Re: Contractors
 

Wisdom would say, stay where you are at present with your good job ;)

Re: Contractors
 

i work in manchester for fujitsu on the new price per job my last two monthly wages have been over 2500 pounds .fujitsu seem to be gettiin better its just taking time .if your new to installing you will find it hard ive done this job for fifteen years and woudnt like to start now having never done it before.but i still enjoy it

Re: Contractors
 

is there any reviews on m j Quinn on the bt contact? I want away from Fujitsu ASAP as there thiefs [mod edit] and the pay is crap, they treat you like crap because they no I will not leave

Re: Contractors
 

I've read this thread with interest for a while now. I have had the displeasure of working for a few contractors and also in house at virgin.

My advice to anybody thinking of getting a job in the cabling industry would be DO NOT DO IT. To the contractors you are just seen as a disposable number. They treat you like excrement. The money can be good but sometimes by the time you've worked out the actual hours you've worked for the pay it can be no better than a minimum wage. For that reason it would probably be better to work in McDonald's as you would probably get more job satisfaction! I noticed that a lot of the older guys in the cabling industry seemed like bitter angry men. I did not want to end up like that.

I left a contractor at the end of last year to start a new job this year. It's my dream job and it's a refreshing change to be treated as an individual and with respect. I would never go back into the industry.

It's a shame because certain parts of the job are good but the bad far outweigh them.

So good luck to anybody wanting to get a job in the industry but my advice would be that if you value your health, sanity and quality time with your family, steer well clear!!!

Re: Contractors
 

I would think 90% of sub contracted engineers feel the same.....I did!

Re: Contractors
 

daryls I would agree 100% you don't have a social life, long hours, stressful and bad for your health! if I didn't have a morgage and kid I would walk out any day I am only 22 and this is house I feel about this, it doesn't matter would sub u work for there all the same

Re: Contractors
 

just out of interest.. how do people get a job working for networks? just going around swapping out amps, and line taps etc.

Is it something you move over to after starting off on installs or service tech? or are special qualifications required?

Re: Contractors
 

I worked my way up installs install supervisor,Service ,Networks ,It would be nice if thats all we do .But i do transmission faults ,look after SDH ,HFC faults laser faults .Help service out when they give them to much work or assign work to a tech who is not in .Look after the power supplys in the cab change batteries over etc .
When i started in 1995 we did everything here and were taught how to use the kit .Some of the service techs here come in on there days off to learn and when its not busy they are given downtime to come out with us .But as you know downtime is a dirty word and the techs are always busy .But it looks good when a network job comes up and you have more of a understanding of what we do :)

Hi thanks for clarifying that.

Lol just wondered because although I have no inside knowledge doing network maintenance like amps, batteries, laser faults and installation etc on network side doesnt sound so bad, even with the other stuff you mentioned lol. Compared to the complaints you hear of install techs being over worked.. So I just wondered how people got a job on networks.. Assumed that people applied directly for those jobs and had some kinda qualifications.

Id imagine now it's harder to get a job in networks than years gone by.. Remember when bell cable came here.

Even remember them digging up all the roads round here putting in the ducting and infrastructure then men with clipboards following door to door signing people up onto the new cable network.

We signed up, and a van load of guys turned up, some were digging the garden and pulling the cable while 2 others were inside cabling everything up lol was about 3 or 4 guys and everything was done in 1 sweep.

Now seems to be a case of 1 team comes out and pulls the cable, another team comes out a few days later to connect it. Or if new install
2nd person on their own does the in house install.


So probably loads more overworked leaving less time for those days off where they can learn about the networks, and when gaps do appear probably really competitive I'd imagine with people desperate to get off installs onto networks lol.

But seems to be possible though to get up the chain quickly guess it depends on the person... When I had who I'm guessing was a principle tech out he barely looked 20 lol.

No idea how he got promoted to that role so quickly. Or is it just pot luck you get the job to begin with instead of a normal service tech.

But does seem to be getting worse.. We left vm for a few years then returned 6 years ago..

Even then person came out to do the install, found damaged drop cable, then came back later on in the afternoon with another guy to help him pull a replacement cable.. And we was online same day, pulled, dug in and connected

But now 6 years later if cable was damaged then installer would go, wait a week got cable to get pulled then another week for somebody to come back to dig it in and connect

Re: Contractors
 

Heard today from an ex colleague of mine who is still working on the Kelly bt contract that they are changing their pay from salary to price work.

How they can get away with this I do not know. He said a lot of guys are unhappy and trying to get out. I'm just glad I left when I did.

But it just goes to show that when contracting with the cable firms, the grass is never greener on the other side!

Re: Contractors
 

hearing sounds on the grapevine that Bt openreach are getting shut of Kellys with MJ Quinns getting all BT work

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What a suprise! Fujitsu, however are still working for VM and doing well by all accounts.

Re: Contractors
 

Depends on who you listen to,in Yorkshire they are getting rid of there 150k a year warehouse to move to somewhere much cheaper as they are not making it pay,managers getting roasted for missing dates.the lads on the ground really pi**ed off.

Re: Contractors
 

Not surprised about Kellys. The quality just hasn't been there with them. With Quinns, not nearly the same level of problems.

Re: Contractors
 

hi all new to this , i have just landed a job with vm as a field tech anyone wanna shed some light on the sort of thing i aught to expect, i,ve been in the coms industry for nearly 20 years but have allways been in the commercial sector,i,m useed to doing fibre teminations cat5 cat 6 and av installs