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Out newest hire who started as an Engineer and was then demoted to the lowest levels of Helpdesk (turns out it was with good cause) quit today. Good for him. I hope he found another cushy 80k helpdesk job resetting passwords or whatever he did before.
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Jun 12, 2020 21:29
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GnarlyCharlie4u posted:Out newest hire who started as an Engineer and was then demoted to the lowest levels of Helpdesk (turns out it was with good cause) quit today. Gotta respect the game that he has to get hired on that much higher than his actual skill set.
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Jun 12, 2020 21:30
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Just shows how good our stupid loving 3 hour qualification test is.
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Jun 12, 2020 21:32
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Can I get a referral to one of these $80k a year password resetting jobs? I've been in IT for quite some time, know SQL, Powershell, batch, done work with IIS, and would describe myself as "advanced" when it comes to right click -> reset password in AD. I also have high-level skills in clicking the "unlock account" checkbox in the "Account" tab, followed by "OK."
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Jun 12, 2020 21:56
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Thanatosian posted:Can I get a referral to one of these $80k a year password resetting jobs? learn to automate that and you're hired
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Jun 12, 2020 23:23
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Bonzo posted:learn to automate that and you're hired Azure AD auto password reset amirite
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Jun 12, 2020 23:47
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I'm just going to script a mandatory rotation every 90 hours for every user. New password will be delivered by email or text message. Problem solved!
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Jun 12, 2020 23:54
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I don't get poo poo for being on call. There's 3 of us so 1/3rd of the month we're on call. I'm on call right now, even.
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Jun 13, 2020 09:03
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Generally on call IT is abused. Most states you have to be paid if you are expected to perform a SLA. The major employment lawfirm i worked at abused it by having no real recourse if you didn't answer the phone... but most people did anyway. Doesn't apply to non support ie an actually correctly classified salary product coordinator or whatnot.
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Jun 13, 2020 12:39
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I’ve been on call to varying degrees for pretty much my entire career across a bunch of different companies. None of them offered additional compensation for it. Some covered the cost of my cell bill and/or provided a company phone but amortized over the hours you spend on call that works out to jack poo poo. Usually they’d allow you to take an extra day or two off if you had to spend a lot of time working issues. I should say that for the most part the page volume was very low and they weren’t expecting a “butt in chair fixing the issue within 3 minutes” kind of response. The one job that did have super onerous demands and had me fixing crap on both thanksgiving and Christmas, I quit within a year. Without this thread I’m not sure I’d even be aware on call comp was a thing. Not trying to make a point, just giving some more data cause I’m always interested in how common it is. Edit: in hindsight, one was almost certainly illegally classifying me as exempt from OT. Which I didn’t understand at the time as a like 23 year old. The rest were, I think, at least working within the law based on my pay rate and duties. Docjowles fucked around with this message at 13:04 on Jun 13, 2020 |
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Jun 13, 2020 12:59
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On call is managed so poorly by loads of places - it's vital to configure the alerts properly so that only critical events get passed through to on-call, and you need a system in place so that actual calls are generated. Asking people to be on call where that means checking a mailbox or refreshing a helpdesk is not fair on them. If you have customers then they also need to understand what on call is, and that it's not just a service where you can get your email signature fixed at 11pm. I've seen too many occasions where a customer is sold 24x7 cover but the team handling support calls are told that it's on call, and obviously those two things aren't the same.
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Jun 13, 2020 13:02
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Our team rotates between a group of five weekly, the only compensation we get is a cell phone stipend. However, our infrastructure is extremely stable and a significant portion of our apps are SaaS so we pretty much never get paged. We only have to respond to the specific critical alerts we’ve set up in Opsgenie for things like a VMware host down, disk space critical on a sql server, or a major P1 all hands on deck situation. We also have a good manager that is fine with giving us time back. App support has their own on call/escalation path. While compensation would be nice, at this point in my career I just see on call/scheduled after hours work as part of the job. If I were somewhere with a lovely on call rotation I would likely feel differently about that.
