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Admins are the kind of position that you'd think would be axed...but in fact, I find that they have better staying power than many technical jobs in a corporation. Big bosses aren't going to start setting up their own calendars and handling their own errands anytime soon. A good software engineer or product manager can be dead meat as soon as his/her job is sent to India...a competent admin who is personally linked in with a high exec will not be going anywhere. And, as has been pointed out, they make pretty good money for a relatively easy, low-stress job.
Anyone that says that^^ hasn't been an Administrative Assistant. I worked my way up to Executive Administrative Assistant and it's no picnic. It's a fast paced, stressed job that you have to make everyone's deadlines and make them look good. Everything is riding on your shoulders. You don't get any praise when things go right but you sure get crap when something goes wrong.
BTW, I'm no longer in the Administrative Assistant field.
I've never understood why we are considered 'expendable'. I've talked to some of the people from my old department and there is no 'go to' person, no one to do the actual 'work'. VPs are ordering supplies, sales people are organizing meetings, picking up lunch from the lobby. It's ridiculous. Did they really save that much money? Is it worth it to pay high-level people 4x my salary to do these things?
I guess I just don't get where the value of any of that is. I used to be an admin while I was in college, but now in my career as a product manager (technically a director level at my company), I don't have a use for an admin. I set up my own travel arrangements (I have particular wants and I am not going to entrust someone else to set up my preferences-- besides Orbitz for Business is super easy to use), I set up my own meetings, I don't have to order supplies as I work predominantly from home, etc.
My department has an admin but none of the folks at my level use her-- I have found her to be pretty ineffective. I once had to ask her help for setting up meeting space in one of our Ireland offices and she pretty much just passed me off to someone in Ireland even though I had asked her if she could handle it since I was in the middle of traveling and would not have access to email.
The technology at my company and support services are easy enough to quickly open a ticket on our own without engaging an admin-- for example if said printer was broken our corporate site makes it super easy to open up a ticket and input the printer-- then someone is dispatched very fast. same thing with facilities requests, access requests, etc.
Even in my last department with 2 VPs, 4 directors, several managers, and many employees-- we never had to use an admin nor did productivity suffer from it.
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We still have the, but no longer one to each manager. More like one for each department, and with the technology tools provided these days most of their work is ordering supplies, filing and putting paper in the printers/copiers. I can see the salaries going down over time.
I think they will be around for a while yet. I have definitely seen their numbers shrink at my company over the past 12 years but lots of the higher ups still rely on their EA to do practically everything for them.
The tippy top people will always need them because they just do not have enough time to keep track of everything.
As much as I know how important the administrative assistant (read: secretary) is, for me it has always been an underpaying dead-end job. I did not go to college and get a Bachelor's degree to be someone's gopher, servant, or slave girl. In all my years of being an admin., I have almost NEVER seen any males doing this kind of menial work, and if there are males, they are usually just passing through. They wouldn't put up with it! (I don't think they could handle it, either!) Nine times out of ten, it is still men at the top, women at the bottom. Women are stuck in these jobs because they put up with being the underpaid caretakers of the world. It's time we had a revolution in the workplace and started putting more value on educated and talented women who are worth more than fixing coffee, faxing memos, and screening calls!!!
Unfortunately, until you own your own company, you will ALWAYS be this.
I have accepted this. No matter WHERE the job or WHAT the position, you're someone elses b**** until you run your own company. That's just the way it works. You will ALWAYS be at the mercy of someone else until that happens. We are ALL slaves..just different levels of slaves lmao.
A CEO of a Fortune 500 company told me 10 years ago that the administrative assisant positions would soon be a "thing of the past". He said that with the development of new computer technologies, the internet, etc., that there would be no need for executives or management to employ an assistant. I disagreed with him then, and I still disagree. At my workplace which employs over 1,200 people, the admin is very necessary and is better skilled than many of the supervisors and team leads.
Do you think a career as an administrative assistant is a "dead end"? As far as pay scale, the admins at my work place start at $30k and go up to over $50k. Doesn't sound too bad to me. What are your thoughts?
I have been administrative assistant to bosses who could not find their butts with both hands and a road map. Believe me, they needed SOMEONE desperately to keep them straight and organized.
That having been said, I've never been paid more than $10 per hour (which comes out to about $14,000 per year, I believe (after taxes)). I once literally, ran the life of a man worth millions of dollars. If it had not been for me he would have never had a clean shirt nor food in his refrigerator.
The day that a computer can make arrangements for his granddaughter's birthday party, pick up the dry cleaning, send a card to his sick aunt, make arrangements to travel half way across the planet and back is the day I want to see.
Good Administrative Assistants will never be obsolete.
Unfortunately, until you own your own company, you will ALWAYS be this.
I have accepted this. No matter WHERE the job or WHAT the position, you're someone elses b**** until you run your own company. That's just the way it works. You will ALWAYS be at the mercy of someone else until that happens. We are ALL slaves..just different levels of slaves lmao.
So true, unfortunately.
If I had known in my younger days what being an administrative assistant/secretary is like, I would have chosen a much different path in life.
It's never to late though, so hopefully things will turn around for me.
If I was the CEO, President, COO, CFO of a company I would want one. Then again I have to admit I am a sexist pig and would want one that has a certain look.
Administrative assistant can mean anything. It really depends o the job description and who they are the assistant to. Much different being a administrative assistant to director for instance than the type which are basically the lead secretary. Pays well too.Much like any title ;the job description has more meaning.
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