Octopus Overlords

I deploy and maintain a dozen or so app service and sql servers on azure; and I have built quite a few ec2 instances in AWS, as well as a few sql RDS instances. I wonder if perhaps I’m actually better off than I think I am in this market.

Mayhaps I should be viewing my company’s soon to happen acquisition as a blessing in disguise. Who knows, maybe I can get something better for a little while and retire on my terms.

hepcat wrote: ↑Wed Oct 06, 2021 8:32 pm I deploy and maintain a dozen or so app service and sql servers on azure; and I have built quite a few ec2 instances in AWS, as well as a few sql RDS instances. I wonder if perhaps I’m actually better off than I think I am in this market.

Mayhaps I should be viewing my company’s soon to happen acquisition as a blessing in disguise. Who knows, maybe I can get something better for a little while and retire on my terms.

I think you might be. It seems to be an ever-increasing requirement. I'm going to do some LinkedIn Learning crash courses, but that's not the same as actually having hands-on experience. An interview I had the other day with the recruiter for a hospital system in Green Bay went nowhere because I lacked expertise in this area. Or because I'm a Bears fan. You never know when dealing with that city.

And I’m a people person!

hepcat wrote: ↑Wed Oct 06, 2021 8:44 pm And I’m a people person!

You forgot the "DAMN IT!"

hepcat wrote: ↑Wed Oct 06, 2021 8:32 pm I deploy and maintain a dozen or so app service and sql servers on azure; and I have built quite a few ec2 instances in AWS, as well as a few sql RDS instances. I wonder if perhaps I’m actually better off than I think I am in this market.

Mayhaps I should be viewing my company’s soon to happen acquisition as a blessing in disguise. Who knows, maybe I can get something better for a little while and retire on my terms.

The market is ripe for IT burnout and crossover. My place have now had my resignation for a month and aren't getting anywhere yet. You wanna move to Michigan and be at company beck and call for 24/7? You'll be fully vested in five years. That was your retirement timeline, right?

Also if your thing is moving from on premise to cloud with a backbone in security, I'd think you'd be prized about everywhere. People are still building "resiliency" plans in all industries around IT.

Interviews start in two weeks. President is asking if we can make it a two year transition... And I'm like can we hire someone with enough oomph to get my canned by the end of the year.

LordMortis wrote: ↑Thu Oct 14, 2021 10:13 am Interviews start in two weeks. President is asking if we can make it a two year transition... And I'm like can we hire someone with enough oomph to get my canned by the end of the year.

Tell him sure - you'll be able to help out with the first 3 months of it, then it's someone else's problem.

LordMortis wrote: ↑Thu Oct 14, 2021 10:13 am President is asking if we can make it a two year transition...

The correct answer is "Sure. If by "transition" you mean that the last 21 and a half months the person will be working alone...."

Sheesh. That's crazy. You are practically bending over backwards.

My company is mostly remote. If anyone is interested, feel free to PM me. Looking at our website, I see openings for Data Governance, Informatica ETL development, dev management, software development. Sadly, nothing on the IT infrastructure side.

stessier wrote: ↑Thu Oct 14, 2021 10:19 am

LordMortis wrote: ↑Thu Oct 14, 2021 10:13 am Interviews start in two weeks. President is asking if we can make it a two year transition... And I'm like can we hire someone with enough oomph to get my canned by the end of the year.

Tell him sure - you'll be able to help out with the first 3 months of it, then it's someone else's problem.

BAMMED! Doh! Spent too much time on my reply.

Hehe... I'm really not sure how much more I have to give nor even how much more I want to give. The recruiter I spoke to today made the mistake of telling me the salary being offered. They're going to pay my replacement my same wage. Good for everyone but of course that says to me they believe they've been underpaying me. I only concur with them in that I believe they've been overworking me. Hopefully the bait for my wage will get them someone good and a bit of loyalty to boot.

