So, I just need to rant for a minute about what’s just happened. It’s made me feel fairly disposable as a worker. I work in I.T. support. I help people who can’t operate technology with highly complicated issues. I am highly skilled, well trained and I have a diverse set of understanding for technical issues.
Last year I took a new job. The old job was an MSP, or Managed Service Provider; if you don’t know what that is; an MSP is the IT department for companies too small to have an IT department. That’s the summary. The new company is both an MSP and an ISP as well as just about everything else you can imagine for IT… hosting webpages, and all the associated nonsense, phones/VoIP, colocation (Datacenter stuff)… everything. Basically, when someone was signed onboard with this employer, we did it all.
Starting out, everything seemed fairly normal, a bit more involved, since we do more than the last company, but nothing too crazy. The part that irked me, is that as MSP, we own a client, we do everything for them, including, but not limited to all their computer/server/network work (which I expected), but also their phones, internet service, hosting, email, etc. everything… which is a bit more than I expected, but I was managing okay.
In March/April, things changed in my personal life, where I was having to drive my SO to work (she doesn’t have her license, and we don’t live in a place where she can reliably get a taxi/bus/other transportation), the problem is that her work is 3-11, where I work 9-5, in another city. So I tried to work with my workplace but they wouldn’t let go of working from the office, so I ended up on an insane schedule of commuting to the office (over an hour drive each way), then leaving the office at 1PM, to be home for 2PM, to get her to work for 3PM, then GOING BACK TO WORK. I wasn’t able to keep up with my workload… in addition, I’m driving her home at 11, getting home at midnight, then getting up at 5-6AM to get a shower and do it all over again. I couldn’t sustain that for any reasonable length of time, and I burned out. My doctor issued a notice to my workplace that I am unable to continue working for the time being, they accepted it and I went on disability as of early may, until now.
Currently, I feel much better, compared to when I was burning out in April, and I feel a lot better about going back. The SO has also been working on getting her license and her own car, so within a few months I won’t have to even think about whether she can get to work or not, since she will have a car and her license to drive herself there. A week or two ago, I contacted my workplace to let them know I was ready to return. We had a few emails back and forth to resolve the matter of the doctors recommendation and disability diagnosis. Once all that was completed, I thought I was ready to go. Big nope.
I got word yesterday that instead of bringing me back, they’re laying me off.
So not only did they have the callous attitude to force me to drive to the office and back several times a day to try to maintain a poor life scenario (I asked to WFH, which they absolutely could do, since they did it over COVID without significant issues)… but when I burned out as a result of their ridiculous demands, and took some time off, instead of welcoming me back and holding my position, they filled in the gap while I was out on disability, and laid me off when I was able to return.
I feel so abandoned. I won’t complain about “where’s the loyalty” because there’s never been a time in my career where “loyalty” has ever been something I’ve felt that my workplace ever gave me; and all evidence I’ve seen says that companies have zero loyalty to anyone. Maybe one day in the past that was true, but it’s definitely not been true for the entirety of my working career; but here I am, a highly skilled individual, with specific skills that will absolutely help the company succeed, that they know I have, that they’re just going to throw away… and for what?
The excuse they gave me was financial downsizing, but it’s a company of about 12-18 people, so it’s not like my job was part of a larger dismissal of people, they’ve lost, laid off, or otherwise shed employees at a very slow rate. Some of my (now former) coworkers have said that several people who have voluntarily left their positions, have been replaced during my time away; but me? no. Apparently my knowledge isn’t worth enough to them.
I’m currently on the hunt for a new employer. IMO, these guys are fools to throw away everything I know. The only challenge I face right now is finding someone who will see my value. IT support jobs are usually underpaid in my local area, and too many companies are going return to office and I’m not easily able to find remote (WFH) type employment. The jobs are there, but it’s hard to find one that’s worth my time. The core issue IMO, with the low pay, is that it’s a non-union position, but if I can find a union job, I’m all in.
Wish me luck!
This is exactly the kind of thing that a union would prevent.
if you know of any company that has a union that includes the IT support team, I will pursue it aggressively. Sadly, even the companies with unions often omit the IT/support staff as covered under the contract. But if you (or some future reader) finds such a company, let me know and I’ll add them to the list of places to watch for openings.
Here are a few places to start looking:
Edit: I just saw you’re in Canada, so maybe those aren’t super helpful links, but I’ll leave them for everyone else
Edit again: By everyone else I mean people in the US
looking into this, broken down by links:
- this looks good on paper but no canadian branch exists currently. A good option for those living in an area covered by them (not me, but others may benefit).
- countries with chapters include the USA, Brasil, India, Germany, Ireland, England, Italy, and The Netherlands.
- International Federation of Professional & Technical Engineers.
- They exist in Canada, but seem to be more oriented towards professional engineering (structural, electrical, that sort of thing), less-so things like network engineering.
- I.T. staff missing from their “Occupations” under “whom we represent” on their about page. No related technical jobs are listed beyond Programmers, which could be computer programmers but also could be something else. They also list “Technicians” but that can really be anything also, so I have no idea.
Potentially worth contacting them to inquire further about whether they cover IT/support workers, and if so, what companies they represent, so I can focus job searching on the companies that are local to me.
