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Getting Paid Fairly When Job Responsibilities Spiral?
greymond writes "I was originally hired as an Online Content Producer to write articles for a company website as well as start up the company's social media outlets on Facebook and Twitter. With budget cuts and layoffs I ended up also taking over the website facilitation for three of the company's websites (they let go of the current webmaster). During this time the company has been developing a new website and I was handed the role of pseudo project manager to make sure the developer stayed on course with the project's due date. Now that we're closer to launch the company has informed me that they don't have the budget or staff in place to set up the web server and have tasked me with setting up the LAMP and Zend App on an Amazon EC2 setup. While it's been years since I worked this much with Linux I'm picking it up and moving things along. Needless to say I want to ask for more money, as well as more resources (as well as a better title that fits my roles), but what is the best way to go about this? Of course my other thought is that I'd much rather go back to writing and working with marketing than getting back into IT."
You don't seem to understand how modern "capitalism" works. When your boss said "we don't have the budget," he meant exactly that. If you push for more money, or even just ask, if they're really antsy, you'll be filing for unemployment.
I just got out of a funny situation a week ago. I took a job as a manager that only paid 10/hr but the I.T. people were being paid 2.5x to 3x as much. It was very unprofessional and the owner mentioned my meager salary to the other works I would watch. Something sounded fishy. If this were 1999 I would have not taken the job and laughed at the guy. The owner of the computer shop was a terrible manager and he mentioned that I was not even an asset but a liability. I was very close in not accepting the job as the owner sounded snotty and indecisive, but I decided to take it because I had bills to pay. Looking back at it I have to say that we were both incompetent if this is what was agreed upon (being brutally honest). Same is true for anyone else or the slashdotter who submitted the story.
In the end the computer shop barely made $400 in revenue for the week and after the 2nd I was let go. I was planning on doing door to door sales and doing at least *something* to bring in value. But it beat working at the grocery store since its the only place hiring and I need to pay off my student loans.
In such a situation either management is bad or the employer is on life support. You need to leave or the decision will be made for you. If you do not have years of experience then your SOL and maybe store management is the next big thing to strive for after college. Many fortunate 1000 companies wont even talk to you unless you have years of experience and the college degree (or in my case I had one but 3 years out of I.T.).
For the one who submitted this story I would say I.T. is too competitive. Shoot! Webmaster salaries and computer techs are 50% of what they were in 1999. I remember when webmasters were paid $65k a year and now its about $30k. Store management is the future if you have no experience or specialty besides a business degree and less than 3 years experience. You need many years of experience for anything today for medium to large businesses and globalization creates too many foreign cheap workers to compete against.
http://saveie6.com/