Damm you Elite!
I still think this was the reason I got a 2:1 rather than a first.
110 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Dec 2011
We had a similar situation - towards the end of the last century, our company successfully migrated off one of the ancient applications onto a new (for then) platform.
At the celebration party one of the key people was presented with a 9-track tape reel from the decommissioned system as a souvenir.
However this person overdid the celebration a bit and was found later that night by the Met - as the tape had 'property of $big_corporation ' printed on it they thought they had stumbled on an industrial espionage attempt.
It took a late night phone call to the head of IT to get it all sorted out.
In the 1980s I had to work on one application that used names as the key. This app was used to log information our company had with various suppliers.
As those suppliers could have multiple sites the users eventually ended up needing to deliberately misspell their names - for example 'Heinza' and 'Heinzb'
Our company has the same restrictions for the same reason, although I think data protection also comes into play as well.
One of the teams I work with recently employed someone - all the interviews were remote and we had the new laptop shipped to a London address.
A week or so later, InfoSec flagged up that this laptop was connecting from Cyprus. The new employee admitted that they had the kit shipped out to them and they had never stepped foot in the UK, so they were immediately terminated.
I came into my work office today, solely so I can pick up a new chair (my company closed an office and are allowing us to have one in return for a charity donation)
It took nearly an hour to drive in. Now sitting at a desk which has far worse monitors than I have at home listening to a couple of 'colleagues' in the next section natter incessantly (including playing phone video clips of their kids to each other)
Now why would I want to return to this full time?
As at least one hospital in the US has stated in a message to its staff, unless they can truthfully say that they have never taken or will never take any of the following:
Acetaminophen, albuterol, aspirin, ibuprofen, Tylenol, Pepto Bismol, Tums, Lipitor, Senokot, Motrin, Maalox, Ex-Lax, Benadryl, Sudafed, Preparation H, Claritin, Prilosec, and Zoloft
Then they can't use the 'fetal cell lines' excuse, as these have all used them during R&D.
The house I grew up in was also a 1930s semi, with the floorboards between the junction box under the stairs to the back door running perpendicular.
My dad wanted to run power out to the garage and was trying to work out how to do it, when our cat stated nosing around the hole.
After a lightbulb moment, he tied a string to the cat's collar, took up a single extra floorboard by the back door and my mum opened a tin of tuna at the other.
Cue the cat making a quick trip under the floor, after which the cable was connected to the string and pulled through.
Cat enjoyed the tuna.
Our company has well over 100,000 employees, with probably about 10k office based.
Frequently during lockdown people have asked if they can work abroad and that's always been (quite rightly) rejected due to tax reasons as you said, but also because of GDPR and other regulations.
We've ended the leases on two of our offices (one in London, the other in the Midlands) and have fully rejigged our ways of working, with the expectation that we would only go into an office once or twice a week at most.
Same for my company - we had one main office and two smaller satellite sites in London, plus two large offices in a Midlands town separated by about two miles.
The satellites and one of the Midlands sites have not had their leases renewed, plus we are only expected to go into an office for the '3 Cs' (Collaboration, Coaching or Celebration) , which is likely to be one day a week at most.
Back in the early 90s our company had successfully migrated one of the key applications from an old platform.
At the post-implementation party one of the key people was presented with a reel tape from the old system as a present. He got a bit inebriated that night and was found by Plod in a semi conscious state, still clutching the reel.
They thought that they had stumbled upon a major hacking incident and called our IT director to say as such. It took a few hours to straighten everything out and our guy didn't get in any trouble (although the story stuck with him for the rest of his days there)