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skipdogg posted:Is help desk still really only starting at 40k these days? I interviewed with a law firm for a help desk administrator position last month that started at 60k. Most of the other places I've looked into seem to start north of 50k. Then again, I'm in the DC metro. But you still see some bug gently caress "entry level t1 help desk, 39k. Must have 3-5 years experience and a MCSA!" job postings.
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Mar 17, 2023 04:08
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App13 posted:$5k/mo raise gently caress yeah  GreenNight posted:Been at this job for 4 months and I still think I'm not good enough for it and trying to provide value. It never ends. Haven't laid me off yet though. Yeah they suck rear end, but it's been my experience that so long as you're not going out of your way to lie or mislead them, they don't give a poo poo. And sometimes you get an investigator who acts like a human being and acts normal. Nice when it happens.
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Mar 17, 2023 22:20
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ihatepants posted:I recently started a new entry level IT job since I am new in the field and good lord the benefits package of the company that hired me is kind of crazy. The health insurance they're providing is a PPO with $0 deductible, $0 copays and 0% coinsurance on everything except ER visits (which is a $100 copay and 0% coinsurance). They're covering all the premiums for me, my spouse and my dependents as well. It's almost like I moved to a country without a poo poo healthcare system. Out of curiosity, where are you located? Benefits seem to be all over the place here unless you end up with a university, local gov, or a hospital system. Still striking out in the DC Metro, but kinda knew it would be a numbers game and I'd likely have to wait a bit before landing somewhere. Though it is a tad infuriating when I see "Entry Level Help Desk, urgently hiring!" but the requirements are insane. Not like "3-5 years experience" which I'd still apply to, but full on looking for a sys admin or network engineer to step down to help desk for 20 dollars an hour. Good luck with that.
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Mar 22, 2023 16:57
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KillHour posted:Congrats! I'm guessing this is the role where she accidently missed the interviewer and had to reschedule? In any case, congrats, that's awesome! i am a moron posted:Yea definitely tell everyone now hahaha 
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Mar 23, 2023 16:03
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JFC, I feel this in my bones right now. I had one place that wanted at least an A+ and a high school diploma for one position, and a college degree and a trifecta for another with no experience requirement reject me within few hours a few weeks back, but is still throwing the post up on Indeed and such. It's very  looking at some of these job postings.On the upside, have an in-person interview next week, and a phone interview with another place the same day. Finally after like a month of no hits, finally starting to see some bites.
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Mar 23, 2023 20:00
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The Fool posted:coworker just announced that she's leaving to go work for Lego and I am insanely jealous kensei posted:drat, same
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Mar 23, 2023 22:54
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mllaneza posted:Back at the ad agency, our prize possession was a $15k (in ~2003) LED projector with a hard shell travel case. One Thursday one of the junior account people signs it out for a New Business pitch. Come Tuesday, I get called into the main conference room by the VP of New Business. He's got the president of the local agency (75-person office, $100mil annual revenue) and the Senior Executive Creative Director for North America (the guy who did the Got Milk? campaign) with him. You love to see it.
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Mar 25, 2023 04:04
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Had an interview for an in-house help desk position with an organic grocery store this morning. Seemingly went well. I think the only major goof I made was I mentioned how tired I was of my previous career track feeling a lot like groundhog day. They nervously asked me if I knew that the position I was interviewing for would get a lot of the same questions and also possibly be groundhog day like. I think I recovered with my response and the interview continued to go smoothly but  The IT director started talking about how she wanted to do networking stuff in-house eventually, since it's currently contracted out. She brought this up after I had mentioned that I enjoy tooling around with networking equipment and I'm probably going to go get my CCNA after not getting it years ago. So between that and her accidentally swearing and then apologizing profusely, I'll take it as a sign it went well.  Anyways gonna forget about it once I send thank you emails. On to the next one.GreenNight posted:My USB wine isn't working. They really missed the chance to throw in the French pronunciation of Wi-Fi in here. Weeefeee 
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Mar 27, 2023 19:01
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vibur posted:You're wrong. That absolutely was the best move on your part.