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Jun 13, 2020 13:11
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taqueso posted:its your job to not ask questions and respect the grift Fallen through the cracks... Docjowles posted:I’ve been on call to varying degrees for pretty much my entire career across a bunch of different companies. None of them offered additional compensation for it. Some covered the cost of my cell bill and/or provided a company phone but amortized over the hours you spend on call that works out to jack poo poo. Usually they’d allow you to take an extra day or two off if you had to spend a lot of time working issues. WTF, not paying OT?! I hate oncall but since I have to do it because my workplace is held together with hopes and thumbtacks I have a transparent rule...I need an event/incident/change order number to log the time I spend working on problems for oncall work...no tiki, no workie.
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Jun 13, 2020 13:35
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They told me I was salaried and therefore didn’t get OT. Being young and dumb I didn’t realize you can be salaried and still qualify for OT depending on the specifics of your job and pay. America lol
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Jun 13, 2020 13:39
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When oncall was brought up as a possibility, I rounded up the other three non-managers in my shop and we came to an agreement that we'd dig our heels in and resist any on-call responsibilities unless adaquetly compensated. We never got bothered about being on-call again.
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Jun 13, 2020 14:41
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I've been on call my entire career, more or less, but there are incidents maybe twice a year and I'll get some time off if it happens. Now I'm a CIO making 70k, ask me anything
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Jun 13, 2020 18:46
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CloFan posted:
Lmao what the gently caress. Is this title inflation or is the company that lovely?
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Jun 13, 2020 18:49
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Super small community college in bumfuck Arkansas. I've got one each sysadmin, netadmin, desktop support and helpdesk tech. They all make poo poo wages as well 
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Jun 13, 2020 18:50
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My favorite bullshit 11pm call was the CFO's intern back at the ad agency. The little dipshit had his cable Internet go out Friday night and called me first thing. No restarting the router, no calling Comcast, he just expected me to call a cab and make a house call at 11pm Friday. I didn't actually use profanity, but I slapped him down pretty hard. Come Monday the CFO was upset, but backed down when I pointed out the dipshit had done nothing before calling me.
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Jun 13, 2020 18:58
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Thanks Ants posted:If you have customers then they also need to understand what on call is, and that it's not just a service where you can get your email signature fixed at 11pm. I've seen too many occasions where a customer is sold 24x7 cover but the team handling support calls are told that it's on call, and obviously those two things aren't the same. It doesn't help that my boss refuses to charge these people a fee when they do this. We've tried on multiple occasions but I don't think it's ever actually been paid. The other problem are the ones where a legitimate problem starts at 9:30 PM at a 24/7 site, but no one at the site cares, then somewhere around 4 AM the new shift manager comes on and calls us then screaming that the phones have been down for hours.
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Jun 13, 2020 19:00
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We're on a six-person one-week rotation, we're all exempt so we get a $200 bonus for being on-call (we also all have company phones, but we don't use them for personal stuff because gently caress that). I used to be pretty good about just sucking it up, but over the past year or so my practice has been that if I get a call before 8:30am (my workday starts at 9:30am and I have a very short commute), I shut off my alarm, go back to sleep, and wake up and go to work whenever I loving feel like it. Nobody has said anything. Late-night calls don't really bother me, because I don't have kids and I'm a night owl, anyway, but they're few and far between. One week, I had a call come in at 5:30 in the morning from a senior VP; he was having password issues, because he let his account expire while he was remote (something we tell people not to do), and 5:30 in the morning is essentially the middle of the night for me. I'm so loving out of it, he has to tell me his name three times before I get it right (it's not like I don't know the guy, we're a small company), and it winds up being what I think is a VPN issue (he's locked out of the VPN, not AD) which is a system I don't have access to. I tell him he'll have to call back in an hour or two when the regular people get in, and he's like "oh, do you mean on Monday?" It was 5:30 in the loving morning on a loving Sunday. The reason he thought it wasn't working was because he wasn't getting any new emails, because nobody loving emails you when you work at a bank on Saturday loving night. He just wanted to check his loving email. I laid into my boss a bit on Monday about that one. It was the same week I got another call from a user at 5:30 in the morning who was an accounting temp asking "oh, am I getting a message that says I'm not allowed to login at this time because I'm not allowed to login at this time?" Yes. Yes you are. A shame they don't have reading comprehension as a requirement to work here, apparently. I was probably a dick to the VP (to be honest, I don't really remember the first ten or fifteen minutes of that call, so loving out of it), and I was definitely a dick to the temp. loving morning people. Anyway, that was a relatively bad week, but I'd say most on-call weeks I get 1-2 calls before 8am, and 1-2 alerts, usually in the middle of the night.
