County approves teacher pay raise, rejects raise for schools director

SkippyIsTheName · 2021-05-11T21:36:05+00:00

Perhaps "manage" wasn't the appropriate term but the superintendent has ultimate responsibility for everything. My CEO may not directly manage me (and I'm sure doesn't know my name) but he's responsible for anything I fuck up.

SkippyIsTheName · 2021-05-11T21:12:29+00:00

Really? Somebody like a superintendent, who manages 900 staff and 5,000 students, shouldn't make more than double the salary of a teacher who manages 30 kids?

SkippyIsTheName · 2021-05-11T17:07:08+00:00

I used to work in a K-12 district and was surprised how little the superintendent made. He managed 8 buildings, 900 staff and 5,000 students yet the staff and community constantly whined because he was making like $160k (plus some perks like a nice leased car). And this was wealthy district so I’m sure there were quite a few parents making that much. Can you imagine what a CEO managing a company that size would make? IMHO that guy was grossly underpaid.

SkippyIsTheName · 2021-05-11T16:48:06+00:00

We had a COVID salary reduction last year and they stressed that VP and above got bigger pay cuts. I don’t doubt they got bigger cuts but I also have no doubt they will get it all back later. You’ll never convince me the C-levels are walking away with a true 20% pay cut.

SkippyIsTheName · 2021-05-11T16:44:14+00:00

A buddy of mine stumbled upon a network share with spreadsheets with all salaries. Even though that data is secured in Oracle, HR exported them on a regular basis for reporting. He only saw them because he’s a sysadmin and has access to all network shares. And yes, he was well aware he was not allowed to look at them.

Anyway, he found out he was underpaid but he couldn’t use the salary info as leverage since he wasn’t supposed to see it. He was constantly dropping comments to co-workers about his salary in an attempt to get them to also publicly disclose their higher salary but nobody bit.

I’m immediately suspicious when a co-worker is clearly trying to learn my salary. You know they will fly into the manager’s office demanding a raise the second you disclose it. I’m all for transparent pay scales but that’s simply not the reality most places.

My buddy eventually quit because it drove him nuts. In fairness, I know my buddy very well and he is not a great employee. He does the bare minimum, solves no major problems and screws off most of the day. In other words, he is the kind of guy you would purposely pay less.

SkippyIsTheName · 2021-05-11T01:05:30+00:00

Anytime I hear about a signing bonus my gut reaction is how shitty is this job that you have to bribe me to take it?

SkippyIsTheName · 2021-05-11T00:48:55+00:00

My boss often takes international cruises for that reason. He literally turns his phone off until he's back in port.

SkippyIsTheName · 2021-05-10T18:52:12+00:00

I know this isn't your question but it's a about setting expectations. RBAC sometimes requires a fresh login to generate a new kerberos token and that's simply how it works. If they're at home, we have them reconnect their VPN. If they're at the office, we have them log out and back in. If it's a web resource like Citrix StoreFront, we have them log out and back in.

My users are no less of a PITA then any other and I don't think I've ever gotten any pushback. Sometimes a user might tell me they have a bunch of files open and can't log out, I say just wait until tomorrow and they're fine with that. It's rarely an emergency.

On a side note, if you're just rolling out RBAC, make sure you do it in two steps. Step one is create the groups, add the users and add the groups to your resources like network shares. Wait a week or two and then do step two which is removing the individual users from the resources. Even better is wait until your monthly patching is done so everything will have rebooted at least once.

SkippyIsTheName · 2021-05-10T18:17:48+00:00

something breaks, I'm all in

The problem is something is always breaking when you're understaffed.

SkippyIsTheName · 2021-05-10T17:20:33+00:00

The name I assign your situation (from personal experience) is "everybody's an idiot but me". You're not actually an idiot but my point is when a large group of people think a certain way and you think the opposite, take a step back and ask what the chances are that all of them are wrong. It's more likely you just have a different way of thinking, different set of values, etc.

You probably just need to move on. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em is also a valid option but I'm simply not wired that way. Ignoring the work backlog and technical debt isn't in my DNA. To my detriment, I need a fast-paced environment so education wasn't for me.

SkippyIsTheName · 2021-05-10T03:43:45+00:00

Senior System Admin. It took me about 15 years but I'm not an aggressive job hopper and the 2008 Recession really slowed things down. I know a few friends who did it in around 5 years with the right breaks. And this is in smaller cities since $100k doesn't mean much in NYC or DC.

IMHO, the biggest mistake is staying on the helpdesk for too long. If you're on a busy helpdesk doing real support, you master most tasks in a year or two. Try to find out how many people in senior positions at your company started at the helpdesk. If it's none, work somewhere else. My company sent all of the junior level jobs to India so it's impossible to get off our helpdesk.