- Part of the CWA
- seems to represent mainly healthcare researchers and professionals, along with technicians (I assume in the medical field, like lab techs and assistants).
- California based, seems to be US-centric, no international coverage, good for US workers in healthcare.
- Has presence in Canada
- “Communication Workers Association”; specifically referring to media workers, like TV and multimedia companies. Most notably for canada, they represent the workers of the CBC, or Canadian Broadcasting Corporation; which is great, but not really in the computers/technical field I’m in, and likely exclude I.T./support staff from contracts.
- Seems to be an umbrella for several other unions, most notably SAG-AFTRA, NFLPA, trades (electrical workers, machinists and aerospace workers, fabrication, etc). Very little if any unions listed seem to be computerized-tech related or specialized.
- Their tagline is “America’s Unions” which should tell you all you need to know about their focused locale, probably not a great option for locales outside of the USA.
My main issue is with the fact that none of these explicitly list, and very likely do not represent workers in the computerized technologies, with the possible exception of programmers, which I am not a programmer. This is great information for anyone living in the USA or working in a highly technical/skilled environment, but does not pose an answer to my initial inquiry, which was a union that includes the IT support workers. For someone working a non-IT position, or someone working in the USA, there’s likely a union that only needs to be found.
I’m not angry or upset at the response at all, you tried and I appreciate that. Hopefully this is good information for other people, and I hope it helps them. It does not however seem to help me much or at all. Regardless, I appreciate the effort. Unfortunately as IT support, I’m generally cornered into non-union positions, which makes me vulnerable to more exploitation than other fields; which isn’t to imply other workers and groups are not exploited, they just usually have some options where they can have better representation that I could have to advocate for their wages and benefits compared to what I can do individually.
Regardless of all of the above, I wish everyone who reads this all the best in their career. I hope you all get the best representation possible, and that you’re successful in negotiating for your livelihoods regardless of your locale, chosen vocation, experience, race, religion or any other factor beyond your specific skill set. I bear no ill will towards anyone who has a union simply because I do not have the same opportunities.
Have a wonderful day.
Sorry to hear you’re going through this. I had similar thing happen to me a while ago. Same industry, I was a sys-admin at an MSP contracted to a specific client.
Got in a car accident, hit-and-run by another driver. Luckily I was not seriously injured, but my car was in the shop for 5 weeks. My spouse and I only had 1 car then, so I had no way to get onsite easily. Public transport sucks where we live, the fastest bus route to my client was an hour and 20 minutes. It used to take me 15-20 minutes to drive in the car.
I requested to work remote until my car was back from the shop, (my insurance didn’t include a rental at the time.) My MSP responded, “it’s not our problem that you got in a car accident, figure out your transportation.” They wouldn’t even compromise and let me work remote for 2-3 days of the week, even though they had presented their company as being remote-work friendly.
I wish there was a tech workers union I could join, it would have been so nice to have them start kicking some ass on my behalf.
The company doesn’t care about you…
Agreed. If someone proposed a tech workers Union, I would sign up. The problem is that unless everyone agrees, there’s always going to be some fresh-faced person straight out of college/uni who is willing to work outside the Union who will work for next to nothing.
I imagine such an organisation being something akin to the stone masons or nurses association… Where people from all different employers and walks of life are represented as a group.
Until something like that happens, I’m afraid we’re stuck. We will be exploited and taken advantage of whenever and wherever management thinks they can get away with it.
The company doesn’t care about us.
there’s always going to be some fresh-faced person straight out of college/uni who is willing to work outside the Union
Such a person is called a scab.
Scabs should be considered bad members of society, because they are bad.
They harm their own interests by siding with employers. They make life miserable for the entire working class, while helping billionaires become even richer.
aaah, I have difficulty with some of the terminology, and you’ve filled in a gap. Thanks.
IMO, a lot of the recent college grads would just be happy to be employed for more money than they would be at pretty much any other job that they’ve worked; so little more than minimum wage. Where I am, minimum wage at full time hours gets you just over 30k/yr, so companies offering 50-60, a bit less than double that, seem appealing to those who are recent grads, but the problem is that for someone who just racked up tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt with college/uni, doesn’t really understand that $50k/yr is massively underpaid for a high-skill position, even an entry one. I was an inadvertent scab when I started, but that was over 10 years ago, when things were a lot cheaper, I could get an apartment when I started, for around $600/mo, and now the same place would easily be double that.
I’m not excusing my behaviour at all, just trying to provide context. I was paid less than $50k/yr when I started, and it took me a while, about 3-4 years in the industry, until I demanded more. Fact is, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I have very quickly lost potential employment because I “asked for too much” during early stages of the interview process. I’m okay with that. Those people clearly don’t know what the value of I.T. is, and they may never realize that their poor excuse for infrastructure and IT support, is because they can’t attract talent offering so little.
The addage of “nobody wants to work anymore” is both true and false. Nobody wants to work for the wages that companies are offering. It’s a multi-headed demon that needs to be understood more than anything. Companies have enjoyed stagnant wages, and increased worker productivity as a result of technology for a long time, along with rising costs of goods sold, all contributing to their profits; in many industries, companies are no longer satisfied with less than half of the cost of goods sold going to profit, and they want more. More for them, less for everyone else. where everyone else includes their clients, workers, support staff… everyone. More for the shareholders and c-levels and less for the people who actually do the work. This drives the working class into poverty, while the rich become richer, and it’s no wonder that things are so messed up right now.
