What Ive Been Up To - Part 1: The Job
If you recall my post a little over a year ago ( here) I got a job at Paulstra as a developer and support tech (we were so small everyone has to do support too). Well at first that was going pretty well, I enjoyed the job. I never had too much work and though some individual problems were stressful it was not too stressful overall. Well a few months into the job we learned that the IT department (and a couple other departments) would be merging with our sister company of Hutchinson Sealing Systems (Hutchinson owns Paulstra also). This meant above my boss would be an IT Director and the person we currently reported to would change. At first this did not seem like too big of a deal, but oh.... would that change.
The first major IT change was our email system. We went from the very common and works well with Windows; Microsoft Outlook to IBM Lotus Notes. Let me tell you, dont ever to this!! Lotus Notes is 10 times more complicated than an email app needs to be and administering it really sucks. Lotus Notes probably gave me an extra 40 hours of work for the first few months.
And next of course, came downsizing. The IT Director (Candace) interview each of us individually the first week of this merger and I did mention this was a starting job for me, im a programmer and I could not to this tech support thing forever. She really insisted I tell her how long that is, I probably meant 2 or 3 years but I said 5. Well it turns out that was a pretty important answer. There was 4 of us in the IT department and 2 others in what’s called IS (we do quite different things). Well they let one person from IS go and then the main database developer in our department, in fact the only one for about 10 years. Well he decided to leave. Turns out he found out they were going to let him go so he decided to quit first. Well obviously this had immediate and serious implications for me, the only one left with any programming experience. Randy wrote (in Microsoft Access) and managed around 10 databases. A couple of these were very important applications that kept track of all budgets, spending, and part development. I don’t have too much experience with MS Access and, SQL Server, and SQL Procedures. In Randys last two weeks he went over some things with me but there is no way he could go over everything, it could take months, each application has thousands of lines of code. So now I was responsible for the work I already had (really wasn’t too much) and now all of another persons.
Oh, but that was not all... I later found out that my boss, who is the Network Administrator would be becoming the Corporate Network Admin and he would have to move to Detroit (other side of the state) where Corporate is. He would no longer be a Paulstra employee, not under their payroll. This may seem pretty cool not having your boss on site, but no, this sucked. So our department went from 6 to 3 (including my boss leaving for the other site). Two in IT (Karen and I) and one old guy who is about to retired in IS. And it was determined Karen would be CAD support and I would be everything else. So in less then a month my workload nearly quadrupled. I am the main IT person for around 300 users. Its funny as some people even congratulated me on my promotion, but my pay didn’t change, as far as I know my title didn’t ( I don’t even know what my title is), and hell I was not even hired (still under contract through an outside company). This meant I didn’t have health care, dental, vacation, 401K, or any other benefits.
Yeah, lets talk about that health care, so the outside company I was paid through did offer some benefits, but they were expensive. This was weird to me as I always thought benefits meant they pay for it. Anyway you had to be employed for two months in order to get them. So after 2-3 months I called to sign up and they said because I waited so long (I had to wait!!!) only one package is available, some new cheap package. And I don’t need much, I’ve not been to the doctor since high school. So I said okay to that, which was around $12 a week. When I got all the details in the mail I read through it, but honestly, I didn’t know what most of it meant. So some months later I decided to actually go to the doctor as I had a sore that had not gone away for some weeks (no not down there). My mom recommended one, but before he would see me he asked that I get bloodwork, and my mom found out that the package I had would cover the blood work no problem. So I got the bloodwork done, they took my insurance card, no problem. When it came time to go to the doctor they would not accept my insurance, saying they have never seen anything like this. So I called my insurance and they said it does not matter as they will pay after. Well I dug into it more and I found out, well I don’t actually have insurance, its just a "benefits package" all they do is help pay for medications (I never need any) and they will pay up to $50 per doctor office visit. Nope they don’t cover surgery or anything major. So what I had was pretty pointless. Well I went to the doctor anyway and he said I needed surgery to get it removed and that was a simple operation that would cost around $250. Turns out the sore went away shortly after that so I never got it done, and well, remember that blood work it cost around $500 which my insurance only covered $50 of. So this small doctors office visit where I never even got anything done cost me $600+. Fucking BS imo.
