best path to career change

IT blows. That's the simple truth. I have worked for large companies (Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, Capital One, Fidelity, Citibank). I have been involved in startups as well. It's all the same crap (in software at least). Extraordinarily unrealistic deadlines met by overworked, under-resourced professionals. Then after 70, 80, 90 hour weeks breaking your back to meet those deadlines, your company is sold, the top brass get rich and you get layed off...which happens more than most care to admit. I have been through four of these situations. Usually I leave before pink slips are issued. Then you and 20, 30, 100+ engineers are all out of work, saturating the local market trying to scroung for what's out there. Usually if you do get rehired, its for a substantially lower rate...because if you dont take the paycut, the guy behind you will....plus could there be an industry with less attractive women in it? OK that was wrong (true, but wrong )

 

Re: Re: Alternate View

There are several types of Salaried Exemptions under the Fair Labor Standard Act.....Supervisory Exemption, Executive Exemption, Professional Exemption....There is also a salary test....In my (apparent) diatribe I was referring to appropriately classified Exempt IT professionals who still ask for overtime compensation. I believe if the average person read my post and your post, they would see yours as somewhat over-reactive. Wow, did I strike a nerve! You are correct -- I am thankful I apparently do not have to work as long and hard as you do. Good luck to you in your future endeavors and may God Bless.

 

Re: Re: Alternate View

The law (at least in CA) is more complex. Check out http://www.trinet.com/HR_resources/HR_Library/HR_library.htm

 

Re: Re: Re: Alternate View

I agree....and BTW there is also an Administrative Exemption, one for outside sales, etc. I believe the Executive and Supervisory Exemption is one and the same, although I have seen references to both. My point is not to debate the interpretation of FLSA; Rather, to point out a situation involving IT professionals are appropriately classified Exempt. Thanks.

 

DesElms I agree with ya

Amen , I agree with you on that DesElms.

Some people just do not understand how hard some IT staff people work to get the job done. Most IT positions I have been in are hourly paid, the people who do the real grunt work( this do not included most of IT managers or CEOS folks, they do not count because most don't do jack) It is the other people in IT who really work their but off. So heck yeah, I want my overtime pay if I am working to get the job done for your company by your deadlines that is over my 40 hrs per week. Yes, I have been in positions with on call duties and late stays to fix server/computer issues & getting up in the wee hours of the morning. This sometimes occurs very frequently. Its not like at 5:00pm, I get clockout and go home on time most of the time and leave my at the job, most of us take our work home with us because it is part of the job. Believe me if I ever have a on call job again, I will demand for higher pay because basically your on duty 24 X 7, so I expect to be compensated well for it; I refused to get salary raped. In the terms of training, all I can say I have worked for big and small companies and there are some really cheap azz corporations out there who will not contribute to any of your IT training improvement, but yet they want you to keep up will current technologies. Ok yes, I need money for this to pay for class that each cost between 1800 to 3000 per class. Then there is self study, costs for books, training software, and certifications.

 

beachhoppr----- I think NOT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

beachhoppr you stated

"....plus could there be an industry with less attractive women in it? "


Ok, you are so wrong. There are attractive women in working IT where have you been hiding under a rock somewhere.
Ok maybe not alot ; just a little but there are not much females in IT field anyways. Could there be a industry with less attractive men in it. I just can't seem to find one. O wait I see that hot looking nerd/geek in the corner troubleshooting those computer issues. If the females look that bad where you work, just drink a few beers before you go in to work; I am sure they will start to look better each day to you. Just kidding

 

The men in IT are just sooooo hoT!

NOT!

 

Whatever...you have no idea what I do.

 

Re: Re: Alternate View

I think the post by Gregg DesElms demonstrates clearly why many organizations are disenchanted with their I.T. professionals and no longer offer them giant tubs of money.

In the academic environment, long hours (60+ per week) are the norm, and "job training" is generally a graduate program that puts the student in lifelong debt.

Our e-mail service went down over winter break, and the I.T. staff begrudgingly came back to fix it, whining all the way. They doubtless assumed that the faculty were out partying. In fact, many of us desperately needed e-mail service in order to submit grant applications, grade students' work (sent by e-mail the day before the university's deadline for grade submission), and carry out the research that keeps the institution functioning.

A colleague of mine, arriving as a new faculty member, had to wait nearly a month for her computer and internet access.

