Marines, we are leaving!
"Billy, find us a way out of this hole"
-Ahnuld as Dutch from "Predator"
I have just had a very nice conversation with a fellow from the U of M and it has been confirmed - I will be interviewing for a position with the Technology Services Center on the U of M campus Wednesday at 10am. Hooah!
My time with Wells has certainly had its ups and downs. I walked in the door my first day on February 18th, 2008, almost literally into a meatgrinder. Wells Fargo supports a plethora of highly proprietary software for everything from managing email contacts to remote networking to bare bones data entry. And I came in with no training given and no training available for any of it. Apparently this is a commonality with Wells Fargo.
Since then I've had to teach myself a lot of things by scratch, catching more experienced techs and even some of our users in 15 minute intervals of brain-picking to get a clue what the hell I'm doing. Since then my job duties have changed slightly, focusing less on phone support and more on building/rebuilding/reimaging machines and pushing out software updates. However, since our sorely understaffed team of 3 supports a user base of over 700 I still would have hours upon hours of my time funneled into support this buggy piece of software or that buggy piece of software (word to the wise, never use Integrity's Zone Alarm for a firewall. Or Voltage for secure emailing).
All the while I have had to work under someone who is possibly one of the most weasily, underhanded, jelly spined bosses I've ever known. This guy continually cripples our efforts to get more staff or get honest to god training on what we're supporting, all the while smiling to -his- boss and saying "it's not my fault, it's those techs who work under me!" The guy keeps us understaffed because he flat out doesn't know how to manage people, and is so intimidated by the three of us that do work for him on this team that he won't hire more. And he gets away with it.
Also, our user base as a whole seriously needs to die in a fire. We support Wells Fargo Business Credit, who for the uninitiated are the muckity mucks who create and maintain the high end contracts for major businesses to bank with -only- Wells Fargo. They make Wells the big money. They get away with murder in regards to how they treat anyone else. Take for instance a fellow, we'll call him "Dick", who over the course of a week called 3 times to the help desk and literally spent the entirety of each call cussing out whoever he talked to, until finally whichever one of us was talking to him had to respectfully hang up. At which point he would then go to his bosses who went to our bosses to tell us how we don't know anything and are crappy people (not just technicians) and how he could run this place better himself. Right. Because your vast amounts of technological ability are why you needed to call in the first place. Because your outstanding social skills will win you friends business wide. His boss knows what an ass he is, but nothing more will come of it than a slap on the wrist and a memo from our lilly-livered boss on how we need to take customer service training that he never schedules for us. Because, you know, our years of customer service background that made us eligible candidates for this job in the first place are obviously lacking. The farkwad just sends this email to the three of us where -his- boss can see it to go "see, I'm fixing the problem! What a good boy am I!"
And this happens every day.
I have a lot of hope riding on this interview. I will do my best to keep things...polite...when asked about my position with Wells currently. And if I net this position then my good friend and fellow 1/3 of the support team Shawn will be applying as well. We're both tired of doing the work of a Systems Analyst 1 through 3 and being paid like we're high end secretaries and not skilled technicians.
We'd both like to be treated like and work with actual human beings again.
-Ahnuld as Dutch from "Predator"
I have just had a very nice conversation with a fellow from the U of M and it has been confirmed - I will be interviewing for a position with the Technology Services Center on the U of M campus Wednesday at 10am. Hooah!
My time with Wells has certainly had its ups and downs. I walked in the door my first day on February 18th, 2008, almost literally into a meatgrinder. Wells Fargo supports a plethora of highly proprietary software for everything from managing email contacts to remote networking to bare bones data entry. And I came in with no training given and no training available for any of it. Apparently this is a commonality with Wells Fargo.
Since then I've had to teach myself a lot of things by scratch, catching more experienced techs and even some of our users in 15 minute intervals of brain-picking to get a clue what the hell I'm doing. Since then my job duties have changed slightly, focusing less on phone support and more on building/rebuilding/reimaging machines and pushing out software updates. However, since our sorely understaffed team of 3 supports a user base of over 700 I still would have hours upon hours of my time funneled into support this buggy piece of software or that buggy piece of software (word to the wise, never use Integrity's Zone Alarm for a firewall. Or Voltage for secure emailing).
All the while I have had to work under someone who is possibly one of the most weasily, underhanded, jelly spined bosses I've ever known. This guy continually cripples our efforts to get more staff or get honest to god training on what we're supporting, all the while smiling to -his- boss and saying "it's not my fault, it's those techs who work under me!" The guy keeps us understaffed because he flat out doesn't know how to manage people, and is so intimidated by the three of us that do work for him on this team that he won't hire more. And he gets away with it.
Also, our user base as a whole seriously needs to die in a fire. We support Wells Fargo Business Credit, who for the uninitiated are the muckity mucks who create and maintain the high end contracts for major businesses to bank with -only- Wells Fargo. They make Wells the big money. They get away with murder in regards to how they treat anyone else. Take for instance a fellow, we'll call him "Dick", who over the course of a week called 3 times to the help desk and literally spent the entirety of each call cussing out whoever he talked to, until finally whichever one of us was talking to him had to respectfully hang up. At which point he would then go to his bosses who went to our bosses to tell us how we don't know anything and are crappy people (not just technicians) and how he could run this place better himself. Right. Because your vast amounts of technological ability are why you needed to call in the first place. Because your outstanding social skills will win you friends business wide. His boss knows what an ass he is, but nothing more will come of it than a slap on the wrist and a memo from our lilly-livered boss on how we need to take customer service training that he never schedules for us. Because, you know, our years of customer service background that made us eligible candidates for this job in the first place are obviously lacking. The farkwad just sends this email to the three of us where -his- boss can see it to go "see, I'm fixing the problem! What a good boy am I!"
And this happens every day.
I have a lot of hope riding on this interview. I will do my best to keep things...polite...when asked about my position with Wells currently. And if I net this position then my good friend and fellow 1/3 of the support team Shawn will be applying as well. We're both tired of doing the work of a Systems Analyst 1 through 3 and being paid like we're high end secretaries and not skilled technicians.
We'd both like to be treated like and work with actual human beings again.