Is your work busy this week?
Is it busy where you are? I'm a web developer, and for the past few weeks there has been almost no work here. Really slow, but browsing Snapzu helps.
9 years ago by Boop
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Is it busy where you are? I'm a web developer, and for the past few weeks there has been almost no work here. Really slow, but browsing Snapzu helps.
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I'm nominally in the construction field dealing with IT. (I have non-construction projects on the side) Thankfully this looks like a normal work week, which really just means hurry up and wait.
Unemployed :D
But I will say this, I've been really trying to get into the UX / UI field, so I've been actively learning about the industry, best practices, trends, etc. So I guess that could count as being busy and productive!
Cool! What resources are you learning from? All online? I'm curious what other steps have you taken to pursue the UX/UI field. I'm in web development, but have always took a keen interest in the usability of things.
Sorry, meant to reply earlier!
I'm mostly teaching myself from various ebooks, articles on UX websites, following industry people on twitter. I've been meaning to pick up some books from Amazon as well, but just don't want to dish out the money right now. I come from a design background (about to finish my Bachelors of Landscape Architecture), so luckily I already have Photoshop and Illustrator skills (I'm learning After Effects so I can show some basic gesture animations, etc.). I'm mostly making a career switch because I'm disillusioned with the LA field, and my program as well. It sounds interesting, yes, but long hours-little pay and in UX I can get paid a lot more, especially starting out. My interests changed halfway through my degree, so I've been scrambling about the past 6-8 months trying to determine what I really want to do. I love the idea of UX / UI, I thought originally I wanted to dedicate myself fully in becoming an iOS developer, but alas, my strong suit remains on the creative side. I think what I may end up doing is hopefully getting a job in the field, but still have that knowledge of programming languages so that help steer me into making correct design decisions.
The problem I'm having right now is building up my portfolio. I'm working on a personal project or two and will put up case studies for those, but it's really hard starting out. Most jobs I'm seeing say 2+ years of UX / UI experience, but when you're teaching yourself, it can get kind of hard to reach that point. I want to contact some companies and ask about maybe potential internship opportunities, or even job shadowing, which I think might be a good approach? It's just hard to get noticed when you're first starting out and don't have that sweat equity built up from having, say, an interaction design degree.
I'm working on rewriting the code behind for one of the internal websites I was hired to develop, it's practically done but I really don't like talking on the phone with the people so I'm procrastinating until after lunch to relaunch. Other than that I'll be starting a new project once it's launched and after that project I'll be done for the summer.
Normal pace at the moment maybe even a little light but that can change in an instant so I'm knocking wood as I type this.
Nope. And due to happy coincidence, HR screwed up and didn't realize my contract ended on the 16th. So I was conveniently told that we'd renegotiate it and convert me to employee status when the new SOW is signed soon. Any day now, they promise.
So yeah, I've started applying to other jobs on the very likely possibility that they're just BSing and will just not renew me at all. I guess technically I'm newly unemployed.
I work from home answering phones for an insurance company. I do pretty much anything you can call an insurance company for, from website support to new policies. Mondays are traditionally moderately busy because we're usually over staffed. Saturdays are the worst! I've been at work for 10 minutes now and I've taken one call, so it might actually be slower than normal today. A busy day is back-to-back with at least five or six people waiting in the queue, the slowest days I can do 30+ minutes without a call...
And as I was typing that, we got flooded, haha. I guess a lot of what I do is based on luck. Some calls will take 3 minutes or even less, but if someone let their insurance cancel or they want a new policy, it can take up to an hour. More if something goes wrong or they have things like a DUI or anything I have to investigate or get permission for a waive. Although most of that we just refer to a local office.
Either way, I get to work four days a week instead of five, I get paid well enough to not worry about it and I wear boxers at work. On the busy days I browse the internet between calls and on slow days I play video games or work on school stuff.
Nope, but I'm glad that I finally have a work week. Reduced hours since it is training, plus I may be able to squeeze some hours from another part time job that I have. Woo!
The busy part was actually just this past weekend. I work at a local fast food joint and we had a little league baseball "world series" get hosted in our town nearby the store, people were coming in from all over the region from thursday through saturday so we would get huge waves of people every couple of hours between games. This week should be normal. And I'm going on vacation wednesday c:
Yes it has been busy. Project work has been ramping up and is shaping what I will be doing for the rest of the year. It is quite exciting. This is why I've been only partially engaged over in the IRC channel.
If you were't aware of the IRC channel, details can be found over at /t/irc - come by and say hi!
It's the calm before the storm where I work. We are on the brink of ripping out my 2 year Citrix project and doing it all over again. But I'm all for it. I've made some big mistakes with the project and it needs a clean slate, along with the upgrade. While the calm has been going on the last few weeks, I've re-learned Python and automated a few things that I do on a daily basis. Man I love automating stuff!