Economics: Minimum Wage, Who Gets Hurt?

[Ph64]

IT one of those jobs that the less you work the more you are worth. For the less that breaks under your watch means people can keep making money.

Only if you suck at it.

If shit keeps on breaking, you aren’t doing your job right. The point of IT is to not be seen or heard.

You say that, but my last boss at my prior job made that virtually impossible. He was a "when I say jump, your only reply should be how high?" From the day he started he totally refused to listen to anyone on the team who suggested anything other than "his way" (and he actually threatened me several times with "the highway" until he eventually did it - more so for money reasons, me and one coworker who were the longest in the team, the most experience, but also the most expensive). My problem was I actually cared about how things ran, he cared about kissing his bosses ass no matter what the consequences.

I always said "my job is to put myself out of a job" - not literally, shit happens, hardware fails sometimes, etc, and you need people to fix it, but your goal should be to have things run so smooth your job isn't running around putting out fires all day. My prior bosses (2 in the 7 years prior) valued that, being the longest time person on the team I'd had my hands in everything at some point and was basically the "master troubleshooter", my job (in my mind) was to make the boss look good - the less problems came his way the better. The last boss was a micro-manager, he absolutely *hated* that I knew everyone's skill sets, would suggest who might be best for a given task, etc. He had no clue what I did/knew, and didn't care, I spent most of my day helping app teams (pretty much all our coding was done by outsourced teams in India, most of the code was total shit) debug issues (make things run smooth, right?). It would piss him off royally when some team said on a call, after hours of issues working with our offshore guys, "can we get Pete on this call? He knows our app."

A year after he got rid if me I was talking to one of my old coworkers, the offshore guys (all in their early-mid 20s, willing to work cheap for the experience then leave for $greener pastures in 2-3 years just as they were getting good) had spent 2 days on an app issue until he dragged my old onshore coworker in, who had it fixed in 4-5 hours... he told me on the "post-mortem" call after he had to bite his tongue as the boss bitched at how long it took, to not say "Pete would've had this fixed in an hour". (Really I would've jumped in after the first few hours the first day, I kept track of any issues and wouldn't have let it go on that long, I considered that my job).

Funny, that boss is gone now, the company had had multiple rounds of layoffs since, talked to my coworker again at Xmas and he basically said it was a total shitshow now... and then asked if I wanted my job back (the new boss was open to it). I declined, needless to say - the place was a shitshow when I joined in 2003, it took two years - me and one other guy (also shitcanned together) working 60-80hrs/week the first year before we got two more people (him being one) and getting down to 50-60 the second year, before we had it running fairly smooth. I really have no desire to walk into another shitshow... worse yet, the same shitshow we had running smoothly before that last boss let it fall apart. I spent 10 years trying to make things run better, the last 3 desperately trying to sneak around fixing things behind his back to keep things running ok.

Overall though, I agree... the goal of any good IT team should be to be virtually invisible, keep things running smooth, try for 24/7 uptime. If you get "noticed" by anyone other than your immediate boss, you're not doing it right. Your job should be to make them look good by keeping things running smooth.

[Speaker to Animals]

Let the corporations die, fam. They deserve it.

[The Conservative]

Only if you suck at it.

If shit keeps on breaking, you aren’t doing your job right. The point of IT is to not be seen or heard.

You say that, but my last boss at my prior job made that virtually impossible. He was a "when I say jump, your only reply should be how high?" From the day he started he totally refused to listen to anyone on the team who suggested anything other than "his way" (and he actually threatened me several times with "the highway" until he eventually did it - more so for money reasons, me and one coworker who were the longest in the team, the most experience, but also the most expensive). My problem was I actually cared about how things ran, he cared about kissing his bosses ass no matter what the consequences.

I always said "my job is to put myself out of a job" - not literally, shit happens, hardware fails sometimes, etc, and you need people to fix it, but your goal should be to have things run so smooth your job isn't running around putting out fires all day. My prior bosses (2 in the 7 years prior) valued that, being the longest time person on the team I'd had my hands in everything at some point and was basically the "master troubleshooter", my job (in my mind) was to make the boss look good - the less problems came his way the better. The last boss was a micro-manager, he absolutely *hated* that I knew everyone's skill sets, would suggest who might be best for a given task, etc. He had no clue what I did/knew, and didn't care, I spent most of my day helping app teams (pretty much all our coding was done by outsourced teams in India, most of the code was total shit) debug issues (make things run smooth, right?). It would piss him off royally when some team said on a call, after hours of issues working with our offshore guys, "can we get Pete on this call? He knows our app."

