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I feel that after COVID-19, that I'm constantly under pressure to deliver and get work done. Don't get me wrong, long work hours were the norm even prior to COVID-19. But in a COVID-19 world, I feel that with more people getting laid off. Workplaces are even more understaffed, but the companies that do strive in this environment have taken on more work. And with tons of uncertainty around the health crisis, less companies are willing to hire the appropiate staff. I feel that since COVID-19 there has been nothing but pressure constantly, and no one has let up on it. I feel that I'm constantly under "crunchtime" to get things done and delivered. And once you deliver a project, then they have a ton more high priority projects coming down the pipeline.
I have never felt such endless pressure in my career as I do now. Similarly I'm seeing a girl in nursing school. And even she feels that it's always crunch time. Assignments are given to her and she's completely overwhelmed. Almost as if they're trying to give her as much work as humanly possible.
America has been considered one of the most overworked countries in the world. But it feels like things are at least 3 to 4x worse than they are now. Employers know that you're basically working remotely, and likely have no real social life. So now they're just trying to load you up with as much work as humanly possible. Does anyone else feel that workloads have increased a ton since the pandemic?
Well, those are the effects or working from home that everybody supposedly loves. Employers know that you no longer have a commute and have reduced social obligations because many places are closed. So they make employees work more. This is especially difficult for working parents are often going crazy trying to spend time with kids and also get their work done.
It is getting worse by the day where I am. Over the past month to six weeks, I have...
1) Led an upgrade of a large enterprise credentialing system onto net-new hardware, OS/DB version, and on a different domain. Got all those clients running as well. Another person on the team officially "owns" this system, but I somehow got tasked with the upgrade. This was all rushed through with no additional funding for a sandbox system buildout, so we just had to lay it over existing prod and hope it all worked.
2) Staged net new hardware for an enterprise messaging platform from ten year old physical hardware onto a VM. We don't have the SQL licenses to actually complete the application install, and the application must be upgraded for W10 compatibility. This system was originally managed by someone who was furloughed, then quit, so there was no knowledge transfer. There is a possible physical safety risk to people if this system were to fail and the system was rolled out over a decade ago with no DR environment or failover capacity.
3) Speaking of that system...had to arrange maintenance on two vendor-owned pieces of hardware for which there is nor redundancy. The communication on that took weeks for people to agree upon.
4) Moved a small department to new computers, new OS, new domain with basically no help other than the accounts being enabled and equipment physically installed when I got to their office. I spent the better part of last week with "at the elbow" support for printers, home drives, and basics like that when I'm really only in charge of two applications this team uses. I designed tip sheets for remote access because the migration team couldn't be bothered to show the end users how to do so.
5) I'm over a part of the ERP system and work daily tickets on that. The tickets are frequent and basically clerical in nature.
6) I'm over numerous smaller applications where I'm in multiple meetings per week on. One of them is a nearly eight figure implementation.
7) One out of every four weeks is 24x7 on-call. I did Windows patches Saturday night around 11. I was rolled out of bed Sunday at 8 AM for a page. I did UNIX patches around 10:30 AM Sunday.
8) As of the past few days, I've now been pulled into troubleshooting Microsoft Office issues.
We have lost a person due to COVID and will not be getting that position. More work keeps coming in - we're being tasked to take over more and more things, with fewer resources, and a lot of effort being expended into enterprise level projects. Meanwhile, I don't have the access to do a lot of the things I need. It recently took about two weeks to be able to get sudo to root access on a system where I am responsible for updating regulatory items, and that patch process needs root access. More than a day or two off consecutively has been denied through the summer.
Our retirement match was supposed to happen, but the funds were never deposited. Going into my now fifth year there, I've received one year's worth of retirement match due to timing on their plan and now COVID impacting financials.
This is the most frustrated I've been at this employer, and among the most frustrated I've been throughout my career.
I was slightly scolded today for not having some things done. The fact is, I can't do everything at the same time, so while I am working on something, others things have to wait.
Yet the tone was that it should've been done already. It was an unrealistic expectation, and I refuse to feel bad about it. There's continuously more and more work, so it's impossible to ever completely catch up. I just have to do one thing at a time and if someone's mad, too bad.
Perhaps companies are learning to "get their money's worth" out of their employees, as well as making sure that employees are so overworked that they don't have time to watch TV, play video games, watch their kids, or play with their pets on company time (and beyond) while working from home.
I think many of these situations are employees letting themselves get overworked. I have a friend who basically does the job of 3 people, but is constantly complaining to me about it. I told my friend "why don't you push back"... the response is "I don't feel comfortable pushing back..."
Ok...whose fault is that?
I push back when I feel over-worked, and get management support. If it keeps up, I find a different job and leave.
It's not so hard. I don't get why people allow themselves to be over-worked. I have never willingly allowed myself to be over-worked unless I consent. In other words, the value I bring to my employer is enough that I can control how much work I allow my schedule to fill.
If you feel your value is zero, then you'll allow yourself to get over-worked. It's a combination of fear and low self-esteem, it seems.
Absolutely! We have cut back staff to the barest of bare bones and the remaining ones are each covering what at least two people used to do. Overtime, nights, weekends are just expected. The problem is that most employees don't have any power to resist because so many people are unemployed right now, and those that are employed have had their pay and benefits cut in many cases. Employers know this. Employees know this. Complain too much and you might be out the door and there are many people waiting in line to take your place.
It’s an employers market again unfortunately. They know have their employees by the gonads. The abuse will continue Because chances are, unemployment will continue to rise
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