So, I just need to rant for a minute about what’s just happened. It’s made me feel fairly disposable as a worker. I work in I.T. support. I help people who can’t operate technology with highly complicated issues. I am highly skilled, well trained and I have a diverse set of understanding for technical issues....
I have a friend who is a paralegal, and while her opinion does not constitute legal advice, she thinks I should talk to an employment lawyer as well… I’m seriously considering it, but at the moment I’m biding my time a little bit as I still have personal effects at the workplace that I would like to recover before pursuing any action that could sour the relationship between that employer and me (from their perspective) any more than it may already be soured.
I resisted the urge to make the comment “laying someone off after they recover from a disability? That’s awfully brave of you.”
I don’t think that would have gone over particularly well with them. Needless to say, my first priorities are to find reliable employment and recover my belongings. I’ll consider it further when that is accomplished. Lucky for me, I had previously been given the name of someone who is exactly this kind of lawyer by someone I worked with. Let me paraphrase them by saying, it’s not the first time, and probably won’t be the last.
I feel like it’s unfortunate since I actually liked the people I worked with. I didn’t care for management, but bluntly, most management rubs me the wrong way, so no love lost there… But they had some really great people working there that I genuinely enjoyed working with. Oh well. Life goes on.
Agreed. If someone proposed a tech workers Union, I would sign up. The problem is that unless everyone agrees, there’s always going to be some fresh-faced person straight out of college/uni who is willing to work outside the Union who will work for next to nothing.
I imagine such an organisation being something akin to the stone masons or nurses association… Where people from all different employers and walks of life are represented as a group.
Until something like that happens, I’m afraid we’re stuck. We will be exploited and taken advantage of whenever and wherever management thinks they can get away with it.
The doctors note said little more than (I’m paraphrasing) $employee can return to work as they have recovered from the disability. X, y, and z would still be beneficial to $employee whenever possible.
That last bit was mostly about doing whatever is possible to prevent it from happening again, and little more than a suggestion for the exact kind of environment you should find in an office.
If someone were to give it 30s of analysis, it basically reads that I’m good to go and I can work in a normal office environment.
I am disabled. I have an executive function disorder. I have been working on it and continue to work on it with several healthcare professionals so that I can function normally (as expected) relative to everyone else. I take on the responsibility of making sure I can keep up with everyone and little, if any, burden put on others to make accommodations for me. My doctor knows this and worded the note accordingly.
Software and the whole developer community will probably get it together before the rest of the tech industry does.
The main difference I see with programmers/developers/whatever (people who write software), is that they’re usually producing a good that can be sold, therefore their efforts directly relate to customer sales and customer retention from a business standpoint, thus they are usually better treated and compensated, but aren’t. I mean, none of the workers in the tech industry, IMO, are treated well… actually scratch that, not even just tech, any workers are generally treated poorly in the absence of a union, where they might be treated like they exist as more than numbers on a page, by force.
IT support and general IT staff are usually considered a “cost center” by management. Something you need, not something that you want, so workers in this field are generally taken advantage of whenever possible. Even medium-sized businesses generally only have one IT person if any at all (more than a few are hiring out to an MSP instead). The companies do not care about their IT staff, as long as they exist and can take blame for the technical things that go wrong, and with any luck, fix them and make the rest of the company productive to make money.
What many business owners need a lesson in, is the undeniable truth that companies are no longer selling a product, they’re information management companies that make money by selling products/services. Almost everything in the modern era is computer/network/server driven, whether in the “cloud” or not. The sales process relies on phones, which have almost entirely moved to VoIP, and email, and usually involves some server running CRM software or similar. Everything they do is on the computer now. Companies can no longer exist without the IT department doing their job effectively. That’s just one example, and you can cut and paste the ideas to pretty much any job in a business. There’s very few exceptions to this in most modern businesses. Unless the company is a tech-driven industry, and even then, IT is just a cost center. They don’t realize how important we are; not right now they don’t.
aaah, I have difficulty with some of the terminology, and you’ve filled in a gap. Thanks.
