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Does Your Company Pay For Broadband?
masq57 writes "My fellow administrators and I used to have company provided ISDN lines in our homes so that we could respond quickly to issues after hours. That was changed in the last few years to letting us expense our broadband service. Now our new CIO has elected to stop that benefit using the argument that we should be dedicated staff who desire to be responsive and should do what it takes to make that happen. The rumor now is that we should also pay for blackberries, cell phones and pagers. What sort of experiences do the rest of slashdotters have along these lines?"
Aside from that, this might be a good sign that it's time to start looking around for another job. This isn't 2002 anymore -- employers who still think they can get away with this sort of shit are wrong, wrong, wrong.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Yes, my company does pay for my home broadband access..and they are remarkably liberal about it. They don't care what servers I run or how I use the bandwidth (3 Mb/1Mb), just so long as I can still effectively do my job. Of course, I work from home full time, so the situation is a bit different than that of many in our profession. Josh.
How many roads must a man walk down? 42.
I have DSL at home ($50/month), a pager ($20/month), a cell phone (+/- $80/month), and cellular internet ($80/month). My company pays for my pager, my cellular internet (gets internet access via PCMCIA anywhere I get a cell signal), half my DSL, and half my cell bill. I'm also a 1-man IT shop supporting 30+ users and 20+ servers including clusters, so even on vacation, I have to be available and reachable. Of course, we're not hurting for money either.
I agree. You'll find out how important it is when you don't have any of them...for work purposes anyway. Sounds like management is a little out of touch with reality.
When you're in the office, that is. Tell him you are absolutely, positively dedicated to providing your company the best possible service during working hours.
When you're at home, your time is your own, unless they're paying you extra. If your job is not like that, it's time to find a new job. "It's your job, suck it up," is not an appropriate response here; you're a human being, not a disposable resource to be used up.
Your CIO needs to show YOU that he's dedicated to having the best possible service available, and that he's willing to dedicate the resources to ensure it. If he wants 24-hour cell phone availability, he better be paying for the phone. If they're going to require you to use your own resources to perform your job, then they should at the VERY least reimburse you on a prorated schedule for the amount of time you spend using your net connection from home. Even if it's only a couple of bucks a month--hell, especially if it's only a couple of bucks a month.
As it is, all he's showing you is that you're not worth a goddamn unless they can squeeze every last drop out of you that they possibly can.
You don't work from home, you don't carry a pager, and you don't give them your cell phone number. If they don't want to pay for the means of contacting you, they can try your answering machine and hope for the best.
I pretty much have that arrangement with my employer. Fortunately, my boss and I have the same opinions about that level of 24x7 support, that if you aren't willing to provide the means to contact the employee and provide them the access to the systems at work from home, then you can't expect them to be on call all the time. Since our IT head won't even allow FTP access to our webservers, I won't be working from home any time soon.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
The broadband piece may be because most people don't just use it for work, but for their own use as well, and there is no reason work should pay for that.
Having an on-call pager or cell phone is not an unreasonable way to go. I have used worked that out with my staffs in the past and it works pretty well. If you aren't on-call you never get the call because some manager HAS to use the printer right outside his/her cube, and not the one 10 feet further down the hall.
Ride it out, but make it clear (if this is really the case) that you don't have room in your personal budget for high speed internet access, and that if you get the call it will take you X minutes to get into work.
Personally I don't take work calls on my personal cell (sometimes my wife takes it, or my kids) so it's not a reliable way to contact me. I do have a company provided pager.
YMMV
Eschew Obfuscation
Let me 'chime in' myself.
I work for a mid-sized medical lab that STARTED as a very small niche lab.
I bent over backwards to make myself valuable to my employer. That includes web accessable alpha paging (straight to my cell phone) and cell access. PLUS support from home/vacations. This was all at my expense.
The downside: It costs me money every month.
The upside: Tax write-off, greater asset to my employer, was able to jump on any major problems BEFORE they effected employee productivity.
Here I am 5 years later earning 4x my starting wage (which wasn't too bad to start with) and I'm the manager of my dept. Further, I may be on a 'leash', but I have incredible amounts of flexability. Twice a week over summer, I leave for a 2.5 hour lunch and spend it with my son (park, catch, arcade, whatever). Whats that worth to some people? For me it's priceless. (Of course that 7 hour drive up the coast from LA to Oakland xmas-eve sucked -- but I made it back before my kids were woke up xmas morning! (I drove to make SURE I didn't get stuck at the airport)).
