hughk's Journal: Another project....

I was in a short term project last year based out of London, commuting Mondays and Fridays which was as bad as I feared. However, the income level more than compensated for the extra costs of travel and accomodation. The work was just as a straight BA/Tester and I was supposed to help test an upgrade. It was fairly uneventful, except that it meant that I could get a bit more experience in a paricular 3P financial package. After doing usability on an inhouse package, the 3P package seemed quite crude and even if not bug-ridden, it certainly was poorly engineered.

That project finished, so I was left at a loose end. I had interviewed for a couple of jobs in London again but the budget kept on appearing and disappearing like Alice's Cheshire Cat. There wasn't a lot happening in Frankfurt, so some job in London seemed inevitable.

Finally and after a second interview conducted by phone whilst I was away skiing and a pause of several weeks, they came back to me and started to make opening moves about the rate. I told the agent that I wouldn't compromise much as I had a friend working for the same bank on a similar project and I knew what his package was like.

Anyway, they finally gave me what I asked for but then I had to account for my last 5 years of work history and to account for gaps of more than a month (inside for drug trafficing in Thailand?). Projects have been short and I have worked in many places over the last five years. I even ended up chasing one reference from Uzbekistan. It wasn't easy, but now, maybe they have all the info and I can start.

The project will be interesting and essentially another hand-me-down from the War on Terror, from Bush and Blair. Essentially all financial insitutions are supposed to introduce a number of measures to reduce the ability of terrorists and drug barons to move money around so easily. This project is supposed to implement Know Your Client for a large and fairly international bank. This means ensuring that all new clients are correctly processed and their paperwork recorded in a massive document management system.

I suppose they are entitled to be a little careful, but the check took about a week and was a major PITA.