In search of the latest salary, or how to become indispensable and what it is fraught with
A little over a year ago, I got a job as an ordinary senior system administrator in the not-so-ordinary company% companyname%.
Having worked there for only six months, I got a lot of useful knowledge, a workaround and, with some difficulty, a salary for the last month of work. By the way, I did not work quite white, however, like all my predecessors. Of which, at the mention of the oldest employees, there were 5 people, if not more.
About my dismissal I was warned for a month. During this time, I had to conduct interviews with candidates for my position, find the right person and tell him the network diagram, the software used, comment on the configuration of the servers, etc.
Fortunately, at the same time I was warned that not one of the system administrators leaving here received the last salary. Moreover, the leadership had some “garter” that allowed it to competently deal with a person even if his guilt was not proved in anything.
And this whole rather long story began with the fact that I came for an interview, which turned out to be rather unusual. Interviewed me deputy. Director of the economic part, therefore, of course, there was no question of a “serious” interview. They showed me one machine that crashes when loading into the BSOD, and asked to fix it. The traditional 256MB flash drive with Hirens Boot USB, which I always carry in my breast pocket, helped to detect and fix the problem in about 5 minutes. After that I heard the verdict - accepted.
From that moment on, a whole bunch of different responsibilities fell on me. A half-dead domain, a video surveillance system, consumables orders, an internal under-CRM in PHP, and most importantly - telephony.
A relatively small call center for 10 people was the main source of revenue for% companyname%, receiving more than 15 thousand calls per month. But in spite of all this, behind this beautiful door to the server room hid this:
However, it worked like that. Communication drops, one domain account for 10 employees, D-Link DES-1008 switches (?) Connected by a tree, and the apotheosis is an Internet gateway based on D-Link DIR-120. He is in the picture above. And this is for 70 people and 8 servers.
Needless to say, a lot has been done in six months. Trunk channels are laid, most of the switches are replaced, a normal domain with personal accounts for each employee is raised, the server is completely refitted. Naturally, such innovations did not always immediately begin to work as intended. But in general, a month later the situation returned to normal, and everything began to work as planned.
In general, I liked the work. An educated (albeit far from IT) team, acceptable terms for assignments, tasty and free "home" food. But the whole raspberry was spoiled directly by the owner of% companyname% - the person is by no means stupid, but impulsive and extremely categorical. These two character traits, mixing in it, periodically led to such unusual results that it was even awkward to even tell them in the team of IT specialists.
Therefore, tasks periodically fell on me, a la to throw the Wi-Fi channel through half of Moscow in order not to pay the provider extra 50 thousand Russian money for 10-bit anlim.
And worst of all, I dared (!) Criticize the decisions of the authorities. Only in his field, naturally. Anyway, I didn’t feel any kind of “reverence” for the gender - it was too painful for me to sit in his office with a report “what was done last night / week / month”.
Naturally, this could not continue for so long. The reason for the dismissal was my categorical refusal to arrange the icons on the desktop as they were before the reinstallation of windows. I think no one needs to explain the reason.
But after this incident, I did not sit in a chair, waiting for my dismissal. Rather, the opposite. I began to bring to mind and run all the projects that “hung” due to the unscheduled introduction of a new domain. As a result, users got a bunch of useful functionality, but most importantly, the network has become more complicated. Much harder than before. And most of all transformed ... right, telephony.
There was only one minus - to me, as a developer of this system, it was quite easy to maintain it. But it was much more difficult for a new person to do this. And since the authorities offered the applicants the “old” salary, most of the “normal” candidates turned around and left right after I showed the lists of active network services and voiced the cost of their service.
... after my dismissal, a new team of system administrators called for another month, asking millions of questions about the device of this network. A month later, I said that from now on, consultations are paid. The calls have stopped. And a month later the director called and said he wanted to talk to me. The conversation and the elimination of one bug (though I eliminated it for three hours) cost him 10 thousand rubles. True, we didn’t agree on permanent cooperation - I requested a salary exactly twice as much as I had before.
After another month, I found out that outsourcing company works there instead of the old system administrators. True, their business did not go well for long. On the fourth day of work, exactly half of all phones fell off. In addition, the cost of services of this company was 4 times higher than my salary.
And today they called me again. And what should I tell them,% username%? What would you tell them?
I said - I’ll think about it. Fortunately, I have time.
Summing up - in order not to be afraid of losing your job and your last salary, all you need to do is:
a) really work well and understand that the real effectiveness of your work exceeds the size of your salary by at least several times.
b) tie all the "ends" on yourself. This is easy to do as a senior sysadmin.
c) not be afraid of innovation - to a reasonable extent, of course.
In this case, even dismissal can be a profitable business.
upd: Thanks to readers, transferred to the blog "Learn to work" =)
upd # 2:I see in the comments a lot of questions about the code documentation. All this, of course, was done. The stake was not on obfuscating the IT infrastructure, but on a direct increase in the cost of its maintenance due to an increase in the number of network services. At the same time, the quality of user service increased, because unnecessary services no one would have simply serviced. Linking is not so much to me as to users.
upd # 3: And yes, I don’t have a personal dislike for bosses. It's just that their task is to set tasks for me, and not to teach me life. The last - only at my request. And in the described situation, someone had to win, and someone - to lose. I simply didn’t want to lose.