The line goes up.
a lot of the recent college grads would just be happy to be employed for more money than they would be at pretty much any other job that they’ve worked
The workforce varies in terms of easiness to exploit, but the software industry is not prospering, and cannot do so, merely from the labor of workers without more than a few years of experience. Creating broad class solidarity both within industries and across them is an objective clearly within reach, even though the road will be difficult, uncertain, and at times dangerous.
The addage of “nobody wants to work anymore” is both true and false.
The claim is completely false.
Conceding it may be true also concedes a charitable interpretation, one outside the intention of the phrase as it is being proliferated.
The intention is gaslighting, defamation, and manipulation.
I wouldn’t say it’s false, so much as incomplete. It’s not a complete statement. Nobody wants to work for what is being offered. That statement is true. I certainly won’t accept minimum wage for my skillset, and bluntly, minimum wage, even where I am (where it seems to be higher than most areas), is still not a living wage. The only jobs that should be under the minimum requirement of a living wage, IMO, should be part-time; in that scenario, it’s less a matter of making enough per-hour to live, and more an issue of not working enough hours to cross the line of a salary you can live off of. Even part-time workers should be paid enough that if they were working 35+ hrs a week, they could survive independent of all other factors. Any full time position, even at minimum wage, should be able to support a single individuals survival in the modern world, in the country/state/region they live in. Full stop.
When people stop at “nobody wants to work”, that incomplete sentence seems to imply that the general public doesn’t want employment, they do, they just want employment that won’t lead to poverty and destitution. That incomplete statement is gaslighting defamation and manipulation. I agree with that. The general public, IMO, doesn’t want handouts, they just want to be able to live reasonably for the labor that they provide.
I’m sure this will be news to nobody here but I’m going to rant on a bit of a tangent here for a sec… but historically, a single family (say in the mid 1900’s (20th century), eg, 1950/1960), on a single income, could afford a house, a car, several children, and some other luxuries. Now, on a single income, a family can’t even afford rent while putting food on the table. There’s more than enough evidence showing how this all happened; looking at a larger picture than most people would, it’s clear that for profits, C-level pay, and the upper-class (aka 1%) the line went up, dramatically, but for workers wages, benefits and income it either stayed flat (which is a decline when you factor in inflation), or they literally went down. Very very few have seen an appropriate increase in wage over time, keeping up with inflation. Anecdotally, my wages even in my short career, even with job hopping enough to get somewhat near reasonable raises, I haven’t been able to keep up with inflation. I started my career in 2011, my first job hop put me at a fairly reasonable $55k/yr in the early 2010’s. According to the official bank of canada inflation calculator, that wage has the current buying power of a bit over $72k/yr. at my most recent employer, I wasn’t making over $72k/yr. I cannot keep up. It’s more than a 30% increase in inflation from 2011 to 2023, just based on that alone.
I don’t want more money. If I had a job that paid me reasonably today (around $75k/yr), and only ever kept up with inflation, then I would never feel the need to change jobs for financial reasons ever again. I’m sure there are other reasons why I would change jobs, but money wouldn’t be the deciding factor. I just want to earn enough to live. This is compounded by the fact that my industry (IT support) in my country, Canada, is notoriously weak in terms of wages. Looking at the website glassdoor.ca for my job description, I see starting salaries of $57k/yr or even $41k/yr. Yet, a comparable job across the border into the USA, is similar per-year, but the US dollar is worth more, so a $41k/yr USD job is worth more like $56k/yr CAD, and $57k/yr USD is worth nearly $80k/yr CAD. The issue there is that I cannot relocate. I have constraints on where I can live and what I can do about it due to my personal situation (separate from work). I like it in Canada, it’s a wonderful country for the most part; but the wages for my specific vocation are very very lacking. If someone offered me $80k/yr on the low end, I’d be very happy with my wage - provided I could keep up with inflation.
What’s stupid to me, is that everyone relies on the work I do in my chosen profession. Everyone from C-levels to worker bees doing the paper pushing for the business and everything inbetween, almost all of whom are making more than me, in most businesses. I am the glue that keeps everything operating. My friend, who works in tech as a developer/programming analyst, was given a raise last year to over $100k/yr CAD ( ~ $72k/yr USD ); yet, if we worked together, he would rely on me to keep all of his dev servers running. If I don’t do my job, he can’t do his. It’s a leaning problem, and everything leans on IT support. Whether I’m a sysadmin, or network admin, or network engineer, or helpdesk, his work relies on me and my team to do their job for him to be able to do his. IMO, that’s really stupid to have many, very highly paid resources, relying on some of the lowest paid employees in the organization in order to do their job. What makes this even more stupid, IMO, is that the IT team is usually much smaller than other teams and under-represented by unions or other means. The organization will literally cease to function if IT doesn’t do their job and something breaks while they’re unavailable.