At another institution, I had important files destroyed by an I.T. worker who was apparently too rushed (or too cocky) to back up or rename my system files before he decided to play with them.

DesElms writes, "So next time keep your unappreciative, misguided, uninformed, mean-spirited, ignorant, smarmy advice-for-the-future to yourself, there, Skippy. IT people don't want to hear it; don't need to hear it; and it just makes them hate you more than they already do."

And he questions why decisionmakers no longer feel comfortable handing vast sums of money to their I.T. professionals?

If you want to be valued (and paid in accordance with your value), then you ought to put the needs of the organization ahead of your own. I don't know much about the habits of private-sector managers, but I know that many faculty work far harder than their institutions' I.T. staff -- and with far less whining.

It's 2:48 a.m. on a Saturday night, so I'm going home now. Admittedly, I've been surfing the net for the past two hours, but I'll be back tomorrow to work -- just as many of my colleagues will. I doubt that the I.T. staff will be doing the same.

 

Re: Re: Re: Alternate View

Walter, get ready for the Mother-of-All replies. I was, among other things, "mean-spirited, ignorant, and smarmy" for saying essentially the following:

There was a booming economy and tremendous opportunity for IT professionals leading up to 2000. True.

IT professionals were able to get large monetary rewards. True.

In essence, they exploited a free market economy. True....as would most people if given the chance, myself included (as I mentioned in my original post).

Even when classified salary exempt (and thus not eligible for OT) IT Professionals, in my experience, often wanted additional consideration for working over 40 - 45 hours per week. True, at least in my experience.

Oh and I am sure the following comment he left me will also apply to you: "it just makes them hate you more than they already do." Wow, how does it feel to be hated by every IT Professional? I can tell you, I certainly wasn't able to sleep last night!

 

Why should the IT people always have to pay when the company won't buy a decent system? These corporations never buy back-up systems appropriate for these so-called "emergencies". If the e-mail is so important, there should be a machine already set to go to replace the server that went down.

But noooo...

I'm not an IT person, by the way. I'm an analyst/programmer type who stopped working on hardware and networks because male chauvinists had a hard time with me carrying monitors under both arms and hated having to call me to fix their machines because they felt stupid. It is a male thing, I suppose, where the guy is supposed to know all and the woman shouldn't have to rescue them.

I would recommend that no one EVER do IT support work for lawyers of public relations people. They are the worst bunch of whining babies ever seen.

I had a lawyer guy who refused to take his laptop as a carry-on on airplane trips and was surprised the three times it got crushed in airplane cargo.

 

I would go so far to say lawyers and PR people should never hire whining IT people to work for them

 

Believe it or not, I'm not a whiner. I am employed because I'm the best ass-kisser this side of Timbuktu. My work is good too, but that doesn't matter so much.

 

Ahhhh...something to be proud of!

 

And can you see what that is doing to you? The level of your bitterness is palpable even through a message forum, and it's so high it's sad. Stop doing it, it's not worth what it's doing to you and you clearly aren't proud of it.

Maybe you're thinking "Yabbut I won't have a job if I don't!!" Yes you will, because as you say, your work is good and that matters more than you think. We all run into occasional jerks and there's not much to be done except recognize them for what they are, but conversely we also all teach people in general how to treat us and whether or not they should have respect for us.

Think about it, when is the last time you respected someone you thought of as an ass-kisser?

Kit

 

Don't be so dramatic. Everyone kowtows to their boss. I'm not bitter at all.

It matters only when the exchange isn't perceived as equitable.

Corporate life only allows so much excellence, but capitalism is what we got, so that's what I gotta live with.

Think about that the next time you put on your blue suit and matching tie and socks. If you don't like suits, you are kowtowing/conforming/kissing ass to pay your bills.

I would complain but then the next step is "other countries have it worse move there if you don't like it America is great and you are unworthy blah blah blah f-ing blah."

 

Here's another link, which I've borrowed from jimnagrom's thread:

2005 Looks Promising for IT Professionals


And if what I'm starting to see out in the field is any indication, there may soon be need for a newly created IT position:

Outsourcing Disaster Cleanup Specialist

 

Although I'm a middle manager, not an HR person, I'm fairly familiar with the new federal labor laws that came through last year. I was worried they would affect the overtime of the employees at my office (who are all hourly); it turned out not to be the case. As far as I understand, the new laws remove overtime protection for IT professionals paid on an hourly basis who make more than about $27.00 an hour.