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Jun 13, 2020 21:17
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Anyone with experience with Mersive Solstice Pods or Kramer VIA devices? I've never seen them at any workplace I have visited or worked at. Kind of weird, and super simple functionality, at an enterprise price. Basically turn up to a conference room and you can send off video, pictures, screenshare to the displays in the room. There may be multi-monitor support, you may have a weird gimpy laser pen type feature to highlight items. Allegedly there is multi-room support too, but you need to use Zoom or whatever in addition for the comms. 
MrMoo fucked around with this message at 01:29 on Jun 14, 2020 |
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Jun 13, 2020 23:41
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What are the conditions needed to be exempt from OT? I got OT when I started but got a promotion/raise and I'm now exempt. Job responsibilities didn't change. I get a company phone, which I carry in addition to my own. I started out just using my own phone (no stipend though) but decided it was better to separate work stuff from my own stuff. There's no official comp time policy for on call work but informally we can WFH whenever we want (just not permanently) I found something in HR policy documents about on call stipend (I think it was a stipend it was several years ago I looked at it) and emailed HR about it and they said something to the effect of "talk to your manager". That went nowhere. They are making us go back to work on the 29th. I guess I should feel lucky, they could have made us be in the office this whole time (I think? We are considered a "life sustaining business" in PA). There's been no issues with WFH and no productivity lost but they are hell-bent on having us back in the office.
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Jun 14, 2020 00:38
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Started as a intern at an MSP making like $9/hr. 4 years later I get the the title ‘network ops manager’ making a whopping $40k. When I left I found out the previous Sr. only made that much and he had been there for like 10 years. They had hired his replacement at 90k and he still dipped out after less than a full year. I used that fancy title as leverage to get a proper sysadmin job making 65k, I’ve gotten COL raises every year since and a real raise when I asked for it last year so I’m at $80k even. My whole point being gently caress all MSPs forever. Two weeks after I left they called me because one of their homegrown SANs was acting up and they needed me to fix it. I made $200 running ‘rescan storage’ in vspshere.
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Jun 14, 2020 00:50
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My position is that if I'm in a position where my employer prevents me from having a beer if I wanted to, that counts as working. And if I'm working, I expect to get paid.
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Jun 14, 2020 00:58
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MrMoo posted:Anyone with experience with Mersive Solstice Pods or Kramer VIA devices? I've never seen them at any workplace I have visited or worked at. Kind of weird, and super simple functionality, at an enterprise price. I've dealt with quite a few Kramer Vias as they seem to be getting popular around here. We just place them on our guest network with a DHCP reservation, then make a firewall rule to allow internal traffic to talk out freely to the devices. It seems to work pretty well, end users pick it up quickly from what I've seen. Also thanks for all of the on-call replies. I had a good hour long call with my boss about it after my hellish on-call week. Basically because we're "hourly overtime exempt" he doesnt know if we can be paid an on-call bonus but he does think we could work out some sort of flat comp time that we can bank for up to a year. In otherwords every week you're on call you get a full day PTO regardless of call volume. That would be a win for me. BaseballPCHiker fucked around with this message at 01:23 on Jun 14, 2020 |
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Jun 14, 2020 01:21
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MrMoo posted:Anyone with experience with Mersive Solstice Pods or Kramer VIA devices? I've never seen them at any workplace I have visited or worked at. Kind of weird, and super simple functionality, at an enterprise price. No experience. Generally wireless screen share products include one of the following dealbreakers for me:
Keep in mind, any time I've had to think of implementing any of these solutions I've had to think about scaling them to thousands of rooms where support concerns make any of the above much more complicated. If I was dealing with a much smaller org my impressions might be different. Honestly, the best experience I've had with wireless screen sharing in meetings is using whatever conferencing software you're using (Teams, Zoom, Webex, etc.) and just joining the meeting from your laptop and sharing the screen. Obviously this requires that your rooms already have the hardware present to join the conference room to your conferencing software directly, but I think that's becoming more and more common.