Businesses don’t understand the problem. It’s a matter of burn rate and the leaning problem of everyone relying on a single, unified system. I’m at the bottom of the stack, the network. That’s my focus. IMO, the network should never be in question. It should always work, and do the work it does quickly and effectively. A breakdown of the network precipitates a complete failure of the organization to do business. There’s no reason why the IT and support staff should be some of the lowest paid workers.
Okay, I’ll stop my rant for now, I just get so riled up by this. Management doesn’t understand and they probably never will.
What I mean is, if a claim is dishonest, given with an intention to manipulate or to mislead, then it is best simply to call out the deceitfulness, without searching for a more charitable interpretation.
I have a feeling that as tech matures as an industry, workers will start to unite. For now though, it’s somewhat still the wild west out there.
it’s somewhat still the wild west out there.
This is altogether too true.
Tech is a tough nut to crack, because the platform economy, social media, and techno-utopian ideology has shaped much of the software industry into a kind of self-styled professional managerial class, its workers generally apathetic and often staunchly antagonistic to addressing structural issues.
Nevertheless, as software is a labor intensive industry, worker cooperatives may be formed relatively easily in principle, and many are being formed.
Software may be an industry that emerges comparatively early with strong representation by worker-controlled enterprise, without necessarily benefiting so directly from unions.
Software and the whole developer community will probably get it together before the rest of the tech industry does.
The main difference I see with programmers/developers/whatever (people who write software), is that they’re usually producing a good that can be sold, therefore their efforts directly relate to customer sales and customer retention from a business standpoint, thus they are usually better treated and compensated, but aren’t. I mean, none of the workers in the tech industry, IMO, are treated well… actually scratch that, not even just tech, any workers are generally treated poorly in the absence of a union, where they might be treated like they exist as more than numbers on a page, by force.
IT support and general IT staff are usually considered a “cost center” by management. Something you need, not something that you want, so workers in this field are generally taken advantage of whenever possible. Even medium-sized businesses generally only have one IT person if any at all (more than a few are hiring out to an MSP instead). The companies do not care about their IT staff, as long as they exist and can take blame for the technical things that go wrong, and with any luck, fix them and make the rest of the company productive to make money.
What many business owners need a lesson in, is the undeniable truth that companies are no longer selling a product, they’re information management companies that make money by selling products/services. Almost everything in the modern era is computer/network/server driven, whether in the “cloud” or not. The sales process relies on phones, which have almost entirely moved to VoIP, and email, and usually involves some server running CRM software or similar. Everything they do is on the computer now. Companies can no longer exist without the IT department doing their job effectively. That’s just one example, and you can cut and paste the ideas to pretty much any job in a business. There’s very few exceptions to this in most modern businesses. Unless the company is a tech-driven industry, and even then, IT is just a cost center. They don’t realize how important we are; not right now they don’t.
I think IT services (e.g. administration, support) and software development are effectively separate industries as concerned for labor organization. Business has clumped the two occupations into a single general category, but the reasons are in service to their own interests.
Software developers recently have not shown broad class solidarity or class consciousness.
Of course, some do exhibit such traits, and some have managed to find each other and to create pockets of organization and resistance.
Largely, however, the current generation of the occupation has been captured under the trance of techno-utopian ideals, as embodied in Silicon Valley, if not the more classically liberal ideals of Wall Street, and has been too comprehensively enclosed in its own bubbles to reveal any notice or concern that the systems operating from such ideals have been immense failures for the mass of the population.
I can definitely agree that the system has been an immense failure for the mass of the population. If the majority ever figure that out, then the thieves at the top are in major trouble.
Tech is a mature industry. It is evolving faster than others, but fast change is its nature, and will continue in the future. Do you mean that the industry will evolve away from the platform economy and social media, which supports the private interests of sustaining harmful economic systems, rather than empowering personal agency among the public?
In my experience, jobs that have employees working multiple departments are a red flag. Employees should usually stick to one task and learn how to be great at it before moving up.
I understand this entirely; the only statement I can make about “wearing multiple hats” at work, is the companies I’ve worked for (both the former employer, and this one) are both very small, so sometimes there’s not enough of your work to keep you busy, and making yourself useful for other departments is key to maintaining your employment. Sitting around waiting for work to fall from the sky, is not a good look.
In any company that has even 4 or 5 people per department, it should never be a problem. at my former employer (the first one mentioned in the original post), we had 5 or 6 support-focused team members, I rarely stepped outside of MSP support, beyond generating leads for inside sales to existing clients for stuff they needed from a technical aspect. at the “new” place, most deparments had fewer than 4 people. The team I was on, was three support techs.
What irked me, is that as MSP, I had to know everyone else’s job, but nobody was required to cross train on my team. All the other departments were solely focused on their specific tasks, but since I had to take total ownership of all the needs of the clients assigned to me, I had to know how the ISP operations and voice operations team’s jobs entirely. That was problematic for me. I raised the issue a few times and did not get positive responses. I persisted in succeeding at the role regardless, but I still didn’t like it. If I got a support ticket that was for an add/change/remove for a VoIP extension, I should have been permitted to forward that to the voice team and continue with my normal work, doing little more than traffic control on the ticket as a result; if a company wanted faster/different internet, or had an internet related issue, I should have been able to do the same for the ISP team, but it was expected that I would make my best effort to find and solve the problem before I engaged with that team, so I still had to know their job.
