back to article UK.gov pays four fellows £35k to do nothing for three months

Welcome again to On-Call, our usually-on-Friday romp through interesting things readers have been asked to do at work. Last week's tale of a chap who spent a week in Hong Kong doing nothing produced a bulging mailbag, including one story from reader “Adam” who swears blind he and three others were paid £35,000 apiece to do …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    been there done that

    Ditto pretty much working for the PSA when it existed, spent 3 months training myself on various windows packages. Seemed to be a willy waggling contest so you could brag you had a 'consultant' in your office. Not only that when it was revealed there was budget left with a few weeks to go everyone ran around like mad spending money on things that weren't needed for a department that was scrapped at the end of the financial year. That's of course when staff were actually in as many were taking their annual sick leave 'entitlement' and others only turned up at the beginning and end of the day before going off to do another job.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: been there done that

      Ah yes, the sick leave 'entitlement'. For those that don't understand what this is (or at least was), many MOD jobs had a number of days you could be ill without having any questions asked or needing to provide proof that you really were ill. So it was considered additional holiday by staff, who would then take any remaining days off "ill" at the end of each year.

      As to the "spend it or lose it" budget nonsense... I once worked for a government agency where we had a significant chunk of money left near the end of the financial year. We were desperate for some new hardware since several of our DB servers were beyond the point where HP would support them. But instead our stupid boss decided to blow the lot on a team building day doing something only she wanted to do. Aaaarrrghh!!!

      1. Shadow Systems

        @kmiettinen, re: "Team Building Excersizes".

        I just <sarcasm>LOVE</sarcasm> those TBE's!

        It gives us lowly peons a chance to work on the tactics we'll need to use when we begin the Revelution, trample our managers beneath our feet, & string the CxO's up to use them like pinatas!

        *Head thrown back & howling in maniacal laughter*

        Ummm... errrmmm... I mean that TBE's help us focus our skills on being even more productive! Yeah! That's what I meant! Absolutely no mention of a Revolution at all, nope a nope a NOPE!

        *Runs away to warn the others*

  2. Anonymous Blowhard

    Can we have a survey of anyone employed by the government to do actual work?

    ** This is not a criticism of all the slackers out there; I'm with you in spirit but my clients in the private sector need so much stuff doing I'm getting out of practice.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Very many years ago while unemployed, I was hanging out on 4chan, and a British civil servant was bragging about doing nothing but posting on 4chan all day. We were both doing the exact same thing, buy he was getting paid for it.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        The stories and information posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact.

        1. Ken 16 Silver badge
          Trollface

          Hear Hear!

          Well said, Minister

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Hear Hear!

            Don't mess with football!

          2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

            Re: Hear Hear!

            "Well said, Minister Sir Humphrey."

            FTFY

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Apparently 7 people don't realize that that is the 4chan disclaimer.

    2. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

      > Can we have a survey of anyone employed by the government[1] to do actual work?

      Me.

      [1] Well - not actually Government per-se, I work for an arms-length body. Doing real work, with real people.

    3. Hoe
      FAIL

      How can you ask government employees to respond to a survey if they do any work without actually explaining to them what work is?!

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Governments always seem to budget that way

    I used to manage IT for a division of a large public university in the US. I had a set budget, and I was told by those who knew that if I didn't spend it all the powers that be would decide I didn't really need that much money and give me less next year.

    Since the price/performance of IT gear improved quite significantly throughout the year in those days, it was obviously best to spend the money at the end of the fiscal year. Conveniently that also allowed me to know exactly how much I had left after spending money on various unscheduled repairs/replacements and consumables like printer cartridges. Sometimes I had a good idea what I wanted to get and other times I just had to find the best way to insure the money was spent. I didn't need a new tape library, but hey having two would insure me against the failure of the existing one, that sort of thing.

    One year I had an opportunity to take advantage of some massive trade in discounts HP was offering on its obsolete workstations which would allow me to effectively upgrade every student lab under my control in one fell swoop and save a six figure sum. The problem was that the time for the trade in didn't match well with the budget cycle. I ended up making a deal with the Engineering college where I effectively bought a bunch of workstations destined to end up in their labs at the end of the fiscal year, and then at the start of the next fiscal year they paid me back by buying some that were destined to end up in my labs, along with the rest of my own order. They also had more of the obsolete workstations than they needed so I could maximize my tradein.

    Of course this whole deal ended up totally messing up the University's asset tracking because stuff I bought wasn't in my labs and vice versa, but fortunately the guy in the Engineering college had been there forever and was able to suitably explain things and keep the beancounters satisfied without giving away what we did (I think they probably guessed it, but as long as they didn't know "for sure" they were willing to look the other way)

    It would have been a lot simpler if I could have said "hey, I've got this opportunity to save the University a lot of money if I'm allowed to carry over X amount of budget from this fiscal year to the next", but when I asked the assistant dean who was effectively in charge of my budget about that he just laughed and said it was impossible no matter how much sense it makes. Gotta love bureaucracy!

    1. chivo243 Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Re: Governments always seem to budget that way

      @AC

      My employer does the same thing... We didn't replace x amount of widget 1 last year, this year we only get y amount of budget, but widget 1 is failing regularly this year... we're over this years budget, but right on for last years budget.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Governments always seem to budget that way

        ditto.

        I'm a PhD student, we have 4 very randomly specced out servers (my supervisor did it, it's safe to say his natural home is academia, not IT) purely because there was a budget code with money left. 3 years on and of the four one is running a range of project demonstrators (none of which anyone ever looks at, but they have to be there for contractual reasons) one is making available a database that no one uses and the other two don't even have an operating system on...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Governments always seem to budget that way

      Did the same thing in a large UK University, but with the research departments. Had a large amount of the budget left over at the end of the year, researchers had no money left, buy all of the researchers what they wanted with our remaining budget and then they pay us back when they get their research grants.