2 year transition??? Sounds like someone did a really, really bad job at making sure there was an official succession plan in place and they're literally trying to create it now.

If it were me and I had my money / benefits squared away? Sure, I'll stay on F/T for 3 months into the new hire, and then I'll come in 2-3 days a week for the next 21 months at a contractor rate to continue to help them.

EDIT: Just saw they're paying you're replacement the same. Unless you can extort some exorbitant contractor rate, I'd tell them to get stuffed; that's insulting.

The next couple of years are going to be really interesting for me since our acquisition by a larger hospital network. They're now wanting full integration (collapse both our domain and our O365 environment into theirs) within the next 2-3 years. I manage our current domain and O365 environment. I think I'm pretty much guaranteed job security as we go through that merge.

I see three possibilities post-merge:

1. (Best case) - I retain my current position, assisting their team with managing a larger AD/O365 environment. Despite the larger population to manage, this would actually be an improvement for me since I'd have more help (our current team is extremely lean). May also open up a lot of career advancement opportunities since I now have a larger job pool to choose from.

2. (Middle case) - I retain my job, but doing something else. Corporate has been very adamant so far about not cutting jobs, so if they did decide they didn't need me in my current role, this would be the most likely route. I'd wind up doing something adjacent or perhaps having to learn a new skill set.

3. (Worst case) - I lose my job. I think this is the least likely scenario only because they are planning on rapid expansion over the next few years, and will only be acquiring more and more hospital networks. To cut loose an engineer with 15 years of experience to start over with someone else would be a bit foolish IMO, and I just don't see them needing *less* people when the workload is already teetering on too much for the people they already have. I can see them cutting positions post-merge, but I think it's more likely they will be at management level where they're top-heavy.

I'm still prepping for #3 by setting aside at least a year's worth of mortgage payments over the next two years.

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Thu Oct 14, 2021 10:52 am 2 year transition??? Sounds like someone did a really, really bad job at making sure there was an official succession plan in place and they're literally trying to create it now.

If it were me and I had my money / benefits squared away? Sure, I'll stay on F/T for 3 months into the new hire, and then I'll come in 2-3 days a week for the next 21 months at a contractor rate to continue to help them.

EDIT: Just saw they're paying you're replacement the same. Unless you can extort some exorbitant contractor rate, I'd tell them to get stuffed; that's insulting.

They don't mean to be. They don't know what's up and yeah, not succession plan has them ascared and it should. My health is for shit. I'm ready to drop.

I don't have my money/benefits squared away but I'm done. I'm going to have to get if figured out after I leave and then figure out if I can adapt. Every way I look at it health care will bankrupt me or I'll kill myself to keep healthcare.

The goal was be someone else's part time lacky and the would just tell this robot what to do a few days a week where I get all the benefits but I'm past that. I've been asking for a lifeline for years but I didn't ask loud enough. Today, I could lay in bed 10 hours a day after sleeping 8. I have to get my literal and figurative house in order. I have to do nothing for a good long while, then I have to start taking care of my me, then I have to start taking care my stuff (aka house) and I don't have the energy for any of it, much less all of it. My employer need me to work 10 hours a day and be available longer. I don't have the oomph actually put in a 6 hours a day anymore. By 14:00 I'm all but useless. Things aren't just falling through the cracks. The cracks are now fault lines and I am not the guy to be their seismologist.

YellowKing wrote: ↑Thu Oct 14, 2021 10:54 am
MandA with questionable future stuff.

Now is a good time to look. Labor is holding the cards.

I paid the same guy that created my resume about 10 years ago to update mine. I wish I hadn't paid him beforehand though, as the resume and cover letter he sent me is riddled with freaking typos and odd interpretations of things I told him in an interview when he was putting it together. Oh well, it's in a format I can work with now at least. I'll update it and then engage with a service that specializes in tech resumes to fine tune it.