The irony of the whole thing is that the other departments jobs were so straight-forward that I was often able to do their jobs better than they could. I’m not meaning to brag or anything that I’m better or something, I don’t believe I am. With my specific disability, I’m classified as neurodivergent, so there’s a certain structure I always look for when dealing with issues. Simply having that structure seemed to lead me to better solutions than that team otherwise would have. The neurotypical workers in those teams would focus on just completing the immediate task, while I would go through the whole thing from top to bottom, trying to understand the full scope of the issue, from a fundamental level. This often led to me catching issues that were otherwise unnoticed. It also resulted in me taking much longer to do simple tasks than others took; which is a big reason I don’t consider my approach to be “better”, just different. It could be argued either way which is “better”, and such an assessment is really a matter of opinion. The fact is, me doing their work often resulted in finding more issues, and taking longer. I got blamed for slow working, and they shot the messenger more than once for the problems found; so I get blamed for things a lot. I’m okay with it because I know it’s not my fault. As long as nobody yells at me, or threatens my job for what I’ve found, I’m going to keep doing it… but my interest in doing that work was to resolve the problems so I don’t need to deal with it again later; so I always try to do root cause analysis, or RCA. RCA is not a short process… sometimes it’s as simple as changing deborah to sally, or whatever, on a phone system, and resetting the voicemail password, then emailing that information off to the customer. Other times it’s that the user is assigned but to an offline or incorrect phone, or the phone is assigned as the wrong model in the system and it’s not picking up the changes because the configuration file is wrong for the phone type (or any number of other errors). Things happen.
Sorry for the mini-rant, I kinda got off topic there for a bit.
The only challenge I face right now is finding someone who will see my value.
I am sorry for your experiences, and am hopeful you will bounce back.
Unfortunately, under our current systems, many are having similar experiences, or even worse. Many, in particular, with chronic or permanent disability, face near total disenfranchisement from the workplace, even among those who might support themselves through working at certain kinds of jobs along with appropriate accommodations and subsidies.
None of us is ever paid what we are worth, because businesses exist to extract value from the labor of workers, that is, to claim a profit from workers selling their labor, and doing so requires paying them less than the value generated by the labor they provide to a business.
Unions certainly will help improve work and life experience for the vast majority of the population, by allowing us to negotiate collectively for conditions, terms, and wages that are more favorable than simply the least favorable ones absolutely necessary for an employer to retain some worker willing to perform particular functions.
If we recognize and pursue our shared interests, then we can end the race to bottom that has been imposed on us as workers.
This is something I’ve recognised for a long time. I will never get what I am worth 100% because I’m just a worker. Value from my work will be extracted because the sales staff needs to be paid, and the accountants need to be paid, and management, and everyone I rely on as a worker to both do my job and get paid. There will always be something additional removed for profit above and beyond the cost of all of those other labor needs that make my job possible, since I’m not the only person contributing to the earnings of the company, and the only way to make what I’m worth is to get out on my own, and become a contractor. I don’t want to do that. I have a certificate from a local college for business; I have seen the processes and whatnot that make up the accounting, marketing, sales and other processes that contribute to the success of a transaction. I am not interested and actively dislike having to do any of those tasks.
For me, this is understood, and I’ve accepted that, since I don’t want to do all the jobs. I’m willing to accept a certain amount of loss for my labor so I don’t have to think about or engage in any of those other activities. The work I do is, to my estimation, worth at least $150k/yr, extrapolated from the amount my employers charge for my time, multiplied by the number of hours they expect me to achieve in billable time per day, times five days a week, times 52 weeks per year. I struggle to extract half that in wage. If I could get half of that in wages, I’d be pretty happy, but I can’t. Therein lies the problem. I don’t and never have expected my full value, but I don’t think 50% is too much. Honestly, it should be higher, but bluntly, companies are not in the right position to entertain that, either psychologically, or financially due to mismanagement.
The value I’m seeking to be recognised for is that I’m worth paying a higher percentage of the earnings I’m capable of bringing in. I am useful beyond my role in almost every aspect because I’ve taken the time and gotten the relevant education to actually understand the factors that go into these things. I have a deeper understanding of business practices than the average, and I can all but sell a product or service to a client that they currently do not have; aka, priming a sale for the company. I have been directly responsible for several sales at multiple clients over my career. Not nearly at the same rate as our dedicated sales team, since that’s literally their only job, but I’ve given easy sells to so many of our sales staff that, while I’m on the clock billing time for something else, sold another product with all but the papers signed and money transferred. I make other workers jobs easier, which IMO, is worth more than the direct technical value provided. It’s a skill set that I don’t see in my coworkers that are exclusively focused on the technology. There are many other aspects I can enhance that is valuable, and I often step out of my immediate role to help others. That’s just how I am. I want to be helpful, and if something is in the best interest of the client, I will sell it. Even knowing this, and experiencing this first-hand at work, my employer still decided on a layoff.
I don’t feel like any of what I’ve said is unreasonable. 50% of the earnings I directly bill for is my salary, and I provide value beyond that which justifies the amount spent.