IMO, a lot of the recent college grads would just be happy to be employed for more money than they would be at pretty much any other job that they’ve worked; so little more than minimum wage. Where I am, minimum wage at full time hours gets you just over 30k/yr, so companies offering 50-60, a bit less than double that, seem appealing to those who are recent grads, but the problem is that for someone who just racked up tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt with college/uni, doesn’t really understand that $50k/yr is massively underpaid for a high-skill position, even an entry one. I was an inadvertent scab when I started, but that was over 10 years ago, when things were a lot cheaper, I could get an apartment when I started, for around $600/mo, and now the same place would easily be double that.
I’m not excusing my behaviour at all, just trying to provide context. I was paid less than $50k/yr when I started, and it took me a while, about 3-4 years in the industry, until I demanded more. Fact is, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I have very quickly lost potential employment because I “asked for too much” during early stages of the interview process. I’m okay with that. Those people clearly don’t know what the value of I.T. is, and they may never realize that their poor excuse for infrastructure and IT support, is because they can’t attract talent offering so little.
The addage of “nobody wants to work anymore” is both true and false. Nobody wants to work for the wages that companies are offering. It’s a multi-headed demon that needs to be understood more than anything. Companies have enjoyed stagnant wages, and increased worker productivity as a result of technology for a long time, along with rising costs of goods sold, all contributing to their profits; in many industries, companies are no longer satisfied with less than half of the cost of goods sold going to profit, and they want more. More for them, less for everyone else. where everyone else includes their clients, workers, support staff… everyone. More for the shareholders and c-levels and less for the people who actually do the work. This drives the working class into poverty, while the rich become richer, and it’s no wonder that things are so messed up right now.
This is something I’ve recognised for a long time. I will never get what I am worth 100% because I’m just a worker. Value from my work will be extracted because the sales staff needs to be paid, and the accountants need to be paid, and management, and everyone I rely on as a worker to both do my job and get paid. There will always be something additional removed for profit above and beyond the cost of all of those other labor needs that make my job possible, since I’m not the only person contributing to the earnings of the company, and the only way to make what I’m worth is to get out on my own, and become a contractor. I don’t want to do that. I have a certificate from a local college for business; I have seen the processes and whatnot that make up the accounting, marketing, sales and other processes that contribute to the success of a transaction. I am not interested and actively dislike having to do any of those tasks.
For me, this is understood, and I’ve accepted that, since I don’t want to do all the jobs. I’m willing to accept a certain amount of loss for my labor so I don’t have to think about or engage in any of those other activities. The work I do is, to my estimation, worth at least $150k/yr, extrapolated from the amount my employers charge for my time, multiplied by the number of hours they expect me to achieve in billable time per day, times five days a week, times 52 weeks per year. I struggle to extract half that in wage. If I could get half of that in wages, I’d be pretty happy, but I can’t. Therein lies the problem. I don’t and never have expected my full value, but I don’t think 50% is too much. Honestly, it should be higher, but bluntly, companies are not in the right position to entertain that, either psychologically, or financially due to mismanagement.
The value I’m seeking to be recognised for is that I’m worth paying a higher percentage of the earnings I’m capable of bringing in. I am useful beyond my role in almost every aspect because I’ve taken the time and gotten the relevant education to actually understand the factors that go into these things. I have a deeper understanding of business practices than the average, and I can all but sell a product or service to a client that they currently do not have; aka, priming a sale for the company. I have been directly responsible for several sales at multiple clients over my career. Not nearly at the same rate as our dedicated sales team, since that’s literally their only job, but I’ve given easy sells to so many of our sales staff that, while I’m on the clock billing time for something else, sold another product with all but the papers signed and money transferred. I make other workers jobs easier, which IMO, is worth more than the direct technical value provided. It’s a skill set that I don’t see in my coworkers that are exclusively focused on the technology. There are many other aspects I can enhance that is valuable, and I often step out of my immediate role to help others. That’s just how I am. I want to be helpful, and if something is in the best interest of the client, I will sell it. Even knowing this, and experiencing this first-hand at work, my employer still decided on a layoff.