They still haven't announced the acquisition here. And they keep assuring me nothing is going to change. But I'm now a bit more comfortable with the idea of either early retirement or working something less stressful for a few years to get the health insurance and some more cash to avoid dipping too heavily into my 401k.

I think my friend who teaches economics at a university in California had the best reaction when I complained to him about the job front/retiring: "You're better off than most folks these days. You should be sleeping like a drunk baby.".

hepcat wrote: ↑Thu Oct 14, 2021 11:28 am I think my friend who teaches economics at a university in California had the best reaction when I complained to him about the job front/retiring: "You're better off than most folks these days. You should be sleeping like a drunk baby.".

This. You're better off than I am and are closer to non tax penalization for collecting your life savings. And here I am dying for an out and then to trying figure it out how to make it work afterward. OTOH, you do have a higher CoL than I do and probably want for more then I care about, so that might not be enough for you.

Surprisingly I live rather frugally. I read an article the other day that introduced me to a term that immediately made sense to me: poverty mentality. Essentially, it's always assuming you're going to be broke at any time. It's allowed me to be debt free and to save quite a bit for my retirement, but at the cost of living well below what I can really afford. It's actually a negative mindset.

Discovering that was actually a thing has been a bit of an eye opener for me the last couple of weeks.

hepcat wrote:I think my friend who teaches economics at a university in California had the best reaction when I complained to him about the job front/retiring: "You're better off than most folks these days. You should be sleeping like a drunk baby.".

Sound life advice, and a standard that you can easily achieve.

Jeff V wrote: ↑Fri Oct 01, 2021 4:23 pm The call seemed to go ok, he will present me to the client, and it's a rather urgent hire since the previous manager gave a 4 weeks notice and they want to maximize the transition period. I was initially a little skeptical because one of the techs mentioned was cloud application management, I don't have direct experience with this. But after talking with the recruiter, they are considering migrating to cloud-based platforms, so it seems I would be one of several that would need to educate enough to create a strategy. Salary is good (+15% over my last job, plus 10-20% bonus). Location isn't bad, Oakbrook, IL, straight down I-88 from me. 2-3 days per week WFH. All kinds of yay, now to see if I get an interview with the company.

And after 2 weeks of silence, the recruiter called yesterday asking if I was still interested. 2 weeks fewer of working with the incumbent. Sigh.

And I got a call from a recruiter who was hired by the company that rejected me after 6 interviews. Seems they were convinced I was the best candidate for that job too.

Another interview is scheduled for a recruiter for some company downtown. It's an exploratory interview, I don't know much about the job, but the vague description sounds like something I can do.

And in other news, there was a story today that my former company is being offered an unsolicited buy-out bid by their largest shareholder, who claims the current management and board don't know what they are doing. It seems this news hasn't widely circulated in the company...I contacted several former coworkers and one wasn't aware of it while the other, my former peer, is leery because he's the only income in his household, he's my age and stands to face the same challenges if he gets kicked to the curb.

Good luck! We're all counting on you.

Good luck to you all.

Were I you, LM, I'd be taking Smoove's approach at this point. It's clear that they are not going to have a replacement fully up-and-running on your desired timeline, so give them a hard date. if your body and mind can handle it, double your current hourly equivalent rate and offer to be available after your exit as needed for some additional period (with a 2nd hard date). That provides you the concrete exit schedule you desire while handing the company a line of oxygen to get them to their next phase of IT existence, at a rate they've shown (through their starting rate for the replacement) they can afford. As a bonus, it allows you to continue shoring up finances for some intermediate period, but with a much-reduced workload.

None of that is anything less than fully acceptable/professional given how accommodating you've been thus far.

I'm a wuss and a genuinely care about my boss and not leaving her in a bad way. She has been trying to look out for me all along and is already trying to be accommodating and protecting me from the fact that I am not living up to the needs of my position. Of course, she knows if I'm gone it's a short term nightmare it creates. I'll endure what I can and I will revisit what it means to moving from being they guy to helping the person who is the guy when that time comes. I will push for it being sooner than later. I've already done the hard part. I already told them I was leaving. That literally took years to get to. I've already been excused from my goals from 2021 and putting them together for 2022. God, I hated goal setting.