It all depends on your 'situation'. Plus, working for a privately owned company vs. a heartless evil corporation is a major asset -- and humans appricate effort more than faceless 'boardrooms'. ymmv.
Me, too!
What I find offensive is the way the CIO tried to pass it off as though paying for company materials out of your own pocket somehow exemplifies your character and work attitude. That's what makes him a screwheaded dork.
The only good news is that some of these expenses might (repeat, **MIGHT**) be tax deductable, but it's going to depend on *A* *LOT* of factors, including your financial position, other tax deductions, etc. It might not work out, but it may be worth looking into. Maybe someone else here is already doing that or tried and failed?
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
As an employer of sysadmins, it's rather easy in my book. I pay for cell phones. Not a problem. But I am not going to pay for internet connections. It becomes a liability. Consider if it's a "company paid connection", it suffers under the same rules as the at work connection (no downloading music, bittorrent now allowed, etc). Obviously, this won't work out for a connection at home.
But then, I don't demand that my sys admins work from home. I expect that they work from the office.
However, keeping the servers up 24/7 is part of the job description. If the servers go down, it's the sysadmin's job to get it back up. If the sys admin tells me he doens't have an internet connection, fine, that doesn't mean he is going to lose his job.
However, our servers being down and the sys admin saying "Well, I am only paid to do this 9-5, call me in the morning" isn't going to cut it. The servers being down will cause the sys admin to lose his job.
Now, all this being said, I am not that cruel. I expect certain things from my sys admins, just as much as I let them get away with certain things (as sys admins should do). I don't complain if I catch them playing a little bit of quake. God forbid one of the sale or support staff is caught, but the sys admin, it's all good.
When they need to leave early, go ahead. A little longer on the lunch, fine.
It's reall a give an take relationship. I respect their freedom, I respect their abilities, and I respect that because at time we need them late at night, if they come in an hour later, so be it.
But that doesn't mean I am going to start paying for their Iternet connection, or computer, or chair, or desk, or electricity. The servers need to stay up. That's basically what I pay them for.
Jason Lotito
Excellent point. Don't ignore the signs! Other signs:
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
I agree. Here's how I look at it:
At my company I frequently hear comments from management about how working extra hours makes you a more "valuable" employee. Keep in mind that I'm a salaried software engineer and get no compensation for overtime. At a meeting I once pointed out that my salary was based upon a fixed 40-hour week, as agreed upon in my employment contract. I further noted that by working overtime, I was, actually reducing my effective hourly wage, thereby making myself less valuable to the company. This view proved popular among the engineering staff (who began leaving on-time more often than they used to) and rather unpopular among management. I also mentioned that I had spent about fifteen years running my own consulting business full-time before I came to work there, and that I had decided to go full time to get away from crazy hours and having no social life. More blank stares. Oh well.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
If you're good enough, you can tell them to provide the tools to do the job or they won't get it done. The folks who will bend to such obviously stupid management by terror tactics are not good enough to walk out and get a job. Somebody is always hiring somewhere. You may have to move, but you can find another job. Just do so before you quit.
This is going on in my company. I put in my 50 hours and that's what they get. My department has lost two techs and we've not been allowed to replace them, because the owner doesn't want to spend the money. So when he calls and wants to know why X project is not done, I explain it to him. I even use small words to be sure he understands. So far, no problem.
In a time of limited resources, the management has to set the priorities. Your personal time is not a part of the pay check and is not "Negotiable" no matter what Mr, MBA wants you to think. When they want you to pay out of your pocket, you decide what you are willing to do and then do it. Put in reasonable hours and move on.
Creative Spelling Copyright (2002). May use without Persimmons
I have worked non-union construction jobs and I have to say: while you get more money, the long hours, no benefits and near slave demands made upon non-union employees would get really old really fast. When the union finally bullied its way into the job, I could see the differences immediately. They worked half as hard for half as long for 60% of the pay and three times the bennies. I wish there were a happy medium between slave labor/high wages and slack labor/good bennies. There was, during the Boom anyway...we worked hard for good pay and good bennies. Unfortunately, the dollar signs in the boss's eyes meant we sold our solid little performer to a big bloated startup, and everybody got the short end in the back side.
Hey freaks: now you're ju