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Backhanded Compliments
Posted September 13th, 2007 by rybolov
We’re laying people off, have been for several months. It makes life interesting–IT operations has high churn anyway (over half of the NOC staff was hired in the past 9 months), much less worrying about managing attrition for all the people you are chopping off the bottom of the heap. At any rate, we’re all constantly evaluating our chances of getting the axe on the next go-around. It’s all based in morbidly fascinating metrics and superstition, like how I imagine troops were in the days before the Normandy invasion.
I was told the following today by the manager for our server team:
Rich: “We’re never going to lay you off because nobody wants your job.”
Me: “Well, what if we decide that my job doesn’t need to be here?”
Rich: “You save us more than we pay you for your salary several times over. If we get rid of you, we’ll be spending 3 times your paycheck paying for all the things we got caught on during the next audit.”
Me: “Uh, thanks.”
I’m still not sure that having a job that nobody wants to do is a good thing. =)
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4 Comments »
September 13th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
Why does your NOC staff have high churn? Just curious… I know some places hire very green young men on the cheap, and once they wise up and/or get some experience, move on out of the NOC. That’s not my experience, but I know others do. Again, just curious. 🙂
September 13th, 2007 at 6:11 pm
It’s a mixture of things.
#1 is that we do hire some of the inexperienced guys and life in the NOC is for the most part entry-level employment and shift work at that.
#2 is that our NOC manager left and took some of the higher-tier guys with him. I’m still amazed HR didn’t go after him for that.
#3 is some key personnel changes that didn’t look like they would bring brighter times to the worker bees (read: change in senior management).
#4 is temp-to-perm guys that just don’t work out, so it’s relatively easy for us to call back to the staffing firm and get a new person.
September 13th, 2007 at 7:46 pm
It just means that no ONE person wants to/feels like they could fill your shoes is all. 🙂
So if you do decide to find a better gig elsewhere, they’ll probably have to find two or three suc^Wskilled employees to do your job.
I think it was a hint for you to ask for a pay review. 😛
September 13th, 2007 at 9:07 pm
Heh, I thought about a pay raise immediately afterwords. I just don’t think it’s going to happen unless I jump ship. =)