      That was also around the time dell would do anything to meet their sales targets (items sold, not profit). Buy 1 desktop get 1 free, and get PDAs, printers anything else that is low in sales free. It would just look like a very large discount on the computers, still 'paid' for them.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I've seen those sort of rules in the public and private sector. It's annoying as hell when it comes to the end of the year and you have to find all sorts of nonsense to spend things on. Particularly when a project has been delayed for one reason or another and you aren't allowed to hold on to the money till it's needed. Either it gets spent and you get more next year or you hand it back and get a swift, metaphorical kicking (budget is reduced by double the amount handed back for failing to estimate correctly) and are still expected to do all the extra work that money was suppose to pay for.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Been caught both ways on this one

      As a young, naive new education manager I carefully planned a budget for the year. I carefully took into account that the school year was different to the financial. I carefully planned this much for teaching materials in each term. So much for IT So much for First Aid. So much for this, so much for that. Then 60% through the financial year the Beancounters looked at my budget and clawed it back because I hadn't spent 40% of it.

      On the other hand, my cupboards were stuffed full of envelopes and other assorted stationery. (Especially envelopes - you always need envelopes). Because the manager before me had sensibly adopted the policy of spend it before they grab it. And since every office needs paper, envelopes etc she'd made sure to convert any unspent budget into supplies that would keep. She was right. We needed our budget to do the job. It wasn't a lot of money, barely in the thousands not even approaching tens of thousands, but without it we couldn't have functioned. She wasn't just storing it she was making sure that they didn't cut it. But even so. How many envelopes and glue sticks can you get through before they dry out? Needless to say, in my subsequent years I adopted the same spend it before you lose it mentality. Once bitten........

      And colleagues in other departments were doing the same sort of thing - often even less efficiently, desperately trying to predict what they would need in 10 months time without having any idea what type of case load they might have in even six months time. So in November they'd buy assessment materials that may never get used, because if they did need them in February or March it'd be too late. But of course by then they'd be needing something entirely different.

      Some were clever about it. They'd have a small credit with a local supplier or two, so that they could keep the budget there, where the Beancounters couldn't see it.

      And of course there was always the cynical suspicion that the money that got clawed back from us would somehow find its way to the big boss budget to pay for a new set of office funishings.

      1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

        Re: Been caught both ways on this one

        Ah, the Stalingrad approach.

        According to that nice Mr Anthony Beevor, the prudent quartermasters in the Germany 6th army at Stalingrad put asside rations for a snowy? day. They had a feeling that Winter wouldn't be going too well, and they were awfully far away from Germany when the inevitable Russian counterattack came. Lots of units had had to fight surrounded during Jan/Feb 42 - after the Moscow attack broke down. And they were closer to air supply.

        What happened once the pocket was formed, was that army HQ took over all the individual units' food, and distributed "fairly". This meant that those who had saved it lost, and those who'd doled out all the food they had got the benefit. Their troops also had a tiny bit more body fat, and so the death rate from starvation was higher in the units with the prudent quartermasters.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Been caught both ways on this one

          And yes, in that first year, that's how I felt. Though no one starved.

          But it was really galling how some areas could overspend and get away with it, (nice furniture in the bosses' offices BTW) then our budget would prop up theirs. Had we gone a penny over our meagre budget there'd be a small scandal, and a hauling across the coals etc.

        2. 38292757

          Re: Been caught both ways on this one

          He also said that the Russians captured a great deal of food from the Germans, who had been starving.

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Been caught both ways on this one

          That happened at my local PCT one year. They came in very slightly below budget, while surrounding PCTs went way over their budgets. So the SHA top-sliced our PCT's budget the next year, to bail out the others.

      2. Shadow Systems

        @AC, Re: Credits at the store.

        I used to volunteer at my son's elementary school as their Network Admin (aka "the Computer Dad") & had much in interacting with the teachers throughout the school. They might ask me to fix a computer problem (my official position) or run other errands (as a helpful volunteer), so if they needed a network built or a run to the supplies room for something, they didn't hesitate to ask.

        When I realized that many of the supplies they kept requesting were getting in short supply, I asked the Principal if she had ever considered getting a business account at the local office store. She said no, didn't even know if schools could do that sort of thing (ours had to go through Channels to buy supplies), & wondered if that would make any difference. I did a little research, found out that the school district had a business account with the very store I had suggested, & then asked the store if our school could set up their own business account. Not only was the store manager agreeable to this fact, the fact that a *volunteer* was trying to start one on the school's behalf earned the school a $100 "opening bonus" on top of whatever else they spent.

        When I handed the business account paperwork over to the Principal to sign, plus the $100 gift card, she hugged me so hard I thought my ribs would implode. *Grin*

        After it was all said & done, the account activated etc, the school would spend any left over budget money at the supplies store & stock up on all the little stuff they might need next year. Binder paper, #2 pencils, pencil sharpeners, plastic rulers, cheap calculators, stickers, construction paper, "kiddie scissors", you name it. Everything not course material, they would fill the supply room nearly to bursting, & assure an adequate supply for at least the first few months of the next year.

        I later learned that not only have they continued the tradition with the original store, but they've expanded it to several local stores. If they *ever* have extra in the budget that "needs spending now", they place orders at any/all of the stores to buy the stuff they think they might need.

        The end result is they *ALWAYS* look good to the bean counters because they spend *exactly* their budget every year. Their budget never gets significantly cut (& when it does the community tries to hold a bake sale or something to make up the loss), and the school has credit that doesn't rely on the financial cycle to be spent.

