Journal Penguin Follower's Journal: Starting to dislike my job... 4
I work for a smallish company - currently somewhere between 250 and 275 people (I know we haven't hit the 300 mark yet). I've been employed for about a year and a half with them (started in May '06). And this company is a young one at 6 years of age. We seem to move at the speed of light compared to most businesses. In the year and a half I've been with the company we've outright bought one company and merged another under our brand name. And lastly we are a privately held company in the Dayton, OH area.
So I was originally hired in as the first person of a helpdesk. Only I've really never done that job for them. A helpdesk person is chained to a phone in a cubicle all day and takes calls. In the beginning, I'd take a call, and then I would have to head to the client's location and take care of the problem(s). And on top of that I'd get random paper shuffling jobs that I guess everyone else was too busy to do, so they just decided to give it to me. Fast forward to today, we do have a helpdesk these days (which has gone from myself to about 10 people), but I'm not really apart of it. No, indeed I'm pretty much still what I would term a field technician.
The company accepted a contract from a client that was to last 18 months. It's actually been shortened to 13 months, and thankfully that is up at the end of December. So for the last 11 months I have been doing what I said I would not do when I hired in (i.e. during my interviews). I would travel up to 25%. No more than that. Well from March through July I was put on a two week on the road, one week at the office rotation. OK we're up to 2/3rd travel... Then in August, the client and my employer struck up a special addon to the original client that was to last from August to the end of the original contract. Myself and 3 other poor souls/coworkers (who also had no option not to be put on this assignment) are now travelling 100% (except holidays of course) Mondays through Fridays until the end of the year.
I see my home 2 days a week: Saturday and Sunday. I have enough time to catch up on snail mail, make sure all the bills are covered, do laundry, and pack for the next round of travel. Somewhere in there I have to do some "paperwork" (its all electronic/database stored) before I leave on Monday mornings as well. I've been in 6 cities in 5 days at one point in time. I stopped counting the number of cities I've been to since I started this project after I counted fifty. And the number of states that I've been to (one of which I've been to 4 times) is up to 14. Next week I'll be heading to Illinois (15). And after that New Hampshire (16).
So what's the point? Well my salary still reflects what I did prior to this project. The closest match I could find to what I do on (looking on Salary.com) was "Field Service Engineer I". Namely, that I travel to places, install equipment (PCs, servers, and network equip), train personnel, troubleshoot broken equipment and get replacements on the way. That pretty much sums up my job description. Salary.com's profile says that the mean salary for a Field Service Engineer I based in the Dayton area is around $42,000/year. And that the low side is $36,500. Well, imagine my shock at reading that when all I get to bring home is $32k/yr. Talk about underpaid.
And it's somewhat funny (not really) at the same time. I think we just saw on Slashdot, in the not too distant past, a reference to an article about tech jobs exceeding other job sectors in compensation/benefits/whathaveyou.
Well, I'm not seeing it.....
I'd leave Ohio if it weren't for the fact that I would be leaving some really good friends behind, and the only family that I care about. I've seen some nice jobs posted OUTSIDE of Ohio.
The real kicker is that my employer is now "fishing" for a Systems Administrator. We have an IT Director whose been doing that role as well, but now that we're expanding again (significantly this time) they want to hire an SA. I applied for it, but haven't been given a definite on whether I'm going to get it or not. If I get the promotion, it would mean less travel. I'd only have to travel down to Blue Ash every now and then.
If anyone out there cares - cross your fingers for me. Then again, I'd be managing Windows servers...
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I'd direct the word "hate" towards our client that puts me on such a travel schedule. I don't really hate the company I work for. Like I mentioned, we are still a smallish company (though I think that we might cross the 300 employees mark by this time next year if the trend continues). If I were higher paid, I'd be able to tolerate this a lot better. But the big fact that remains is that I now KNOW I'm underpaid compared to my peers - that is if Salary.com is correct (I don't doubt that they are at least re
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