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mobby_6kl posted:To be fair to the OP, we mostly don't do anything to justify our salaries. As evidenced by posting here during business hours. As long as your stuff is getting done I don't think it matters, which is sort of my point. These bossware features exist only because management has literally nothing to do other than to make sure employees are doing productivity-theatre, and mostly just get in the way of actually producing. A relative has a bossware tracker that will alert management if the computer mouse hasn't moved in X seconds, because that means you're being lazy. So at every telecon meeting people are forced to tap their mouse over and over to keep the "you're not justifying your salary" alarm from going off. That feature only exists to give a do-nothing boss something to harass people about, it serves no justifiable business purpose.
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Aug 10, 2023 15:21
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I found that putting my optical mouse on a barcode solves that problem.
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Aug 10, 2023 15:28
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If you've time to lean you've time to.. input code..
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Aug 10, 2023 15:29
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DrBouvenstein posted:Yeah, I...have no clue how to do that.
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Aug 10, 2023 15:31
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Serious_Cyclone posted:As long as your stuff is getting done I don't think it matters, which is sort of my point. These bossware features exist only because management has literally nothing to do other than to make sure employees are doing productivity-theatre, and mostly just get in the way of actually producing. A relative has a bossware tracker that will alert management if the computer mouse hasn't moved in X seconds, because that means you're being lazy. So at every telecon meeting people are forced to tap their mouse over and over to keep the "you're not justifying your salary" alarm from going off. That feature only exists to give a do-nothing boss something to harass people about, it serves no justifiable business purpose. I've said it elsewhere in this thread, but a lot of this dumb middle-management bullshit can basically be boiled down to someone, somewhere having a monthly/ quarterly/annual/whatever report that they need to make a spreadsheet cell turn green for. All of that bossware bullshit is full to the brim of ways to export reports and quantify what you are doing, and track those figures over time. So rather than saying "yeah, all my people are doing their jobs" you've got a really slick looking graph for the slide deck where you can track how you've exceeded the company productivity goal for the past 6 quarters and you've shown a 1% increase in Q3 alone. Now, is this stupid? Yes. Sometimes it's driven by having a c-suite guy who needs a shiny slide deck to show his boss or the board etc, sometimes it's driven by some regulatory thing or certification. You can get into some really dumb stuff with ISO standards and certifications, for example. Sometimes it's just driven by someone high enough up the stack wanting a simple way to see number = green so they can get back to golf. What a good middle manager will do, if they can, is find a way to develop metrics to report up that actually matter. I had a job a few years back where I was running a team on a pilot project, which meant that we had a fair bit of leeway as far as getting poo poo done but I also had to be reporting loving constantly (bi-monthly) and that poo poo was read by my boss's boss's boss. A lot of it was data entry drudge work, the kind of thing where if you make someone sit down and do it for 8 hours you're going to burn them out. My solution was to do some myself to figure out what a decently productive day of half loving around looked like, then define that as our target. I told my team that I didn't give a gently caress if I walked past their computers and they were reading reddit or ESPN, as long as we met our (slightly sandbagged) numbers. If you've got internally developed goals that make sense and you report based on those goals, then it's fine and no one notices or cares. The bullshit where TimeCop or whatever it's called is logging your keystrokes and taking screen shots of your monitor as a proxy for productivity is usually the result of not having those. Which, yes, is bad management, but it might be imposed from outside. I've worked on projects where we could define our own productivity targets and focus on deliverables, and I've worked on ones where we had frankly baffling metrics imposed on us from things entirely external to the company, much less the department.
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Aug 10, 2023 15:32
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Cheesus posted:I feel I'm decent at this, but is there a translation reference to help in revising resumes? I think there's a resume thread in the business forum that could help you make up
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Aug 10, 2023 15:36
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The harder you work the more they expect. A company does not give a single gently caress about you so as far as I’m concerned just do the bare minimum to keep yourself from being fired and when you do decide to get a hair up your rear end and work hard it looks like you’re doing amazing. My dad is a workaholic and I barely saw/see him, gently caress that noise I wanna enjoy my downtime and impose as much downtime into my job as I can.