I don’t feel like any of what I’ve said is unreasonable. 50% of the earnings I directly bill for is my salary, and I provide value beyond that which justifies the amount spent.
I’m neurodivergent, with an executive function disorder, and that classifies me as disabled, yes. I have done everything in my power to meet everyone on their terms, so nobody needs to make accomodations for me. It’s still hard to fit in for me, but I take on the challenge of that as part of the experience of employment; I do everything in my power to make sure that my differences don’t affect the ability for others to operate as they normally would.
yet, I still feel rejected by the systems I’ve worked so hard to fit into. I’m tossed out like trash whenever they feel like I’m not doing enough, when I’m fighting very hard to survive in their world, not made for people like me. All I’ve ever wanted was to be helpful. Let me be helpful, and pay me for the significant efforts I take to be helpful.
if you know of any company that has a union that includes the IT support team, I will pursue it aggressively. Sadly, even the companies with unions often omit the IT/support staff as covered under the contract. But if you (or some future reader) finds such a company, let me know and I’ll add them to the list of places to watch for openings.
I’m in Canada, and with the exception of some healthcare and related things (like parental leave), we’re very similar in employment laws at a high level. I still plan to inquire about it with an attorney, but I’m not exactly hopeful that will result in something.
Speaking to some people who know the system better than I do, locally, they’ve informed me that our government employment insurance system (which has been covering me financially since I became “disabled”, may launch an inquiry, since it’s very legally dubious that a company doesn’t take back a worker after a disability)… based on the results of that inquiry, I may have legal options… that’s a lot of if’s, and relying on others to do their jobs and results of these things being in my favor. At present, I’m apt to leave it be, but I will pursue it if advisors say otherwise. I will be seeking official legal advice on the matter at some point in the near future. I can’t and won’t promise any specific action because I don’t have all the information required for the matter; in my mind it could go either way. what I can promise is that I’ll be looking into it. I don’t know that I will update anything in any meaningful way to relay the results here, but it will be examined as an option.
What’s important to note, is that this is a layoff. A layoff is different than firing (termination of employment), you still don’t have a job at the end of the day, but a layoff is more along the lines of “we are currently unable to fulfill the requirements of employing you”, which opens the option of employment later if the conditions change on the companies side of things. I’m still unemployed at the moment, so I’ll see what happens, I don’t officially come off disability until the end of the month, and I don’t report that to employment insurance for a few weeks yet; but I may give them a call on Monday just to inform them of the change, which may accelerate the process. Regardless, I don’t want to force them to employ me, since that’s usually a recipe to have them seek out any/all infractions and reprimand me whenever possible to justify firing me with cause, which would be worse for me overall; EI here only covers job loss where there is no fault of your own contributing to the loss. If you are fired with cause, then you’re on your own. While EI doesn’t provide enough income to sustain myself properly, it’s something, which is more than nothing.
Thanks, I appreciate your confidence in this matter. I’m not sure I have such a sunny outlook, but I don’t really have a choice but to find something. I can’t sustain myself on what I’m currently getting from my insurance.
I understand this entirely; the only statement I can make about “wearing multiple hats” at work, is the companies I’ve worked for (both the former employer, and this one) are both very small, so sometimes there’s not enough of your work to keep you busy, and making yourself useful for other departments is key to maintaining your employment. Sitting around waiting for work to fall from the sky, is not a good look.
In any company that has even 4 or 5 people per department, it should never be a problem. at my former employer (the first one mentioned in the original post), we had 5 or 6 support-focused team members, I rarely stepped outside of MSP support, beyond generating leads for inside sales to existing clients for stuff they needed from a technical aspect. at the “new” place, most deparments had fewer than 4 people. The team I was on, was three support techs.
