Sometimes work can be a slog

I think that when people come on board as product designers/business analysts, they think that the work is exciting. They do not realize that some of the work is absolutely fascinating, such as requirements gathering and analysis, but that there is also a lot of slog work involved – writing the requirement spec, keeping it up-to-date, etc. That of course is life, and I always made a point of not putting off the boring stuff.

As a technical writer more of the work is of the boring type. For example, I have just spent the last week rebranding the complete documentation set for project #3, which was sold to another company and thus has a new look and feel. Working on the new template was fun – making sure it fit our documentation needs, but then came the actual process of moving each document across. Boring is the only word that fits. Thank goodness that part is finally over and the more interesting material should start flowing in once the holiday season is over.

Having said all that, I am of course grateful for any work I receive and get paid for, boring or not!

I sign my third contract

I signed my third contract, just before the Xmas vacation started. I have to admit it was a wonderful contract in that it was straight forward and I understood every word. Amazing (compared to the contract I received from the first company I signed with).

I have already started working, as there is so much to do in too little time. There is a massive rebranding exercise and then I can start modifying documents or creating new material, based on the current state of the product. I hope that the subject experts will put aside time to bring me up-to-date as soon as the holiday season is over.

That is always the major problem when working with R&D. Documentation is only dealt with at the last minute, when the developer in question has finished his work. This leads to overload on the part of the technical writer. We use Agile, so the developments could theoretically be provided to me at the end of each sprint, but that rarely happens. For this release, I am coming on board rather late in the process, so I really need to have the material provided on time. Here’s hoping.

Being sociable

No, I do not mean going out in the evening or weekend and meeting friends, I am talking about one of the changes I am getting used to by working from home. We all know how productive we are (not) in the office, with so many people around us and the endless meetings. I used to come in very early so I would have a couple of hours of uninterrupted work. But talking to people, basic interactions, gossiping in the kitchen, going out for lunch are all missing now that I am at home. I can work harder, I can work whenever I want to and go out and do other stuff during what was once defined work hours, but I do not interact with my workmates. That’s not quite true of course as I do occasionally talk to someone on the phone.

About once every two weeks I go to contract number 1 (my previous place of employment) and make sure that all the documents on the server are the latest versions. Today was one of those days, and I thoroughly enjoyed the gossiping and going out to lunch with good friends.

Is it possible to lose one’s social skills? I think you can, and so I must remember to be sociable from time to time. It is so easy to get lost in work, or a good book, or TV.

Work, work and more work

So if I have to work so hard on my third project, I need to get as much work done as possible on the first project, which has a final release date of beginning Feb. All the basic work has been completed, and I am now waiting to receive feedback (if any) from QA that might change a detail here or there.

In the meantime I have finalized (proofed, PDFd and linked to the documentation set) all those documents I think are OK, in order to cut down on work at the last moment. If QA find any last minute mistakes I will need to re PDF, but it should take much less time as all the prep work has been completed.

The third project is on average 10 hours’ work a day (!), but that takes into account that I receive on time the information required on new features and changes to the system.  I am supposed to go and visit the office, but by the time we closed the deal it was too close to Xmas. Maybe that was lucky in that Europe is totally snowed in. See below for a wonderful photo a friend at the office sent last Friday showing her way to work. They will try and arrange remote access so that I can play with the system and access documents. In the meantime I am busy doing a rebranding exercise.

The third contract saga continues

It currently looks as if I will not take the infamous third job. I feel as if they are playing around with me. I originally proposed a price and they never got back to negotiate with me, so I didn't know if the price I offered was reasonable. Last week I was asked to rephrase my proposal so that it was only for the next release. I quoted a price based on feedback I received from them of the expected amount of work, and sent it off.

My contact tried to reduce the price. I wouldn't mind so much if I knew what the acceptable price per hour was. I originally told my contact how I came by the price I had quoted and told him to talk to me if my information was incorrect. He told me that they were looking for a quote from a local person to put mine in perspective, but I never heard back.