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Mar 30, 2023 21:28
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Defenestrategy posted:I have a question for yall IT nerds. They struggle to fill IT and tech analyst roles because of this. Well that, and the drug screen for marijuana. Comey said as much a few years back. But also what Big Fluffy Dog said, a lot of mormons. Oh and a lot of people who get out of the military, get their bachelors, and then go in for a few years before moving onto contracting or something without insane requirements. Have a panel interview, or like 4 mini interviews later on today for an entry level IT role. Hoping it's more just "Hey so we'd be working together, do you suck?" and not 4x "HEY TELL ME ABOUT A TIME YOU WERE A BAD ENOUGH DUDE TO RESCUE THE PRESIDENT? IN STAR FORMAT PLEASE." Because dear lord those are exhausting. Handsome Ralph fucked around with this message at 15:44 on Apr 6, 2023 |
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Apr 6, 2023 15:41
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GreenNight posted:One of the reasons I may not stick around my new job is because the rest of my team leaves at 12:30 every day to "work from home". And then I can't get ahold of anyone the rest of the day, so I end up being the one guy supporting the entire org. Oh yeah I used to do that at my old job before COVID. Difference was, I wasn't a support role, so me loving off after being in the office for a few hours (roll in at 10, leave around 2) and getting all my work done for the day wasn't an issue for anyone else. I would just check my email to make sure there weren't any major house fires but would otherwise enjoy the rest of my day. Though If I was somehow piling work onto someone else by doing that, I'd feel lovely about it and not do it. My only real nitpick with WFH, is managers or colleagues that will gently caress off for hours on end and be unreachable during regular business hours, but then get on your rear end because you didn't respond to a Teams message asking a very minor question within five minutes of them sending it at 8AM. My previous manager and some teammates would do that, and that's one of the many reasons why I decided to quit without another gig lined up rather than continue to deal with it. In lighter news, got a job offer from a place I interviewed with last week  Though, I might be getting one from another place I wrapped up interviewing with yesterday but they said they wouldn't be making a decision till next week. Sent them a quick email saying I really really liked meeting with the team and I'm excited about possibly joining that team, but I need to tell the other place yay or nay by next Wednesday. Hopefully that lights a fire!
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Apr 7, 2023 15:55
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Wibla posted:I feel "be available on Teams/Slack while WFH" is a very low bar to clear when WFH. Exceptions for when you're working on stuff where you really don't want to get distracted / disturbed by IMs and poo poo. And that should be blocked out in your calendar. Yeah like, we never had any question or issue that had to be urgently answered within five minutes or else. So I would understand sending a question and not hearing anything back for like 10-15 minutes in the middle of the day, hell I'd even be fine with a 30 minute turn around and not really give a poo poo. But hours on end? Come the gently caress on. Like you said, it's a very low bar to clear. And the issue I had was I was pretty upfront that my work hours were 9-5 when I worked from home, and anything before or after that would need to wait. I never had an issue with this on previous teams within that company either. So I'd have a colleague that liked to work 60 hour work weeks, ask me a question on teams at 8AM, and then at 8:10 they'd go to my manager to whine that I wasn't responding to them, and then I'd hear grief about it. My manager would do this as well (as well as micromanage and nitpick the fuuuuuuck out of everything they laid eyes on), but I'd send them a question at like 1PM on an issue that was preventing my work moving forward...and I'd not hear anything back for hours. And when I finally got an answer, it was usually not so much an answer but them deciding that my question was the issue, and they'd spend 5-10 minutes arguing over that. Sorry, you broke the seal. I loving hated that job. Glad I left 
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Apr 7, 2023 17:05
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zimbomonkey posted:How do you get into IT as a total outsider? I lost my job a few weeks ago. I went to business school from 2015-2018 and after 5 years in that world. I realize they aren't my people and it's not my thing. I'm 33 and I unfortunately don't have the luxury of working a $30k job to get my foot in the door though I do think I could make 42ish work if that's what it takes (this would be a 25% income cut but we can scrape by on that). The other issue is that I don't have two nickels to rub together so I can't afford to go out and get any certs right now. Is this a possible hill to climb or am I stuck in the white collar world of TPS reports? Where do you live? Depending on what state (or even city) that you're in, some states will cover the cost of certs if you're unemployed/were laid off. A+ is like 400 bucks all together for both exams, Net+ is 250ish, Sec+ is 300. As far as study materials, they are easy to come by for free and a lot of local libraries give you free Udemy access