Potentially the longest thread in history...

[PP Mguire]

I prefer work to school by a long shot. But i'd say i've done work that was more tedious than anything I had in school.

E.g. recently:

Check 200 tablets for SIM cards. Every tablet had a thick case on it, which takes 1 or 2 minutes to pull off. Every SIM card you find, type it into a form on the website and assign the correct users name, location, cost center, the device the SIM is inside with serial and IMEI information.

And that's just tablets. I had to collate accurate inventory information for all IT hardware across the business. Every monitor, PC, printer, server, switch, router, WAP, docking station, laptop, tablets, smartphone had to have about 10 fields filled in each for manufacturer, user its assigned too, condition, value, serial number, description, specification etc. So that sounds ****ty already, but it had to mirror and backup the initial inventory taken when the business started last year. Which meant continual discrepencies e.g. "well last year we had 187 OptiPlex 9020, now we have 185 9020's, why ? where are the other two ?" it was just a massive ****ing minefield of bull****.

It was hundreds of hours of awful, tedious, monotonous data entry.


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ANDDDDDDDDDDD in other news. Payrise ! finally, I found out !

Not what I was hoping for. But I already realized life is never as simple or as good as you would like. So while I was hoping for more, I wasn't surprised when they lowballed me. They offered me a $4000 payrise now, and then another $2500 payrise in 6 months time. That sounds good at face value, but bear in mind I have been underpaid for over a year. By the time I have had my 4000 plus 2500 increase by middle of next year, that'll take me up to a level of pay which is still on the lower side of median, but in an acceptable range just about. I was more disappointed in the 6 month wait than the actual overall figure.

The difference you're being paid for it though. You pay a school to practically torture you with unrealistic workloads and to honestly not learn even 3/4 the material you paid to learn.

 

[carnageX]

Finally got my assignment finished yesterday. Don't get me wrong, I'm super happy about it -but now I have the joy of adding comments to pretend i did it all the way through, and writing a report on it. I haven't got the foggiest idea how i'll manage in the workplace, nothing annoys me more than writing documentation

Like mentioned, documentation during school for programming was / is more tedious than at an actual workplace. However - I will say...after working, you'll actually wish there was more documentation - because undoubtedly you'll inherit some junk system, that's not documented worth crap and have to fix it (or re-write it). I know this from experience.

 

[Yami]

Oh good, nice to know i'll be able to avoid my responsibilities all the way through life
Also, is working in forensics as cool as it sounds?

Yes and no. I come into contact with a lot of cool people and work on a lot of interesting and enjoyable cases. That doesn't stop my job being 70% spreadsheet processing (in my specific sub-field of digital forensics).

 

[Trotter]

ANDDDDDDDDDDD in other news. Payrise ! finally, I found out !

Not what I was hoping for. But I already realized life is never as simple or as good as you would like. So while I was hoping for more, I wasn't surprised when they lowballed me. They offered me a $4000 payrise now, and then another $2500 payrise in 6 months time. That sounds good at face value, but bear in mind I have been underpaid for over a year. By the time I have had my 4000 plus 2500 increase by middle of next year, that'll take me up to a level of pay which is still on the lower side of median, but in an acceptable range just about. I was more disappointed in the 6 month wait than the actual overall figure.

I know how being underpaid feels as I am there as well. There were no raises for anyone last year as the company "re-branded" itself and apparently they decided to do it during a crap year... or at least that's what they told us, anyway.

Supposedly we are going to move to a tier pay scale next year. They paid a research company to compare our pay rates against the rest of our industry and lo and behold we are well below the median. Well, no shtick, Sherlock. The upcoming tiers are supposed to include some decent increases but I will believe it when I see it. If/when it rolls out I will check it out; if my pay doesn't move up a decent chunk then I will start putting out resumes. My bud down in my regional office interviewed for a local government job Monday and will walk if they offer him a position as it will be at least a 20K pay bump just walking into the bottom of their pay scales.

 

[kmanmx]

I know how being underpaid feels as I am there as well. There were no raises for anyone last year as the company "re-branded" itself and apparently they decided to do it during a crap year... or at least that's what they told us, anyway.

Supposedly we are going to move to a tier pay scale next year. They paid a research company to compare our pay rates against the rest of our industry and lo and behold we are well below the median. Well, no shtick, Sherlock. The upcoming tiers are supposed to include some decent increases but I will believe it when I see it. If/when it rolls out I will check it out; if my pay doesn't move up a decent chunk then I will start putting out resumes. My bud down in my regional office interviewed for a local government job Monday and will walk if they offer him a position as it will be at least a 20K pay bump just walking into the bottom of their pay scales.

Yeah the excuses companies come up with is funny. My boss gave me all the usual exec spiel during my pay review. When he first showed me the new contract before I read it he was like "This is great Max, I think we've done really well here, so is a great result considering" ... right right right, for a start, there is no "we", so don't try and include me to make me feel important. Secondly, it's not a great result - it is an acceptable result. Congratulations Mr Boss, you are now paying me roughly what I am worth. That should really be a given anyway, it's no reason to feel all high and mighty, especially as it took you over half a year to enact it after it was first raised. Secondly, you should be on the ball with these things anyway, I shouldn't have to raise it.

And then I got the whole "Pay rises are frozen across the company. Zero payrises for everybody. So we did really well to get this approved and signed off".