I’m neurodivergent, with an executive function disorder, and that classifies me as disabled, yes. I have done everything in my power to meet everyone on their terms, so nobody needs to make accomodations for me. It’s still hard to fit in for me, but I take on the challenge of that as part of the experience of employment; I do everything in my power to make sure that my differences don’t affect the ability for others to operate as they normally would.
yet, I still feel rejected by the systems I’ve worked so hard to fit into. I’m tossed out like trash whenever they feel like I’m not doing enough, when I’m fighting very hard to survive in their world, not made for people like me. All I’ve ever wanted was to be helpful. Let me be helpful, and pay me for the significant efforts I take to be helpful.
Value from my work will be extracted because the sales staff needs to be paid, and the accountants need to be paid, and management, and everyone I rely on as a worker to both do my job and get paid.
Profit is not wages paid to workers other than yourself, even workers performing other job functions. Other workers receive wages because they provide labor, just as you receive wages because you provide labor. Profit is value generated by your labor, and by the labor of other workers, that is appropriated by the owners of a business, claimed for themselves, despite their not having contributed any labor to the productive processes of generating the wealth.
All sophisticated productive systems are based on division of labor, and even most primitive ones entail at least some. Division of labor is as old as the hills, but the unbounded accumulation of private wealth by the labor of workers is not universal and indeed relatively recent.
You should not support the profit motive of your employer simply because you have an occupational specialization. One is not bound to the other.
There will always be something additional removed for profit above and beyond the cost of all of those other labor needs that make my job possible, since I’m not the only person contributing to the earnings of the company, and the only way to make what I’m worth is to get out on my own,
Along a similar theme as above, you are conflating organization of labor in general, with particularly labor being organized by a private business under the profit motive.
The value I’m seeking to be recognised for is that I’m worth paying a higher percentage of the earnings I’m capable of bringing in.
Employers always pay workers, with the rarest exceptions, the absolute minimum required to retain their labor.
Otherwise, they would be eliminated by businesses that were more competitive.
Profit is not wages paid to workers other than yourself, even workers performing other job functions.
I understand, and I won’t discount this. However, there are costs to my labor that are separate from me. For example: If the business is charging $100/hr for my services, I don’t expect to be paid $100/hr for work. There’s other costs associated with my time, including frictional time between tasks, which may include time between tasks while in transit or simply task switching, or breaks, which the customer is not directly paying for but must be paid to me for my time. Legally here, over the course of an 8+ hour day, I am entitled to 60 minutes worth of breaks, 2x paid 15 minute, plus one lunch break (which may or may not be paid); I also have job tasks that are not related directly to producing profit, so on a good day, when I am exclusively working on a single unified task all day, I can “bill for” at most ~ 7 hours of work (some exceptions exist, but I won’t go too far into detail on this), but on an average day, I’m usually generating 5-6 hrs of “billable” work per day.
I cannot reasonably expect $500 to $600 in earnings per day due to overhead and costs. The associated costs of my work, from floorspace to do my job, electricity for the equipment I need to use, the equipment costs themselves (desks, chairs, computer, etc), as well as the costs for other workers time to support my work, in sales, marketing, accounting, etc. all needs to be covered from that ~ $500/day I’m producing for the company. So me earning ~ $250/day ( $31.25/hr, aka, 65k/yr ), or about 50% of the revenue I generate at $100/hr at 5 hours “billed” per day, needs to include consideration for the efforts of management, accounting/finance, sales/marketing, collection and all the non-producing contributors to my workspace, including but not limited to maintenance/janitorial. What’s left is profit, which likely isn’t very much per hour, but spread across all workers is a non-trivial amount.
At least, that’s how it should work. profit, as a function of revenue, should not exceed more than ~20% is the above mentioned scenario. Of course, the realities of the situation are far more nuanced and complex than that, since most MSPs charge monthly for service, not by the hour, so worker pay for the related team needs to balance against all representative clients of the team, with enough overhead to pay for and properly compensate the efforts of sales, marketing, finance, accounting, management, etc. before profit can be extracted from the remainder. Since every MSP client has a different contract and a different amount paid per month, usually based on that organizations headcount. Profit numbers are not strictly tied to the amount I’m not paid relative to the revenue I generate per hour/day/month for the company.
The core of my issue with all this is that companies do not understand all the contributing costs associated to labor, and how the revenue that individuals generate is distributed for the business, and what each employee costs/earns over the course of a day/week/month; and definitely don’t understand how much profit they earn per employee hour. I know this because this is a factor in burn rate, and I have asked business managers about burn rate and I’m usually met with looks of confusion or mystery in the matter. Burn rate is simply all those associated costs (salary/compensation, and all associated rent/electrical, and equipment costs) for an employee separate from the revenue they generate. Burn rate is used as an indicator of costs that should be accepted for downtime, and informs how much downtime should be tolerated by the business; that financial number, when known, can quickly inform how much to spend on redundancy, which is something that information technology advisors strive for. When a system is fully redundant, or multiple levels of redundant with no single-point-of-failure (SPOF), then the operation of the production equipment can be reasonably guaranteed 24/7, resulting in no downtime, less redundant systems will require downtime to perform maintenance, upgrades and unexpected faults. So if the burn rate, multiplied by the estimated average downtime of the system, is less than the cost of making the system fully redundant, the system shouldn’t be redundant; simply, it is cheaper. However, if the burn rate is significantly more than the cost of making the system redundant, given the estimated average duration of downtime, then the system should be made to be more redundant. This is something I very strongly understand. Sometimes it is simply not financially beneficial to add redundancy to a system (whether server/network/workstation or otherwise). Things that only affect one, or a small group of employees, generally do not justify being redundant; which is why your PC at work generally only has one ethernet connection to a single switch which is probably shared with a subset of workers in the workplace (as an example). You, and the people on that same switch (SPOF for that group of workers), don’t represent enough of a burn rate to justify making those systems redundant. This is a fact that is universally true for most workers. The costs associated with employing you while you are incapable of producing profit due to a major network fault that keeps you from working, are not enough to justify the added cost of redundant network connections from your workstation to redundant network connectivity on the network side. If the switch you’re connected to fails, a replacement can usually be prepped and replaced from a cold spare in a matter of hours, so for those hours while you cannot work, you’re burning money while a technician corrects the problem.
