Things IT Professionals Should Not Tolerate

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Tdarcos
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Things IT Professionals Should Not Tolerate

Post by Tdarcos »

In a thread in the discussion on his purchase of an Omega Race cabaret machine, he said,
Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: Mon May 29, 2023 4:46 pm nice to see an environment in a town that had room and wasn't cramming 8 people in an office meant for 2 like they do in IT.
IT professionals often forget or are unaware how valuable they are. Especially now, moving to a new job is easy, and it's possible to discover bad employers through websites like Glassdoor, the answer is to avoid those places like the plague they are.

An IT professional is a highly skilled crafts person in a very complex profession. We keep inventing new things that blossom into whole new fields of endeavor, creating an environment where you can't come close to knowing everything, in many cases you might not even know how to do all of your job, and possibly the biggest part of your work is to know how to use a search engine to find out how it has been done before or various approaches to take.

Not realizing their value, IT professionals often put up with ridiculous (often unnecessary) constraints that can make their job harder to do or would literally prevent them from doing their job. Worse, they sometimes accept signing a contract - probably unnecessary, the contract is not to benefit you, but to force you to work in a place that people would be running away a short time after working there.

So there are conditions that, if you do feel it is worth signing a contract, you need to watch out for, and unless there is serious compensation for accepting it, you probably want to avoid these by rejecting them and continuing your search, or negotiating additional benefits.

If you are presented a contract, strike out and initial non-compete clauses; there is no reason the employer should be able to stop you from working anywhere. Or, as one disk jockey did when negotiating his contract with the radio station, it only applies if you voluntarily quit. Since about the only reason they'd fire him is if he lost ratings, wouldn't it be better if he was working at a competitor? Strike out requirements to pay back salary if you quit within a certain time unless you got an insane signing bonus (like equal to 50% or more of the salary you'd have gotten for the period of time they want to block you.) In some cases, an employer has gone out of business and the receiver was still holding people laid off to the terms of their noncompete clause.

Expecting you to be responsible for paying for onboarding costs they have chosen to inflict upon themselves is the height of arrogance, so reject clauses that if you leave before a certain amount of time you have to pay back all your salary, or a large chunk of money above that. It is probably a red flag that the place is horrible to work for, or that people don't like it there after discovering the work environment is toxic.

If you have to sign a contract, you must get to see it before starting work or possibly even accepting the job, read the damn thing, and if you don't understand it, ask for clarification or pay a lawyer a small fee - probably $200 or less - to explain it to you. You might think this is a lot of money, but for a job where the salary is often six figures, you don't want to accept a contract without knowing what it holds for your future.

As a professional, you need at least a desk and possibly an office. An office so small you can't work there means, well, you can't work there. If for no other reason than you're going to need to use your computer to search Google (or other search engines) for solutions to problems you haven't figured out, and you can't do that if either you cant sit down in the office or you can't even access your computer.

Unless there is a compelling reason otherwise, you should be working on an hourly rate, or, if the pay is good to excelllent for a 40-hour or 48-hour work week, that needs to be in your contract, with an "escalator clause" so that workweeks exceeding this threshhold cause some sort of increase. If you're working 100-hour weeks and doing the work of three people, you'd better be getting at least the pay of three people. If the other side does not agree to a work limit, it's probably a sign they intend to work you to extreme amounts. Too many employers think that if you're on salary they can have you work a very long workweek, without compensating you for the understaffing that causes this problem.

While I've never had to experience the worst of these practices, there are still a lot of these things I wish I had known about when I was negotiating for employment and for benefits.
Evil cannot create anything new
They can only corrupt and ruin
What good forces have invented or made.
- J.R.R. Tolkien

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Ice Cream Jonsey
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Re: Things IT Professionals Should Not Tolerate

Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

This is the best thread you have started, thank you! I have complicated thoughts and agree with a lot of this. More soon.
the dark and gritty...Ice Cream Jonsey!

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AArdvark
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Re: Things IT Professionals Should Not Tolerate

Post by AArdvark »

It was AI generated. Not enough spelling errors

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RealNC
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Re: Things IT Professionals Should Not Tolerate

Post by RealNC »

Tdarcos wrote: Fri Jun 02, 2023 5:29 am An IT professional is a highly skilled crafts person
Haaa! Good one.

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AArdvark
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Re: Things IT Professionals Should Not Tolerate

Post by AArdvark »

But what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you.

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Flack
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Re: Things IT Professionals Should Not Tolerate

Post by Flack »

On the count of three let's all change jobs.
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Tdarcos
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Re: Things IT Professionals Should Not Tolerate

Post by Tdarcos »

The only reason employers got away with essentially draconian conditions like the ones I mentioned above is either IT people didn't realize their value, or there was a labor surplus.

You know, when employees treat employers or potential employers the way they routinely treat employees or applicants, employers don't like it. I've heard employers complain that they decided to offer the position and can't contact them because the employee ghosted them to accept an offer somewhere else, and never bothered to let them know. Hey, HR recruiter, when did you ever call the people who came in for an interview that you picked someone else, I can guess that you never so much as even sent a letter.

To araphrase Darth Vader,
Evil cannot create anything new
They can only corrupt and ruin
What good forces have invented or made.
- J.R.R. Tolkien

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Flack
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Re: Things IT Professionals Should Not Tolerate

Post by Flack »

It might not have been bad intentions though, maybe the stamps fell off those letters sent by the multiple employers you talked to.
"I failed a savings throw and now I am back."

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Tdarcos
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Re: Things IT Professionals Should Not Tolerate

Post by Tdarcos »

I forgot to finish this
Tdarcos wrote: Fri Jun 02, 2023 5:28 pm To araphrase Darth Vader,
This should have read, "To paraphrase Darth Vader, 'the hypocrisy in this one is very strong.' "
Evil cannot create anything new
They can only corrupt and ruin
What good forces have invented or made.
- J.R.R. Tolkien

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