So back to the work/workload. I took on all that database stuff I didn’t really know much about and when there was a serious problem I really had to reverse engineer the system just to understand how it works so I could understand the problem in hopes of fixing it. And in all honesty there has not been much I’ve not been able to fix. This experience in Access is not helping as its not used as a professional programming environment. But I am getting some experience with SQL Server , so that’s good. I rarely ever get to do any development anymore, the very thing I want to do and went to school for.
Oh and there was another thing that made it worse. The IT Office is a closes office with no windows to see into it. It is connected to the server room. It was designed to be an IT Office. We have lots of both power and network connections and we have a little work station to work on computers. The door is always shut, its a good place to work, especially on the computer all day. Well the new CEO (I think it was him) decided that he didn’t like Karen in that office with us alone and well once everyone else in IT left, didn’t like anyone in there. So we had to move into another office across from accounting in a very old part of the building. This office had fake walls, no ceiling. You could hear people talking 4 offices down, in the hallway, etc. And people always stop and talk in the hallway right outside this office. Oh and there was this huge, loud ass printer in there that printed off long reports. It was a terrible place to work. Every time I need to work on a server I had to walk to the old IT office, open it (with key) and then get into the server room (via key card). Oh and this new office did not have enough power and network connections to hook up many computers. So anytime I needed to work on another computer I brought it in the old IT Office and had to go back and forth from they’re to the new office throughout the day. Yeah, very productive.
So my weeks became more stressful every month. Any major problem, especially network related people blamed on me. I hate supporting so many things I did not create. So your application is crashing, did I write it? No!, did I write windows? No!. But I'm to blame, of course. No one ever thanks you when things have been going perfectly fine for weeks, as its just supposed to on its own, right? What I do is I fix other peoples problems, problems created by both end user ignorance and buggy applications. And most of these problems I don’t know how to fix, many from applications I’ve never even used or heard of.
In January we went though a big change, we changed domains (windows domain is what ties the entire network together, the common root). My Boss was putting this together and he had some tools to do most of the migration automatically. We knew there would be some things we had to change manually, but, it didn’t go so well. For some of the users everything was working okay, but for most, they could not access a few of the main things they need to do their job. Many computers did not automatically get migrated, so we had to go out to then individually and do it. The biggest issue was that no one could get on any of the database because all the security was setup to use the previous domain, which was now gone. I was worried this might happen, but I was not sure. So I was in a scramble trying to find out if there was a way to do a mass search and replace for the security, but, there wasn’t. So I had to go into every database to every table, query, function (some databases have hundreds) and redo the security. The worse part about this was that people would not stop coming in, calling, paging me about issues. So I went in the old IT office and locked myself in there, it was so bad that I could not even risk going to the bathroom without 20 people catching me along the way to tell me about their issues, there very things they are preventing me from fixing by wasting time talking to me. It was bad, very bad. Candace (the IT director) was there the day after in the heat of it all and she just went off on us all (mostly Todd since this was his project). Yelled and cusses very very loud, and this was in that office where everyone can hear you talking, let alone a black woman yelling. It didn’t bother me much though as I know I was doing what I could. I had at least two days this week where I worked for 12 hours straight, no lunch break, I had a lunch some of the time, but just ate it as I worked. It took around 4 weeks to get things back to how they were before the change. Things then started to settle down..
Some time around December Candace began talking to me about getting hired in. She said that she owed the CEO some favors and that after that he would owe he one (funny that to get me hired it takes a favor). I was not too concerned about getting hired as I know I would be salary and she expects us to work as many hours as it takes weekly, including weekends. Im protected from that now as I technically am supposed to get paid for all overtime, but I work over quite often now and I usually still just write 40 hours on my time card. But, I really needed some good benefits (health care, vacation, etc). Well its been a while and I’ve still not been hired, I would have pushed the issue, but I'm to the point where I don’t care and that takes us on to now and the closure of this long ass post.
Before this merger/change I used to say I liked/loved my job. But now, every day, every week I say I hate my job. And it only gets worse. I did not go to school for programming to do tech support. I cannot take this much longer. But unfortunately I don’t feel confident enough that I have the experience for a good programming job. But I honestly would take less pay to get out of this job. So, here is what I plan. I am going to touch up on my skills for the next few weeks (finish up some programming books ive started) and then Im going to start looking for a programming job. I've actually had a few calls about jobs lately, even at work. I plan to quit my current job by the end of this month. You know the biggest reason I have not already is that I care, you know when I leave the few remaining I care about will have it rough, thats for sure, but you cannot choose a job based on things like this alone. Its a business, and I must treat it that way. Its time for me to move on.