too. I'm 36, and I quit my god awful job in December to just knock out certs and switch careers. I had taken CCNA courses in high school but opted to go to college for a history degree instead, so I did have some background. I've currently got one job offer for around 50K, and another that I might get early next week for 60k after I started really seriously looking about a month ago. These are both entry level roles, but I am also in a high cost of living area (DC). It's certainly doable to find something around 42K or higher if you're in a major metro area, but it's not in any way shape or form a stupidly easy transition. If you know anyone locally that's working in IT, ask them if they know anyone that's hiring for entry level, because that will help a ton, certs or not. Also if you don't do even a casual amount of computer touching in your own time (being able to build and troubleshoot a computer, understanding very basic command line stuff, knowing what active directory is), it will be even harder to break in. Not trying to dissuade you, just lay out the reality of it. Also what EoRaptor said.
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Apr 8, 2023 16:20
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Got a job offer with a biotech's IT dept today that's pretty sweet.
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Apr 13, 2023 02:41
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Hughmoris posted:Congrats! What does the job entail? Thanks! It's an entry level support role, so desktop support/help desk stuff for the most part. Pays pretty solid for entry level too, so I'm happy.
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Apr 13, 2023 14:19
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When the biotech place made me their offer, I asked upfront if there would be any issues about me taking a planned 3-week trip to Australia next year as well as some random days this summer for long weekend trips. "...lol, of course not. Totally fine. That sounds awesome btw." The other place I interviewed with seemed like they would have been very "Hmmmm, I don't know. Three weeks, and it's nearly a year from now?", especially considering I counter offered their offer by like 2 bucks an hour and they rescinded the offer right then and there lol. Seriously though, any employer that gives me poo poo about taking earned vacation time with plenty of notice can eat my entire rear end. I'm incredibly lucky in that my wife makes a killing in her job so if I work somewhere that tries to give me grief for taking earned time off, I can laugh at them and quit. My last boss tried to pull that poo poo, and I told her flat out that it was my earned time, I was giving her 6+ months notice, and if she wanted to bring it to HR, she was more than welcome to. She opted to drop it and just be really passive aggressive about things instead.
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Apr 14, 2023 21:07
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Yeah my previous company was kind of like that, though it was up to your manager. My old manager was great for that sort of thing. My last one was terrible about it. We essentially had a tornado roll through my city downing trees and power lines last summer. My house was fortunately spared, but we had no power at home for about a week while everything was sorted out. I asked my boss what the procedure was since we no longer had an office I could go into, and I was unable to work due to a no poo poo natural disaster. "I don't know. Burn your sick time I guess?" I found out later from another manager my boss could have easily written it off and ensured I was paid, but didn't bother (or just didn't want her numbers to look bad) to look into it. I left by the end of the year.
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Apr 18, 2023 02:11
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skipdogg posted:Here's some advice off the top of my head. Some you may or may not agree with. Couple of pages back but thanks for posting this. Started a new gig last week, my first IT/desktop support job, and this has been how I've been going about things but it's helpful reminding myself of the first point you made. So far so good otherwise though, I think I landed in a pretty solid starter position compared to some of the horror stories I've heard. Handsome Ralph fucked around with this message at 17:45 on May 15, 2023 |
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May 15, 2023 17:41
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skipdogg posted:Something else about your first couple of months, is that is when you set expectations with everyone. If you come in firing on all cylinders and going 80MPH, working 12 hours a day and all that, that's your baseline expectation that you've set with everyone. Say you get comfortable a few months down the road and dial it back to what you consider to be reasonable, people are going to think "Man Ralph is slowing down or slacking". Way better to come in and set those expectations at first, and save some reserves when needed. Good point and I'm wayyyyyyyyy ahead of you. Literally the first day I asked about how to enter in some vacation time that was agreed upon before I accepted the offer, as well as just taking my full lunch break and leaving after I've worked my full shift instead of staying longer. Manager was also pretty upfront about adjusting my schedule to my liking and taking time off for doctors appointments and stuff. Fortunately I think most of the people on my team have the same "don't over do it" mentality.