Having worked there for only six months, I got a lot of useful knowledge, a workaround and, with some difficulty, a salary for the last month of work. By the way, I did not work quite white, however, like all my predecessors. Of which, at the mention of the oldest employees, there were 5 people, if not more.
About my dismissal I was warned for a month. During this time, I had to conduct interviews with candidates for my position, find the right person and tell him the network diagram, the software used, comment on the configuration of the servers, etc.
Fortunately, at the same time I was warned that not one of the system administrators leaving here received the last salary. Moreover, the leadership had some “garter” that allowed it to competently deal with a person even if his guilt was not proved in anything.
And this whole rather long story began with the fact that I came for an interview, which turned out to be rather unusual. Interviewed me deputy. Director of the economic part, therefore, of course, there was no question of a “serious” interview. They showed me one machine that crashes when loading into the BSOD, and asked to fix it. The traditional 256MB flash drive with Hirens Boot USB, which I always carry in my breast pocket, helped to detect and fix the problem in about 5 minutes. After that I heard the verdict - accepted.
From that moment on, a whole bunch of different responsibilities fell on me. A half-dead domain, a video surveillance system, consumables orders, an internal under-CRM in PHP, and most importantly - telephony.
A relatively small call center for 10 people was the main source of revenue for% companyname%, receiving more than 15 thousand calls per month. But in spite of all this, behind this beautiful door to the server room hid this:
However, it worked like that. Communication drops, one domain account for 10 employees, D-Link DES-1008 switches (?) Connected by a tree, and the apotheosis is an Internet gateway based on D-Link DIR-120. He is in the picture above. And this is for 70 people and 8 servers.
Needless to say, a lot has been done in six months. Trunk channels are laid, most of the switches are replaced, a normal domain with personal accounts for each employee is raised, the server is completely refitted. Naturally, such innovations did not always immediately begin to work as intended. But in general, a month later the situation returned to normal, and everything began to work as planned.
In general, I liked the work. An educated (albeit far from IT) team, acceptable terms for assignments, tasty and free "home" food. But the whole raspberry was spoiled directly by the owner of% companyname% - the person is by no means stupid, but impulsive and extremely categorical. These two character traits, mixing in it, periodically led to such unusual results that it was even awkward to even tell them in the team of IT specialists.
Therefore, tasks periodically fell on me, a la to throw the Wi-Fi channel through half of Moscow in order not to pay the provider extra 50 thousand Russian money for 10-bit anlim.
And worst of all, I dared (!) Criticize the decisions of the authorities. Only in his field, naturally. Anyway, I didn’t feel any kind of “reverence” for the gender - it was too painful for me to sit in his office with a report “what was done last night / week / month”.
Naturally, this could not continue for so long. The reason for the dismissal was my categorical refusal to arrange the icons on the desktop as they were before the reinstallation of windows. I think no one needs to explain the reason.
But after this incident, I did not sit in a chair, waiting for my dismissal. Rather, the opposite. I began to bring to mind and run all the projects that “hung” due to the unscheduled introduction of a new domain. As a result, users got a bunch of useful functionality, but most importantly, the network has become more complicated. Much harder than before. And most of all transformed ... right, telephony.
There was only one minus - to me, as a developer of this system, it was quite easy to maintain it. But it was much more difficult for a new person to do this. And since the authorities offered the applicants the “old” salary, most of the “normal” candidates turned around and left right after I showed the lists of active network services and voiced the cost of their service.
... after my dismissal, a new team of system administrators called for another month, asking millions of questions about the device of this network. A month later, I said that from now on, consultations are paid. The calls have stopped. And a month later the director called and said he wanted to talk to me. The conversation and the elimination of one bug (though I eliminated it for three hours) cost him 10 thousand rubles. True, we didn’t agree on permanent cooperation - I requested a salary exactly twice as much as I had before.
After another month, I found out that outsourcing company works there instead of the old system administrators. True, their business did not go well for long. On the fourth day of work, exactly half of all phones fell off. In addition, the cost of services of this company was 4 times higher than my salary.
And today they called me again. And what should I tell them,% username%? What would you tell them?
I said - I’ll think about it. Fortunately, I have time.
Summing up - in order not to be afraid of losing your job and your last salary, all you need to do is:
a) really work well and understand that the real effectiveness of your work exceeds the size of your salary by at least several times.
b) tie all the "ends" on yourself. This is easy to do as a senior sysadmin.
c) not be afraid of innovation - to a reasonable extent, of course.
In this case, even dismissal can be a profitable business.
upd: Thanks to readers, transferred to the blog "Learn to work" =)
upd # 2:I see in the comments a lot of questions about the code documentation. All this, of course, was done. The stake was not on obfuscating the IT infrastructure, but on a direct increase in the cost of its maintenance due to an increase in the number of network services. At the same time, the quality of user service increased, because unnecessary services no one would have simply serviced. Linking is not so much to me as to users.
upd # 3: And yes, I don’t have a personal dislike for bosses. It's just that their task is to set tasks for me, and not to teach me life. The last - only at my request. And in the described situation, someone had to win, and someone - to lose. I simply didn’t want to lose.