The first major IT change was our email system. We went from the very common and works well with Windows; Microsoft Outlook to IBM Lotus Notes. Let me tell you, dont ever to this!! Lotus Notes is 10 times more complicated than an email app needs to be and administering it really sucks. Lotus Notes probably gave me an extra 40 hours of work for the first few months.
And next of course, came downsizing. The IT Director (Candace) interview each of us individually the first week of this merger and I did mention this was a starting job for me, im a programmer and I could not to this tech support thing forever. She really insisted I tell her how long that is, I probably meant 2 or 3 years but I said 5. Well it turns out that was a pretty important answer. There was 4 of us in the IT department and 2 others in what’s called IS (we do quite different things). Well they let one person from IS go and then the main database developer in our department, in fact the only one for about 10 years. Well he decided to leave. Turns out he found out they were going to let him go so he decided to quit first. Well obviously this had immediate and serious implications for me, the only one left with any programming experience. Randy wrote (in Microsoft Access) and managed around 10 databases. A couple of these were very important applications that kept track of all budgets, spending, and part development. I don’t have too much experience with MS Access and, SQL Server, and SQL Procedures. In Randys last two weeks he went over some things with me but there is no way he could go over everything, it could take months, each application has thousands of lines of code. So now I was responsible for the work I already had (really wasn’t too much) and now all of another persons.
Oh, but that was not all... I later found out that my boss, who is the Network Administrator would be becoming the Corporate Network Admin and he would have to move to Detroit (other side of the state) where Corporate is. He would no longer be a Paulstra employee, not under their payroll. This may seem pretty cool not having your boss on site, but no, this sucked. So our department went from 6 to 3 (including my boss leaving for the other site). Two in IT (Karen and I) and one old guy who is about to retired in IS. And it was determined Karen would be CAD support and I would be everything else. So in less then a month my workload nearly quadrupled. I am the main IT person for around 300 users. Its funny as some people even congratulated me on my promotion, but my pay didn’t change, as far as I know my title didn’t ( I don’t even know what my title is), and hell I was not even hired (still under contract through an outside company). This meant I didn’t have health care, dental, vacation, 401K, or any other benefits.
Yeah, lets talk about that health care, so the outside company I was paid through did offer some benefits, but they were expensive. This was weird to me as I always thought benefits meant they pay for it. Anyway you had to be employed for two months in order to get them. So after 2-3 months I called to sign up and they said because I waited so long (I had to wait!!!) only one package is available, some new cheap package. And I don’t need much, I’ve not been to the doctor since high school. So I said okay to that, which was around $12 a week. When I got all the details in the mail I read through it, but honestly, I didn’t know what most of it meant. So some months later I decided to actually go to the doctor as I had a sore that had not gone away for some weeks (no not down there). My mom recommended one, but before he would see me he asked that I get bloodwork, and my mom found out that the package I had would cover the blood work no problem. So I got the bloodwork done, they took my insurance card, no problem. When it came time to go to the doctor they would not accept my insurance, saying they have never seen anything like this. So I called my insurance and they said it does not matter as they will pay after. Well I dug into it more and I found out, well I don’t actually have insurance, its just a "benefits package" all they do is help pay for medications (I never need any) and they will pay up to $50 per doctor office visit. Nope they don’t cover surgery or anything major. So what I had was pretty pointless. Well I went to the doctor anyway and he said I needed surgery to get it removed and that was a simple operation that would cost around $250. Turns out the sore went away shortly after that so I never got it done, and well, remember that blood work it cost around $500 which my insurance only covered $50 of. So this small doctors office visit where I never even got anything done cost me $600+. Fucking BS imo.
So back to the work/workload. I took on all that database stuff I didn’t really know much about and when there was a serious problem I really had to reverse engineer the system just to understand how it works so I could understand the problem in hopes of fixing it. And in all honesty there has not been much I’ve not been able to fix. This experience in Access is not helping as its not used as a professional programming environment. But I am getting some experience with SQL Server , so that’s good. I rarely ever get to do any development anymore, the very thing I want to do and went to school for.