        I just wish more schools could do likewise. They'd have a much easier time of getting the supplies they need, the bean counters would be happy, & the students wouldn't suffer from a lack of basic needs.

        Cheers to you for furthering the idea at your work!

        1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

          Re: @AC, Credits at the store.

          "if she had ever considered getting a business account at the local office store. She said no, didn't even know if schools could do that sort of thing (ours had to go through Channels to buy supplies),"

          Ah yes, the "bulk purchasing" theory. Supposedly if a number of organisations "club together" they have more power over the suppliers and will get better prices. The practice is that eventually the smaller orgs are obliged to use *only* the listed suppliers and said suppliers know this so the prices creep up beyond even the retail price never mind the B2B price. Worse, a new central department is needed to manage the orders. With a well paid manager obviously. You now have a new fiefdom which must be protected at all costs. Especially at the cost of the sorely needed budgets of the smaller orgs making up the purchasing group.

          As you have shown, even a small org can usually find a better deal if they can stay out of or get out of those sort of mandated central purchasing deals.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: @AC, Credits at the store.

            Yes, 100 times yes.

            I used to be able to buy stuff direct. If we needed a printer or something I'd work out which one I thought was best. Or 'd take advice from the IT dept. expert, Then phone around and get the best price. It didn't take too long.

            Then the council brought in central purchasing. With someone in the central IT team paid to source and order to our requirements.

            Except that he had no idea about finding the most appropriate product, so I still had to do that myself and tell him which item to order. You'd have expected him to have a pile of catalogues under his desk, and be up to date with the latest reviews. Not a bit of it. He did no studying at all. When I'd given up asking him for advice and told him what to order he'd always order it from the Big Supplier's catalogue, who usually were charging more "wholesale" than I could get it for at retail down the road. On top of that there was an enormous charge for his services and departmental oncosts. And twice as much paperwork. So in effect most purchases ended up costing at least 50% more than I could have got it for and taking 100% more time to process it. It usually took three or more times as long to arrive too. But the f***ing beancounters were happy because we were following best practice or some such pile of stinking s**t. ( Do I sound a little bit on the bitter side? Sorry).

      3. brotherelf

        Re: Been caught both ways on this one

        I've heard stories of IT departments that would buy EUR-pallets at the end of the year to sell them in January, just to sneak some of the budget over.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "Particularly when a project has been delayed for one reason or another and you aren't allowed to hold on to the money till it's needed."

      We've seen projects cancelled, money returned, then project resurrected with no return of the funding, and people's jobs threatened for non-delivery .... or risk budgets returned as a "saving", leaving no provision on a project that has an inherent risk on a key supplier who then realised how key they were and hiked prices ....

      1. Prst. V.Jeltz Silver badge

        beancounters, what can you do?

        cattleprod?

        1. an ominous mass
          Happy

          "beancounters, what can you do?cattleprod?"

          Ask for a significant amount of unbudgeted capex, sit back, open a beer and enjoy.

          1. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

            > capex

            <Hysterical laughter>

            Our new capex *for the whole organisation* is less than our capex for just IT 3 years ago. It's all about opex now - clouds dontchaknow..

            1. Vic

              It's all about opex now

              'Twas ever thus.

              I used to get called out to a site in Germany every 8-12 weeks or so. I had to fix a consumable item. Each visit I made cost about 3/4 of the replacement cost of the item - which would come with a 2-year warranty.

              I told the customer all of this. But he already knew. He was under a complete capex embargo, so opex was the only way to keep the kit running. And so he spent vastly more than was necessary[1] just so that the beancounters could feel pleased that the right budget had paid for the job...

              Vic.

              [1] And I got to spend a couple of days in a dungeon in Munich every couple of months. But at least they bought me beer...

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Actually this has changed in UK Gov as it's all about hitting saving targets that are arbitrarily set by senior management.

      This is from someone that has come back to Gov contracting after a five year hiatus and is now overworked for less pay, the horror (actually it's nice to actually have something to do but more pay is always welcome).

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Of course, if a department overspends then the budget for the new year isn't increased they just have the overage amount from the current year deducted. Then the next years budget gets reduced to the new year minus removed overspend.

  5. Pete 2 Silver badge

    Pause for thought

    > do nothing for three months

    Where I am, that's called the Change Management Board. The workplace equivalent of a delay loop.

    1. Hans 1
      Happy

      Re: Pause for thought

      >> do nothing for [cash]

      Over here it is the marketing department .... just like any other private sector company, I suppose.

    2. TeeCee Gold badge
      WTF?

      Re: Pause for thought

      Oh you can't beat a Project Approval board for delaying tactics.

      You plan a project and work out that it's going to take n months and cost x.

      Three iterations of the Project Approval board later, when it finally gets approved, you have n - 3 months to do it in and x - ${large_random_number} to do it with.

      You can always spot a good Project Manager. At the drop of a hat he can trot out a perfectly believable and yet entirely fictional set of reasons why his project is over both time and budget, without once mentioning the Project Approval board.....

      1. BebopWeBop

        Re: Pause for thought

        The ninja project manager built in time and cost at project inception - and did so convincingly.

        1. Rich 11

          Re: Pause for thought

          Project Planning Rules

          Budget Rule #1:

          Pick a number, double it and add three.

          Project Duration Rule #1:

          Pick a number, double it and add three.

          ---

          Edit: Oh shit, I meant to post that AC!

          1. Triggerfish

            Re: Pause for thought

            As a project manager,

            Assume everyone above you is hostile to you completing the project not usually because of enemy action so much as crushing idiocy.