A year after he got rid if me I was talking to one of my old coworkers, the offshore guys (all in their early-mid 20s, willing to work cheap for the experience then leave for $greener pastures in 2-3 years just as they were getting good) had spent 2 days on an app issue until he dragged my old onshore coworker in, who had it fixed in 4-5 hours... he told me on the "post-mortem" call after he had to bite his tongue as the boss bitched at how long it took, to not say "Pete would've had this fixed in an hour". (Really I would've jumped in after the first few hours the first day, I kept track of any issues and wouldn't have let it go on that long, I considered that my job).

Funny, that boss is gone now, the company had had multiple rounds of layoffs since, talked to my coworker again at Xmas and he basically said it was a total shitshow now... and then asked if I wanted my job back (the new boss was open to it). I declined, needless to say - the place was a shitshow when I joined in 2003, it took two years - me and one other guy (also shitcanned together) working 60-80hrs/week the first year before we got two more people (him being one) and getting down to 50-60 the second year, before we had it running fairly smooth. I really have no desire to walk into another shitshow... worse yet, the same shitshow we had running smoothly before that last boss let it fall apart. I spent 10 years trying to make things run better, the last 3 desperately trying to sneak around fixing things behind his back to keep things running ok.

Overall though, I agree... the goal of any good IT team should be to be virtually invisible, keep things running smooth, try for 24/7 uptime. If you get "noticed" by anyone other than your immediate boss, you're not doing it right. Your job should be to make them look good by keeping things running smooth.

This wasn’t in Boston was it?

[SuburbanFarmer]

Stay on task. Discussing the US economy atm.

Ok, let's stick to the US. A country were 95% of it's citizens have a cellphone. Where 94% have access to high speed internet. A country so bad that thousands of people are rushing across it's southern border illegally every day for a chance to live there.

Yeah, most CEOs make more than you and I think they deserve. I also think most pro athletes make more than they deserve, but us proles keep buying tickets, jerseys and other merchandise that makes spending $400 million on one guy worth it to them. Some of this is our own doing. Some of it is luck. Some is lies and thievery. That is life, and condoning Socialism is not going to make things better for us in the long run.

That’s the same argument as a Roman cheering the fact that everybody can access food and water.

[Ph64]

If shit keeps on breaking, you aren’t doing your job right. The point of IT is to not be seen or heard.

You say that, but my last boss at my prior job made that virtually impossible. He was a "when I say jump, your only reply should be how high?" From the day he started he totally refused to listen to anyone on the team who suggested anything other than "his way" (and he actually threatened me several times with "the highway" until he eventually did it - more so for money reasons, me and one coworker who were the longest in the team, the most experience, but also the most expensive). My problem was I actually cared about how things ran, he cared about kissing his bosses ass no matter what the consequences.

I always said "my job is to put myself out of a job" - not literally, shit happens, hardware fails sometimes, etc, and you need people to fix it, but your goal should be to have things run so smooth your job isn't running around putting out fires all day. My prior bosses (2 in the 7 years prior) valued that, being the longest time person on the team I'd had my hands in everything at some point and was basically the "master troubleshooter", my job (in my mind) was to make the boss look good - the less problems came his way the better. The last boss was a micro-manager, he absolutely *hated* that I knew everyone's skill sets, would suggest who might be best for a given task, etc. He had no clue what I did/knew, and didn't care, I spent most of my day helping app teams (pretty much all our coding was done by outsourced teams in India, most of the code was total shit) debug issues (make things run smooth, right?). It would piss him off royally when some team said on a call, after hours of issues working with our offshore guys, "can we get Pete on this call? He knows our app."

A year after he got rid if me I was talking to one of my old coworkers, the offshore guys (all in their early-mid 20s, willing to work cheap for the experience then leave for $greener pastures in 2-3 years just as they were getting good) had spent 2 days on an app issue until he dragged my old onshore coworker in, who had it fixed in 4-5 hours... he told me on the "post-mortem" call after he had to bite his tongue as the boss bitched at how long it took, to not say "Pete would've had this fixed in an hour". (Really I would've jumped in after the first few hours the first day, I kept track of any issues and wouldn't have let it go on that long, I considered that my job).

Funny, that boss is gone now, the company had had multiple rounds of layoffs since, talked to my coworker again at Xmas and he basically said it was a total shitshow now... and then asked if I wanted my job back (the new boss was open to it). I declined, needless to say - the place was a shitshow when I joined in 2003, it took two years - me and one other guy (also shitcanned together) working 60-80hrs/week the first year before we got two more people (him being one) and getting down to 50-60 the second year, before we had it running fairly smooth. I really have no desire to walk into another shitshow... worse yet, the same shitshow we had running smoothly before that last boss let it fall apart. I spent 10 years trying to make things run better, the last 3 desperately trying to sneak around fixing things behind his back to keep things running ok.