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Aug 10, 2023 15:39
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Outrail posted:It's lying with extra steps so it's not lying. I guess in that vein, I feel like my resume is mostly there? I know it needs some updating since last I touched it was like two years ago, though. Splicer posted:Post a non-doxy bullet point from your resume, if such a thing exists. Sure... I just used one of those "resume builder" thingies online, not sure if it's even in a good format (it recommended I go with one highlighting the projects I've worked on), but here's what I got.  Boy...looking at it now, I think I do need to get some more specifics in there? IDK, problem is I don't actually DO much or KNOW much, so...yeah. I try to volunteer for things but the issue is where I am now has a MASSIVELY silo'd IT department. So only the desktop engineering team can do things like make GPO or AD changes, only the Server Team can do things with the servers, only the Infrastructure Team can do things with the Citrix or VMWare environments, etc... and I'm stuck on the deskside team (and can't really move to another team because my company is ONLY contracted for deskside, two other MSPs are contracted for the other teams.) I have no certifications, a couple training classes that are on the way to them, but until VERY recently, it's been hard to get my company to allow time for training, because an hour of training means one less hour they can bill...and we only FINALLY had access to an online portal with training classes like two years ago. Before that, we ALSO had to beg for money/reimbursement for any sort of training.
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Aug 10, 2023 15:46
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Invalid Validation posted:The harder you work the more they expect. A company does not give a single gently caress about you so as far as I’m concerned just do the bare minimum to keep yourself from being fired and when you do decide to get a hair up your rear end and work hard it looks like you’re doing amazing. My dad is a workaholic and I barely saw/see him, gently caress that noise I wanna enjoy my downtime and impose as much downtime into my job as I can. They call that "quiet quitting" now, or whatever new name they attached to "doing the job you were hired to do" this week. I think a lot of our parents' generation were raised at the tail-end of the era when someone could go to work for a company for 30 years and rise through the organization, and they didn't notice that the management killed that pathway somewhere in the middle of their careers. Now the generation forming the largest slice of the workforce is aware of this game and refuses to play, and it drives management crazy. GenZ is even less interested, and it absolutely rules.
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Aug 10, 2023 15:54
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Cyrano4747 posted:Metrics
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Aug 10, 2023 15:55
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DrBouvenstein posted:Resumes Like 5-7 years ago I paid for one of those goon advertised resume writing services and I really learned a lot from it. Was it all stuff I could have learned for free online/studying/practicing resumes or whatever? Definitely. It's not a service I go back to, once I saw the process and kind of 'understood' resumes, I've just written them in a similar way ever since. But it showed me a lot of cool tricks back in the retail days - I didn't just 'sell cell phones' I 'lead monthly sales numbers in my store (I was the only full time)' and i didn't just manage inventory stock, I managed up to $500,000 in inventory stock using XYZ inventory management systems'. It might be worth considering! I am a social worker these days, so pretty much the furthest possible from IT work, but I bet there's a lot of flashy specifics you could work in there.
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Aug 10, 2023 15:55
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I found this amazing video the other day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1HGsznQeCg&t=116s Paraphrased: "Gen-Z sucks because they are conflict avoidant, as evidenced by them leaving jobs instead of asking 5-6 times for raises at their current employer".
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Aug 10, 2023 15:59
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Try pulling up your job description from your employer, it almost certainly has a bunch of flowery language that doesn’t pertain to anything you actually do but sounds good.
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Aug 10, 2023 16:01
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That font choice is horrible. Try Comic Sans or something.
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Aug 10, 2023 16:07
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Serifs are for wimps.
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Aug 10, 2023 16:08
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Unless it's full typewriter monospace.
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Aug 10, 2023 16:08
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Powermove is using braille.
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Aug 10, 2023 16:12
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Cheesus posted:I found this amazing video the other day: lol Simon Sinek, the Jordan Peterson of the corporate boardroom. I remember a "Bosses are like your parents, your company is your family, act like it!" speech he gave once. I don't know if he really thinks GenZ ghosting a poo poo employer is like going no-contact with family but he sure acts like it, but you'll never hear a peep out of him when Mom and Dad cut 3,000 of their beloved kids from the family payroll to meet quarterly goals.
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Aug 10, 2023 16:15
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A friend of mine had to submit her "cover letter" as a fully signed video when she was applying for a job with a deaf charity.
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Aug 10, 2023 16:15
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Cheesus posted:I found this amazing video the other day: I'm not going to watch the video and agree that just from looking at it looks like that dude sucks, but people should ask for a raise. Once. After they say no, then it's time to start flogging out resumes so you can get that bump in pay.
