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Congratulations. Even in places where wages are pathetic you can occasionally find a decent company. I lucked out here in Chicago as well as most of the companies here play permatemp and low wage games with their laboratory staff.
56k was a decent wage 10 years ago, and I know at that time entry level (fresh out of college) accounting jobs weren't paying much less than that (about 50k).
For someone with several years of experience in a professional field like IT, 56k would have been pathetic back then. It's even more pathetic today with inflation.
I'm not knocking Serious Conversation btw. It's just the sad state of today's job market.
56k was a decent wage 10 years ago, and I know at that time entry level (fresh out of college) accounting jobs weren't paying much less than that (about 50k).
For someone with several years of experience in a professional field like IT, 56k would have been pathetic back then. It's even more pathetic today with inflation.
I'm not knocking Serious Conversation btw. It's just the sad state of today's job market.
Things have changed a lot in those ten years. The economy is not roaring along like it was in 2005/2006.
I got an offer for $56k in my hometown today. Worked out with management to leave Friday - I start in Tennessee on the 29th.
Congrats man! Glad you finally got a decent paying job in your hometown and something that pays enough to keep up with your finances. Hope everything goes well at your new job.
56k was a decent wage 10 years ago, and I know at that time entry level (fresh out of college) accounting jobs weren't paying much less than that (about 50k).
For someone with several years of experience in a professional field like IT, 56k would have been pathetic back then. It's even more pathetic today with inflation.
I'm not knocking Serious Conversation btw. It's just the sad state of today's job market.
Yeah in this current economy you have to be greatful for whatever job offer you get even if the pay doesn't meet your expectations. I still feel like I'm underpaid but my profession doesn't pay very well in the first few years and you are lucky if making in my profession past 5 years since most jobs are permatemp paying $15-20 per hour. I couldn't get anything decent back in Atlanta besides a $17 per hour temp job so I accepted a position in West Virginia paying $50k a year with very good benefits (health insurance cost me only $32 per month) and annual performance bonuses every year.
For now I am hoping once the economy fully recovers I can be even more established in my profession.
They can't really offer financial support. Basically the moves I've made have been out of desperation to improve my career/financial standing. At the time it seemed to be a decent decision then either things happened out of my control or I screwed them up then end up in a worse mess than before.
May I make a serious recommendation to you. If you do file BK, please find place (usually a local church) that offers Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University. It made a huge impact on our financial balance sheet in our family. We paid off all of our debt and have learned how to manage our money so it works for us instead of us working for it.
I wish you well in this trying time! Remember, everyone has tests and struggles in their lives. It is not the tests, but how we handle and learn from them that truly makes the difference in our lives!
I thought I'd update this as I heard something interesting this week.
The day I left, another employee who also turned in her resignation said the same thing happened to the last guy in the role - basically forced out by the person in the role because she wouldn't share any knowledge. Another employee messaged me on LinkedIn this weekend saying that she's leaving - that's about a third of the team that's left in a couple months.
The manager hassles local government officials on social media with rude behavior (posted a local officials BK on Facebook of an NBC station) to borderline libelous (accused city council member of beating his wife). The official accounts of the government ignore him, but he gets into it with individuals one on one all the time. All this is public and anyone googling him will find it.
Also got a call from the recruitment agency that helped place me asking why I left so soon. Didn't tell them about PIP but did say the role ended up being more desktop support and wrenching on stuff than what I was led to believe it was. Recruiter also said he got a similar complaint about the business. I do think the recruiters were honest.
New job is a better fit. Still more downtime than I'd expect (my role and another new hire were split from someone else who is moving into another org) but the fit generally seems better and I'm not making the errors I was. I had gone through a break up as soon as that job started and was just mentally done with Indianapolis at that point.
I took on a new documentation project to help standardize stuff and fill in the time. My direct manager has about thirty direct reports and we're a small team of five that was put under her from a different manager. We're in private offices and not cubes.
Still hard to not post during the day but I haven't visited C-D on the work PC in three weeks I've been there. I'll post on phone from breaks and lunch and on occasion but far less. I'll read an article here and there but i can post for hours but don't read that long. Trying to keep posting separate from work.
I did pay off one CC and finances are straightening out a bit. Actually met a little more than at
Old job.
I started a new position in early February. There has been one other person in the role who has been with the company for nearly twenty years, along with at least two additional staff in my role since 2011 - both of those guys either resigned or got fired (not sure which). There are other staff in the department - we have one support person and two other infrastructure guys, who have more generic knowledge than on my role.