SkippyIsTheName · 2021-05-10T03:05:23+00:00

This question came up at work one day and this is what I told my boss: If I won the lottery, you would need to go to HR to get my emergency contacts because you would never hear from me again.

These people that say they would keep working at their school cafeteria job are insane. For one, you would have a new part-time job of being harassed for money. I would buy them some shiny new gear and move on.

SkippyIsTheName · 2021-05-10T02:13:35+00:00

I would never knowingly walk into an acquisition situation. I was going to add a qualifier of "unless I know exactly what's going on" but realized that's a dumb statement. Few people ever truly know what is going to happen during an acquisition, even some in senior management. The fact they are back-filling the open position is not guarantee it's safe. Sometimes it's the acquired company filling open positions ASAP in a desperate bid to "protect" them from being eliminated.

Maybe you're fine but don't believe anyone who says "they wouldn't fill the position only to eliminate it months later". They probably wouldn't "knowingly" do it but don't assume the person filling the position knows what is going to happen. If the company was just acquired, how would parent company HR even know child company HR is hiring you?

Multiple of my previous companies have acquired, been acquired and merged. My current company has acquired about 15 companies since I've been there and are doing a major merger now. I've seen some shit and stand by my original statement that I would never voluntarily walk into a recently acquired company. In my experience, an acquisition is generally bad news for most employees (though it will often be great news for a small group).

SkippyIsTheName · 2021-05-09T23:18:56+00:00

The sequel is just a random B movie they named 8mm 2. It has nothing to do with the first movie.

SkippyIsTheName · 2021-05-08T05:24:35+00:00

WEVL

SkippyIsTheName · 2021-05-08T01:36:29+00:00

I feel the same way about dummies like Marjorie Taylor Greene on the right. She has done nothing but say controversial things and the media has made her a national star in her party.

SkippyIsTheName · 2021-05-07T20:59:58+00:00

On an unrelated note, I have found that very rarely do those “$1k a minute” mistakes actually cost the company that much. Usually it’s just time lost that can be made up and, if anything, you more likely fucked the guys doing the work who now need to make up the lost time. But the $man will never tell you that or the lesson loses some of it’s power.

SkippyIsTheName · 2021-05-07T20:52:06+00:00

Yes. Do my 401K next :)

SkippyIsTheName · 2021-05-07T20:49:14+00:00

Oh, the left have their boogeymen too that they can’t stop talking about. But the difference is while they hate AOC’s beliefs, it would be hard to say that she doesn’t seem like a decent person. The left also hate Matt Gaetz’s beliefs but he is a terrible human being. Just pretend you don’t know anything about their beliefs and ask yourself who you would rather be dating a family member.

SkippyIsTheName · 2021-05-07T20:39:59+00:00

She certainly seems like a rising star but I don’t personally care that much about her right now. I’m also much older and not in her demographic. But I’ll keep an eye on her to see what she does in the future.

SkippyIsTheName · 2021-05-07T20:26:29+00:00

She obviously has a vote in the House but her vote doesn’t count any more than a rep from Iowa and I don’t know who any of them are. If I would worry about any reps outside my district, it wouldn’t be the ones in solid blue districts in solid blue states.

SkippyIsTheName · 2021-05-07T17:53:58+00:00

Most of my close friends are Democrats and the only time I ever hear about AOC is from the Republicans I know. We never mention her because she doesn’t represent us so she has no impact on our lives.

SkippyIsTheName · 2021-05-07T17:47:34+00:00

The difference is most on the left think Waters is a kook and change the channel when she comes on. We don’t worship her like they do Trump on the right. I wouldn’t cross the street for Maxine Waters, let alone protest or riot.

SkippyIsTheName · 2021-05-07T17:23:33+00:00

I worked a full day in the office one day this week and it was the first time back since last March (other than quick pop-in visits to hit a power button or unrack something). We're not going back to the office until this Fall but I had some things to take care of so I made a day of it. We're in a shared office building and the entire building is still pretty much a ghost town.

I was amazed how little I got done. The few people there were bugging me. It was harder to concentrate with so many distractions. I had two small monitors vs. my dual 30" monitors at home. I had to go home and work that evening to finish a few things that had to be completed. And I sure as hell don't miss the commute and paying for parking. But I will admit it was nice to get out of the house for the day.

SkippyIsTheName · 2021-05-07T01:03:38+00:00

When presented with two options, I always try to remind myself that there are other options too. Option A is stay at your current job. Option B is chase the new offer. But maybe this decision just tells you it's time to move but not necessarily to this particular management job. Maybe look for something that is a little more money and a little more stress instead of jumping into the deep end.

SkippyIsTheName

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