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My company: Let's create a support portal but customers cannot create their own logins. The logins have to be created by one of our staff. Also the logins do not use existing idp. Also the logins have to be approved before they can open support tickets. Also we have a policy that allows only 3 logins per customer. Also creating a support ticket is like 20 required input fields. Also the support portal goes down on a weekly basis. Also my company: Why are our customers emailing our staff directly instead of opening support tickets!?
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Oct 22, 2021 14:44
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Do you work at an hr saas vendor because that all sounds really familiar from the customer side.
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Oct 22, 2021 16:42
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Starting to think the corporate HQ had a gas leak somewhere. I get an email last night asking if we can take one of our wall mounted video conference units offsite. The reasoning is, the C levels have a monthly meeting with heads of every division, but for some reason, some people don't want to travel. Instead of having this meeting in our corporate buildings that have nice video conference systems, they want to have this at a local resort's meeting room. (Local resort is a customer and I think sits on the board). So, now the thing is figuring out how to get video conferencing there. Also, its next week on Wednesday. One person brought up using a DSLR hooked up to a machine, but we'd need a capture card. How about a webcam? Well room is kinda big for that. I look at getting a PTZ conference camera, just one that connects over USB, but none could arrive in time. Now they want us to look at a traveling system. I don't know what a traveling video conference system would look like because those are words that don't work together.
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Oct 22, 2021 16:56
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Sounds like a money laundering scheme, OP.The Fool posted:Do you work at an hr saas vendor because that all sounds really familiar from the customer side. Neither hr nor saas, but I bet this is a pretty common problem with people who think they know best on how to support their customers.
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Oct 22, 2021 17:04
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CitizenKain posted:Starting to think the corporate HQ had a gas leak somewhere. I get an email last night asking if we can take one of our wall mounted video conference units offsite. I've highlighted the key parts of this puzzle, OP.
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Oct 22, 2021 17:09
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CitizenKain posted:Starting to think the corporate HQ had a gas leak somewhere. I get an email last night asking if we can take one of our wall mounted video conference units offsite. https://www.cdw.com/product/logitech-rally-conference-camera/5135682?pfm=srh ?
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Oct 22, 2021 17:48
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This one is cheaper and better rated https://www.sec.gov/tcr
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Oct 22, 2021 17:57
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https://owllabs.com/products/meeting-owl-pro We have one of these and it works super well for a plug and play solution.
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Oct 22, 2021 18:59
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skooma512 posted:Oh and my lead was denied a promotion to the network team, because he didn't have the skill to "play with the big boys"  gently caress these gatekeeping assholes.Cliques of employees who deem themselves the holder of the Sacred Keys of Knowledge can get right hosed. It’s not like employment is some zero sum game among the workers so my getting promoted somehow takes away from your status. It’s another pair of hands to lighten the workload. I get so pissed off when I see poo poo like that happening.
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Oct 22, 2021 20:56
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Got an update: We are going to buy a TV and a portable TV tripod, then use one our expensive Room Kits attached to it. I wanted to use a webcam, but was told that we wanted to make using this feel like they are in the office. What is funny on this is its not like the resort is too far away. Its about a 20 minute drive, and then everyone goes home.
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Oct 22, 2021 22:23
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If you use Webex or UCM, the Cisco Webex Room Kit has proxy services for remote connectivity through NAT and foreign networks, one button start, and good cameras. If all you use is Webex , SIP/H.323, or MS Teams WebRTC, it’s solid.
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Oct 22, 2021 22:27
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CitizenKain posted:Got an update: We are going to buy a TV and a portable TV tripod, then use one our expensive Room Kits attached to it. I wanted to use a webcam, but was told that we wanted to make using this feel like they are in the office. Clevels want to expense the resort for their own things. Someone probably has a deal to get free rooms or something out of it. I find that often enough the answer to "why does csuite want to do x" is because it benefits their pocket in some way.