The new rules suck, and they make an already messy, confusing labor law situation even more messy and confusing for employers while at the same time screwing employees. I'd rather not get into a rant on that topic, but I do think that overtime is not always bad for employERS. Wal-Mart hates overtime and does all kinds of evil and sometimes downright illegal things to make sure no one gets overtime (for example, making employees clock out when they need to pee). Their workers have terrible morale and massive turnover, but they just live with that. For a job in which good morale and high responsibility is important, overtime is a fantastic motivator under many situations. When we have incredibly busy periods at our office and people are stretched to their limit I don't need to give them a B.S. pep-talk about taking one for the team that they wouldn't believe anyway, I just have to ask, "so have you passed 40 yet" and they perk right up.

I do find it odd that most IT professionals are paid on a salaried basis but expected to have the job attitude of an hourly employee, and that there are massively unrealistic expectations placed on them. On the other side I think a common tendency on the IT side of the organization is to create work for themselves that they don't really need to do. I've found that if given a choice between -- 1) spending a long time fixing a system, communicating with end users and simplifying its interface so that almost everything can be done by the end user without having to call up the IT person 2) not improving a system and expecting people to call for IT support when they can't figure it out -- most non-high-level IT people gravitate towards number 2. Part of it is defensiveness -- "this is my job and I don't want to show anyone else how to do it" -- which you can find in any industry and any field. sometimes it's a good self-defense strategy against being made obsolete. Part of it is just not feeling the obligation to have to communicate with non-specialists.

Unfortunately in today's job environment, and without union protection, a lot of employees can't afford NOT to be selfish, cynical and completely paranoid. How many IT professionals have been asked to train a team in India, ignored the red flashing warning bells and followed instructions, then gotten laid off and replaced by that same team? Loyalty to an organization has to be earned and maintained by that organization/employer, it's not a given by any means.

 

You had me until #2.

Once the system is built, a lot of the time the powers that be never allow for the building of the support and administrative pieces necessary.

If this sounds nuts, but it has happened to me on more than one occasion that I am supporting many users on a system I have built but I am told to implement it without the support structure. So now I'm supporting AND trying to build on the system at the same time.

The users always say "Why didn't you build in a self-maintenance piece for us?" and IT always responds "Why didn't management allow us the time and resources to do so?"

 

His name is William, not Walter. His last name is Walters -- plural. There's no "Walter" anywhere in there.

Now you know how it feels to have the salient points of your post essentially ignored and trivialized in favor of a part thereof that has absolutely nothing to do with the larger message you were trying to convey... as you did with your initial response to my post about which you're complaining.

Ah, yes... the weakest of all debating tactics not-surprisingly proffered by you in this case: Attacking the opponent's form rather than addressing his content. We saw alot of that from Republicans during the last election. It's comforting to have confirmed, now, that that particular tactic's ability to make those using it look foolish back then wasn't just a fluke. Thank you.

No, Big Red, you were appropriately -- and with remarkable constraint on my part, given the other adjectives that initially came to mind -- called those things because the overall tone, obvious intent, and unmistakable underlying message of your post was to denigrate a class of worker whom you clearly believe don't work hard enough, or for long enough; and who expect pay they don't deserve and, moreover, should be hanging their heads in shame for having even mentioned, to boot. And you punctuated your derisive message with insulting terminology like "exploit" and "wild ride;" and then you dared to offer this clearly clueless bunch of techno-geek morons who obviously don't understand the logical cycles of business and the financial realities thereof some advice-for-the-furture... ostensibly so that next time around they will be better able to weather abuse from the likes of you.

No, Big Red... what the average person who reads your post and then mine would see is the ease of your arrogance and condescension, and the depth of your disdain, ne, utter contempt, for a class of worker that you clearly consider to be underworked, overpaid, and more-than-adequately-appreciated.

But did they refuse to work those extra hours, or are you just irritated that they dared to complain about their lack of compensation therefore?

And what part of my painfully obvious point that employers routinely mis-classify employees as salaried/exempt (and, by the way, Mr. Your-Freudian-Slip-is-Showing, it's "salaried," not "salary," or would you have them be exempt from salary, too?) in order to avoid paying overtime did you not understand? Or are you just doing that classic Republican/Corporate thing wherein you simply pretend the problem doesn't exist rather than addressing the actual point that's being discussed, here, and defending the employers' practice of routinely mis-classify employees in order to avoid paying them overtime, as you clearly believe is their God-given, Big-Corporate right?