What irked me, is that as MSP, I had to know everyone else’s job, but nobody was required to cross train on my team. All the other departments were solely focused on their specific tasks, but since I had to take total ownership of all the needs of the clients assigned to me, I had to know how the ISP operations and voice operations team’s jobs entirely. That was problematic for me. I raised the issue a few times and did not get positive responses. I persisted in succeeding at the role regardless, but I still didn’t like it. If I got a support ticket that was for an add/change/remove for a VoIP extension, I should have been permitted to forward that to the voice team and continue with my normal work, doing little more than traffic control on the ticket as a result; if a company wanted faster/different internet, or had an internet related issue, I should have been able to do the same for the ISP team, but it was expected that I would make my best effort to find and solve the problem before I engaged with that team, so I still had to know their job.
The irony of the whole thing is that the other departments jobs were so straight-forward that I was often able to do their jobs better than they could. I’m not meaning to brag or anything that I’m better or something, I don’t believe I am. With my specific disability, I’m classified as neurodivergent, so there’s a certain structure I always look for when dealing with issues. Simply having that structure seemed to lead me to better solutions than that team otherwise would have. The neurotypical workers in those teams would focus on just completing the immediate task, while I would go through the whole thing from top to bottom, trying to understand the full scope of the issue, from a fundamental level. This often led to me catching issues that were otherwise unnoticed. It also resulted in me taking much longer to do simple tasks than others took; which is a big reason I don’t consider my approach to be “better”, just different. It could be argued either way which is “better”, and such an assessment is really a matter of opinion. The fact is, me doing their work often resulted in finding more issues, and taking longer. I got blamed for slow working, and they shot the messenger more than once for the problems found; so I get blamed for things a lot. I’m okay with it because I know it’s not my fault. As long as nobody yells at me, or threatens my job for what I’ve found, I’m going to keep doing it… but my interest in doing that work was to resolve the problems so I don’t need to deal with it again later; so I always try to do root cause analysis, or RCA. RCA is not a short process… sometimes it’s as simple as changing deborah to sally, or whatever, on a phone system, and resetting the voicemail password, then emailing that information off to the customer. Other times it’s that the user is assigned but to an offline or incorrect phone, or the phone is assigned as the wrong model in the system and it’s not picking up the changes because the configuration file is wrong for the phone type (or any number of other errors). Things happen.
Sorry for the mini-rant, I kinda got off topic there for a bit.
I can definitely agree that the system has been an immense failure for the mass of the population. If the majority ever figure that out, then the thieves at the top are in major trouble.
this looks good on paper but no canadian branch exists currently. A good option for those living in an area covered by them (not me, but others may benefit).
countries with chapters include the USA, Brasil, India, Germany, Ireland, England, Italy, and The Netherlands.
joinifpte.org
International Federation of Professional & Technical Engineers.
They exist in Canada, but seem to be more oriented towards professional engineering (structural, electrical, that sort of thing), less-so things like network engineering.
I.T. staff missing from their “Occupations” under “whom we represent” on their about page. No related technical jobs are listed beyond Programmers, which could be computer programmers but also could be something else. They also list “Technicians” but that can really be anything also, so I have no idea.
Potentially worth contacting them to inquire further about whether they cover IT/support workers, and if so, what companies they represent, so I can focus job searching on the companies that are local to me.
upte.org
Part of the CWA
seems to represent mainly healthcare researchers and professionals, along with technicians (I assume in the medical field, like lab techs and assistants).
California based, seems to be US-centric, no international coverage, good for US workers in healthcare.
cwa-union.org
Has presence in Canada
"Communication Workers Association"; specifically referring to media workers, like TV and multimedia companies. Most notably for canada, they represent the workers of the CBC, or Canadian Broadcasting Corporation; which is great, but not really in the computers/technical field I’m in, and likely exclude I.T./support staff from contracts.
aflcio.org
Seems to be an umbrella for several other unions, most notably SAG-AFTRA, NFLPA, trades (electrical workers, machinists and aerospace workers, fabrication, etc). Very little if any unions listed seem to be computerized-tech related or specialized.
Their tagline is “America’s Unions” which should tell you all you need to know about their focused locale, probably not a great option for locales outside of the USA.