What I thought that they were trying to do was save money by saying that it is only three months’ work. So I wrote an e-mail to my contact and his boss and explained how I got to my price structure and had asked for feedback, and that the amount of work was the same, never mind if I started in November or January, just more hours work in each day. They were supposed to phone me yesterday, but didn't, and if I don't start soon I will not be able to complete the work anyway. So basically I have given up.

Strange, but I feel relieved.

Update: Well it all goes to show – I received a call yesterday and they are offering me a contract for the project. They asked for a slightly lower rate, which is acceptable to me (at least now I know what they expect for an hourly rate). It is actually a project price but based on my assumption of the amount of work involved. So (1) my fears were unfounded; and (2) if I start next week I can still manage the project, albeit by working flat-out (10 hours a day versus the original 6.5). But now I know that I have guaranteed income until I go on my long vacation. After that I’ll need to start acting as a real freelancer and start lobbying for work (and also get used to the idea that some customers will try to make me feel bad about the price quote as part of their strategy).

Pension fund and income tax

When I stopped working, my pension fund was freed by the company I worked for and became my property. This is considered a tax event (iru’a mas) because I was not employed by another company after that. The form stated that I owed taxes on a certain portion of the pension, so it was explained to me that I needed to get the income tax office to sign the form that I was not taking the pension out, but leaving it to mature.

I went into the tax office with the form and my last three pay slips. I expected to see a clerk and took with me something to read while in the queue. I went to the information desk on the ground floor and asked where the tax office information was. The website had said that it was on level 0. She told me to go up two floors and it was on the left, and when I queried the level 0 bit, she said, yes that was level 0 - weird.

Anyway, I found the desk in question and the nice lady took the form and told me that she would pass it on the correct office. She gave me a phone number in case I didn’t hear back from them within one week. This is surprising on two levels, first that she volunteered such useful information, and second that she expected me to receive the signed form within a week. Not only that, a real tax officer phoned me a couple of hours later to confirm the details.

And that was that, I got home 75 minutes after I left it and was in time for breakfast.

Update: I received the signed form today – 2 working days after I handed it in!!!

On a less positive aspect, there was a newspaper article today mentioning that some pension funds had actuarial problems and would need to reduce the monthly pension. My pension fund was listed (with a deficit of 9.3%), and I have only just over one year before it matures (at the previous female retirement age). Now I have to go check this out.

A great five minutes

This weekend we planned on going on a birding trip down south with some friends. We were to meet them at 6:30, which entailed us leaving the house at 4:30 (AM!!!). We went down to the car and the remote wouldn’t open it. Shaul went upstairs for the other key and that also wouldn’t open the car. Once we worked out how to get the manual key out of the remote (we have a Prius), we could get into the car but not start it. It was totally dead.

So we phoned up the friend we were supposed to pick up and others we were supposed to meet and cancelled our participation in the trip. We then waited until 7:30, phoned the Toyota garage who told us not to touch the battery but to be towed in (he said that you don’t touch a Prius). Our insurance company wouldn't agree to this and a technician came out and started the car with leads. We then drove to the garage where they changed the special battery. This took nearly one hour as it is located in a very difficult spot in the car. Luckily the battery was still under a partial guarantee, and we only had to pay 50%. So we became NIS 605 poorer but drove off with a brand new battery for our hybrid.

The upside of this is that because I am now self-employed, two-thirds of my car expenses are recognized, and I also get back some of the VAT. So our day was pretty boring, and not what we had planned, but then I heard rolling thunder getting closer. Eventually it reached us and it also started raining. I went and stood on our sheltered balcony and then suddenly the heavens opened and it absolutely poured down for five minutes. It was such strong rain, that I got Shaul to come out and we stood there together and just watched this (for us) rare phenomenon. The rain hit the dry earth and the smell was heady. For those of you reading this outside Israel, we have had a terrible drought this year and there was no rain in November; we had a few minutes of light rain early last week, and c’est tout. So those were my great five minutes, which I would have missed if I had gone birding.