I'm not sure you fully grasp your current situation. You don't have to feel grateful for them not making you do goals. If you didn't do them what would be the repercussions? They give you a bad review? Fire you? You're leaving - do your best on things that matter and don't worry about the things that don't (like career oriented busy work ).

To be fair, not burning your bridges is always the best route. He may need a recommendation from them someday. But yeah, they do seem to be taking advantage of him right now.

stessier wrote: ↑Fri Oct 15, 2021 11:34 am I'm not sure you fully grasp your current situation. You don't have to feel grateful for them not making you do goals. If you didn't do them what would be the repercussions? They give you a bad review? Fire you? You're leaving - do your best on things that matter and don't worry about the things that don't (like career oriented busy work ).

Goals were not career oriented busy work. They were puppies and directly related to my burnout. Goals were ways to take things that weren't part of your job accountability and expanding what you are accountable for in perpetuity until you rise from your position or leave the company.

LordMortis wrote: ↑Fri Oct 15, 2021 11:20 amShe has been trying to look out for me all along and is already trying to be accommodating and protecting me from the fact that I am not living up to the needs of my position.

This is crazy talk to me. Are you truly not living up to expectations or is this the typical company where they think one person should be able to scale to everything? I see this all the time and it's just garbage management/cheapness to the point of burning out people. And I'll be blunt from what I can hear - they burned you out. Including the person you think was protecting you. She didn't protect you. She was directly responsible for what happened. I am hearing all the classic signs of it. And that is almost certainly their fault. You don't owe them much expect your labor on the timetable you are willing to give it to them. I also wonder if you should seek some support groups for workplace burnout.

Edit: What a simulpost! It sounds like you are on the same page on the burnout front. In that light, take what you can in the healthiest way you can. Good luck!

malchior wrote: ↑Fri Oct 15, 2021 12:13 pm Are you truly not living up to expectations or is this the typical company where they think one person should be able to scale to everything?

Yes and yes.

I see this all the time and it's just garbage management/cheapness to the point of burning out people. And I'll be blunt from what I can hear - they burned you out.

Yes.

Including the person you think was protecting you. She didn't protect you. She was directly responsible for what happened.

No. She takes on a lot to protect her people as did her predecessor. My loyalty to the company is not loyalty to the company, it's loyalty to people in the company. She will also eventually burn out (or get let go like her predecessor did)

I don't know if there will eventually be systemic changes but it's too late for me. I can't bounce back.

LordMortis wrote: ↑Fri Oct 15, 2021 12:17 pmI don't know if there will eventually be systemic changes but it's too late for me. I can't bounce back.

I see burnout culture everywhere as a consultant. Companies never learn. They burnout the people too fast to organizationally learn. Eventually they either march on in chaos or just fail as businesses.

LordMortis wrote: ↑Fri Oct 15, 2021 12:17 pm

malchior wrote: ↑Fri Oct 15, 2021 12:13 pm Are you truly not living up to expectations or is this the typical company where they think one person should be able to scale to everything?

Yes and yes.

I see this all the time and it's just garbage management/cheapness to the point of burning out people. And I'll be blunt from what I can hear - they burned you out.

Yes.

I've still got 20+ years before I could even consider retiring, but I'm already at a point where "if expectations =/= reasonable, then walk" is my theme. I've moved job to job in 16 years of IT trying to find the right place, and I get pickier with each change of scenery. I've already decided that if showing up for an interview wearing clean jeans and a comfortable flannel shirt is unacceptable then I won't want to work there so we can all part ways as soon as that comes up as an issue. Playing dress-up so my boss thinks I'm a better worker isn't what I want to do anymore. (Of course, if I was pressed for work, I'd break out the dress pants again while I looked for something better).

