Current Events > I'm now on my first real vacation in years.

(+) Yeah! (+)

At my old job, I never got to take a real break. Every time I tried to take time off work, I had to work any way.

I took a two and a half week break between my last job and this one, but I made a big mistake and chose to keep answering the phone when they needed help. I thought it would just be a call every now and then, but it was every day. Multiple times per day.

So I never really got to decompress between jobs. And then for the past year and a half, I took a few days off here and there, but never an extended break.

I'm now off all of next week. This is gonna be great. Nothing special planned. Probably gonna go to my mom's house on Sunday, but I'm gonna come back Sunday night.

---

Welcome to IT when IT has basic employment rights

Did you have to remote work during the pandemic?

Payzmaykr posted...

Did you have to remote work during the pandemic?

Yeah, I'm still working remotely right now. They're talking about having people come back to the office in September, but they're going to do a "hybrid" thing where you don't HAVE to go back. If we want to work from home, we can. If we want to work from the office, we can.

They're saying they're gonna try out a "hoteling" type of thing where you can reserve a space at one of any of our administrative offices to work out of on any particular day.

I'm probably going to just keep working from home. They want to have one network person in the office at each data center every day, so I may end up working in the office one day every now and then. I think I'd be OK with that.

---

enjoy! so nice to be able to decompress

---

CableZL posted...

but I made a big mistake and chose to keep answering the phone when they needed help. I thought it would just be a call every now and then, but it was every day. Multiple times per day.

So I never really got to decompress between jobs. And then for the past year and a half, I took a few days off here and there, but never an extended break.

I'm now off all of next week. This is gonna be great. Nothing special planned. Probably gonna go to my mom's house on Sunday, but I'm gonna come back Sunday night.

I can completely relate to this. This past year i've just been on call basically. Just to keep the company moving along. I went out of my way to make shit work, and I got nothing in return.

---

Johnny_Nutcase posted...

I can completely relate to this. This past year i've just been on call basically. Just to keep the company moving along. I went out of my way to make s*** work, and I got nothing in return.

Yeah, that's pretty much how it was for me. I was super into the company because working there was really awesome when I first started. Then the company exploded in size over the course of about a year and I just couldn't keep up. Constant 60 - 80 hour weeks and I was at least a month behind on stuff. I was spending what felt like all of my time awake working or worried about work.

Someone opened a ticket to get a music player connected to the network in their area at the corporate office. I didn't get to that shit for like a month and a half. They complained and I finally did it. They stopped using that music player within a couple weeks.

Then there was one building that was having new network ports installed in various areas of the building without my knowledge. They didn't know the drops had to actually be connected to the switch in the network closet for the devices to work. I was just randomly there one day and was like "Wait, WTF does that port on the wall go to? ... ... ... And when did THAT port get there?" There were like "Yeah, there's something wrong with these ports because they don't work." Being the only network guy, I knew they weren't connected to the switch, LOL. If I didn't do it, then nobody else would have done it.

---

Oh cool where'd you g-

CableZL posted...

Nothing special planned. Probably gonna go to my mom's house on Sunday

:l

Well, do what makes you happy lol

---

I'm going to resist mandatory office hours when it comes down to it I'll accept being in the office one day a week at most.

---

Why answer calls from a place you no longer work?

sabrestorm posted...

Why answer calls from a place you no longer work?

I had a weird emotional attachment to the network I built at that company and it was a lot harder than I expected it to be to let it all go. I was pissed and bitter at the company for essentially forcing my hand and pushing me out the door, but I was super proud that I took a chance at being a solo network engineer for the first time and accomplished all that. So I didn't want the network to fail just because the company made dumb decisions and didn't hire people to help me or give me time to train the contractor on anything.

It was a bad decision, sure.

What I told the contractor when I left was to call me if anything major broke and he couldn't figure it out. I didn't expect that to turn into multiple calls per day every day. But the big problem there was they prevented him from working on any existing network infrastructure because he was just a contractor. They only wanted him to work on new stores. I told them that was dumb because it handcuffs him and would end up hurting the company, especially if I was unavailable. They didn't listen.

When I put in my 2 weeks notice, a lot of people in and around the company were pretty surprised. When they thought of that company and the network, they knew I was the guy to talk to. The CEO was shocked that I was quitting. Vendors and other companies we worked with were shocked. I gave my boss a heads up before I did it, but I didn't tell anyone else. And basically, because the company didn't really do much to be prepared to lose me as their only network engineer, they were in a rather panicked state when they knew I was leaving.

My 2nd to last day, they finally told me to set aside the whole day to go over the whole network with the contractor. It's not something you can just pick up and learn in a day, but whatever. That morning, we sat down and started going over stuff. Then at about 10am, the security camera vendor unplugged the only firewall the company wanted to pay for at one of the new store locations. That killed the whole rest of the day and I was pissed. It reminded me of why I was leaving. We spent like an hour getting there trying to get through Austin traffic at 10am on Mopac.

And so, when I left a couple days later, the guy who took over my role basically didn't know jack shit about the network. The company screwed him over. So I wanted to help him.

He definitely took advantage of that way too much and was calling multiple times per day. Then when I started at my new job, he was STILL calling in the middle of the day when I was trying to learn my new job's network environment. That's when I got pissed and stopped answering the phone.

He only calls once every few months now, which isn't too bad. They have 3 network engineers now, but there's still stuff that they don't know about the network that they sometimes need to ask me about.

---

I'd consider working from home a vacation. And never answer your phone when you're off. I have a million excuses lined up as to why I didn't get a call.

---

LeoRavus posted...

I'd consider working from home a vacation. And never answer your phone when you're off. I have a million excuses lined up as to why I didn't get a call.

My current job has 22 network engineers and another 4 in India for overnight support, so they won't need to call me for anything. They're also working on expanding the team to 48 network engineers right now.

---

My old job, though, I didn't really have that option. I was in a weird spot where I was responsible for critical infrastructure and nobody else in the company understood networking to a very high degree. My boss knew some basics, but he definitely wasn't a network engineer.

Just letting the network stay broken because I'm off work... I don't think they would have made a big deal about it, but I didn't want to even test that theory out. If the wrong thing on the network breaks, it brings the company to a crawl or possibly a halt.

---

I hope you're charging them a fat consulting fee.

Because you should be on retainer for like $20,000 a year for emergencies and then billable hours for actual hours worked for such a critical role like that at a old company. You can be, if your old boss is smart and humble. Have you approached them with this kind of offer?

---

pure_temper posted...

I hope you're charging them a fat consulting fee.

Because you should be on retainer for like $20,000 a year for emergencies and then billable hours for actual hours worked for such a critical role like that at a old company. You can be, if your old boss is smart and humble. Have you approached them with this kind of offer?

So... I've had a number of people suggest this and I probably should have done it, but... The idea of being contractually tied to the company physically repulses me. It'd be some nice extra money, but I don't want any part of the strings that would come attached to that money.

I just know it would turn into them expecting me to help them all the time because there's a contract.

They also fired my old boss when the covid lockdowns went on for longer than expected, along with about 85 other people.

---