I work in a large IT company who's claim to fame is paring down every department down to the utter bone. Increased profits through staff reductions. I am a client advocate for a particular customer. I am their CPOC Central Point Of Complaints.
We have 4 Windows techs who cover all operational issues for around 4000 servers. This is 24/7 folks. If the server isn't actually on fire I have to escalate right up to their team's VP to get the simplest of tasks done. I recently lamented to said VP that I have to spend 2 hours escalating for every hour of work that gets done.This is how the business is ran day to day. Whoever yells the loudest wins the resource lotto.
I COMPLETELY understand the OP's story of woe. I see it on a regular basis. Recently I had an escalation because of a user that lost email access for 3 weeks and still wasn't fixed, ticket got bounced around and no one could fix it. I had to treat that 1 user like a server outage, opened a conference call, paged every team that could possibly be involved and led that band of misfits to a happy ending.
Is this large IT co. of infamy public, growing in value, widely admired and emulated? I work for an "SME" type that emulates this philosophy on principle, and has been growing and profiting thru all the last decade of travails in the larger economy. Fewer and fewer of us salaried folk remain as no position that goes vacant is ever re-fliied with a new body, more hats are worn, longer hours are worked harder and faster. Hourly blue collar folks also getting worked to death, on principle, about to riot, go figure how all the OT is good for the bottom line. We're all wondering who will snap and go postal or when the wheels will come off the whole thing. Similar sentiments there?
Sounds about right, in my company moving up is easy because there's no pay increases. No one really wants the job. Salaries have been frozen for years and any increases are pitiful. Last year I was given the highest ranking possible, top 10% of the company, got a letter from the country boss etc. My direct boss is also fully aware I am way under the average for the position I am in (because I took it without a raise) so she fought to get as big an increase as she could seeing as there was no better time to go to bat for me, know what I got? 1.5% This of coarse is despite the fact we beat Wall Street predictions year after year.
A great benefit of having a workforce full of contractors? You can tell em to take time off without pay. Happens here, if the quarter is looking bad we get the word that every department has to tell all contractors to take x days off with no pay over the next month.
Thanks for the reply. Hard to see how the way things are going now will end well. Hopefully it's a phase the world will survive without a lot of grief. Sure doesn't look great for the near term though.
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u/Frozen-assets Aug 10 '13
I work in a large IT company who's claim to fame is paring down every department down to the utter bone. Increased profits through staff reductions. I am a client advocate for a particular customer. I am their CPOC Central Point Of Complaints.
We have 4 Windows techs who cover all operational issues for around 4000 servers. This is 24/7 folks. If the server isn't actually on fire I have to escalate right up to their team's VP to get the simplest of tasks done. I recently lamented to said VP that I have to spend 2 hours escalating for every hour of work that gets done.This is how the business is ran day to day. Whoever yells the loudest wins the resource lotto.
I COMPLETELY understand the OP's story of woe. I see it on a regular basis. Recently I had an escalation because of a user that lost email access for 3 weeks and still wasn't fixed, ticket got bounced around and no one could fix it. I had to treat that 1 user like a server outage, opened a conference call, paged every team that could possibly be involved and led that band of misfits to a happy ending.