already spoken to them, and they agreed I was able to spend the next 11 months learning some invaluable skills. Although I am now a developer, it taught me what projects manager have to do, and what they need to get from the developers they work with. There is no doubt about it, the experience made me a better developer. Further, actually having the balls to speak up taught me something more important, stand up for yourself, make yourself counted, make what you want, happen. So your product isn't used. So what. Did you learn anything from it - e.g. new development technique, new way of coding perhaps? What would you differently if you had to do it again? Look around you, what else is everyone doing that can give you more knowledge? What else could you be doing? What else do you want to learn before your year is out? 100% you need to speak to your manager, but rather than say that you are not happy, offer an alternative about what you could do instead. It's up to you to make it happen
I 100% agree with your comments and I appreciate your reply. The issue I have is that the company is not a IT company, they are a UK wide construction company. So in an ideal world like you did yourself I would be able to turn to another developer or project manager. But in this company they simply don't exist. They hired me basically to make them a piece of software that did this, this and this. The simple reason they asked me is because as a student I am far cheaper! Yes far less experienced but because it's not a development environment I didn't really need any experience as I am working on my own with the knowledge I have. Yes I have learnt while doing the project but that is through my own endeavour, the company as a whole simply couldn't care less. The main thing I have learnt is about integrating microsoft products such as excel with c#. I am just dissapointed that in my opinion I am not really improving as a developer because there is no one around me to basically say "This is not quite right, you would be better to do..." it is that knd of guidance that I thrive on. You only learn from making mistakes.
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I think the only good thing about this job so far is codeproject isn't blocked! I understand that not all the code I write will be used but to get someone to write it and then say well we can't use it because an employee made it what the hell! Lol I made it for them at there request. I swear the worlds backwords at times. Well the excel I am doing is basically data input and is just painfully boring, I can't change formulas etc becauseeeee all there cells are locked and protected. I can't even center the text in a cell for god sake! I just don't know what to do stick it out typing in numbers for another 6-8 months or move on and try to find more relevant experience. I know I can put this on my cv but I want to learn and experience a proper development environment and this just isn't it!
It sounds like this is the first time this has happened to you. It really hurts when you spent all that time proving that you're actually good at the skills you represented on your resume. Well... That happens, ok? Businesses change their minds. Your supervisor might be getting trumped by a management team that doesn't know anything about computers. They probably just want to check each item on their list, and one of those items is "Support contract". I've seen that be the sole reason a company won't give up IE for Firefox or Chrome. Could be they waited until the project was done to run it up the flagpole (as they say) which is definitely backwards, but in fact it has to happen at some point before it gets the green light. Don't worry, it stings less after the first one, and you'll eventually do enough other things that you won't completely mind having one project tank once in a while. You could push back if you do it professionally. Now, venting is healthy, but you're attaching your name and specifically mentioning your university here. These are things that could show up on a background check, so you ought to be careful. I agree with the other posters who said that you need to watch your writing style. It's good to be in the habit, so when frustration slips through the cracks at work and you accidentally send out that nastygram, it's still somewhat professional. It makes the difference between getting fired and getting written up. Recruiters also look you up online. They look at your writing style. I've read countless interviews with recruiters who said exactly that. If they or your next employer finds you writing like this, they are probably going to give you a pass for someone who looks more professional online. So tighten up those reins!
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It sounds like this is the first time this has happened to you. It really hurts when you spent all that time proving that you're actually good at the skills you represented on your resume. Well... That happens, ok? Businesses change their minds. Your supervisor might be getting trumped by a management team that doesn't know anything about computers. They probably just want to check each item on their list, and one of those items is "Support contract". I've seen that be the sole reason a company won't give up IE for Firefox or Chrome. Could be they waited until the project was done to run it up the flagpole (as they say) which is definitely backwards, but in fact it has to happen at some point before it gets the green light. Don't worry, it stings less after the first one, and you'll eventually do enough other things that you won't completely mind having one project tank once in a while. You could push back if you do it professionally. Now, venting is healthy, but you're attaching your name and specifically mentioning your university here. These are things that could show up on a background check, so you ought to be careful. I agree with the other posters who said that you need to watch your writing style. It's good to be in the habit, so when frustration slips through the cracks at work and you accidentally send out that nastygram, it's still somewhat professional. It makes the difference between getting fired and getting written up. Recruiters also look you up online. They look at your writing style. I've read countless interviews with recruiters who said exactly that. If they or your next employer finds you writing like this, they are probably going to give you a pass for someone who looks more professional online. So tighten up those reins!
Thanks I appreciate the comments. It is, as you rightly point out, my first time experiencing this kind of thing. I am not used to someone saying one thing and then going in the opposite direction. It is hard to accept. You are right though and I appreciate your comments.
