A Curious Situation At Work
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Why not counter and say you'll take a 30% increase to keep your desk clean? If you clean your desk, you'll only clutter it again and he probably hasn't considered this. This way, you get a better pay rate and he gets to keep his OCD under control.
I was brought up to respect my elders. I don't respect many people nowadays.
CodeStash - Online Snippet Management | My blog | MoXAML PowerToys | Mole 2010 - debugging made easierThat's got some potential, Pete - thanks for the suggestion! :-D I'm certainly not above using blackmail to achieve my goals. If it's good enough for the US Government, it should be good enough for me.
Will Rogers never met me.
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That's got some potential, Pete - thanks for the suggestion! :-D I'm certainly not above using blackmail to achieve my goals. If it's good enough for the US Government, it should be good enough for me.
Will Rogers never met me.
It's all about setting expectations. :-D
I was brought up to respect my elders. I don't respect many people nowadays.
CodeStash - Online Snippet Management | My blog | MoXAML PowerToys | Mole 2010 - debugging made easier -
Roger, the one thing a lot of us have come to appreciate about you is your eloquence and how you explain things. You have a wise bonce on the top of your shoulders and I'm quite sure that on the day you'll know what to say. It seems your boss is more concerned about his own shallow existence than he is about appreciating the excellent bloke who works for him. I don't know if engineering is like it is in the UK where everyone seems to know what everyone is doing. Have you thought of applying for some of those jobs if only to "test the water" and see if ageism is indeed the malaise you understand it to be? You and I are the same age. I told my wife a few years ago that when I was made redundant in 2009 it would probably be my last job in IT. For some reason though, I've always found jobs but unfortunately I've often gone to small companies that don't have the reserves to see them through difficult trading periods. At 58, I still hold my own against the young 'uns. I'd really like my current job to be my last job before I hang up my keyboard but the more I have to move around the more upbeat I am. :)
If there is one thing more dangerous than getting between a bear and her cubs it's getting between my wife and her chocolate.
Much to my surprise, I've actually had head hunters calling me lately. I've put them off because I really like the job I have, but I don't know if I can afford to do so any longer. The job is great, but the pay is lousy, and I can't figure out why. Every job I've had in my life, I got raises when no one else did, I got promotions when there were no spots open on the org chart... This one started off wrong, because they hired me to do something I can do, but they didn't really need - database management and computer maintenance. What they learned was that I have far more valuable skills, but having started at a ridiculously low rate of pay, I have trouble getting management to adjust it upwards to a more reasonable range. I can well believe that you "hold your own" against the young ones; we don't have any young ones. There is no one able to take my place when I do retire. That's sad. I'd love to have a young tribal member with a technical degree to train to take my place when I go, or die at my desk. Even younger engineers I encounter when dealing with vendors and sales support people lack the strong technical knowledge that we had to acquire in college and our early years of employment. When we go, there's going to be a huge recession, for lack of ability in the market.
Will Rogers never met me.
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Clean the desk and take the raise. It'll probably take a month after the raise for the desk to get fully cluttered again, or was the keeping of the desk clean a part of the deal?
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES! Abraham Lincoln
Given the rate at which new tasks are dropped on my desk with TOP Priority, I should be able to work this into a 10% per month deal, if I can manage it properly. There is never a day when I fail to walk into the office with a plan in mind, and a list of things I want to accomplish for the day. There hasn't been a single day in the past month when that plan wasn't tossed out the door with a new crisis to take its place within ten minutes of my walking in the door. But you raise a good point - there was no mention of keeping the desk neat. This raises an opportunity for future raises, and sets a precedent for the value of cleaning my desk. At 10% per event, it shouldn't take long to reach my target wage. :-D
Will Rogers never met me.
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Good luck as I would clean my desk, take the raise, and look for a better job. At least you are in sight of the bell curve. I am so far to the left that a 10% raise would only get me in sight of it. Notice I said look for a better job not get a better job. I too am pushing 58 and worry about the "age discrimination", especially since I do not interview well. Once I am on the job they like me but getting there is hard for me.
Work on your interview skills... that's really hard for us engineers as we don't tend to be very sensitive to people skills, but it's worth learning. Your salary is a bit like mine. According to the US BLS, my current salary is just below the 2nd percentile for Arizona. It would take a 50% raise to get me to the 50th percentile. I can't make too many waves, as I really can't afford to be unemployed again. I've been laid off for many years twice, lost everything, and recovered. But I don't think I can do it again.
Will Rogers never met me.
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I think you need to find a suitably tactful way to say 'if you think money will motivate me, why aren't you paying me what I'm worth?'.
I really like the way you phrased that, Bob. Thank you! :-D
Will Rogers never met me.
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You're obviously daft, or possibly Irish. Cleaning my desk, the repository of every piece of paper or hardware that no one in the company can understand or deal with for 8 years, is not a 30 minute task. It's been days, and I'm not half done. One thing I've already noticed, though, is that before, if someone needed a piece of information, I could lay hands on it in seconds. Now I have no idea where to begin looking for it.
Will Rogers never met me.
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Much to my surprise, I've actually had head hunters calling me lately. I've put them off because I really like the job I have, but I don't know if I can afford to do so any longer. The job is great, but the pay is lousy, and I can't figure out why. Every job I've had in my life, I got raises when no one else did, I got promotions when there were no spots open on the org chart... This one started off wrong, because they hired me to do something I can do, but they didn't really need - database management and computer maintenance. What they learned was that I have far more valuable skills, but having started at a ridiculously low rate of pay, I have trouble getting management to adjust it upwards to a more reasonable range. I can well believe that you "hold your own" against the young ones; we don't have any young ones. There is no one able to take my place when I do retire. That's sad. I'd love to have a young tribal member with a technical degree to train to take my place when I go, or die at my desk. Even younger engineers I encounter when dealing with vendors and sales support people lack the strong technical knowledge that we had to acquire in college and our early years of employment. When we go, there's going to be a huge recession, for lack of ability in the market.
Will Rogers never met me.
Roger Wright wrote:
lack the strong technical knowledge that we had to acquire in college and our early years of employment
True. I studied CS and maths yonks ago and the transition from theoretical to practical required decks of punched cards and visits to computer installations, like the big puppies you'd find housing ICL and IBM/360 mainframes. I learned a lot from those visits and we'd discuss them back in the lecture hall. A colleague of mine had little respect for apprentices going into engineering straight from college. They had this attitude of being all-knowing while continually moaning about how little they got paid. They wanted senior management pay for tea-boy duties. It was no wonder then, he and other team members would once in a while rig up a capacitor under their desk and discharge it with an almighty bang, thus scaring the crap out of the hapless apprentice. :)
If there is one thing more dangerous than getting between a bear and her cubs it's getting between my wife and her chocolate.
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Work on your interview skills... that's really hard for us engineers as we don't tend to be very sensitive to people skills, but it's worth learning. Your salary is a bit like mine. According to the US BLS, my current salary is just below the 2nd percentile for Arizona. It would take a 50% raise to get me to the 50th percentile. I can't make too many waves, as I really can't afford to be unemployed again. I've been laid off for many years twice, lost everything, and recovered. But I don't think I can do it again.
Will Rogers never met me.
During an interview, I have a bad habit of foot in mouth. I want to say one thing but it comes out wrong. By-the-way I use to work with a guy named Roger Wright, whom I think was older than us.
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During an interview, I have a bad habit of foot in mouth. I want to say one thing but it comes out wrong. By-the-way I use to work with a guy named Roger Wright, whom I think was older than us.
You never know... Where have you worked? My name's not terribly common, but there's more than one of us. :)
Will Rogers never met me.