Man of Honour
Congrats Stoodles! I'll take a generous serving of meat with my beer.
This Business and Moment...
- Thread starter randomshenans
- Start date
Soldato
Well, I've been in my current role nearly a year, loving the work. I'm an application support analyst using mainly SQL to work on a massive fraud analysis software for multinational companies. my brain is tired every day but it's getting me down that I'm mostly self-taught (no training), things are going out of SLA's because I can't get answers to questions. There are no procedures for anything and those few documents there are up to 6 years old. They are unwilling to develop support systems or create champions so that we can turn work around faster increasing client happiness and freeing our time to develop improvements.
My colleague has been there 6 years and like everyone else, admits he only knows about 40% of the system if that.
The colleague to my right has been there 2 years and is on £34k a year inc car allowance but not shift allowance which adds another 3k a year. The colleague behind me takes home low £30k as he does a lot of on-call work.
My life has just taken a turn, I need a bigger salary to get a larger mortgage and on the £21k I am on not including the shift allowance it's not really possible. I've been waiting for the results of a pay analysis for 2 months now but from what everyone says I can expect up to £1k at the most.
has anyone else left a job that they enjoy purely to look for more money?
There's a team leader position going which will add £3k on top but in all honesty, a team leader to me should be a fountain of knowledge, I can line manage and lead people as I've 15 years experience in various industries but I don't feel I know enough, however, that's not stopped others.
I've a few web-based ideas to develop as well as my photography but that's a 2nd or 3rd job and I don't want to miss my kids growing up just to provide for them.
My colleague has been there 6 years and like everyone else, admits he only knows about 40% of the system if that.
The colleague to my right has been there 2 years and is on £34k a year inc car allowance but not shift allowance which adds another 3k a year. The colleague behind me takes home low £30k as he does a lot of on-call work.
My life has just taken a turn, I need a bigger salary to get a larger mortgage and on the £21k I am on not including the shift allowance it's not really possible. I've been waiting for the results of a pay analysis for 2 months now but from what everyone says I can expect up to £1k at the most.
has anyone else left a job that they enjoy purely to look for more money?
There's a team leader position going which will add £3k on top but in all honesty, a team leader to me should be a fountain of knowledge, I can line manage and lead people as I've 15 years experience in various industries but I don't feel I know enough, however, that's not stopped others.
I've a few web-based ideas to develop as well as my photography but that's a 2nd or 3rd job and I don't want to miss my kids growing up just to provide for them.
Caporegime
Definitely...money, whether we like it or not is a big driver in everything we do. Ultimately, you have your own lifestyle needs therefore require a certain amount of money. It sounds like they don't want to invest in the staff and just keep pushing until breaking point. To me that screams you need to look for something else.
Don't get emotionally attached to the place or the work you've done, take what you've learned and find somewhere else which values you, offers the salary you want, and go for it.
Don't get emotionally attached to the place or the work you've done, take what you've learned and find somewhere else which values you, offers the salary you want, and go for it.
Applied for a new role and promotion - different government department but still Civil Service, very high profile department at the moment. I am punching a bit if I am honest due to the profile and the level of stakeholder but I have the skills both essential and desirable they want, I have the experience and knowledge and now I have dealt with the leaders of my current department I'm sure I can hold my own in their world.
Hopefully the 3 promotions in 3 years shows I am adaptable and striving to always be better and push-on. Someone tried to tell me that I was in danger of promoting above my skill level last week, bizarre as his current department have asked for my help in fixing his current predicament.
Fingers crossed, would mean doing the Waterloo Shuffle again but would be great for my CV and the department is very interesting.
Hopefully the 3 promotions in 3 years shows I am adaptable and striving to always be better and push-on. Someone tried to tell me that I was in danger of promoting above my skill level last week, bizarre as his current department have asked for my help in fixing his current predicament.
Fingers crossed, would mean doing the Waterloo Shuffle again but would be great for my CV and the department is very interesting.
Soldato
Been offered a job in Dubai, currently awaiting the terms/package. Slight career change but pretty excited!
Ultimately you need a salary to pay for bills. At the high end I think lots of other factors can be more important, but if you need a higher salary to get a mortgage required for a sensible house option then absolutely just move on. If you get an offer elsewhere you can tell your current employer and see if they would match salaries, giving you a choice.
Soldato
I've just opened a slide deck from a supplier partner outlining what is new in a software release.
File name says it's the consolidated version.
My heart sank when I saw slide 1 of 194
File name says it's the consolidated version.
My heart sank when I saw slide 1 of 194
@Diddums have you started the new role this week? How's it going?
It's times like that where you stand up and say 'nope, not for me'.
I've just opened a slide deck from a supplier partner outlining what is new in a software release.
File name says it's the consolidated version.
My heart sank when I saw slide 1 of 194
It's times like that where you stand up and say 'nope, not for me'.
Back end of last year I'm told by my line manager that if it were not for the systems and processes I implemented in the last few months of the year, the company would've likely fallen to bits.
Few months back I ask if I can put an £8 wireless mouse through expenses. It's agreed, with some difficulty, and I'm told I'm explicitly allowed to tell nobody else in the business that I put it through expenses, because it might start a trend. I never bothered in the end.
Today the bonuses are dealt out, ranging from £2k to £10k net.
I received nothing.
Amongst plenty of other annoyances with my current work/employer (colleagues/management taking credit for my work, lack of communication, inflexible working hours, lack of progression, unfair treatment of some staff as opposed to others), I'm feeling it's time to move on, or am I being petty here?
