Today, I have been whinging...

Or more accurately, I pointed out to my manager how my workload has increased, and the fact that the work I was promised would be distributed around the team after Barry was made redundant has been consistently finding it's way to me. I also pointed out that having a major deadline every friday was certainly not helping.

Upshot:
After christmas I am going to be assigned four projects a month, and I get to allocate my own time as I see fit, so long as I work on those projects and so long as any slippage is on the lower priority projects for that month, not the higher ones. I've also managed to get my manager to agree to discuss the project with me before agreeing a deadline for it, rather than just assumning that developing a new website will take a week, regardless of what it is.

These are good things.

For my next trick I intend to ask for a raise in my forthcoming appraisal. My workload and responsibilies are at least as significant as my other team members, and it is my belief (and theirs, thankfully) that I should be paid the same as them. To be fair, my manager probably agrees too. Saying it in an appraisal means it's been raised by the proper means, however, and it'll documented and passed up the management structure...