This cost is directly extracted from what would otherwise be profit. This is where profit is converted to overhead in real-time.
Profit, or additional overhead that will often not be utilized, needs to exist, for these edge cases where things have an unrecoverable fault and employees are incapable of doing their job. Profit itself isn’t horrible to have, excessive profit is definitely a problem though. There should always be more overhead/profit for the business to function correctly, and not collapse at the first significant failure. If the profit is excessive, then that’s literally taking money out of the pockets of workers to pay the upper-class.
My point is there is a legitimate purpose to having additional overhead above and beyond the direct and indirect costs of labor. That additional overhead may, or may not be profit at the end of the day, depending on what’s happened.
I understand all this and I accept it as a worker, what I would not and will never accept is when companies are making so much profit on my labor, that goes above and beyond any burn rate or coverage of excessive costs of incidentals, that they can still extract profit from a particularly poor month for downtime. If everything is operating well, then yes, that excess revenue can definitely become profit. Looking at the big picture, this is a trade-off. Profit should be sacrificed for the continued survival of the business during times where performance is poor, or downtime affects the ability to generate revenue.
I think my business diploma is showing. I will only add this: I received just enough education in business to know I don’t want to be a part of the business/management systems. Trying to figure all this out and make intelligent decisions on these types of things, seems like a horrible thing to have to do. I suspect this is why I get such dumbfounded looks when I ask about burn rate, because people want to spend so little time thinking about this stuff that they simply don’t. While I can’t really blame them for that, simply put, it’s their job. They decided to be in that role, and that’s a part of it.
This is all separate from the fact that companies/corporations are built with the express purpose of generating profit; which is an entirely different discussion usually fraught with some very unpleasant and often unethical topics. This fact has been more or less codified. There have been court cases of shareholders vs companies where the shareholders have sued because business leaders wanted the majority of profits to be repaid to employees in the form of bonuses and raises. IMO, this has fostered a culture of bad faith practices where profit is prioritized above workers on a consistent basis.
I’m not going to apologize or explain away the greed and profiteering of companies; I understand that’s what they exist for. Whether I agree with that or not, it’s the reality of the situation. Profit is the inevitable outcome of unused overhead which should always exist. Excessive profit, above and beyond safeguarding the business from failure during “slow” times or where revenue is difficult or impossible to generate, is simply greed. Unfortunately, in a capitalist world, greed seems to be the name of the game. It seems to be the foundation of all modern business, and also the thing that both makes it terrible trying to work within the system, or for it. Unless you’re at the top (C-level, shareholder, board of directors, etc), you’re on the losing end of business greed.
I am not quite understanding why you are inspecting operating costs so deeply, since the subject is not strongly relevant to whether an enterprise has private owners who claim profit.
Every enterprise creates products that are sold for some value. Production requires a variety of non-labor inputs. The enterprise must also pay operating expenses.
The sale value of products minus the sum of inputs and expenses is the value of the collective labor for all the workers in the enterprise.
The value is distributed within the enterprise. In the case of a privately owned business, distribution of value, like all operations, is controlled by owners, who pay workers the minimum amount required for their labor to be provided, and claim the rest of the value as profit.
For an enterprise that is cooperative, no owners claim profit, and workers may choose how to distribute value among themselves, realizing the full value of their labor.
In either case, some value may be invested in expansion of the enterprise.
I just want to say that it doesn’t have to be this way. This is a pretty US centric issue
Employers in any country take advantage of every opportunity to extract the most value from workers at the least expense and risk.
Workers have experienced better conditions in many advanced countries, compared to the US, but the overall structure of the system is entirely the same.
Meanwhile, the political forces that have dismantled systems of worker empowerment are operating in all countries, and in some sense are continuing to expand outside the US.
Did you check with an employment attorney? Sounds illegal.
Sounds about right. There’s a reason he needed to get that doctors note. Disability discrimination seems plausible.
The doctors note said little more than (I’m paraphrasing) $employee can return to work as they have recovered from the disability. X, y, and z would still be beneficial to $employee whenever possible.
That last bit was mostly about doing whatever is possible to prevent it from happening again, and little more than a suggestion for the exact kind of environment you should find in an office.
If someone were to give it 30s of analysis, it basically reads that I’m good to go and I can work in a normal office environment.