            Nix any suggestions out of habit (maybe think about them later (but fuck me don't let someone senior actually think their idea might be worth it by showing too much enthusiasm, murphy says you will be forced to follow the dumbest one)).

            Get everything in writing.

            Don't let board level guys talk to your techies the techies don't deserve it or for that matter need the frustration of dealing with the illogical.

            Be kind to the techies and engineers. You were one once, you may be again.

            Always lie about how much time and budget you will need you can only look good delivering under budget and before deadline, you can never win if it's over even if it was not your fault.

            Gin and Tonic looks like water when in a water bottle.

            Always wear sunscreen.

            1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
              Happy

              Re: Pause for thought

              Gin and Tonic looks like water when in a water bottle.

              What is this "tonic" you speak of...?

              1. Triggerfish

                Re: Pause for thought

                It's my alternative name for vodka.

  6. Whitter
    Meh

    Simple is what simple does

    Such rules have a simple basis: that management are simpletons and don't know how to allocate (and, were they competent, to modify) budgets, so they apply a simple rule, sit back, do sod all and take the (considerable) paycheck.

    So we have a group of idiots doing nothing paying competent (or not) others to do nothing too.

  7. BurnT'offering

    This used to happen across the UK goverment

    Now, they have realised economies of scale by doing this year-round and centralising it in the Government Digital Service

  8. Nixinkome

    "UK Gov pays four fellows £35K to do nothing for three months."

    My first thought was; Academia.

    [Work recognized 60 years after death]

    1. BurnT'offering

      Re: Academia

      "Do you plan to do any work?"

      "I'm thinking about it"

      "Oh, OK"

  9. This post has been deleted by its author

  10. A K Stiles
    Big Brother

    So much this

    One of my (many) biggest bug-bears. Spend your budget before year end or don't get the budget next year...

    At Uni, I was involved with a sports club in charge of looking after the equipment. The annual budget wasn't massive and all expenditure had to go through 3 subsequent layers of administrative approval to get signed off.

    towards the end of the year we needed a new piece of reasonably expensive kit - more than we had remaining budget for and such that it would wipe our next year's budget flat. I asked the admin to whom I usually had to pass the invoices for payment if we could carry our remaining budget through or get an advance out of next year's budget so we could buy this item, but neither option was permitted and if we didn't use our remaining budget, next year's would be reduced accordingly...

    It ended up with the supplier invoicing me for '0.5 x big item' plus other bits of consumable in the last month of the budget period, and '0.5 x big item' in the first month of the next period, when it was actually delivered. Needless to say 'big item' was not a divisable thing, but at least someone was willing and able to manipulate the system as necessary to get things done. Plus, their financial year ran across a different period to ours so they didn't have to explain how or why they sold 50% of it!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: So much this

      Seems to me there are serious flaws in the "dont spend it - lose it" philosophy.

      Do private companies still do this? or just the silly servants?

      Its an invitation to throw profits away.

      It wouldnt be going on if i was in charge, but then nobody ever asks me , or puts me in charge of anything , or advances my career in any way, or gives me any training,

      Inspite of me having revolutionary world changing ideas such as: "Instead of the current budget system , that encourages people to piss away the spare money, why not give them a bonus for money remaining at end of year, eg 10%"

      1. Christoph

        Re: So much this

        It's accountancy. It makes it nice and easy for the accountants, and everybody else has to do what they say or they don't get any money.

        The accountants have all sorts of rules and systems for controlling the money flow, and if the real world clashes with the accounting system, the accounting system wins. Even when this ends up costing lots more real world money.

        1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

          Re: everybody else has to do what they say or they don't get any money

          That is my principal beef with accounting. Accounting is NOT there to authorize things, it is there to count where the money goes and provide a realistic picture of what the company is earning and how it is spending it to the Higher Ups.

          It is Production that knows what it needs, when it needs it and why. I honestly cannot fathom why Production needs to explain itself to Accounting. Production should only need Executive permission. Obviously, Production would very much like to blow x millions on the new shiny as well, but a proper ROI study should be enough to decide what to authorize or not.

          But of course, Executive likes to delegate, so it makes the budget rules and leaves Accounting to enforce it. That is why we have this stupid system, with the assorted waste it produces.

      2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: So much this

        "It wouldnt be going on if i was in charge, but then nobody ever asks me , or puts me in charge of anything , or advances my career in any way, or gives me any training,"

        You are me and ICM£5.

        (Must've posted that while I was asleep)

    2. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: So much this

      Dell's business website (used?) to let you do this.

      It offered you the option of paying over 'n' credit cards or accounts keeping under the approval limit on each

    3. an ominous mass
      Pint

      Re: So much this

      Upvotes to all of you. I have done exactly the same thing.

      Created a purchase order for $15k on the last day of the financial year then did exactly the same thing the next day. Supplier wasn't the least concerned. Didn't have a manager at the time but the next up the food chain was fully aware. Full speed ahead and damn the bean counters.

      Capex is often a use or lose line item.

      To make any bean counter break into an instant cold sweat incant the following magic words,

      "Unbudgeted capex"

  11. Nixinkome

    2nd thought

    From a lot of choice

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwDDswGsJ60

  12. GlenP Silver badge

    Goverment Spending

    Shortly before I became (briefly) a Civil Servant they'd purchased a new DEC VAX or, as it was described on the CapEx, "PDP-11 Compatible Data Collection Equipment". At that time anything over £100K had to go to central government for approval, which wouldn't be granted as it wasn't ICL kit. In addition the Establishment capital budgets were running out for the year.

    In the end the hardware was ordered and invoiced in March at £99K then they raised a separate CapEx in April for the software. I'm sure someone high up knew what was going on but ignored it.