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Jun 14, 2020 01:41
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BeastOfExmoor posted:Honestly, the best experience I've had with wireless screen sharing in meetings is using whatever conferencing software you're using (Teams, Zoom, Webex, etc.) and just joining the meeting from your laptop and sharing the screen. Obviously this requires that your rooms already have the hardware present to join the conference room to your conferencing software directly, but I think that's becoming more and more common. We just purchased a low-end Surface (I think it was left over from a salesman that quit) and got a nice stand for it, and leave it docked to our conference room TV. We got a nice wireless KB/Mouse, and put a high end webcam on top of our TV that is connected to the dock. We also got a nice USB speaker/mic module. It's worked extremely well and replaced our super expensive and useless Polycom VC unit. Spring Heeled Jack posted:My whole point being gently caress all MSPs forever. Two weeks after I left they called me because one of their homegrown SANs was acting up and they needed me to fix it. I made $200 running ‘rescan storage’ in vspshere. $AWFUL_JOB was basically an MSP/integrator. i worked on everything, Linux systems, PBXs, AD, Help desk, networking, and only made about $50k, 50-60 hours a week, on call all the time, etc. When I went to a recruiter and told him what I had experience in, and what my salary was, he laughed. He told me to go and quit my job and he'd have an interview for me making twice that and a new job with in my two week notice period. He wasn't joking, a few years later now and I make way more than double what I did back then doing half as much with a quarter of the stress.
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Jun 14, 2020 01:56
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BeastOfExmoor posted:
Looks like Mersive will address the first point in their next release. To me it looks trivial to replace it all with a simple WebRTC page, but the spec for that literally changes every month. The Solstice pod supports both Miracast and Airplay for whatever that is worth.
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Jun 14, 2020 02:20
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BaseballPCHiker posted:Also thanks for all of the on-call replies. I had a good hour long call with my boss about it after my hellish on-call week. Basically because we're "hourly overtime exempt" he doesnt know if we can be paid an on-call bonus but he does think we could work out some sort of flat comp time that we can bank for up to a year. In otherwords every week you're on call you get a full day PTO regardless of call volume. That would be a win for me. Comp time is certainly a good step in the right direction, paid time off is valuable, as long as you actually get to take it. A friend of mine is on-call every second week, he gets an additional 25% on top of his salary for that, in addition to paid double time if the phone rings, and a very lenient PTO arrangement 
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Jun 14, 2020 02:27
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After a bout of unemployment 2 years ago, I took a job at an MSP after 13 years as a solo IT person in the fashion world. It was loving awful. I worked with some smart people and the pay was ok but the on call hours were terrible, the benefits were nonexistent and I had to be on their stupid yearly video that they make for prospective clients. Just god loving awful. Jumped ship as soon as I could and I'm so much happier, even more so than at my previous gig. I ge to touch Linux and devopsy kinda stuff all day and solve interesting problems. I love it. gently caress MSPs.
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Jun 14, 2020 02:38
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Matt Zerella posted:After a bout of unemployment 2 years ago, I took a job at an MSP after 13 years as a solo IT person in the fashion world. It was loving awful. I worked with some smart people and the pay was ok but the on call hours were terrible, the benefits were nonexistent and I had to be on their stupid yearly video that they make for prospective clients. Certificates!!!!!!!!!
