h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Workdays are not for working in an American-style (open air) office, especially if your collegues are young guys. Why? Some xample:
- It's lunchtime, are you coming? (From 11:00 to 14:00)
- Don't you wanna drink a chocolate? (5 times a day)
- I started a Quake-server, anyone to join?
- Wow, it's impossible! That girl... oh... over 120 cm...
I assume you can continue.

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ERN0.since.1971.scene.muzak

Yes, in the UK, we call it "local government"

Wow, can I have a job in your office? Maybe I should check my map, last time I checked I was in America, and I work in an office, but it doesn't sound anything like that! Do you work for the government or what?

I am a software engineer at a big company in Hungary. Our working style is somewhat interesting. We have milestones, it actually means deadlines. 2 weeks before the deadline we get excited. 1 weeks from deadline we start working. 1 days to deadline we work 16 hours a day, even on Sunday. At the D-day, we review the work we've done, then everyone joins to the Quake-server, a new round of development lifecycle begins.

What is your working style?

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ERN0.since.1971.scene.muzak

I am a program manager for a marketing company. I get to work at 9 am, say hello and jump right in, sometime around 2pm I grab something I call lunch and somewhere around 5pm I walk out the door. In between, I answer calls, handle complaints, make decisions about who gets what, enter account information and whatever else crosses my desk. I am the only one if the office who is really familiar with computers so I spend a good deal of time playing sys-admin and yelling "reboot" across the cubicles.

Our basic program is cyclical revolving around a print date for the product, billing, shipping, order cut offs, all those things are dependent on the print date. The Week before the print date is extremely hectic with order changes and set up information to take care of. The week of the print date is worse. Billing can't take place until counts are in, yet counts can't go in until collections and credits have been processed. Once billing is done shipping starts. Shipping signals a bit of a break time as there is a week long slow period between the shipping date and time to start preparations for the next print date. The whole thing happens again, month after month.

Being the manager, there isn't much time for me to goof off or play computer games. If there were time for things like that, I would just take comp time and spend more time with my family instead of in the office. Besides, if I spent my time goofing off then I couldn't very well expect those under me to work hard could I?

O. Marie

PS. My grandmother was Hungarian. Her parents were immigrants here sometime ago. Honestly, I don't know when. She was 4' 10" and could kick ass on all of us kids no matter how big we got. We never messed with her!

Hi,

> Being the manager, there isn't much time for me to goof off or play computer games.

I was manager (comp.dept. leader) in a textile factory for 3 years. IMHO the good manager is who has no task at all. All the manager's task pass the tasks to the employees. I have had 2 programmers and a system administrator. When I asked "what are you doing now, boys?", they understood it and replied "okay, please wait a minute, I'm just saving my files", then we began to play with our favourite network game or we started to go to get a cappuccino.

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Lot of Hungarian people went to U.S. around 1920. See also the "Hungarians" issue.

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ERN0.since.1971.scene.muzak