I think there's a HUGE wave of shifting expectations on both sides of the employment line. Employers seem to be discovering that people won't do shit work for shit wages and shit treatment anymore and workers are just avoiding those places that think it's okay. I suspect a year of self-reflection at home without a job really woke a lot of people up.

Paingod wrote: ↑Fri Oct 15, 2021 12:40 pm I think there's a HUGE wave of shifting expectations on both sides of the employment line. Employers seem to be discovering that people won't do shit work for shit wages and shit treatment anymore and workers are just avoiding those places that think it's okay. I suspect a year of self-reflection at home without a job really woke a lot of people up.

Add the record profits = record stock market but increased productivity = stagnant wages while others aren't working and I think it's going to be a labor market for a good while. Labor has been more with less since Reagan but I think this might end up the first big labor movement in my lifetime... Right as I'm exiting. That's how things work.

Also CNBC reported this morning the 28 Trillion dollars are in the process of being handed from the Boomer to the Millennials. Generational wealth shift is going to see a whole great big segment of the population just not thinking they ever need to work. I sincerely fear that's going to shit on my early retirement. Labor is going to want a whole lot more and they deserve it but it's going to come at the cost of the value of my savings.

For my update - 18 months ago I added supervisory duties to my regular duties. 3 weeks ago I got my first title promotion in 15 years. Somewhat related - dealing with difficult employees is double unfun.

Very few people look at personnel management as anything but a distraction from actually doing what your job is. But it is necessary and can make or break a person's career with a company.

How do people blow off steam when they have to carry out a policy that they don't agree with. I can't really complain to the people above me and can't let the my group know I disagree. I think I have a great poker face, but it makes me want to punch a wall somedays and that's not exactly great either.

Find a job with a company that better aligns with your values?

Talk through it with your leader, make sure you understand the why which might help you come to terms with it. If the why doesn't work for you, see my first suggestion.

stessier wrote:How do people blow off steam when they have to carry out a policy that they don't agree with.

You have to cultivate people to which you can safely vent. I have a few people that I can freely vent to, and a few people for which I represent a safe space for them to vent. There’s no other way.

One friend developed a twisted enough reputation at a gaming company that when asked how many people in the office he could kill after going postal, he pulled up a Half-Life level recreating the office floor plan and gave a demonstration. The questioner announced that he should never have asked such a stupid question and walked away.

Zarathud wrote: ↑Thu Oct 21, 2021 9:18 pm One friend developed a twisted enough reputation at a gaming company that when asked how many people in the office he could kill after going postal, he pulled up a Half-Life level recreating the office floor plan and gave a demonstration. The questioner announced that he should never have asked such a stupid question and walked away.

That is messed up.

Interview earlier in the week was not with a hiring manager, but with the guy who hired the guy I'd be replacing. He seemed uninterested from the start, and apparently was in no hurry to provide positive feedback to the recruiter. Dude was a lot younger than me, so once again, I think a job I could easily do was denied because of my age.

Jeff V wrote: ↑Thu Oct 21, 2021 9:25 pm Dude was a lot younger than me, so once again, I think a job I could easily do was denied because of my age.

Have you considered Botox?

stimpy wrote: ↑Fri Oct 22, 2021 12:22 pm

Jeff V wrote: ↑Thu Oct 21, 2021 9:25 pm Dude was a lot younger than me, so once again, I think a job I could easily do was denied because of my age.

Have you considered Botox?

I'm not terribly wrinkled, so no. AFAIK, it doesn't help with gray, balding hair and I'm not vain enough to go the Burt Reynolds route.

But you're such a handsome fellow!

Let's not go overboard. It's not like I can brag about having hair like hepcat, after all.

When I had a FTF interview last month, my wife wanted me to dye my hair. Apparently, one of the Covid supply chain casualties is Just for Men, as I couldn't find it anywhere (I tried 4 different stores, each which should have had it). If I create a facade, then there's eternal pressure to maintain it.