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May 15, 2023 18:15
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Blurb3947 posted:Got let go today, poo poo sucks. Sorry my dude. Hope it leads to something better. kensei posted:Work to live, do not live to work 
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May 17, 2023 21:28
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Dandywalken posted:Saw a Tier 1 helpdesk position listed for $14.30 an hour.  Man, I am so glad I landed an internal support entry level job that pays a respectable wage and didn't have to resort to consider taking that kind of poo poo. God drat.
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May 18, 2023 02:19
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Jiro posted:Good luck anywhere that will pay like that AND you get to 40hrs a week. Same as it ever was.
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May 18, 2023 12:58
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Internet Explorer posted:That is a wild loving story. Awesome. Actual content. So the company I started out at this month is in the process of being acquired by another company. I was told this throughout my interview and onboarding but didn't really think twice about it since it happened like three times in my old job, and it never really impacted you unless you were upper management or in a redundant position (HR/payroll, etc). Now that I've been here for a few weeks, I think everything is fine but now realize now that there is a remote possibility that my office gets closed out once the merger is completed. I think it'd be 6-12 months after the merger that it would happen if it did, but lol. Guess I'll hang on and enjoy the ride in any case. Getting my foot in the door was supposedly the hardest part of getting into this industry. So here's to hoping if the worst case scenario comes to pass, I can just treat this job as a paid internship and move onto something else. Best case scenario, none of this really affects me. Handsome Ralph fucked around with this message at 19:16 on May 19, 2023 |
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May 19, 2023 19:05
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BadOptics posted:Really wish it was called eldritch technology instead of IT.
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May 24, 2023 03:55
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I am now the printer guy at my gig. One of the bigger printers kept jamming. I spend a few minutes looking at it with one of the other guys in my shop, not seeing any obvious jams. Ready to call it quits and call the printer tech in when I take one last look and find like a small 2 inch piece of scrap paper scrunched up into a roller. The printer works completely fine after that. All of the people on the immediate area of the printer "oh boy so I guess we just call you now!" Boss afterwards is like "oh yeah, some of them like to rip the page out as it comes out of the printer. That'll happen." Lol, gently caress. Also people in TYOL 2023 still mystified by Googling stuff to find answers. Myself and another new hire on a different team both got notifications last week from FedEx saying we had a package being sent to our homes. Queue that person's manager thinking it's a phishing email and running into IT to ask us about it today. Me, who cannot shut up and just let things be "Oh no it's legit. I got the notification from FedEx on my personal account as well." "But what is it? And how do you know?!?" Proceed to explain how you can sign up with FedEx to get package alerts followed by me literally googling the name of the shipping party and the company name "Looks like it's a swag kit for new hires." "Wow that's amazing, how'd you find that out?!?"
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May 24, 2023 22:45
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Wizard of the Deep posted:This was a mistake, and your job is now ruined. Lol yeah I hosed up there. The good news was my manager was like "yeah don't waste time on printers. If we can't fix it after five minutes, call the tech. Also unless they put in a ticket, don't even look at it."
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May 24, 2023 23:40
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CitizenKain posted:Good news, managers realized that making a big change at 4:30 on a Friday before a 3 day weekend is really stupid and decided to go with the plan we already figured out. Then they kept talking for 20 more minutes. One of the things that even I a newbie in IT saw at my new job and was like "oh poo poo, these guys are good" is that they have block in the calendar mandating no major changes for the last five days of the month. A full week if it's a holiday weekend or multiple people are on vacation. Also today I helped the sysadmin fix an issue with our alarm and door system by using the Homer Simpson method and just pulling random jumpers till poo poo worked.