    Later when I moved into education the beginning of March always brought the annual question, "What shall we buy this year to use up the budget?"

    1. Dabooka

      Re: Goverment Spending

      Working in education, albeit further down the food chain, I can say with some certainty that those days have gone. Ironically enough the big problems I see people facing is based around how they can spend there allocation of teaching budget, despite the 20% year on year reduction in value.

      Strange times we live in...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Goverment Spending

      Ah, the good old days of ICL favouritism.

      I worked for a large gubbmint department where an order would go to ICL at the end of March for "assorted mainframe stuff - details to follow". ICL would submit a 7 figure invoice which was duly paid before the April 6th deadline..

      The budget was thus safe from the evil Treasury.

      Triple G&T's all round !

  13. ukgnome

    I know of a chap that is employed by the local council as a CRT repair tech. He has been there for years and is on a very good contract. Although they don't have any CRT at the council, but he is far too expensive to be made redundant.

    1. James 51

      When money is made available to them from another source he'll be the first one offered voluntary redundancy.

    2. Christoph

      My father worked on a national newspaper in the heyday of the print unions. There was one machine that needed two people on print union wages (*not* small) to work it.

      One of them came in every morning and pushed the button to turn it on.

      The other one came in every evening ...

    3. dr john

      I came across the reverse of the CRT repairer.

      I met a guy who was a salesman, a VERY good one. His basic pay was low but the company had one of those ever increasing bonus schemes after you met the required target, so that as he sold more and more stuff, his percentage bonus was for ever increasing through the year. He became too expensive to employ even though he brought in lots of business.

      So they sacked him, hired two guys to replace him, and their 2x basic pay plus 2x small bonus was a lot less than his basic plus huge bonus. For roughly the same amount of sales.

      We are talking 17 years ago. His basic was about £12k, his bonuses were typically £40k+ . His replacements were getting bonuses of only about £5k, with a lower basic as they were new staff.

      We met on a computing course. I was being made redundant and given retraining. Why was I made redundant??

      The bean counters at the college I lectured at had calculated that a course had to pay it's way by having a certain minimum number of students on it (seems sensible you'd say).

      As it was a chemistry course I taught we had a fair number of specialist support technicians and equipment to fund. So our target course size was a little bit higher than others (again, seems sensible you'd say).

      So I had just moved to this college and three weeks into my new job, busily preparing lectures, a memo came round saying that we had only 14 applicants for year one of our most prestigious course, two short of the target 16. So they were cancelling the course for that year, to save money, and there might be redundancies - last in first out being me!!! And I hadn't even seen a student yet! (Actual redundancy was announced seven years later.)

      These accountants are SO clever aren't they, when it comes to saving money! Because all the staff were full timers, all got full pay as normal, had less teaching to do, with one course cancelled to save money and its income lost. Save money???

      The inevitable happened of course - from then on, students were reluctant to commit to our college unless they knew that the courses were definitely running, numbers dropped yearly (the accountants eventually reduced our minimum number per course "too avoid redundancies" - actually because they finally worked out they had cost the college money by cancelling courses and paying us to do less).

      Eventually the numbers were so low that courses genuinely had to be cancelled and we tried various tricks to re-organise things to keep costs down. We even had staff voluntarily take redundancy, then continuing teaching FOR FREE for one term, gambling that they could come back part time the following year to teach the rest of the course for three terms (but not actually teach for the third term, to make up for the free work they had done). We suspected that this was actually illegal, as we kept quiet about who was teaching for free to help the students, but no-one outside our group knew this and the students benefited. Okay, we KNEW it was illegal, as you can't be made redundant and immediately continue part-time in the same job, and they had a requirement to be re-employed that there was a four month gap between the redundancy and part-time work. Gap being greater than one term, to stop fake redundancies, which was probably sensible you'd say.

      For the sake of letting one course run one year with two less students than the accountants wanted, an entire teaching department and all its support staff watched they jobs slowly disappear down the drain, and we saw it coming for several years before the accountants did. We went out in style however - 33% of the degree students got a first in the last year it ran (the students from the cancelled course came back and formed a fair part of that last group), and a few other courses managed 90%+ pass rates in their last year.

      Accountants - don't you just love them.

      1. dr john

        Revenge

        Forgot to say - I got my own back on the accountants in the end.

        When I was told that I would be made redundant, they said they'd retrain me in computing for free and give me some part-time work at the same time. But they were very disorganised about the actual date they would make me redundant. It took them 18 months to work out the date!

        So over a full year, AFTER being told I was redundant, I did about three months' equivalent full time work, while taking year one of a two year computing course part-time. For FULL pay. Not bad, eh.

        And for the next year, I did no work at all, and continued on the part-time course. I also accidentally lied slightly to the new head of department that started that year and asked if they were still going to fund the full three year course I was on, and he said yes. And all this still on FULL pay.

        I think I upset some of the lecturers on my computing course, as I was earning more than several of them... while sitting reading their notes.

        So from when I last actually did my last bit of full time work for the college, including all the paid holidays in between terms, until the day I was officially no longer employed after my summer holidays, I collected 30 months full pay for three months full-time work. And had the final year of my course funded while no longer working there.

        Beat that !

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    In a former employer's case, they built a new office block...and completely forgot to do anything at all about IT infrastructure. What do you mean, you need network switches? Don't our PC's work by magic?

    Then when we'd finally specced, procured, installed, and configured a working network (starting the week before the building was due to be occupied), there was a huge row about the "IT overspend".

    Said "overspend" being of course the entire cost of the network kit they'd forgotten to include in the project plan.

    Beancounters, eh?