Oh and there was another thing that made it worse. The IT Office is a closes office with no windows to see into it. It is connected to the server room. It was designed to be an IT Office. We have lots of both power and network connections and we have a little work station to work on computers. The door is always shut, its a good place to work, especially on the computer all day. Well the new CEO (I think it was him) decided that he didn’t like Karen in that office with us alone and well once everyone else in IT left, didn’t like anyone in there. So we had to move into another office across from accounting in a very old part of the building. This office had fake walls, no ceiling. You could hear people talking 4 offices down, in the hallway, etc. And people always stop and talk in the hallway right outside this office. Oh and there was this huge, loud ass printer in there that printed off long reports. It was a terrible place to work. Every time I need to work on a server I had to walk to the old IT office, open it (with key) and then get into the server room (via key card). Oh and this new office did not have enough power and network connections to hook up many computers. So anytime I needed to work on another computer I brought it in the old IT Office and had to go back and forth from they’re to the new office throughout the day. Yeah, very productive.
So my weeks became more stressful every month. Any major problem, especially network related people blamed on me. I hate supporting so many things I did not create. So your application is crashing, did I write it? No!, did I write windows? No!. But I'm to blame, of course. No one ever thanks you when things have been going perfectly fine for weeks, as its just supposed to on its own, right? What I do is I fix other peoples problems, problems created by both end user ignorance and buggy applications. And most of these problems I don’t know how to fix, many from applications I’ve never even used or heard of.
In January we went though a big change, we changed domains (windows domain is what ties the entire network together, the common root). My Boss was putting this together and he had some tools to do most of the migration automatically. We knew there would be some things we had to change manually, but, it didn’t go so well. For some of the users everything was working okay, but for most, they could not access a few of the main things they need to do their job. Many computers did not automatically get migrated, so we had to go out to then individually and do it. The biggest issue was that no one could get on any of the database because all the security was setup to use the previous domain, which was now gone. I was worried this might happen, but I was not sure. So I was in a scramble trying to find out if there was a way to do a mass search and replace for the security, but, there wasn’t. So I had to go into every database to every table, query, function (some databases have hundreds) and redo the security. The worse part about this was that people would not stop coming in, calling, paging me about issues. So I went in the old IT office and locked myself in there, it was so bad that I could not even risk going to the bathroom without 20 people catching me along the way to tell me about their issues, there very things they are preventing me from fixing by wasting time talking to me. It was bad, very bad. Candace (the IT director) was there the day after in the heat of it all and she just went off on us all (mostly Todd since this was his project). Yelled and cusses very very loud, and this was in that office where everyone can hear you talking, let alone a black woman yelling. It didn’t bother me much though as I know I was doing what I could. I had at least two days this week where I worked for 12 hours straight, no lunch break, I had a lunch some of the time, but just ate it as I worked. It took around 4 weeks to get things back to how they were before the change. Things then started to settle down..
Some time around December Candace began talking to me about getting hired in. She said that she owed the CEO some favors and that after that he would owe he one (funny that to get me hired it takes a favor). I was not too concerned about getting hired as I know I would be salary and she expects us to work as many hours as it takes weekly, including weekends. Im protected from that now as I technically am supposed to get paid for all overtime, but I work over quite often now and I usually still just write 40 hours on my time card. But, I really needed some good benefits (health care, vacation, etc). Well its been a while and I’ve still not been hired, I would have pushed the issue, but I'm to the point where I don’t care and that takes us on to now and the closure of this long ass post.
Before this merger/change I used to say I liked/loved my job. But now, every day, every week I say I hate my job. And it only gets worse. I did not go to school for programming to do tech support. I cannot take this much longer. But unfortunately I don’t feel confident enough that I have the experience for a good programming job. But I honestly would take less pay to get out of this job. So, here is what I plan. I am going to touch up on my skills for the next few weeks (finish up some programming books ive started) and then Im going to start looking for a programming job. I've actually had a few calls about jobs lately, even at work. I plan to quit my current job by the end of this month. You know the biggest reason I have not already is that I care, you know when I leave the few remaining I care about will have it rough, thats for sure, but you cannot choose a job based on things like this alone. Its a business, and I must treat it that way. Its time for me to move on.