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Oct 22, 2021 22:29
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Sickening posted:Clevels want to expense the resort for their own things. Someone probably has a deal to get free rooms or something out of it. My guess is that the owner of the resort is on our board, so there is some mutual back scratching. If they just had the meeting there, that would be fine, but tossing in the video part is silly. Partycat posted:If you use Webex or UCM, the Cisco Webex Room Kit has proxy services for remote connectivity through NAT and foreign networks, one button start, and good cameras. If all you use is Webex , SIP/H.323, or MS Teams WebRTC, it’s solid. Yep, I've got a system already configured for it, we have Webex cloud enabled, so if it can hit the internet its fine.
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Oct 22, 2021 22:41
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CitizenKain posted:Starting to think the corporate HQ had a gas leak somewhere. I get an email last night asking if we can take one of our wall mounted video conference units offsite. Due to the pandemic, most of the DSLR manufacturers released software to let you connect to a computer without a capture card. Just plug in via USB and put the software as a source in OBS or your video streaming platform of choice.
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Oct 23, 2021 03:40
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So in the kudos section of the big townhall meeting, the project I worked got a small squareon the powerpoint, and my team wasn't even mentioned, let alone by name. Sure love being told that working on projects gets you visibility, the PM low key threatening me the night before that the CIO is monitoring the project (oooo the CIO ooooo), to get a printer to the vaccine event even though the scope worked out beforehand explicitly said no printers, only to not only not be mentioned by name, but not even my team. Lmao. Typical. Only when I fail does anyone give a poo poo what I'm doing. If I do well? I don't exist, not even any crumbs. To think I actually momentarily considered going in to support the actual go-live, which coincided with PTO I had scheduled before. The equipment was rolled over from a previous event so they didn't need much else, but there was a downtime that day. Lol, I'm so glad I didn't. Let's see how worthless and invisible I am when I finally get out of here and only give 3 days notice.
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Oct 25, 2021 23:12
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IT is thankless. I’ve done so much work behind the scenes on huge high visibility projects over the years and I can count on one hand the number of times my team has been thanked. Edit - I’m not bitter
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Oct 25, 2021 23:26
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deedee megadoodoo posted:IT is thankless. I’ve done so much work behind the scenes on huge high visibility projects over the years and I can count on one hand the number of times my team has been thanked. I think this is why it's important (and maybe something you only start doing after years and years of experience like this) to concentrate on the money and not expect any thanks. To someone starting out that probably sounds cynical and jaded, so I want to make it clear that's not necessarily how I approach everything, but at this point while I will do my absolute best to get a job done, it's a fine line between doing my best and killing myself to finish a project which no one's going to notice or care about. The company will always demand more and never be satisfied, and it's especially hard in a service industry like IT to NOT finish things or not help because you're not being given the right resources / paid enough to make it worth it. If you don't take a hard look at your work, and if you're giving 110% all the time because you want to help and you want to make everything as good as it can be, but you're in an environment that isn't supporting you and properly enabling you to do that, you're going to burn out eventually. At this point if I get thanked it's a special occasion and my estimation of the person I'm dealing with goes up sharply. Other than that, I don't expect thanks and I try to make sure my paycheck is all the thanks I need.
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Oct 26, 2021 00:15
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SyNack Sassimov posted:... I make it a point these days to give public praise to teammates, other departments etc... whenever I can. Giving someone a shoutout for great work, or a great idea, costs me nothing and could make someone's crappy day a little bit better.
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Oct 26, 2021 03:45
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deedee megadoodoo posted:IT is thankless. I’ve done so much work behind the scenes on huge high visibility projects over the years and I can count on one hand the number of times my team has been thanked. That's the thing, this was an IT call. There sure were a lot of people getting thanked! Like 3 slides of that poo poo. Surprise, it's mostly people who are already in higher positions and can be on Zooms all day and see the bosses, formerly people in the office suites or on site. The hospital itself is becoming an outpost to them from their (rightfully I suppose) real lives with their families. So they wouldn't see me or anything. Like cool, play your RTS MMO game called Work from your couch with me as the pawn on site. I get it, they managed to snag a gig that's WFH. The one day that they're taking away from me was cool and badly needed. Oh they get paid more than me too and don't have to commute. They're dragging rear end on a raise they promised in July, but that also comes with an ability to join a union with actually a decent contract, I signed up immediately.