My main issue is with the fact that none of these explicitly list, and very likely do not represent workers in the computerized technologies, with the possible exception of programmers, which I am not a programmer. This is great information for anyone living in the USA or working in a highly technical/skilled environment, but does not pose an answer to my initial inquiry, which was a union that includes the IT support workers. For someone working a non-IT position, or someone working in the USA, there’s likely a union that only needs to be found.
I’m not angry or upset at the response at all, you tried and I appreciate that. Hopefully this is good information for other people, and I hope it helps them. It does not however seem to help me much or at all. Regardless, I appreciate the effort. Unfortunately as IT support, I’m generally cornered into non-union positions, which makes me vulnerable to more exploitation than other fields; which isn’t to imply other workers and groups are not exploited, they just usually have some options where they can have better representation that I could have to advocate for their wages and benefits compared to what I can do individually.
Regardless of all of the above, I wish everyone who reads this all the best in their career. I hope you all get the best representation possible, and that you’re successful in negotiating for your livelihoods regardless of your locale, chosen vocation, experience, race, religion or any other factor beyond your specific skill set. I bear no ill will towards anyone who has a union simply because I do not have the same opportunities.
I’m not a cybersecurity admin, I do sysadmin and network admin work mainly. I’ve taken more time off this year from burnout than I have worked this year.
The problem isn’t exclusive to security, and it’s not getting better. The entire IT support industry is grinding it’s workers to the bone and there’s already a need for more workers. By the time this grinder is finished, there won’t be anyone left to do support.
Earlier in the pandemic many news and magazine organizations would proudly write about how working from home always actually can lead to over working and being too “productive”. I am yet to collect some evidence on it but I think we remember a good amount about this....
Fact is, at the beginning, remote work was a requirement for companies to keep operating (aka, printing money for the execs and shareholders), so it was freely discussed as a positive thing.
Now that shareholders and execs can require RTO, the narrative is reversed. If you look at most of the articles surrounding WFH “not working” there’s a very high chance that the motivation for such statements revolves around what management says about WFH, with no actual data to corroborate the message.
If you do your own research, a lot of what was true for WFH at the start of the pandemic is still true. The numbers and studies show that on the whole in the majority of circumstances, WFH increases productivity and makes workers happier overall. There are a few exceptions to this, I’m sure of that, and for each person, WFH or in office should be a personal choice, but it’s not. You should be allowed to work where you feel most productive and happy. As long as it doesn’t negatively impact your output, then it shouldn’t matter, but to execs, it does matter.
IMO, the motivation for forced RTO is twofold: first, control. The company you work for wants to exert control over you, so you have to do something that maybe you’re not a big fan of doing, simply because they say so. Additionally, they have more control over your day to day actions while you’re at the office. When you get to converse with others, monitoring how much time you’re spending away from your desk, the ability to walk up to you and grill you for any reason (or no reason). The second, is justifying office expenses. Either to be able to write it off, or pay their real estate owning buddies so those people can get money that could otherwise go to, IDK, wages (lol, it wouldn’t, but you know), and by having the vast majority of their workforce in house all the time, they can keep that going.
I’m sure there’s more to it, but that’s my impression. Fact is, very few companies are allowing RTO to be just an option. Everything is either part-in-office (aka hybrid), or forced full time RTO. Full remote positions are evaporating.
Oooh, this is a post for me. I have a handful of projects going.
I have a network room that needs a fan installed where the window used to be, I have the fan, just need to cut open the board covering what used to be the window, install the fan, and wire it up to exhaust hot air out of the room directly outside. Non time critical, I have the door to that room open for now, it used to be a root cellar in the basement.
I also need to fix the insane electrical work for the basement lighting that the former owner of this house put in. He put in one of those light socket to plug things, then wired together all the new lights in the basement with Romex (all fluorescent) and finished it to a plug that connects to that light socket. I want to pull apart this hot garbage and wire it correctly, and replace the light switches box in the process (some of the threading in the electrical box is stripped, so the switch doesn’t mount correctly), and move it to a different circuit, because it’s currently sharing a circuit with the recreation room, and a couple of bedrooms for seemingly no good reason.
