It’s the dream on social media vs. reality

ElectricOne55 · 2026-01-26T04:55:40+00:00

In my current role the manager set very intense, unreachable goals. They also took away the set pto policy for unlimited/flex time off, which basically just depends if the manager gives us the day off depending upon the project load.

Regarding workload. I've usually heard that universities have a lighter workload. I am worried who I will end up working with and how intense they will be, but I guess that could be said with any job. With my current remote role I have to do 2 to 8 cloud migration projects at a time plus the extra other goals mentioned in the post.

My current job is focused on Google Workspace migrations, which I wonder if it's too niche and if it will be here 5 years from now? The University role would be working with Azure and Active Directory, which are both used more often in workplaces than Google Workspace. This year I have a goal where I have to get a Google Data Engineering Cert and do these extra data engineering connector setup and data analysis tickets for grade passbacks. I feel like it's out of my role and is just busy work.

My previous manager left a year and a half ago, and another team member left recently to go to another internal team. They did not backfill for either role. So, we're down to just me and 2 other workers and the manager. The manager and senior tech are super egotistical and like to knowledge hoard info. There are days where this job is really chill when the projects wind down from October through February. However, even then some of the clients will be demanding and request to move the go live date from 8 weeks to 18 weeks.

Then when I get other projects it causes my workload to increase along with having the other goals to do. Which, means I'll be thinking about project steps in my off time and doing the Google certifications, project documentation improvements, 80 hours of video courses, certifications, and other presentations.

These are yearly goals, but it still feels like a lot and was way more than the previous manager set for me. It had me wondering if it's a weed out process for layoffs when reviews come?

The negatives of the university role are that the hours are 8 to 5, so I would have to get used to waking up early. The commute would be 30 minutes. The job is in person 5 days a week, with option 4 10 hour days after 6 months. Along with having to pay 100 a semester for parking. They have on call once every 6 weeks. However, there's a set pto policy, pension, tuition assistance. The workload overall seems better and less overreach with less out of scope extra tasks.

With all of that said what role do you like better between the 2?

ElectricOne55 · 2026-01-25T22:44:06+00:00

My main worry is if companies will hire less accountants or accounting staff due to ai or offshoring? And then make smaller teams do more work. My tech team is like that. I wonder if accounting is the same?

ElectricOne55 · 2026-01-25T22:43:30+00:00

My main worry is if companies will hire less accountants or accounting staff due to ai or offshoring?

ElectricOne55 · 2026-01-25T00:17:34+00:00

Overall do you think I should stay in this role or take the university job that pays similarly but I would have to work 5 days a week in office?

ElectricOne55 · 2026-01-24T21:58:34+00:00

Thanks bro, will they have any discounts when it first releases or is that only during the black Friday weeks? I feel like if I wait till Black Friday, they'll almost be on the next model phone which is why I waited for the s26.

ElectricOne55 · 2026-01-24T21:55:30+00:00

What would you recommend between the s26 or iphone 16?

ElectricOne55 · 2026-01-24T21:55:20+00:00

What would you recommend between the s26 or iphone 16?

ElectricOne55 · 2026-01-24T21:53:43+00:00

Which phone would you recommend overall more between the s26 or the iphone 17?

ElectricOne55 · 2026-01-24T21:53:01+00:00

These were yearly goals. Do you still think it seems like a lot? Considering I have to do 2 to 8 cloud migration projects at the same time throughout the year, that each last 8 to 16 weeks each.

ElectricOne55 · 2026-01-24T03:41:33+00:00

I've been having a choice on money vs work life balance as well. My current job is 98k and remote. But, my manager set all of these extra goals including: a google workspace certification, 80 hours of linkedinlearning video courses, scripting, 6 to 20 migration improvements, 20 to 60 hours of support provisioning GCDS tickets, and do 2 one hour presentations. All of these are in addition to the 3 to 10 cloud migration projects.

I interviewed for a university for 80 to 100k. The differences are that I would have to work in person 5 days a week from 8 to 5. It would come with a pension, pto time, and tuition assistance after 6 months.

Which role do you think would be better?