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Oct 26, 2021 04:27
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I've got mandatory HR training the next two days that will have me working 1130a to 3a instead of my usual 230p to 3a. It's a Teams call with mandatory camera. I hope they like watching me drink coffee.
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Oct 26, 2021 07:24
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skooma512 posted:That's the thing, this was an IT call. There sure were a lot of people getting thanked! Like 3 slides of that poo poo. Surprise, it's mostly people who are already in higher positions and can be on Zooms all day and see the bosses, formerly people in the office suites or on site. The hospital itself is becoming an outpost to them from their (rightfully I suppose) real lives with their families. So they wouldn't see me or anything. There's a pile of bullshit in this post, but the worst is delaying a raise by 5+ months. That's enough justification for me to flip the "Looking For Work" toggle on LinkedIn and spend my working hours talking to recruiters. "gently caress you, pay me" is the only way to thrive in IT.
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Oct 26, 2021 07:27
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My manager has never been on time to a meeting in his life
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Oct 26, 2021 14:12
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For most people a raise is going to be like ~5k/year or something that is, at a business level, utterly inconsequential. The only reason to delay them is because they just straight up don't want to give you a raise. If the business doesn't have 5k + payroll taxes to spare then you should be looking to bail ASAP before the business folds anyways.
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Oct 26, 2021 14:15
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Hughmoris posted:I make it a point these days to give public praise to teammates, other departments etc... whenever I can. Giving someone a shoutout for great work, or a great idea, costs me nothing and could make someone's crappy day a little bit better. in our project summary report template thing we have a specific section for praising people - some people cut it out if it's a fairly mundane project but it takes nothing to just say thanks to the people that have done some work for you.
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Oct 26, 2021 14:42
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Sheep posted:For most people a raise is going to be like ~5k/year or something that is, at a business level, utterly inconsequential. The only reason to delay them is because they just straight up don't want to give you a raise. If the business doesn't have 5k + payroll taxes to spare then you should be looking to bail ASAP before the business folds anyways. It always amazes me that more people dont realize this. HR isnt slow, things dont get "tied up" in paperwork, raises arent "awaiting approval". Employers can and should be able to give you a raise within a month no problem, 2 weeks isnt unfeasible. I have aggressively job hopped and doubled my salary in the past 5 years. Every single time I've quit to go somewhere else the employer has magically found the ability to offer me more money, PTO, etc. Dont take poo poo, especially in this market.
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Oct 26, 2021 15:09
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Businesses don't look at individuals when it comes to raises. They look at organizational units and set pay increase budgets for the whole unit (likely set at a nominal percentage rate of the current payroll of that unit) and pit managers against each other to fight over the scraps for their teams. That's why it's never just "run this raise up the chain to get approved" because that's not how is viewed. The C levels don't look at it as spending market value to keep a specific individual, they look at it as an organizational unit that's operating outside of its budget and therefore a failure of the management of that unit. 9 times out of 10 if a manager manages to score a large pay increase for someone in their team, it came at a (at least partial) expense to someone else in the same organizational unit.
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Oct 26, 2021 15:31
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Totally agree that that's often how it works, especially at larger places, but as a counterpoint: the business has control over how that process works. They do it the way that benefits them. Employees shouldn't put up with that poo poo, and fortunately, in-demand workers don't really have to.
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Oct 26, 2021 15:35
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My company realized they pissed everyone the gently caress off by not doing raises at all in 2020 and then having really terrible ones in 2021 (seriously - I got an actual promotion with a new title and everything and it worked out to a 3% increase in base pay and a 5% increase overall), so they started handing out options to people they are worried are going to leave and I'm just like "how dumb do you think we are?"
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Oct 26, 2021 15:58
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Internet Explorer posted:Totally agree that that's often how it works, especially at larger places, but as a counterpoint: the business has control over how that process works. They do it the way that benefits them. Employees shouldn't put up with that poo poo, and fortunately, in-demand workers don't really have to. Yeah, but it involves jumping jobs which itself gets more fraught as you age because this industry is very ageist. That was one of the worst things about turning 40, the realization that I was now in a protected class. At 42 now I think about this constantly. My skill set is growing and adapting (right now I'm at the forefront of building infra as code for application migrations to azure). I'm being paid probably under market once i get my experience solidified, but I'm also now embedded like a tick here due to being in the right place at the right time. Do I have enough time to get that way somewhere else that pays more before they start looking at my age and thinking they are better off with a fresh faced college grad? Sucks that you have to weigh these factors but you absolutely do. Comedy option (only partially), do I not even worry about it since the long term stability of society is getting to the point where I'm not going to have to worry about retirement anyways.