Walking around Tel Aviv

I have just come back from a lovely walk around the part of Tel-Aviv that was built from 1909 to 1924. The original neighbourhood built outside of Jaffa was called Ahuzat Bayit, and was considered a sleeper neighbourhood for the Jewish merchants working in Jaffa. Many houses no longer exist, others are falling down and a few have been restored, but the atmosphere is charming and quite European. At the northern end – around Rothschild Avenue, it is very leafy with mature trees providing a lot of shade; the noise of the cars does not penetrate and there are wonderful overhanging balconies replete with flowering plants. The whole neighbourhood is full of street cafes – definitely continental in feel.

A couple of weeks ago, in the middle of the dead period for work, we took a walk in and around Jaffa, looking at the original Arab buildings and the Templar buildings. In the renovated railway station (originally providing pilgrims with a way to get from Jaffa to Jerusalem), you actually see both styles right next to each other.

So one of the benefits of working for myself is the ability to take a few hours off and just walk and relearn the city.

Finally some work

When I first started working as a freelancer (all of a month ago), there was a lot of work for the first two or three weeks, and then nothing (as I have written about previously). Now the work is trickling in again and I am finally working a couple of hours a day. That is what I expected on average from these two contracts, but I wonder if it will dry up again. I am still in limbo on the third project, which should have kicked in this week – but as I haven’t seen a contract yet I am not sure when I’ll start. I believe I’ll get the project, which provides a lot of work until March; my main worry is being able to complete the work on time and to a good level if the start date keeps being put off.

So one of the main areas of disquiet so far in being self-employed (and I know that this is self-evident but I am experiencing it first hand) is the uncertainty of when there will be work and how much. I need to work this out…

Staying awake in the evening

This may sound trivial to most but I went to a concert yesterday evening and managed to stay awake throughout (and enjoy it). When I was employed and tried to go out in the evening, I would always collapse half way through. So I take this as one of the benefits of being self-employed.

Maybe I am learning to relax into self-employment?

So maybe I didn’t get the contract

The third and large contract that I was building on to keep me busy (and earning money) looks as if it has fallen through.

First take: I sent a proposal, and always heard back how interested they were and how we would work together, and then silence. This is a company that knows and appreciates my work and has even received many compliments on it from people learning the system for the first time. I am surprised at how gutted I feel. I was always a bit wary, but must have felt that I would get the job because I didn’t start to drum up other business. If I had this long-term contract there wouldn’t have been room for more work.

So now, as the song says, I have to pick myself up, dust myself down, and start all over again.

Second Take: It is the ‘morning after’ and on re-reading the mail I see that there may be project work from them for the next release in March. This gives me breathing space and time to plan for my future after that. Not that this is final either – they want to start negotiating with me, but time is running out for them also if they want that work done well enough. But a project is a closed item so I need to understand what they expect and then provide a price.

Update (and third take): It is now mid-week and I have finally had a call with the person I was originally in contact with. He sounds as enthusiastic as ever, and wants me to be ready to start by the 6^th. That cannot possibly happen as the price has to be agreed on and the contract reviewed and signed. I provided a list of what needs to be achieved in the next 15 weeks, and now I’ll wait again. The Christmas season is ‘drawing nigh’ and I must get the main inputs before then so that the work can be completed on time.

Regarding how I feel about the developments. I was told previously that they would hire someone locally but that would be at a later stage, and in addition to me, as the work required more than a full-time person if one takes into account marketing materials and RFPs. Also any contract as a freelancer can be terminated – that is the difference between me and a full-time employee (as I have to remember). So I have become more sanguine and hope that my work will be so good, and that they have so much of it, that they will reconsider come March. If not, c’est la vie.

More updates later…