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Jun 14, 2020 02:54
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Jerk McJerkface posted:Certificates!!!!!!!!! Nothing compared to dealing with MSP bullshit and I now know a fuckload more about how they work! Certificates!
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Jun 14, 2020 03:13
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Collateral Damage posted:My position is that if I'm in a position where my employer prevents me from having a beer if I wanted to, that counts as working. And if I'm working, I expect to get paid. This is actaully a pretty good milestone and meterstick - its worth looking up the link Its worth looking into the law side of things, which is more or less based around 'is the employer dictating an employee's freedom outside of work'. There's been a few lawsuits that warrant that on call time is to be paid because, say, that jobs poslicies required on call people to respond and report to work with a certain amount of time, thus meaning they couldn't leave the city, and also ran afoul of paid break laws doing so. https://www.timesheets.com/blog/2013/01/when-on-call-employees-should-be-paid/ Here's a good checklist another good shorthand https://www.patriotsoftware.com/blog/payroll/on-call-pay-rules/ Basically, its good negotiating leverage to keep in mind not how much you're on call, but how restricted you are while doing so. TheParadigm fucked around with this message at 04:42 on Jun 14, 2020 |
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Jun 14, 2020 04:38
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Let's look at overtime exemptions ! I'm in California so our text will be CSC 515.5 a and b.CSC 515.5 posted:(a) Except as provided in subdivision (b), an employee in the computer software field shall be exempt from the requirement that an overtime rate of compensation be paid pursuant to Section 510 if all of the following apply: You are exempt if ALL of a1-a4 apply. For most of us a4 is going to be the decider: "(4) The employee’s hourly rate of pay is not less than thirty-six dollars ($36.00) or, if the employee is paid on a salaried basis, the employee earns an annual salary of not less than seventy-five thousand dollars ($75,000) for full-time employment," So that's black and white law, if you're in CA and make less than $36/hr or $75k/yr you are eligible for overtime. Period. No argument. Things get fun because there's another clause, even if ALL of a1-a4 apply, you are still eligible for overtime if ANY of b1-b6 apply. The kicker is b3: CSC 515.5.b.3 posted:(3) The employee is engaged in the operation of computers or in the manufacture, repair, or maintenance of computer hardware and related equipment. "Repair or maintenance." "Operation." Got a can of air on your desk ? Get told to "fix" it ? Operate a computer ? Ka-CHING baby, you're eligible for overtime. Every sysadmin in the state is eligible for overtime. I'm not a lawyer, I'm especially not your lawyer. And this wouldn't be legal advice even if I were. However, I have used this and did get cut a check for overtime over multiple objections by the agency I was contracting through at the time.
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Jun 14, 2020 05:57
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myron cope posted:What are the conditions needed to be exempt from OT? I got OT when I started but got a promotion/raise and I'm now exempt. Job responsibilities didn't change.
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Jun 14, 2020 13:35
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It’s worth noting that CA labor laws are MUCH better than most other states. Pulling up Colorado where I was working at the time for example, the cutoff for OT exemption is only 35k and there are a broader range of computer-touching activities that exempt you. You’re also exempt if you manage at least two people. There was an effort to raise the bar at the federal level but that was canceled when the administration changed 
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Jun 14, 2020 14:17
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mllaneza posted:So that's black and white law, if you're in CA and make less than $36/hr or $75k/yr you are eligible for overtime. Period. No argument. This is tied to inflation and is closer to $97k now, btw. I dipped under when my work put me on 10% furlough for COVID and immediately reminded them I could no longer be classified as exempt.
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Jun 14, 2020 20:54
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Found this out the other day, Microsoft is finally creating a package mananger, 2 decades late, but at least they're doing it. It's in preview now: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/windows-package-manager-preview/
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Jun 15, 2020 02:13
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MF_James posted:Found this out the other day, Microsoft is finally creating a package mananger, 2 decades late, but at least they're doing it. They've used Chocolatey in PowerShell for many years.
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Jun 15, 2020 02:14
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