I worked for a classic MSP a while back, barely lasted 3 months. Such a toxic environment, tons of pressure to spread yourself thinner and thinner.
It was one of those places where you were expected to be there an hour early, stay an hour late, and work through your lunch.
Even though that’s illegal, it was never explicit, just one of those, wink wink type things. But the workload was always so heavy, you couldn’t stay on top of everything unless you were working 50+ hours a week.
And of course, all salary, no overtime or double time for weekend work.
I do internal IT now, much better. Trying to get my own one-person shop going to eventually be fully self-employed. Actually, it would be really cool to become a worker-owned co-op, but that’s still a faint dream.
Nice! I’ve job hopped a few times and tripped my salary in 5 years and am at a unicorn msp with unlimited PTO and management that cares about employees.
I wish I could find a union IT shop, but nothing around that I’ve seen available. Happy to hear my first statement isn’t as universal as my experience suggests!
“Unlimited PTO” is a meaningless term, and a trap.
I have 42 days of PTO per year, plus 13 state holidays.
I have a right to take those days off, they can’t be denied by anyone.
And if I don’t take them, my team lead will have a talk with me in October at the latest, because the company would get in legal trouble if I didn’t get them.
With “unlimited PTO” you have no such right to any amount of PTO.
Sure, you could try to schedule lots of PTO, but it can just be denied (“not possible right now”), or if you take too many, you’re just fired.
Do system administrators still exist? Honest question. I was one of those years ago and layoffs, forced back to office bullshit drove me away
I think they call them devops now.
yes, but we spend most of our time in meetings with cloud service vendors now.
I haven’t been inside the server room for a month.
I only go in the server room to t-pose in front of the giant air conditioner to cool off.
There are dozens of us (working for MSPs because in house doesn’t pay as well and companies are cheap and want to outsource that cost center)!
I switched from an MSP to a unionized in-house position, doubled my salary and my days of paid time off.
I worked for a classic MSP a while back, barely lasted 3 months. Such a toxic environment, tons of pressure to spread yourself thinner and thinner.
It was one of those places where you were expected to be there an hour early, stay an hour late, and work through your lunch.
Even though that’s illegal, it was never explicit, just one of those, wink wink type things. But the workload was always so heavy, you couldn’t stay on top of everything unless you were working 50+ hours a week.
And of course, all salary, no overtime or double time for weekend work.
I do internal IT now, much better. Trying to get my own one-person shop going to eventually be fully self-employed. Actually, it would be really cool to become a worker-owned co-op, but that’s still a faint dream.
Nice! I’ve job hopped a few times and tripped my salary in 5 years and am at a unicorn msp with unlimited PTO and management that cares about employees.
I wish I could find a union IT shop, but nothing around that I’ve seen available. Happy to hear my first statement isn’t as universal as my experience suggests!
“Unlimited PTO” is a meaningless term, and a trap.
I have 42 days of PTO per year, plus 13 state holidays.
I have a right to take those days off, they can’t be denied by anyone.
And if I don’t take them, my team lead will have a talk with me in October at the latest, because the company would get in legal trouble if I didn’t get them.
With “unlimited PTO” you have no such right to any amount of PTO.
Sure, you could try to schedule lots of PTO, but it can just be denied (“not possible right now”), or if you take too many, you’re just fired.
Plus they don’t have to book the liability on the balance sheet!
That’s my job title.
What do you do now?
What, do you think it’s all run by AI now?
Idk dude, I got a redundancy about a year ago. There are still jobs out there but it feels like it’s dwindling.