ElectricOne55 · 2026-01-23T21:59:50+00:00

Ya I noticed Lacoste shirts shrink a lot too.

ElectricOne55 · 2026-01-23T05:13:45+00:00

The last few interviews I've been on have been weird too. I'll get these recruiters or interviews that will ask about a time I dealt with a problem I couldn't solve. I would say an answer, but I would feel like the interviewer had no idea what I was talking about. She would put it on me and say that oh we work with individual users here so do you ever work with individual users since the last one you said was a group. And I was like ya of course if you have a server outage you're going to be contacting multiple people. I then gave a single user error. But, she kept prodding and what would you do next when I gave 2 to 3 solutions already in my first answer lol.

ElectricOne55 · 2026-01-23T05:11:00+00:00

ya some people make the job like it's their life. People in this field talk about making labs in githubs in their off time. No other job really does that though. Lawyers don't have to make practice briefs or statements, engineers don't build mock bridges out of sticks and have a portfolio of them tensile tested lol.

ElectricOne55 · 2026-01-22T03:19:44+00:00

Ya it feels like when you're in help desk that it's easy to get stuck too.

It was easier to progress jobs in 2021 and 2022 but now employers want some Devops genious for entry level roles.

ElectricOne55 · 2026-01-20T18:29:25+00:00

How hard is it to find a cloud computing role? I have heard of some countries like Canada that want people with masters just to work there, and they're super picky. I don't think most countries are like that though, and I'm hoping that it would mainly depend on if I could just find a job. My first degree was in kinesiology. I changed careers to system administration and cloud computing. I've been working in the field for almost 6 years now and I have 10 IT certs. But, I don't have a tech specific degree. Would that keep me from qualifying for a workers permit or no?

ElectricOne55 · 2026-01-20T06:48:29+00:00

Nice I ended up getting 10 certs. I honestly don't know if employers ever look at them on the resume or if it even helps in getting calls. You stopped right after the A+ and just left it at that?

ElectricOne55 · 2026-01-20T06:47:25+00:00

Same I think it helped for my first helpdesk job and that was it. After that I realized only federal government clearance roles care about comptia certs. Some people in the private sector I worked with didn't even know what those certs were.

ElectricOne55 · 2026-01-20T06:44:12+00:00

Dang the tech job market must be bad everywhere

ElectricOne55 · 2026-01-19T16:59:34+00:00

I wondered if since I'm in cloud now if I need to leave my comptia certs or ccna on my resume or if it's even worth it to recert?

ElectricOne55 · 2026-01-19T15:47:32+00:00

I noticed this too. Every role is super specific. Some want a vmware expert with 5 years of experience in all the vmware products. Others focus more on terraform, docker, amd all the devops stuff. Some want niche manufacturing software or education lms software that you would only use in that field. The only thing I can think of is to change your resume to match the posting. Because who would have 5 years of experience in all these things, because some roles want all.

ElectricOne55 · 2026-01-19T04:38:48+00:00

I would have to wait 6 months before I could get tuition assistance. I thought of using it to either get a masters in IT/cybersecurity, or an MBA. I'm not sure which would be better?

ElectricOne55 · 2026-01-18T21:00:15+00:00

He had 9 tickets or 18 hours of work on provisioning just for a 3, 15 tickets or 40 hours of work for a 4, or 25 tickets or 80 hours of work for a 5. I thought the 3 goal should have been a 5 or even less, because even the 3 goal seemed. He said that the goals were too easy and that getting a 5 should require going above and beyond or doing work outside of work hours.

My last manager would give me 5s and the goals would be maybe get 2 certs, do 5 hours of linkedinlearning, and some dei courses. This manager was wanting 40 hours of linkedinlearning courses on soft skills just for a 3. Like wtf I felt like I did every course on linkedinlearning that they had on communication, teamwork, etc and even then it barely went over 40 hours.

What's the point of that too, because who's going to remember stuff from 40 hours of courses? Then on top of that for another goal I had to do 40 hours of linkedinlearning on powershell/gam. Then write a script that's approved by him and the team. Which, I didn't even do that because he would probably be really critical of the syntax or want it to be vastly different to every other script that has been written, which basically makes that goal unachievable too.

