Work Life Balance 1

Intro

I have recently signed and accepted a job offer with a substantial raise but it is a salaried position.

My entire life I have been warned against the dangers of Salary positions. How they only offer those jobs to people who go above and beyond. Working outside of normal hours to get the job done. So that they no longer have to worry about paying overtime and so that the company can feel obligated to my time outside of “normal” work hours.

These are warnings I know to be true. My Dad has worked salary for nearly 2 decades now and he tells me all the dangers of it all the time. He gets calls at odd hours or on vacations. Sometimes he works an 80 hour week for a 40 hour pay check. And those are all things he’s expected to put up with.

Corpo Bullshit

These are all things I obviously consider and I am weary of. So far my employer has not wasted my time or abused my enthusiasm for what I do. They may have learned their lesson as the last guy very much had his time wasted and he quit. Man was twice my qualifications and nearly a decade of experience. He taught me a lot and I appreciate him, but he mostly taught me to not put up with corporate bullshit.

One Year Rule

Which I had a plan on how to avoid this trap of job stagnation. I intended to live by the 1 year rule for IT. When you’re getting into the business, do not stay at your first help desk job for more than 1 year. In fact start applying to new jobs 6 months in as your first job will suck, but you will learn a lot and they will not compensate you accordingly. My current employer is aware of that rule and that I tell people about it. It’s obvious in my resume as most of the previous jobs before now are less than a year and I have hit my one year anniversary.

You have to maintain rules like this because these corporates are playing the just business game and you should too. They will use you for all you’re worth and throw you away the moment sales drop and budgets are squeezed. You can’t trust them and should stay as flexible as can be when playing their corporate games.

Sometimes You Break the Rule

But they have caught me a second year. I have done the shopping and I frankly cannot beat a $10K pay raise with my education and experience. I have successfully demonstrated my value to my current employers and I actually feel more than fairly compensated. You should not count on this. I didn’t, I was following the rule and applying to jobs in the area, the employer finally won me over.

Worries on the Unknown

There is a lot of perks to finally making it to the point of being offered more to stay than you would make bouncing. I’m lucky to have a director who saw that was my plan and saw me as important enough to keep. However, I think the greatest drawback for me is the perk of being on a long leash.

I will be left very much up to my own devices. I wasn’t micromanaged much at all previously so long as I closed tickets and looked busy. But now I am going to fully manage what I do and how quickly I do it. Which I’ll admit has always been a scary proposition. I spent a good amount of time in jobs where the bosses have a strict plan of action for what needs to be done when. I am at that point where I need to do that myself and that’s weird.

Of course, I’m not being totally hung out to dry. They didn’t just give me a really important job and nothing at all to back me up. I will be shown the process by an experienced coworker for a week and then let out on my own. Yet it still feels like I might not be able to do the job. I’m working too much in the unknown.

Maybe this is all something I’ll need to figure out better in the future. The truth about IT is all jobs are very vague in descriptions and responsibilities because the people who need those roles filled don’t know how to ask for what they need because they don’t know what they need. You will never quite know what the job actually entails until you start doing it. I wonder how much that contributes to our collective impostor syndrome.