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Aug 10, 2023 16:15
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Serious_Cyclone posted:lol Simon Sinek, the Jordan Peterson of the corporate boardroom. I remember a "Bosses are like your parents, your company is your family, act like it!" speech he gave once. I don't know if he really thinks GenZ ghosting a poo poo employer is like going no-contact with family but he sure acts like it, but you'll never hear a peep out of him when Mom and Dad cut 3,000 of their beloved kids from the family payroll to meet quarterly goals. Lol Sinek quotes are a favorite of leadership e-mail signatures. Would be fun to do that but use Alpha Centauri quotes and see if anyone notices: “Resources exist to be consumed. And consumed they will be, if not by this generation then by some future. By what right does this forgotten future seek to deny us our birthright? None I say! Let us take what is ours, chew and eat our fill.” - Simon Sinek
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Aug 10, 2023 16:40
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No use in me asking for a raise. I'm at the top of my pay band.  
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Aug 10, 2023 16:42
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Serious_Cyclone posted:They call that "quiet quitting" now, or whatever new name they attached to "doing the job you were hired to do" this week. I think a lot of our parents' generation were raised at the tail-end of the era when someone could go to work for a company for 30 years and rise through the organization, and they didn't notice that the management killed that pathway somewhere in the middle of their careers. Now the generation forming the largest slice of the workforce is aware of this game and refuses to play, and it drives management crazy. GenZ is even less interested, and it absolutely rules. I like "grumpy staying" because that's pretty much what I've done my entire professional career and I'm happy there's finally a term for it.
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Aug 10, 2023 16:44
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Salami Surgeon posted:No use in me asking for a raise. I'm at the top of my pay band. Unless it's a government job, I view pay bands as the company's opening offer in salary negotiation, but that's about it.
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Aug 10, 2023 16:54
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Salami Surgeon posted:No use in me asking for a raise. I'm at the top of my pay band. At my last job they re-org'd and moved from a patchwork system of salaries to a pay band structure, all the while promising that nobody would end up at or above their pay band after the restructuring. To the surprise of absolutely nobody, a bunch of people ended up above the pay band, a large cluster of them being highly specialized IT folks who run the supercomputer that the rest of the center relied on. Since they were above the band they were ineligible for any pay raises, including the upcoming COL bump. The last thing I saw about it before leaving was a meeting where someone from that cluster was telling admin that they need to fix the problem quickly or else all of these necessary IT specialists were going to find new jobs. I don't know know it all played out.
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Aug 10, 2023 17:32
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DrBouvenstein posted:I guess in that vein, I feel like my resume is mostly there? I know it needs some updating since last I touched it was like two years ago, though. * Provided tier 2 support for <number, accurate to two significant digits> hardware clients across <X> locations (if you support multiple sites) both on-site and remotely using <name of remote assistance tool> * Support and provisioning of (X) pools of (Y) virtual desktop instances using <name of every piece of virtualization software you've ever touched or heard of in the position software> *etc Do you deploy software? With what? Is there shift work? Are you the only person on shift at certain times? "Sole point of contact for the department" "Frequently required to operate independently and without supervision as sole member of staff on duty". Do you have end of shift reports? What do you run them in? List it. Ever tweak a report to work better? Congratulations, you updated existing reports using <name> to match changing requirements. Ever write a bat file? Ever write a powershell script? Ever get lazy and automate something you got sick of doing? Congratulations, you used your existing scripting knowledge to improve turnaround and reduce the risk of manual error. Then go over your previous job with a fine toothcomb and list every single thing you did, even if you only saw it once all it takes is one guy in the room to go "I see here you've been worked with <thing nobody in the company has touched since 2001 except for one server under a desk that's inexplicably making this company millions of dollars a day>?" "Yes, I'm a little rusty but I'd love the opportunity to dust it off." DrBouvenstein posted:I was initially hired to do QA for the e-commerce team, but the company lost its biggest client about a year into my role and had to massively downsize, and I got shifted to the Managed Services team. From there, any skills I picked up were almost entirely just as-needed on the job, I have only done a few actual REAL training courses, but I felt like I was ;picking up some real sysadmin and lower-level systems engineering skills. But then a few years into that, I was told I needed to "fill in" at the (n ow largest) client we had, as an on-site desktop support tech, which is something I've never wanted to do. My previous role was maybe only 10-15% desktop (since the MSP-team had only 1 client we did desktop support for, everyone else was server/backup/monitoring support.) But now it's basically almost entirely desktop support. I've asked several times to get moved back to the MSP team, but they don't have enough clients to support another tech, especially since they'd also lose the 40 billable hours/week they can charge for me at Big Large Client. I asked about moving someone else to this team and I take their place, but I guess everyone else but me gets what they want when they say no, and I'm the one to get hosed over. DrBouvenstein posted:I try to volunteer for things but the issue is where I am now has a MASSIVELY silo'd IT department. So only the desktop engineering team can do things like make GPO or AD changes, only the Server Team can do things with the servers, only the Infrastructure Team can do things with the Citrix or VMWare environments, etc... and I'm stuck on the deskside team (and can't really move to another team because my company is ONLY contracted for deskside, two other MSPs are contracted for the other teams.) quote:<question about what you want from the role> DrBouvenstein posted:That being said, I don't think I want to do IT at all anymore. Never really wanted to do it in the first place, but got stuck in a rut, and I'm barely qualified to do it, but I've been stuck here ten years, so I don't think I'm remotely qualified to do anything else at this point... Splicer fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Aug 10, 2023 |