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May 27, 2023 04:23
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johnny park posted:I asked a user to show me the error they were getting when they tried to access a page in Chrome so they printed the page out, scanned it back in, and emailed me the PDF Similar vein, had a user call in saying their monitor was showing white "like the sun is hitting the screen". After a few minutes back and forth, I remote in to confirm it's a physical problem. So while I'm on the phone getting the ticket prepped for a replacement system, I ask the user to take a photo of the screen with their smart phone for me so I can add it to the ticket for documentation. "Oh sure!" proceeds to use Greenshot to capture their screen "Actually, could you take a picture of the entire laptop? Like with your phone?" "Oh sure thing!" Then sends me a super close up photo that I can only describe as being similar to the balls photo from Arrested Development. "Ah okay. Yeah that works. You'll have a new system in hand sometime tomorrow, let me know if you need anything else."
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Jun 14, 2023 22:26
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Today at work, a remote user broke their laptop by leaving a pen on the keyboard and then closing the lid. A common occurrence. I sent them a new laptop last week and told them to contact me once they had it in hand so I could transfer their licenses for some software they use with clients in the field. They did that yesterday. I included a return label and told them to ship the broken laptop back to us whenever they got the chance. "Will do!" they said as I ended the call. This morning I logged in to find out that they decided to bring their old laptop with the busted screen for reasons unknown to their client presentation this morning, and called my coworker freaking out when they realized the broken laptop wouldn't work for them. When he asked them why they brought the busted one with them when we just sent them a new one. They said they thought they could still use it and just use the new one once the old one completely stopped working. 
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Jun 22, 2023 14:31
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Had a user get mad at me because he demanded I install the corporate VPN on his private laptop so he could review cases/private data while on vacation. Told him no, we absolutely cannot do that. Policy is that the VPN client and access is for corporate devices only. "But I don't want to bring my work laptop with me on vacation!!!" Cute part was he tried to get his way with "oh but I've had this VPN on my personal system for years. So you should just do it." Which was an easy lie to spot because the VPN client he was asking for has only been in use by our company for like two months.
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Jun 28, 2023 20:49
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xzzy posted:Should have closed the ticket telling them only idiots bring work on vacation.  If only.I've learned my shops reaction to users who do carry some weight but make ridiculous demands that were not going to give into is pretty much the same one Brad Pitt's character had towards Col. Landa at the end of Inglorious Basterds. "I'm gonna see that you're written up/fired for not giving into my stupid as hell demands! "Nah, I don't think so. More like chewed out. I've been chewed out before." I'll take the risk of being mildly chewed out for not fulfilling a stupid request over just doing it and finding out I'm out on my rear end for facilitating a data breach.
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Jun 28, 2023 21:04
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Ran into a weird issue with Teams where two users on the same team can't directly message one another. Go into the admin portal, made sure neither was blocked by the other, cleared the app cache date, reinstall, etc etc. Still no success. So I ended up setting up a group chat with myself and the two of them as a temp workaround. Submitted a ticket through the Teams admin portal after the rest of my team is stumped on what the issue is. I get assigned some random MS365 ambasador tech, who's clearly overseas. Anyways, says he wants to remote into both of the user's systems to see what's going on. Higher ups say yeah go for it. So we setup the meeting to do this. Doesn't show. Calls me like an hour after the meeting was scheduled "Oh yeah, my apologies. I was on my break. Can we do it now?" Tell the guy no, since both users are remote and have hosed off for the day. Decide to reschedule to today. Hop into the meeting to facilitate, doesn't show, doesn't call. Both users are leaving for vacation for the next 3 weeks so lol, no point rescheduling now. Anyways, my point is that Teams is loving trash.
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Jun 30, 2023 03:05
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User submitted a ticket 10 days ago complaining about their laptop having issues, so they're wondering if they could just get a new one. We're out of new laptops at the moment while waiting for our next shipment from Dell to come in, so my coworker asks if he can remote in and investigate instead of just giving the user a brand new laptop because the user hasn't indicated anything that tells us the laptop is hosed and needs to be replaced immediately. Anyways, user ignores my coworkers request for a time to remote in...and the seven automated messages asking them to reply or else the ticket will be automatically closed. Ticket gets closed after a week by the system because they never bothered to respond back. Here we are today, two weeks after the initial ticket, new ticket comes in from the same user. "Hey you guys forgot about me! Where's my new laptop? "Cool. still very pleased with my career change but at some of this poo poo.