I also have to replace all the magnetic ballasts in the basement light fixtures with electronic ballasts because we have fluorescent replacement LED bulbs, which only work on electronic ballasts. Yay. I have to check the garage and at least one other room with fluorescent fixtures to see if they’re on magnetic ballasts and replace them too so we can finally have all LED lighting in the house.
Going with lighting here: I have to find my multimeter to test and hopefully fix a lamp my brother purchased that doesn’t work that will go in the living room, and replace all the lightbulbs in the living room with smart bulbs, then have them controlled by an in-wall smart light switch (which is already in place), via home assistant. I also need to do smart bulbs in the recreation room, I also have new light fixtures for the rec room to replace some that had loose bulbs (the bulb base was loose in the fixture), and replace the light switches in there with in wall smart switches.
A whole room is lacking power, it was split between different circuits, one was the basement lights/rec room, the other was to the bathroom, I managed to rewire the room to a single point, and I’m trying to pull a new circuit to the room with 12/2 Romex. Holes are drilled, just need to feed the cable along side another run of Romex, and likely pull one more circuit to separate the bathrooms (which are on different floors above/below eachother), from the fridge in the kitchen. Two new circuits, woo. Need breakers for them.
My brother also bought a gazebo from the hardware store that needs to be built and set up in the back yard, and my father in law bought us some pathway lights that I have yet to unpack.
The back yard garden is overgrown with weeds, and I need to deal with that. We didn’t do any gardening this year so nature took over… I don’t really have many if any tools to deal with it, so I need to do some garden supply shopping.
I’m also prepping to install ethernet throughout the house, I have two boxes of category 6 cable, 1000 ft each (2000 ft total), including wiring going up into the attic for access points.
I’m sure I’m forgetting a lot, but that’s the projects that are foremost on my mind… Some are pretty easy (like the rec room fixtures, I have them, I just need to hang them, or the new wire pull from the power-less room, I have the cable partly run, just need to pull it the rest of the way).
Longer term, I want to build raised boxes in the garden, plus renovate to add a kitchen and another bathroom (with a shower)… Build a new shed, and replace the old antenna tower with something less rusted and perhaps taller, plus run coax from the antenna tower to my office for my ham radio hobby.
Maybe eventually put solar panels on the roof and perhaps a battery system so we can produce and store our own power…
Thanks! I think in the short term we’re going to try to make the electronic ballast lamps we already purchased work… If we hit any issues, I’ll look around for the bypass.
We only have 10? Bulbs, I think, and we have at least 8 fixtures, each taking two bulbs. So we’ll have to buy more anyways, I’ll probably get what you suggest for the remainder, and test them along side the direct ballast driven ones… Either way, thanks
My biggest complaint with Live Action Trek vs the two Animation shows is that they seem obsessed with giving us a black ship on a black background. It’s nice to be given a reprieve, even if for only one episode.
Workers are not valuable
So, I just need to rant for a minute about what’s just happened. It’s made me feel fairly disposable as a worker. I work in I.T. support. I help people who can’t operate technology with highly complicated issues. I am highly skilled, well trained and I have a diverse set of understanding for technical issues....
Being Mean to Scabs Is Working ( www.motherjones.com )
Drew Barrymore and Bill Maher are now not resuming their shows amid strikes.
Cyber professionals say industry urgently needs to confront mental health crisis ( cyberscoop.com )
cross-posted from: lemmy.capebreton.social/post/506912...
Almost all remote-work news is negative now but was positive in the beginning of the pandemic. Have you noticed this or am I going crazy?
Earlier in the pandemic many news and magazine organizations would proudly write about how working from home always actually can lead to over working and being too “productive”. I am yet to collect some evidence on it but I think we remember a good amount about this....
(August) What are you working on now, DIY? ( beehaw.org )
Making any progress, you slackers? Tell us about it!
Ship Lighting ( startrek.website )
My biggest complaint with Live Action Trek vs the two Animation shows is that they seem obsessed with giving us a black ship on a black background. It’s nice to be given a reprieve, even if for only one episode.