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Aug 10, 2023 17:38
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Splicer posted:What do you want to do? Well, there's the rub...I have no idea. Not this, and not my last job, which is basically the only two things I'm remotely qualified for. Actually, I wouldn't mind too much the WORK I did at my last job, just not the employer or the pay (the problem is they are the only employer in the area, really, in that line of work and I have no desire to move.) Splicer posted:Can you afford to take night classes? Could you afford to take a hit in pay or at least not a raise? No, not really. Maybe a small pay cut if I reduce what I send to my savings and investments (which are not much, a few hundred a month.) Like, I'm by n o means living paycheck to paycheck, but anything more than, say, a 15% pay-cut would be really hard to finagle. Splicer posted:Depending on what you want to do early or mid 30s genuinely isn't too late to switch careers, especially if you're in existing employment and willing to start near the bottom. I'm 40...nearly 41, so...yup. Thanks for the help everyone, I'll stop shittin' up the thread and take it to the actual careers forum.
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Aug 10, 2023 17:49
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Currently interviewing candidates, bizarre at the start of questions more than one was asked why they applied & the response was because we are hiring, they want out of their current role, and they are applying for everything available. I’ve been there but it’s a quick way to make a bad impression. I know it’s all corporate BS anyway but it’s a pain to train new folk so less likely to hire if they seem like they will leave as fast as possible. I mean yeah of course they will, but don’t tell me that.
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Aug 10, 2023 18:21
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Serious_Cyclone posted:The whole concept of justifying your salary based on keystrokes per hour or whatever else pointless KPI management invents needs to die. You justify your salary through what you deliver and the scope of your job responsibilities. If projects are meeting deadlines or calls are getting answered or claims are getting processed, that's it, you just justified your salary. Managers cannot stand wfh because it actually forces them to evaluate their underlings based on their production rather than pointless bullshit like how many consecutive hours you warmed a chair in the main office. It exposes the managers as being the dead weight because outside of touring the office and holding pointless meetings they literally have nothing to do with their day if there isn't an employee somewhere they can harass. In fairness, I've never seen or heard of "keystrokes per hour" being used as a KPI. I've only seen it used as a justification after the fact to shitcan someone. Hyrax Attack! posted:Currently interviewing candidates, bizarre at the start of questions more than one was asked why they applied & the response was because we are hiring, they want out of their current role, and they are applying for everything available. I’ve been there but it’s a quick way to make a bad impression. Please offer them interview feedback as part of their (I assume) rejection. They really need to not be saying that at interviews otherwise all of their efforts will be in vain 
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Aug 10, 2023 18:41
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as a middle manager who has access to and uses these types of monitoring tools literally every day, I really do think there is a good way to use them and a bad way. like I can read my employees dms to each other - I don't though. I consider that private even in the context of work. I refuse to read even a single one. I can look at their activity reports but I only do so if I'm trying to help the agent - for example to figure out why they're struggling in schedule fulfillment numbers when they genuinely seem to be trying to do the right thing as we've described it to them(for instance it turned out one of them was using the wrong aux for something and it was wrecking their numbers, and I only figured this out by looking into their activity report in detail). a good manager/supervisor will remember what it is like to be an agent and will carefully avoid adding to that stress because the last thing I want is for good employees to burn out, and bothering them over dumb rear end poo poo like 'you didn't do enough keystrokes this hour' will make someone quit in an instant. but a company structure and business practices that actually allow managers/supervisors to operate that way is also necessary, the only reason I can be this way is because my job isn't overbearing about these things in that way. I'm not bucking company culture by not being an rear end in a top hat, it's company culture to not be an rear end in a top hat. if they suddenly changed to a be an rear end in a top hat about it company I'm not sure what I'd do because it's not like I could just instantly get another job like this at another company so I'd probably be pressured into being like that. I'd loving hate it and would complain about it but sometimes it's just not up to the middle managers having to push it. that said even if you're put in that position you can still find a way to talk to your employees about it in a way that places you 'on their side' against the forces of evil that are annoyin them, another thing most managers and supervisors badly fail at.