    1. Mark 85

      We had to get creative and get the CEO to rip Finance a new one. Network wanted a raised floor for the entire building. Building Services who had to pay for the floor balked. Network said, we'll give you the funds from the savings made by doing the wiring with a raised floor instead of through the ceiling and drops all over the place. Finance had a cow... sputtering and spewing about "can't do that". CEO got involved and told them "do it or find a new job". We got the raised floor and the savings were huge beyond the install. Maintenance of the network, reworking as needed is still saving them a bundle.

  15. My-Handle

    My first job...

    ... was pretty much like this. I was hired by a large energy company as a temp to do a two week job that I subsequently completed in a day and a half. I informed the boss that I had finished, then spent the next eight days playing sudoku (thinly disguised as a work-related spreadsheet). The boss's reaction? My contract was extended by two months, as I was clearly so efficient. They didn't have much that I could actually do, and had no time to train me, so I ended up getting so bored I wrote a sudoku generator. And solver.

    They actually tried to extend my contract again, from the summer through to christmas, however I politely declined saying that I had Uni to get back to. And sanity to keep.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: My first job...

      My first proper job out of uni was British Aerospace. I had to leave because every day was literally like this.

      After 6 months it destroys you a bit. Worse, try getting another job internally when you're available! "Can't be any good or his boss would be fighting to keep him"!

  16. Wupspups
    Facepalm

    Not just money

    Many moons ago I had the joy of serving in BAOR. One of the weirdness I could never get over was the annual lets go crazy and fire crates of ammo off. The reason for this was if we didnt fire our allotment of training ammo off next years allotment would get cut.

    The reason for this was we weren't infantry so didnt get first dibs on the ranges, add to that we spent 4 months of the year on non live firing exercises so often ended up doing only 3 or 4 range days a year. We were supposed to do 12. The quartermaster always said if we didnt blast all the training ammo of come next year we wouldn't get enough if we did get our 12 days on the ranges. So a new QM arrives and he doesnt do the mad day of blasting off. We get the ammo cut and yes the next year we got our 12 days but only had enough ammo for 4 days.

    1. Rich 11

      Re: Not just money

      Couldn't you have sold the ammo off on the black market instead? Or was it just too much fun having a 'mad minute' 200 times in one day?

      1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

        Of course not. That would be theft of Government property, court-martial and prison.

        Better to just blow it all. That is just waste, not theft.

        Big difference.

        1. MonkeyCee

          spare ammo

          The various stories I've heard from ex-service types indicate that the military beancounters are probably the scariest thing we have, since everyone who kills people for a living is terrified of them.

          These where mainly kiwis, who have a highly acquisitive nature when it comes to military supplies, since our own supply lines can be terribly shit. So infantry battalion deployed in Timor, new rifles get delayed by three months. Upon arrival, the QM's look innocent and claim confusion, since quite cleary the battalion has nice shiny new rifles, ammo, and various other things the aussies clearly didn't want*.

          Combat units have a habit of acquiring more things than they are allocated. So when they get audited, it's far worse to have too much of something (implies you nicked it) versus too little (which can be blamed on other stuff). Hence some firework displays rather than trying to explain where those extra cases of 5.56 came from**.

          * otherwise they wouldn't have left them laying around without proper security ;)

          ** in general, from the US taxpayer

    2. Joe 35

      Re: Not just money

      Blasting ammo away isnt as crazy as it sounds.

      It has a "sell by date" so there's a reason to use it up anyway, and out of date ammo has a cost to be returned and "recycled" (you cant just chuck your old bombs in the local landfill as with your ginsters ! ) which can make it cheaper to use it than return it, and the deals to buy it are usually long term to assure supply so there's a constant supply coming in.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    NHS

    I've more or less spent 4 years getting paid for not much at the NHS. Some weeks I don't even go in...

    AC for obvious reasons.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: NHS

      My ex worked quite a few years for the NHS.

      When her mother was ill (dying), she moved back in and became a full-time carer. On a full NHS salary. On sick leave for herself, for about four years.

      Before that, a big chunk of her job had been the notional work of colleagues also on long-term sick leave.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: NHS

        So, anyone wonder why people/companies/etc move their taxable assets overseas, instead of propping up these muppets?

        1. MonkeyCee

          Re: NHS

          People avoid paying tax because they want to keep the money for themselves.

          It's got fuck all to do with wanting to spend on better causes.

          I don't support spending a fortune on Trident, which has fuck all benefits for society, but I don't get to deduct that from my tax bill, or pick and choose what parts of the state I want to support.

          It should be noted that all the taxes that are *claimed* to be for the NHS pay for it several times over. But those get redirected to serve other purposes. Paying NI so we can invade other countries seems rather shit IMHO.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: NHS

      Disgusting. Rip off a private company all you want but have a soul and resign.

    3. Ken 16 Silver badge
      Paris Hilton

      Re: NHS

      I can't decide whether to upvote or downvote this - should I laugh or cry?

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Happy

      Re: NHS

      Jeremy Hunt, is that you?

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Slightly different slant..

    I was placed on one of the Workfare schemes a couple of years ago, and was sent from Cambridge to Kings Lynn daily to do nothing. We were supposed to be making those terrible bird tables you sometimes see in charity shops, but as there weren't any orders for any during my tenure, I basically did bugger all. Whilst doing nothing, we weren't allowed to use any power tools as we might wake the guy who lived opposite and worked nights. But even if we were, they power tools filled the atmosphere with fine dust, so health and safety had a field day. Proof of which came when they turned up on the last day I was there and condemned the place.

    And the price to the taxpayer for this? A weekly bus pass plus weekly tickets to Kings Lynn. Not exactly cheap, but at least nothing like 35k...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Slightly different slant..

