Re: Re: Screaming into the void
By: poindexter FORTRAN to Adept on Fri Jan 02 2026 12:18 pm

Paris, and Amsterdam, among others, aren't too far away.

Exactly! We're looking to retire to the English country, far enough

Brittish are retiring to Spain for the most part, that should tell you something.

Spain is a hellhole if you want to make a living here. If you just want to settle and have a house near the beach or near some natural environment, as long as you have money, it is a very good place.

English speaking population is displacing the locals in certain neighbourhoods. In certain areas I think you can make do without speaking that much Spanish.


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Arelor wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

Brittish are retiring to Spain for the most part, that should tell you something.

We're looking for village life and reconnecting with family in England
- and having a launching-off point for vacationing in Europe. Looking
forward to vacations in Spain/France/Italy/Scotland and not having to
fly for 10 hours. :)


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Re: Re: Screaming into the void
By: poindexter FORTRAN to Mortar M. on Sat Jan 03 2026 08:03 pm

Re: Re: Screaming into the void
By: Mortar M. to poindexter FORTRAN on Sat Jan 03 2026 09:37 pm

On-call jobs suck. I knew an IT guy that worked like that. Server crash at 3am, he's off to the office.

Sucks when you're salaried, OK when you're single and don't drink. :|
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It is not the best but I like the money. I suspect it is not great unless you are in very good terms with the upper ups and your efforts are recognized, though.

I mean, when a node in a cluster crashes and the whole thing enters degraded mode, you take a 2 hour trip to fix it, replace the failed hardware, then report the thing was broken and repaired and nobody noticed there was ever a problem... damn, that is 5 star service right there... if management didn't appreciate that sort of thing I would be pissed.


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Re: Re: Screaming into the void
By: Nightfox to Mortar M. on Sun Jan 04 2026 09:59 am

I'm doing a job search now, as I was laid off a few months ago, and even for software developer jobs, I've seen a few job postings where one of the job responsibilities is rotating on-call duties where you might be on-call for a few days every few weeks or so, which I suppose wouldn't be so bad.

A friend of mine used to do on-call service for mission-critical products for US customers, from Spain. That means he had to stay up awake in the night just in case he got a call, because the contract related to the product had a 5 figure penaulty per minute of downtime.

He didn't care at all. He considered it easy money, because he used to stay up late anyway watching American sports live instead.


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Hello Arelor!

** On Sunday 11.01.26 - 05:33, Arelor wrote to poindexter FORTRAN:

It is not the best but I like the money. I suspect it is
not great unless you are in very good terms with the upper
ups and your efforts are recognized, though.

I mean, when a node in a cluster crashes and the whole thing enters degraded mode, you take a 2 hour trip to fix it, [...]

The money includes the 2hr [4hr return trip] travel time?





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Re: Re: Screaming into the void
By: Arelor to poindexter FORTRAN on Sun Jan 11 2026 05:33:45

If management didn't appreciate that sort of thing I would be pissed.

Then you'd be soaked to the skin if you worked where I do. We got people that go above and beyond and don't get squat from management.
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Re: Screaming into the void
By: Ogg to Arelor on Sun Jan 11 2026 06:27 pm

degraded mode, you take a 2 hour trip to fix it, [...]

The money includes the 2hr [4hr return trip] travel time?

If I am required out of regular working hours they pay for the bus ticket, the food, and they let me sleep in the facilities if required.

They are not paying extra for the time itself but they will let me take the equivalent time as "break hours". So if I have to burn a big amount of hours I will be compensated next week and they will let me off the clinic earlier.

It is very rare that anything breaks so badly it requires me to be there immediately. I think last year it happened once. If something breaks during the wekend it can usually wait until morning and be fixed right before scheduled appointments begin.


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Re: Re: Screaming into the void
By: Mortar M. to Arelor on Tue Jan 13 2026 10:42 am

Then you'd be soaked to the skin if you worked where I do. We got people that go above and beyond and don't get squat from management.

That is a common trend.

I think modern firms have too bloated structures. The people taking decisions are too separated from the productive fabric of the firm. If you are doing the gruntwork as part of a certain team it is veary easy for other people in the team to appropiate your successes and you won't be recognized for your efforts even if the managers are the sort of people capable of recognizing good efforts.


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Arelor wrote to Mortar M. <=-

I think modern firms have too bloated structures. The people taking decisions are too separated from the productive fabric of the firm. If
you are doing the gruntwork as part of a certain team it is veary easy
for other people in the team to appropiate your successes and you won't
be recognized for your efforts even if the managers are the sort of
people capable of recognizing good efforts.

I worked recently at a company whose CEO stated on multiple occasions
that his customer was whoever is closer to our customers. We also did "ridealongs", where all of administration spent a day working alongside
our customer service and sales teams. It made a great impression on me.


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