Overall though, I agree... the goal of any good IT team should be to be virtually invisible, keep things running smooth, try for 24/7 uptime. If you get "noticed" by anyone other than your immediate boss, you're not doing it right. Your job should be to make them look good by keeping things running smooth.

This wasn’t in Boston was it?

Cough, cough... A very old 2-letter Fortune500 company that makes train engines/cars, jet engines, and used to make light bulbs and consumer appliances here in the US, that honestly is bordering on bankruptcy lately. But they did move their HQ up to the Boston area after I left. I won't name them, but they used to "bring good things to light".

(Now I think they're just trying to stave off the darkness. )

I'm sure the jet engine business will be saved at least, even if he govt has to step in, it's at least got national security importance.

[Fife]

[The Conservative]

You say that, but my last boss at my prior job made that virtually impossible. He was a "when I say jump, your only reply should be how high?" From the day he started he totally refused to listen to anyone on the team who suggested anything other than "his way" (and he actually threatened me several times with "the highway" until he eventually did it - more so for money reasons, me and one coworker who were the longest in the team, the most experience, but also the most expensive). My problem was I actually cared about how things ran, he cared about kissing his bosses ass no matter what the consequences.

I always said "my job is to put myself out of a job" - not literally, shit happens, hardware fails sometimes, etc, and you need people to fix it, but your goal should be to have things run so smooth your job isn't running around putting out fires all day. My prior bosses (2 in the 7 years prior) valued that, being the longest time person on the team I'd had my hands in everything at some point and was basically the "master troubleshooter", my job (in my mind) was to make the boss look good - the less problems came his way the better. The last boss was a micro-manager, he absolutely *hated* that I knew everyone's skill sets, would suggest who might be best for a given task, etc. He had no clue what I did/knew, and didn't care, I spent most of my day helping app teams (pretty much all our coding was done by outsourced teams in India, most of the code was total shit) debug issues (make things run smooth, right?). It would piss him off royally when some team said on a call, after hours of issues working with our offshore guys, "can we get Pete on this call? He knows our app."

A year after he got rid if me I was talking to one of my old coworkers, the offshore guys (all in their early-mid 20s, willing to work cheap for the experience then leave for $greener pastures in 2-3 years just as they were getting good) had spent 2 days on an app issue until he dragged my old onshore coworker in, who had it fixed in 4-5 hours... he told me on the "post-mortem" call after he had to bite his tongue as the boss bitched at how long it took, to not say "Pete would've had this fixed in an hour". (Really I would've jumped in after the first few hours the first day, I kept track of any issues and wouldn't have let it go on that long, I considered that my job).

Funny, that boss is gone now, the company had had multiple rounds of layoffs since, talked to my coworker again at Xmas and he basically said it was a total shitshow now... and then asked if I wanted my job back (the new boss was open to it). I declined, needless to say - the place was a shitshow when I joined in 2003, it took two years - me and one other guy (also shitcanned together) working 60-80hrs/week the first year before we got two more people (him being one) and getting down to 50-60 the second year, before we had it running fairly smooth. I really have no desire to walk into another shitshow... worse yet, the same shitshow we had running smoothly before that last boss let it fall apart. I spent 10 years trying to make things run better, the last 3 desperately trying to sneak around fixing things behind his back to keep things running ok.

Overall though, I agree... the goal of any good IT team should be to be virtually invisible, keep things running smooth, try for 24/7 uptime. If you get "noticed" by anyone other than your immediate boss, you're not doing it right. Your job should be to make them look good by keeping things running smooth.

This wasn’t in Boston was it?

Cough, cough... A very old 2-letter Fortune500 company that makes train engines/cars, jet engines, and used to make light bulbs and consumer appliances here in the US, that honestly is bordering on bankruptcy lately. But they did move their HQ up to the Boston area after I left. I won't name them, but they used to "bring good things to light".

(Now I think they're just trying to stave off the darkness. )

I'm sure the jet engine business will be saved at least, even if he govt has to step in, it's at least got national security importance.

Yeah, but that sounds like something I see in Boston quite a bit, a lot of the IT groups around here are led by assholes that didn't earn their positions... but fear those under them. That's not a way to run a department or company.

[SuburbanFarmer]

Same happening here. I’m a big fan of Indeed lol

[The Conservative]

Same happening here. I’m a big fan of Indeed lol

I’m not. Fucking keyword searches. They drive me nuts. 90% of the people look great on paper, then when you get them face to face, you are meeting Mr Hyde, and not Dr. Jekyll.