      Filling the atmosphere with fine dust is fairly standard for power tools. It's not a problem as long as reasonable safety gear designed for it is worn.

      1. Dave Ross

        Re: Slightly different slant..

        In the end, it wasn't the dust (tho it was pretty bad, and of course, flammable), it was the fire escapes which were probably more dangerous than the fire would have been had we had one.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Technological advancement

    I wonder if Accountancy magazines are full of stories about "new and exciting" innovations in budgeting?[1]

    [1] I mis-typed that and the spell check suggested 'bludgeoning'. Not so far from the truth. :-)

    1. Swarthy
      Joke

      Re: Technological advancement

      Better bludgeoning than buggering, I guess.

      And either is better than bludgeoning then buggering....

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Technological advancement

        And either is better than bludgeoning then buggering....

        You were just reading the fisting site data breach article weren't you?

        Hmmm, now wondering if many accountants are on that list... if so, people might be able to er... rectify their budgets!

        1. Swarthy

          Re: Technological advancement

          I thought accountants went the other way; that is to say, they are usually pulling numbers out of their arses.

  20. riverman

    Just be thankful...

    ...that we don't get as much government as we pay for.

  21. The Vociferous Time Waster

    Rhymes with trap fitter.

    I used to work in a place with a lot of virtualisation. When a project needed capacity on the VM infrastructure the compute and storage guys would calculate how much needed to be put aside to pay for the fraction of a netapp and the fraction of a blade setup that the project was using. At the end of the year they went to finance to buy the kit they needed to expand the capacity for the next year's projects and were told that the money that should have been put aside had been reported as savings so was not available and because all the projects had come in under budget the next year's projects had their infrastructure components dramatically cut.

  22. The Vociferous Time Waster
    Facepalm

    Rhymes with trap fitter.

    I used to work in a place with a lot of virtualisation. When a project needed capacity on the VM infrastructure the compute and storage guys would calculate how much needed to be put aside to pay for the fraction of a netapp and the fraction of a blade setup that the project was using. At the end of the year they went to finance to buy the kit they needed to expand the capacity for the next year's projects and were told that the money that should have been put aside had been reported as savings so was not available and because all the projects had come in under budget the next year's projects had their infrastructure components dramatically cut.

  23. Naselus

    Honestly

    I thought this article was going to be about Ian Duncan Smith.

  24. Naselus

    Was the NHS for me

    Was hired on 15 quid an hour to sit in a server room under the cafeteria for 4 hours a day. Precisely halfway through the shift, I had to change 4 tapes and put them in the safe across the corridor. Leaving until the end of the shift was not permitted, but there was absolutely no attempt to monitor me. Showing up drunk was fine. Installing games on the hardware was fine. Doing uni coursework was fine... in fact, literally anything was fine as long as I was on-site for 4 hours, and those 4 tapes got changed halfway through the shift. I became really, really good at Sid Meier's Colonization during that period, and the £300 a week was more than enough to pay my rent and expenses at the time, but eventually quit because my boss's boss started playing silly buggers with the time sheets.

    The NHS felt that this was so important that they hired 2 of us to do it, just in case on person was off.

    1. Tom 7

      Re: Was the NHS for me

      Strangely I've worked in a place where someone thought it was a good idea to get rid of one of the people who sat around doing nothing apart from changing tapes from time to time.

      It went very badly.

      Some tasks are too important to be part of someone else's schedule.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Was the NHS for me

      Yeah, backups for very old, truly mission critical systems, often have weirdness like that attached.

      eg, the software can be so old that no automatic tape changers will work with the OS any more, leading to situations like this. For some mission critical systems, if the application goes offline the losses to the business can literally be counted in houses per minute (or more).

      So, paying someone's salary to get good at Civ 5 (or whatever) just to ensure there is proper offsite tape backup happening is a trivial expense. But the person getting good at Civ 5, had better not get distracted and mess up the backup tapes / get the timing wrong / etc.

  25. Dan 55 Silver badge

    Shutting down a building

    Worked in a telecoms company as 2nd line support. Eventually as other contractors were let go and permies were moved to another building down the road, I was responsible for shutting down the data centre as teams left. In the last three months I was shutting down a server a week if that and catching up on Doctor Who for the remaining four and a half days before my contract ended with me turning off the lights.

  26. Chronos
    Devil

    Trial?

    I hope this gets rolled out across government in general. You show me some lazy sod who's sitting there scratching his nads and I'll show you someone who's not causing any bloody trouble. (©George Carlin, sort of)

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Many years ago, we were asked to spend more delivering a project to the UK Gov, but had to make it auditable. We ended up hiring a reasonably expensive contractor to come in and write some code for us. Luckily, he was so poor at writing code, we had to get one of our own developers to fix every line of code he wrote, effectively tripling the cost for the same piece of code.

  28. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The lab I work in now, only exists because, 20 years ago, the MOD came to my boss in a panic and said - "Can you spend 250,000 on IT equipment before the end of the financial year?" - "Not a problem" says my boss - and so was born our SGI based lab - which still exists - although it is PC based now.

  29. Tom 7

    I call bullshit

    induction and security training in the MOD and only been there 3 months?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I call bullshit

      Yes, induction would include BPSS clearance without which he would not have been able to access anything and security training is normally a very brief sit down with someone telling you what you can and cant do... Basically don't take your laptop on holiday to Turkey, don't email anything secret over the internet.