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Oct 26, 2021 16:00
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form an union and you can all band together to fight against the boss for raises for everyone
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Oct 26, 2021 16:00
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ChickenOfTomorrow posted:form an union and you can all band together to fight against the boss for raises for everyone I had one coworker who just left and told me he didn't have another job lined up because "it's not fair to start looking for another job before you put in your notice." People in IT are broken
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Oct 26, 2021 16:03
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bull3964 posted:That was one of the worst things about turning 40, the realization that I was now in a protected class. At 42 now I think about this constantly.  I turn 45 next year and we want to pull up stakes and move someplace else once the housing market calms down a bit. There's no way I will ever again land a job like I have now. The only saving grace is that my wife has broken into academia and is starting to command more money than me, so that's a bit of the pressure off.
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Oct 26, 2021 16:05
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xzzy posted:
I am in the same boat, except 7 years older. I am starting to figure out how I can shift to something non-technical because I don't think I have that many tech refreshes left in me. But the money and benefits I have mean that I pretty much need to stay where I am. Has anyone had experience moving to a more non-technical role? I can say unironically that I have people skills, and half my job is already high end customer service working with customer management and executives, so I am looking at account manager or customer service manager types of jobs, which do exist in my field.
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Oct 26, 2021 17:08
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I’ll be 40 next year and as an IT generalist I was definitely getting burned out and seriously considering moving into management. After pivoting a bit I enjoy the technical work again and am thinking I have another decade or more left in me.
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Oct 26, 2021 17:47
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Oh I know I got more technical work in the tank, I'm all on board with the containers and k8s and cephs and am competent at it. I could never do management, I don't got the personality for it. The issue I'm seeing is companies spotting my birthdate and being all "nah, we need a kid to suck the life out of."
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Oct 26, 2021 18:35
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My current company has a “distinguished fellow” title that is a non-management IC equivalent to VP Semi-seriously considering getting on that train
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Oct 26, 2021 19:15
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deedee megadoodoo posted:IT is thankless. I’ve done so much work behind the scenes on huge high visibility projects over the years and I can count on one hand the number of times my team has been thanked. Most IT people I've worked with are not good at playing the political game inside the company. I know we shouldn't have to, but the ones who tout every accomplishment, and make a point to get noticed by the higher ups have a huge advantage. Those people get raises, promotions, budget. It sucks but you have to play the game. The Fool posted:My current company has a “distinguished fellow” title that is a non-management IC equivalent to VP We have a senior IC track that ends up at an VP level Technical Fellow position, but there's like 5 of them in the entire company and as you can imagine there isn't a lot of turnover. If you don't want to go into management we do have a fair number of lead/staff engineer positions, and a large architecture dept at staff/principal levels. I don't think I could make it there in the next 25 years if I wanted to. I'm not sure I want to get into architecture at this org either... Semi Comedy option, get into project management or the PMO office.
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Oct 26, 2021 19:38
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The Fool posted:My current company has a “distinguished fellow” title that is a non-management IC equivalent to VP I have worked for multiple companies that had an engineer track that mirrored the management track. Principle engineer, Senior Principle engineer were titles that corresponded to manager and director as far as seniority and pay scale. It was mainly to keep the folks who knew where the technical bodies were buried around in case something came crashing down. Not my current though.
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Oct 26, 2021 19:41
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Yup, we have "Staff Engineer" and "Architect" for the parallel to "Manager" and "Director" in our org if you don't want to do management.
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Oct 26, 2021 19:48
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I’m angling for lead within the next year. I suspect that I might be looking at other places after that. Not because I have any problems here (yet) but I know since I was pivoting away from being a sysadmin my current company got me for less than they would have some other people.
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Oct 26, 2021 20:01
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