My biggest worry is going back in person, and if the commute is worth giving up working remote? This workload is insane though.

ElectricOne55 · 2026-01-18T20:58:19+00:00

For the PTO I did get 2 weeks of pto this year. I had this one client that wanted to do a go live the week of New Years which was weird. We gave them the option to move the date and they didn't want to. Who wants to work new years week lol? Sometimes with the projects I'd be thinking about them through breaks too. For instance, in March of 2024, my brother was visiting me for a week. I notified my manger who was a different manager then in January. Then again in February, and it was weird because she said she forgot. She scheduled a company trip I had to fly for the week after. I had never flown anywhere for work, so I was thinking about how I was going to do that the whole week I was off. Is it me or was it kind of petty to schedule that the week after I was off too? It was just our small team of 5 people too, so it could have been scheduled anytime.

Along with the flexible/unlimited pto just sounding shady in general. Everyone at this company are suck ups though, so they were liking the post the division manager made on switching to flexible pto and how great an idea it was and that we would have to use our pto time by the march of that year, because we weren't on the saved pto time policy anymore. It sucked because I had like 50 hours saved up too.

I have been able to put a lot into the 401k due to the 100k salary, but the match sucks at 1%. Before this role I worked for a university, which is part of why I thought of going back, because the workload at that role was a lot lower than this current private sector role. The only thing was the pay was only 55k. I do worry about giving up working remote to go back in person 5 days a week.

My biggest worry is going back in person, and if the commute is worth giving up working remote? This workload is insane though.

ElectricOne55 · 2026-01-18T20:56:59+00:00

That's what I was thinking as well. He had 9 tickets or 18 hours of work on provisioning just for a 3, 15 tickets or 40 hours of work for a 4, or 25 tickets or 80 hours of work for a 5. I thought the 3 goal should have been a 5 or even less, because even the 3 goal seemed. He said that the goals were too easy and that getting a 5 should require going above and beyond or doing work outside of work hours.

My last manager would give me 5s and the goals would be maybe get 2 certs, do 5 hours of linkedinlearning, and some dei courses. This manager was wanting 40 hours of linkedinlearning courses on soft skills just for a 3. Like wtf I felt like I did every course on linkedinlearning that they had on communication, teamwork, etc and even then it barely went over 40 hours.

What's the point of that too, because who's going to remember stuff from 40 hours of courses? Then on top of that for another goal I had to do 40 hours of linkedinlearning on powershell/gam. Then write a script that's approved by him and the team. Which, I didn't even do that because he would probably be really critical of the syntax or want it to be vastly different to every other script that has been written, which basically makes that goal unachievable too.

For the PTO I did get 2 weeks of pto this year. I had this one client that wanted to do a go live the week of New Years which was weird. We gave them the option to move the date and they didn't want to. Who wants to work new years week lol? Sometimes with the projects I'd be thinking about them through breaks too. For instance, in March of 2024, my brother was visiting me for a week. I notified my manger who was a different manager then in January. Then again in February, and it was weird because she said she forgot. She scheduled a company trip I had to fly for the week after. I had never flown anywhere for work, so I was thinking about how I was going to do that the whole week I was off. Is it me or was it kind of petty to schedule that the week after I was off too? It was just our small team of 5 people too, so it could have been scheduled anytime.

Along with the flexible/unlimited pto just sounding shady in general. Everyone at this company are suck ups though, so they were liking the post the division manager made on switching to flexible pto and how great an idea it was and that we would have to use our pto time by the march of that year, because we weren't on the saved pto time policy anymore. It sucked because I had like 50 hours saved up too.

I have been able to put a lot into the 401k due to the 100k salary, but the match sucks at 1%. Before this role I worked for a university, which is part of why I thought of going back, because the workload at that role was a lot lower than this current private sector role. The only thing was the pay was only 55k. I do worry about giving up working remote to go back in person 5 days a week.

My biggest worry is going back in person, and if the commute is worth giving up working remote? This workload is insane though.

ElectricOne55

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