    2. GrumpyKiwi

      Re: I call bullshit

      Hah yes exactly. I contracted for the MOD for 2 years back in the late 1990's. Six months to get security clearance (but hey, why don't you go work on our new Groupwise email servers meanwhile). Then once cleared I took a month off to go on holiday. Which apparently meant that my clearance expired (in the expectation that I turned into a filthy commu-nazi while away) and I had to go through that all over again.

      None of which stopped me from working on the TS data servers of course (although to be fair I suspect that classifying what the part of the MOD I worked for as TS was massive overkill).

      Also, where I was at it was the half-dozen contractors that did all the work while the full time staffers sat around drinking tea before 1200 and then beer between 1200 and 1500 and then a nice snooze from 1500 to 1630 hometime.

  30. riverman

    Thank Heaven...

    ...That we don't get all the government that we pay for.

  31. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The picture from an NHS supplier

    I used to work for a company that provided IT "goods and services" to NHS hospitals. Two weeks before the end on a tax year, one of our clients realised that they still had budget left and did not want to lose it. So they placed an order for some servers, tweaked to cost the budget they had.

    Problem was that the servers were on 6-8 week lead time and they had to be noted as received on site before the end of the tax year.

    So a mutually satisfactory solution was found. We shipped several boxes of scrap of about the right weight. These were marked as top be opened by our engineer when he came to commission the servers. The delivery note featured some random serial numbers. (Part of the process needed to officially receive the goods)

    A few weeks later when the real equipment was ready, the engineer took them to site and installed them. I cannot remember if the original boxes were just skipped, or if the engineer bought them back to the workshop.

    As far as paperwork at the hospital was concerned, the servers were replaced under warranty by the real servers, so serial numbers all matched.

    A little deception that harmed nobody, but would not have been needed if budget had been allowed to carry over.

    AC, just in case.

  32. d3vy

    If you're listening...

    If either Adam or that manager happen to be reading this I can make myself available.

    Whats more, for the same money I will do TWICE the work that Adam did last year.

    You cant beat that value for money.

  33. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    kind of

    I once spent 3 months on a contract where I basically only wrote about 20 lines of code, which was itself based on reading/understanding a small part of glibc (not a direct copy, due to GPL). I think the reason for it being such a sinecure was similar to the reason in the article. The department knew that there could be job cuts up ahead, but also the chance of getting more work on an upcoming project. So I guess in one sense they were just spending the budget and upping the headcount to avoid bigger cuts down the road (kind of like a puffer fish?). I really didn't have anything to do, but my boss was quite happy for me to learn how to use the GNU autoconf tools, which was quite interesting.

    At the end of the 3 months, it was decided that there would be staff cuts after all and since I was last in, I was the first out. A couple of other guys got shown the door too, but all of us left in good spirits. A great place to work.

  34. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I always get a little blast of work from the NHS in March each year, as long as they get the quote and work starts before April they are happy - I suspect that this is for the same reason,

  35. imanidiot Silver badge

    Had almost exactly that sort of job once

    Would not do it again.

    Doing fuck all for a day is fun for a day or 2. Then the boredom sets in...

  36. ma1010
    Happy

    Something like this happened to me once

    Long ago, when I was in college, I was a "student assistant" who got paid a small hourly rate to do various tasks around a particular department office. One summer, when I was at home, I got a phone call from the department secretary, a friend of mine, saying "Hey, we've got an extra $300 in the budget that we need to spend. Would you like to come in and help us out?"

    I went in and puttered around at this and that until I'd managed to burn through it. Nice little windfall as $300 was a fair amount of money back then, and I was fairly impoverished.

  37. Herby

    I have a great product idea...

    Have a product called future money. It is sold in various increments and has a physical embodiment. A nice box of something "special" that may have nice blinked lights (activated upon opening of box). Assign a value to said item, and allow it to be traded in for "other stuff".

    Call it a Budgetary Box. Take a little off the top (1% ought to be enough for most instances) and go to town.

    I'll be rich, and retire to a beach somewhere (I understand Hawaii is nice!).

  38. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I got sent to a client site

    as BAU support for 3 months, yet there was not enough work for me and the other guys already there to do. (They just wanted an extra person on the Oncall Roster, apparently 1 week in 3 is considered unfair). So I learnt Perl and Puppet and read a lot of manuals. Money for nothing.

  39. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Busy doing nothing

    As more and more of our jobs are being off-shored I am finding that many IT jobs are basically none jobs. In the past ten years I have had many contracts with almost zero technical input, and you are expected to sit there waiting for questions, or to attend spuradic meetings without goals or clear direction.

  40. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Private sector too!

    I used to work for a consulting firm. One of our clients was a major insurance firm. Their IT department brought us in to build them a new application. The IT director had a gigantic ego and seemed to see if it as a matter of pride to maintain as large a budget as possible.

    Every system they had was massively over engineered. For example, they had invested quite a bit of cash building up a Citrix virtual desktop farm. However, no one was allowed to work from home, and they had a second office for DR so it went unused.

    Anyway, we finished the application four months ahead of schedule, even with loads of busy work change requests for all the pointless stuff at the bottom of the MoSCoW list. However, said IT director would have looked bad if we had left earlier and it would have exposed his ridiculous budget.

    Therefore I spent the last 4 months providing "support" while the rest of my team did roll off. In reality I got a virtual server set up on their barely used VMWare cluster (of course) and spent that time teaching myself development in some new languages and data tools which has stood me in good stead since!

  41. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If I did my math correctly, that works out to 70.56GBP per hour (assuming a 40 hour work week), which is about $101.26USD an hour.

    For on call IT work that is not salaried, that is actually reasonable, if not being underpaid (I have had colleagues charge up to 3X that, if not more at least for consulting).

    Your criticism, as well as assumption that they were "doing nothing" seems unmerited.

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