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Aug 10, 2023 19:16
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DrBouvenstein posted:Man, all this new job talk...I really gotta get out of my current position. I'm now 5 years into a "temporary, 6-month" IT contracting assignment. You're definitely qualified to work at an MSP, at least. I don't know if your company considers what you are doing as separate from the managed-services work, but scheduled on-site support is an incredibly common client request for any MSP. Even if they run everything in the cloud you still need boots-on-the-ground for certain things even if its outside of the managed contract agreement. The on-site support engineer, if they're at the site with any regularity, will almost certain be considered 'the face' of the IT company to the client. A good or bad experience with them reflects on the MSP. If you've been doing good work for the client and have been coordinating their requests and getting them to the right people then any MSP would consider you if you could speak on this ability and show how your skills at managing the clients and their requests and expectations resulted in good outcomes and client experiences. Your technical skills can be fairly weak as long as you're proficient with end-user desktop support and many places will take you on- if you're lucky it won't be a meatgrinder and they might let you touch more than just the user's desktop but every MSP is different and some are poo poo.
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Aug 10, 2023 19:17
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DrBouvenstein posted:Well, there's the rub...I have no idea. Not this, and not my last job, which is basically the only two things I'm remotely qualified for. Actually, I wouldn't mind too much the WORK I did at my last job, just not the employer or the pay (the problem is they are the only employer in the area, really, in that line of work and I have no desire to move.) Biomedical technician is a short step from calibration technician, which if you don’t mind the work you can probably get a job doing calibration poo poo pretty easily. The career field is everywhere if you know where to look and everyone is usually hiring. Maybe something to look into
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Aug 10, 2023 19:20
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Hyrax Attack! posted:Lol Sinek quotes are a favorite of leadership e-mail signatures. Would be fun to do that but use Alpha Centauri quotes and see if anyone notices: quote:If our
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Aug 10, 2023 19:45
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DrBouvenstein posted:I'm 40...nearly 41, so...yup. e: good advice from Hotel Kpro Splicer fucked around with this message at 23:44 on Aug 10, 2023 |
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Aug 10, 2023 23:42
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One of my colleagues tried to throw me under the bus today, except they chose to do it about something that couldn’t possibly have been me because I’m not there, so ???
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Aug 10, 2023 23:46
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History Comes Inside! posted:One of my colleagues tried to throw me under the bus today, except they chose to do it about something that couldn’t possibly have been me because I’m not there, so ??? There is commonly an overlap between terrible people and stupid people
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Aug 10, 2023 23:50
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Chewbecca posted:There is commonly an overlap between terrible people and stupid people Overlaps with management too, so might cop the blame anyway.
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Aug 11, 2023 01:04
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I was just doing some research to build a presentation for a training group tomorrow. in the course of doing so, I came across an account where, in the memos, I saw a total of 15 months of interest charges adjusted by the agent. This was $4200 of interest charge adjustments. the thing is, our systems don't check in real time to see if an interest charge adjustment has been done on an account that day. if it approves the first one, you would then be able to go through every single month of every statement on the account and forgive all the interest. the frontline agent clearly did not know this. the cm apparently did. they were told no by another agent, hung up and called back and got this agent who forgave four loving thousand dollars worth of interest. this likely wouldn't have gotten noticed for quite some time if ever, except I randomly happened to look at this account for totally unrelated reasons. I tried to go locate the call so that I could listen to it and figure out what the gently caress happened here. there is a mysterious one hour gap in the call records for this agent on that day. I called the agent's team leader and showed them what I saw and handed the problem off to them. jesus christ
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Aug 11, 2023 01:57
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tactlessbastard posted:If our 
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Aug 11, 2023 02:00
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I posted about a lovely PTO policy our company implemented a page or so ago and today they walked it back and "clarified" it. So they're not doing that now. Not sure if it was a genuine miscommunication or if the backlash was so severe that they actually went back on it but we're all glad they did, regardless.
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