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Jul 27, 2023 22:15
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kensei posted:Separation of work and porn, I mean personal life on different machines
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Jul 28, 2023 04:57
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CLAM DOWN posted:This kind of bullshit is exactly why our industry has a problem and a stereotype. My solution is I am polite to a fault and never give the user poo poo, even when they are clearly deserving of it. But behind their backs? Oh you had better believe I am going to rant and rave about how loving stupid they are.
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Jul 31, 2023 04:13
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Cyks posted:I’m not doing this poo poo this morning. I hope this is real. We had something like that a couple of weeks ago. Manager tried to be sneaky and move up a hire date that moved from Aug. 14th to this past monday, on a Friday evening after most of the staff had hosed off for the weekend. We typically don't prep accounts or equipment till the week beforehand for a few reasons, so I think he figured we'd just do everything Monday morning. Anyways, my manager noticed the ticket Monday morning, and promptly told the hiring manager the new hire's new start was Tuesday.
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Aug 1, 2023 03:51
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I'm currently in office five days a week and will hopefully have some WFH days coming this fall after I hit the 3-4 month mark of working here. But if after six months of being here, they're like "WFH? I know we said in your interview 2 days WFH a week after some time in your role, but things changed!", I'm gonna head out. The only reason I'm not as annoyed about it is that it was a career change for me and a new job, so I was fine with going into the office when I started out. They've also allowed me a few days here and there to WFH when my wife had to get surgery in June. It's if after a meaningful period of being in this role they still want me to come in five days a week that I'll be annoyed and seriously looking elsewhere.
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Aug 2, 2023 18:04
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The Fool posted:my company tried to force rto two years ago and lost 20% of the it org before they relented My old gig pre-pandemic was very big on WFH and flexible schedules. Then about a year before the pandemic, they announced they were getting rid of it and everyone had to return to the office and could only WFH one day a week. I posted about it a bunch in the BFC Corporate thread but the tldr was we saw a reduction of about 25% of our workforce as a result. The bleeding only stopped once COVID hit and they were forced to let people WFH again. Also the funniest part was they tried to compromise with a "core hours" policy, where you had to be in the office between 10-2, but could work remote before or after. You can guess what most people did.
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Aug 2, 2023 19:39
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Cup Runneth Over posted:Said "ok" and just didn't show up at all? That's what I would do Nope. Because they did track attendance to a certain degree. So it basically turned into people showing up at 10, doing whatever work they had between 10-2, leaving at 2 on the dot to go "WFH for the rest of the day" and then just leaving email on at most while they enjoyed their afternoon/evening. So paying people as if they were 40 hour employees but for only 16 hours of in office work (remember, one day a week of WFH is fine). But it gets better. I was able to get the director to admit they had no hard and fast rule for emergencies or weather. "So if my toilet breaks and I need to work from home that day, does it count as my sole WFH day?" "Well no, but..." "Too late!" It was all very very loving stupid in a way only a C Suite type could think was smart or practical. Handsome Ralph fucked around with this message at 22:54 on Aug 2, 2023 |
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Aug 2, 2023 22:49
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guppy posted:but the data don't matter because it's not based on data, it's based on vibes. Pretty much. When my old company decided to end WFH, the VP who presented the town hall announcing it kept telling us he was an engineer so he needed to see hard data to justify keeping WFH, which he couldn't find. Queue my coworkers who were all researchers and editors pushing back on that with "Our products have won industry awards year after year and we constantly exceed our sales targets. Clearly working from home isn't a problem for our products or the companies bottom line. What data are you using to justify ending WFH?" "Years of experience and my gut." Everyone else:  God that place went downhill fast. Was nice getting some of that "please don't go!" money though.
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Aug 3, 2023 02:13
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