I see guys like you comin' ten miles out, hence the rapidity with which I tend to dispense with the foreplay in situations like this and cut right to the underlying chase. I know you. You can't hide from me. I've fought this battle with trickle-down, I've-got-mine-now-you-go-get-yours types like you my entire life. It's your type that supports the kind of wrong-headed changes to overtime pay that we saw the Bush43 administration put into place on August 23, 2004... you know... the ones that, according to the Labor Department's own estimates at the time, summarily denied overtime pay to some 3.3 million hard-working Americans who had been eligible for overtime prior thereto -- a figure, by the way, which the Economic Policy Institute said was a gross underestimate which should have been more along the lines of 8 million from the ranks of white-collar workers alone (not even counting blue collar workers)... a descrepancy accounted for, in largest measure, by the fact that the new Bush43 plan makes it so easy and profitable for employers to alter workers' job descriptions so that they would suddenly become salaried/exempt.

Music to your ears... no? And surely the reason you keep referring to the IT professionals in question as ones who whine even though they're "properly classified" as salaried/exempt.

You remember those administrative changes last August, don't you? Based on your rhetoric in this thread, I'm quite certain you celebrated them! You know... they're the changes that contain the new "highly compensated employee" rule that makes it nearly impossible for workers who earn more than $100,000 a year in salaries, bonuses or commissions to qualify for overtime under any reasonable circumstances. Remember? And, oh, how cleverly you Republican/Corporate-sympathetic types worded the regulations so that the aforementioned salary cap would not be indexed to inflation so that, with every passing year, more and more high-earners would, by the mere act of benefitting from naturally-occurring wholly-deserved COLA increases, be priced right out of the class of workers eligible for overtime, even if they met all other previously- or currently-established salaried/non-exempt criteria.

Oh, but wait... you Bush43 types weren't done! It wasn't enough that the likes of you took well-deserved compensation for a longer-than-40-hour work week from those in the middle- to upper-income brackets most able to weather it; oh, no... you guys needed to kick the poor squarly in the gut, too... futher reducing the size of the middle class and widening the gap between the rich and the poor in this country. Your beloved administration fooled the public -- taking away with one hand what it appeared to give with the other -- by making a seemingly whopping increase from $8,060 to $23,660 the amount below which workers are eligible for overtime pay if they work more than 40 hours per week; while simultaneously relaxing the guidelines employers may use to categorize them so that they could more easily shift those previously-overtime-eligible into various new overtime-ineligible categories; resulting is situations such that even someone who flips hamburgers at a McDonalds could, just because she happens to informally oversee the work of the two other burger-flippers with whom she stands shoulder-to-shoulder, qualify as "a person in a position of responsibility" under the new guidelines and is, therefore, ineligible for overtime pay.

And it's worthy of note that, like the aforementioned $100,000 "high earner" cap, the $23,660 isn't indexed for inflation, either -- thereby ensuring that probably within this decade and, if not, then certainly within the next, the new $23,660 figure will be as meaningless as the vintage-1975 figure of $8,060 from which it has been raised.

Of course, the spin your type put on it tells a completely different, arrogant, condescending story... twisting the facts so that Americans too busy or too apathetic to dig deeply enough for them will be easily misled by such as the Department of Labor official statements at the time, saying that "the new rules could give up to 1.3-million low-wage 'white-collar' workers an additional $375 million in compensation each year. Under the current rules, workers who earn less than $8,060 are automatically eligible for overtime - a level set in the 1970s ... under the final rule, however, workers who earn up to $23,660, or about $455 a week, will be automatically eligible for overtime."

I swear, people like you will put whatever spin on things you think is necessary to make it all appear like it's just no big deal and people like me are just overreacting. If the government issued free skateboards to everyone and took away all the automobiles from those who own them, you'd write the headline, "Free Skateboards Issued to All Americans; Two-thirds More People Now Have a Means of Transportation."

Thank you, Big Red, for giving the readers here whom you are so certain would see things your way one last illustration of your arrogant indifference. I appreciate the help.

And, no... I won't use any of my comments to you on Mr. Walters. I'm far more creative than that. Mr. Walters gets his own.