That would be true except we both know it's bull****, but I can't comment on it because it's info I shouldn't have (but I work in IT so of course I find stuff I shouldn't ) I know atleast dozen people got pay rises since I asked, so don't feed me that BS.

Then they start trying to make it sound better than it is by talking in percentages. Never let percentages deceive you. Giving someone a 20% payrise sounds great, but to the person in question it's irrelevent. All that matters is the hard numbers. How many $ is my payrise and is it enough $ ? If you're 20k underpaid and they give you a 10k payrise and start chatting crap like "that's ana awesome 25% payrise, 10x inflation !" - well sure, but it's still 10k sure of what it should be.

 

[PP Mguire]

I found out yesterday that Lockheed classified every single contracted position to Maintech (the people that pay my check) as desktop support and that because of how I got shafted when I came in I'm the lowest paid in the branch. Since they did this, the new company thought every single one of us were helpdesk level people and couldn't understand why people were declining their offers. The guy on the phone was like "we went over the details and think 18/h is acceptable for you". I'm like yea no, I didn't stay an extra 4 months and throw away 3 other opportunities to stay for the same bull**** I get now when I started here making more to begin with. I told him who I was, what I did, and hinted that breakfix (the level 3 guys) should start at 50k since EBS starts Deskside people at 50k that literally sleep in their cubes and admins like myself should make more. He said "well sir we have you down here as Desktop Support" and I told him "Dude I haven't supported a role like that in 2 years, those guys come and ask me when they need help with something and I instruct them when I have time". So he said "well 25 an hour, is that what you're asking for?" *inside LOL dude doesn't get it does he* "What do you pay your admins? That's all I'm asking for now. Kick it back to Lockheed, I'm going to talk to my PoC to find out what's going on here".

Turns out my pay IS the 70% ceiling and that's why the guy was confused. So getting that changed since I have friends in places I shouldn't to see what kind of offer these scrubs give me. What makes it worse is, Lockheed has a paid plant shutdown for a week starting Christmas Eve. These guys don't intend on paying us for that week nor do they want to give us a vacation for next year. They also dropped our 5 sick days and 2 personal days.

 

[kmanmx]

You should be happy IT pays so much better in the US. $18/hr is what i'll earn *after* my payrise. Plus our cost of living is way higher. You have it pretty good

Just checked on Glassdoor.. sys admin pay is $20k higher in Texas than it is here, and in reality it'll be even worse than that because London pay is way higher than the rest of the country which screws the average.

 

[PP Mguire]

You should be happy IT pays so much better in the US. $18/hr is what i'll earn *after* my payrise. Plus our cost of living is way higher. You have it pretty good

Just checked on Glassdoor.. sys admin pay is $20k higher in Texas than it is here, and in reality it'll be even worse than that because London pay is way higher than the rest of the country which screws the average.

18 an hour isn't enough when you're a single parent and the cheapest daycare is 800 a month. 18 an hour isn't enough when your kid gets sick and your **** contractor insurance you pay over 100 a month out of your check for doesn't cover anything. I've consolidated my bills, have a roomie, haven't spent a dime on myself in 4 months, and still come out -200 every month. This job is a Level 3/4 position. I should be making double what I'm making now. I'm actually a technical administrator, and I control 3 corporate iLabs now. I actually do way more work than I did when I started and this bull**** isn't cutting it. Friend of mine works from home doing easy work and makes 50-60k while his fiber internet and phone are a tax write off.

 

[kmanmx]

18 an hour isn't enough when you're a single parent and the cheapest daycare is 800 a month. 18 an hour isn't enough when your kid gets sick and your **** contractor insurance you pay over 100 a month out of your check for doesn't cover anything. I've consolidated my bills, have a roomie, haven't spent a dime on myself in 4 months, and still come out -200 every month. This job is a Level 3/4 position. I should be making double what I'm making now. I'm actually a technical administrator, and I control 3 corporate iLabs now. I actually do way more work than I did when I started and this bull**** isn't cutting it. Friend of mine works from home doing easy work and makes 50-60k while his fiber internet and phone are a tax write off.

IT pay is super **** for the knowledge you need. The "SHEQ Controller" near me just organises corporate documentation on the intranet and earns £10k more than me. It's literally as simple as it sounds - making sure documents are ordered correctly. She's not overpaid, thats pretty typical for her kind of job across the company. Over here IT pay has gone to absolute **** over the past 20 years, specifically the past 10. I remember seeing IT has had the largest real world pay decrease of any sector this decade .

I could do that SHEQ job with about 30 minutes of training, no exaggeration. And here I am with IT knowledge that I have learnt and accrued over the past 15 years or so, tens of thousands of hours, with formal qualifications.. and yet that's not really worth anything apparently - just low end office admin job pay. Okay. Honestly I think top IT professionals that have been in the game for a long time have invested as much time, effort and have gained equivalent amounts of knowledge as doctors and surgeons whos pay is WAY WAY higher, though obviously more stressful.

 

[PP Mguire]

In my case it's a classification issue and contracting companies that don't give a rat's *** about the people they give a paycheck too. If I actually worked for Lockheed it wouldn't be an issue. I also wouldn't have a problem with insurance, getting my vacation, or get ripped of my holiday vacation pay. The whole situation is ****ty, but I can always leave and go somewhere else if they don't give me what I want.