I am disabled. I have an executive function disorder. I have been working on it and continue to work on it with several healthcare professionals so that I can function normally (as expected) relative to everyone else. I take on the responsibility of making sure I can keep up with everyone and little, if any, burden put on others to make accommodations for me. My doctor knows this and worded the note accordingly.
I just want to work.
Ironic that I’m saying that… As a millennial.
I understand that you wish to just get on with it, And I am very impressed with your attitude even with your issues. However you cannot think of yourself as a burden to make accomedations for. I’m NAL(Not a lawyer) but here in England it would be descriminatory not to make concessions and to judge you based on that. Even if they kicked you off and you just want to get on with it, you still need compensation for unfair dismissal. Which is the time you spend without work unexpectedly due to their discriminatory practices.
You should definitely speak to professional.
Thank you, I will take this under advisement.
I truly appreciate you. Have a wonderful day.
I want to update you specifically. I have a friend who is a paralegal, whom I have been speaking to throughout this matter, and through the course of our discussions I noted that in my department there has been three people, myself and two others prior to disability, for a bit during my disability there would have been two people in the department. However, I recently had just cause to return to the office to retrieve something that cannot be out of my possession, and excluding me, there were and currently are, three people in my department, there was a new person hired during my absence.
They rightly pointed out that it appears as though I was replaced.
I will be discussing this further with an attorney. I don’t want to say any more than this until after all matters have been legally resolved. What I will say, is that to my understanding of the laws here, and the understanding that my friend has, it is not legal to dismiss an employee without appropriate compensation, while they are away on leave, whether medical, disability or otherwise.
I have taken steps to retain council on this already. Thank you for your advice. I appreciate you very much.
This is also my understanding. Thanks for the update and good luck 🤞
If in the US, generally that would be an FMLA issue. But given the size of the company, FMLA doesn’t apply. As I recall, it only applies to companies bigger than 25 or 50 employees. I used to work for a small MSP, and we had about 20 employees. I had no guarantee of any parental leave when my kid was born, so I had to work remotely and take PTO to cover my time off. It was not how I wanted it to go.
I’m in Canada, and with the exception of some healthcare and related things (like parental leave), we’re very similar in employment laws at a high level. I still plan to inquire about it with an attorney, but I’m not exactly hopeful that will result in something.
Speaking to some people who know the system better than I do, locally, they’ve informed me that our government employment insurance system (which has been covering me financially since I became “disabled”, may launch an inquiry, since it’s very legally dubious that a company doesn’t take back a worker after a disability)… based on the results of that inquiry, I may have legal options… that’s a lot of if’s, and relying on others to do their jobs and results of these things being in my favor. At present, I’m apt to leave it be, but I will pursue it if advisors say otherwise. I will be seeking official legal advice on the matter at some point in the near future. I can’t and won’t promise any specific action because I don’t have all the information required for the matter; in my mind it could go either way. what I can promise is that I’ll be looking into it. I don’t know that I will update anything in any meaningful way to relay the results here, but it will be examined as an option.
What’s important to note, is that this is a layoff. A layoff is different than firing (termination of employment), you still don’t have a job at the end of the day, but a layoff is more along the lines of “we are currently unable to fulfill the requirements of employing you”, which opens the option of employment later if the conditions change on the companies side of things. I’m still unemployed at the moment, so I’ll see what happens, I don’t officially come off disability until the end of the month, and I don’t report that to employment insurance for a few weeks yet; but I may give them a call on Monday just to inform them of the change, which may accelerate the process. Regardless, I don’t want to force them to employ me, since that’s usually a recipe to have them seek out any/all infractions and reprimand me whenever possible to justify firing me with cause, which would be worse for me overall; EI here only covers job loss where there is no fault of your own contributing to the loss. If you are fired with cause, then you’re on your own. While EI doesn’t provide enough income to sustain myself properly, it’s something, which is more than nothing.
I have a friend who is a paralegal, and while her opinion does not constitute legal advice, she thinks I should talk to an employment lawyer as well… I’m seriously considering it, but at the moment I’m biding my time a little bit as I still have personal effects at the workplace that I would like to recover before pursuing any action that could sour the relationship between that employer and me (from their perspective) any more than it may already be soured.
I resisted the urge to make the comment “laying someone off after they recover from a disability? That’s awfully brave of you.”
I don’t think that would have gone over particularly well with them. Needless to say, my first priorities are to find reliable employment and recover my belongings. I’ll consider it further when that is accomplished. Lucky for me, I had previously been given the name of someone who is exactly this kind of lawyer by someone I worked with. Let me paraphrase them by saying, it’s not the first time, and probably won’t be the last.
I feel like it’s unfortunate since I actually liked the people I worked with. I didn’t care for management, but bluntly, most management rubs me the wrong way, so no love lost there… But they had some really great people working there that I genuinely enjoyed working with. Oh well. Life goes on.
good luck, you’ll find somebody who is grateful to have you around
Thanks, I appreciate your confidence in this matter. I’m not sure I have such a sunny outlook, but I don’t really have a choice but to find something. I can’t sustain myself on what I’m currently getting from my insurance.
start by defining what you need in some tangible terms… give yourself a way to approach the problem…