Few months back I ask if I can put an £8 wireless mouse through expenses. It's agreed, with some difficulty, and I'm told I'm explicitly allowed to tell nobody else in the business that I put it through expenses, because it might start a trend. I never bothered in the end.
Today the bonuses are dealt out, ranging from £2k to £10k net.
I received nothing.
Amongst plenty of other annoyances with my current work/employer (colleagues/management taking credit for my work, lack of communication, inflexible working hours, lack of progression, unfair treatment of some staff as opposed to others), I'm feeling it's time to move on, or am I being petty here?
By create champions - do you mean people specialising in say a particular part of the system? Bit bizarre they don't want to do that - you should be able to arrange something like that organically among your colleagues too as everyone likely has strengths or areas they're more interested in - can you just agree with your colleagues that you'll mostly pick up issues relating to X and they pick up mostly the Y issues etc...? Presumably there is no second line team you can turn to for advice or escalate issues too if you're missing SLAs? Also are the clients not kicking off massively or are the SLAs being missed on non-urgent issues they're not so fussed about?
Lastly do you have much interaction with the development teams? Like do you speak to them before submitting change requests etc.. of bugs etc.. or do you just spec them and put them into whatever internal system you use? And also do you have access to the code? Frankly not having up to date documentation on everything in some enterprise software company that also sells ongoing support etc.. to the clients isn't exactly uncommon! I'd definitely network as much as possible with the dev teams, you might well find BAs or product owners there can give you some docs etc.. you should perhaps also make use of them more or let them know if you're potentially breaking SLAs too.
I was happy to spend a bit of time with the support guys at my old place if they had first put the effort in to try to get to the bottom of an issue but had got stuck somewhere - in that sort of situation it was often initially not going to take too much time as I could frequently just take a look and say OK get X, Y Z for me or if it is A then we should see B please check that and come back. etc..
Soldato
Yes, champions as specialists or floor walkers as they are called in some businesses. Many of us feel the same, we need specialists, documents/wiki/procedures/training videos etc but it's getting blocked by the dept manager. We have a workflow team that handles incoming emails but they are non-technical staff, they issue the work according to a planner. The planner doesn't take into account holidays or shift weeks when we aren't supposed to do normal problems as we're dealing with live issues. We're counted as first line but in any other company we would be second line. We've just had someone from a first line position at another company start and he's amazed as we do everything. We have a second line team of 3, only 1 of which is a natural at helping, one keeps his head down as the's the team leader and the other can spend 60 minutes talking about why something is so **** instead of spending the 5 minutes pointing you in the right direction.
90% of those out of SLA are internal problems, they are less concerned about them but I'm not, I'm not programmed to think "that''ll do" or "screw it, it's only internal" or worse, to pop something on responded which halts the SLA countdown like some analysts do.
We've a massive dev department, all split into squads but the problem is, most of them don't fully understand how things work either. They see their tiny bit and that's it. We've a product that was written and designed by a single dev who is now a director, no one understands how it fully works apart from him but no one's allowed to bother him about it now.
I give myself a kicking because I'm used to learning everything I can, but there's so much here to pick up but I've been self teaching and within the first 5 months there was talk about me moving to the second line team, which I just didn't understand because I question my own knowledge and ability.
I love the company and the work despite all the issues, turns out my pay review is being done this month but I seriously doubt it'll be raised enough to make a difference so time to look for something else
I just need a job where I can go into businesses, watch, learn and listen and then tell them exactly what they need to do to improve efficiency etc as that's where my main skills lie.
lolI dunno, if this workflow team doesn't actually do anything then it does sound like what you're doing is first line - it was fairly standard for first line people to analyse an issue and then write up a quick spec and submit it to a dev team without needing to involve second line in my old place too. I don't think you're the first person in a support role at a firm like that to feel a bit overwhelmed or be frustrated by the lack of documentation. That is a bit frustrating that you can't specialise and you've got some people who don't add anything in terms of analysis allocating tasks.
If you moved to the second line team could you specialise in a particular part of the software? Do these dev teams not have business analysts or product owners? Perhaps a move to second line and building a relationship with the relevant dev teams for the part of the system you cover could be a good move even if you are in at the deep end a bit more initially.
If you moved to the second line team could you specialise in a particular part of the software? Do these dev teams not have business analysts or product owners? Perhaps a move to second line and building a relationship with the relevant dev teams for the part of the system you cover could be a good move even if you are in at the deep end a bit more initially.
Associate
Just over a year in my new job for me and I've mixed feelings. I've never worked at a company that has looked after me as much as this and yet I'm not quite sure on my future development - I feel like the direction my role is going in might not be where I want to be. We have a big project underway which should be over later this year and then I think I will have to have some thoughts over where my future role is going.
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Get out of there asap, you'll find something much better without a doubt.
Man of Honour
As Maccy says, get out asap.
Soldato
Time to polish the CV and get it out there.
Once you get to giving your notice, just remember the current situation should a counter offer be made. If the company didn't think you worthy of a bonus, then an improved deal is just to avoid them the hassle & cost of replacing you.
Thank you, all. I'm glad I'm not alone in my thinking.
A little more context, I've been at my current job almost 3 years, and I did have another job lined up almost 12 months ago (came here to discuss, if I recall), and decided not to go with it as my current employer almost matched the salary on offer, and promised me the world. However, as you can guess, in the 12 months since absolutely nothing has changed.
Feels very strange going in there and having the conversation yet again, but I know in my heart it's something I have to do.
It's all a balance, but a company that looks after you is a great thing. If they truly value you, and, like you say, look after you, then they should be open to a discussion about your future.