The one person that knows the role is virtually covered up from starting time to quitting time and is rarely available to answer questions, validate testing plans, much less train on any of the software we use. Unfortunately, I came from a different part of the industry and don't have much familiarity with the applications we use. When I was interviewing, the manager acknowledged they wouldn't find anyone with that skillset, and were likely going to have to take what they could get.
We don't have test environments for some critical applications, so some things are released directly into production with little validation or testing. It's a small, but growing company that hasn't seemed to scale well with its growth. This is the smallest organization I've worked in by far, and it's been difficult to go from a far more formal, bureaucratic environment, full of documentation and rigorous infrastructure and testing to this loose, shooting from the hip environment.
Because of the "one man only" knowledge and lack of a larger infrastructure to properly test/vet changes, as well as my own unfamiliarity with the applications/lack of formal process/documentation, I'm making errors, and when I follow up to try and get feedback/correction from the other person in the role, there is often no response because she is having to do increased work just with the business scaling as well as trying to fix my mistakes. The manager doesn't know the role well so he can only offer general guidance. They have worked 4/5 of the past weekends on both days - it has horrible work/life balance.
Other than stopping the errors, my manager and my manager's manager told me I need to be more assertive, but I've tried to be assertive with the other team members as far as helping them offload some of their simpler tasks and have gotten little feedback, positive or negative. Some of the problems they mentioned occurred over two months ago, and no one has mentioned it to me until now, and I never knew there was a problem - never getting any negative feedback from my management (aside from an informal ten minute talk at the end of the day) or end users at the close of a project (what few I've been involved in) until a formal PIP. I have never had a direct one on one performance review with my manager since I was hired in. Most of what my manager mentioned on assertiveness and being thorough, I feel as though I already tried, and haven't gotten much of anywhere.
Maybe I haven't been assertive or communicated enough, but I've been met with near silence by the other person in my role. After awhile of communicating with nothing, I've basically given up. This role involves customizing and maintaining a lot of financial software for our firm's needs, and with little to no internal documentation or assistance, I'm likely bound to keep making errors.
At this point, I don't see this working out over the long term. This is a poor cultural fit to a T. Everyone was cordial today, and the two managers were doling out plenty of advice in a friendly way, almost like big brothers, and in the initial meeting with my manager's manager Friday, we were talking loosely and even laughing a bit. We get along well, but it's not the right fit professionally.
They want to reconvene in thirty days. If there is not sufficient improvement, they're either going to terminate me or demote me to a support staff level, according to the PIP - demotion was listed first on the form. I've been pounding the pavement already for a month with some success because I knew this was on shaky ground. I've had various callbacks, etc., but nothing paying to the tune of what I make now. I have no commitments to this area and can move virtually anywhere. I'm going to talk to my previous employer that I left on good terms and who are still hiring for my old role to see if I can get back.
On a more general sense, any demotion/firing is going to wreck my shaky finances already, and I'm only in this metro because I'm getting paid relatively well ($60,000 now - have only made $50,000 before this and it was local). Due to large unsecured debt, I can barely make my monthly nut on $60,000.
Family is willing to let me stay with them back home for awhile until I get back right-side up financially, and I sent a former manager from back home an email and he is willing to rehire me at $16/hr, if it comes to that, so I'm not worried about basic needs, homelessness, etc. I think I could make $40,000 or so about anywhere. Other than that, I'm wanting to go to FL, the Carolinas, or other parts of Tennessee, in basically that order.
Credit score/personal finances are going to be screwed unless I can pull a rabbit out of my hat and make $60k shortly.
Manager did have a demotion to another role possibility on the PIP form other than simply firing me.
At this point, would you...
1) Put in a two weeks and preserve dignity. I have enough cash to cover most expenses for about three months. Local economy is very healthy, but it will run up the cards further.
2) Wait two weeks then put in a two weeks. Basically be on my best behavior for two weeks and appear like I'm wanting this to succeed, then resign, should I survive that long. This gives me extra cash to go on in the interim.
3) Do my best and see how this shakes out. I've given it an honest effort and I don't think I'm what they're wanting, nor is this what I want. If I do patch the immediate bleed, it's not the right fit further on.
If I get fired, I may or may not get UI. Either way, the firing is on my own record.
How would you move forward?
I know someone who went through this. In his case, the PIP was just a formality. He stayed, worked very hard and still ended up getting fired six months later due to "performance issues" (bull****) and "not being a good fit" (a VP didn't like him personally). All that time they were making notes of things to throw in his file to make the termination stick later: he was three minutes late to that meeting or he didn't return that email fast enough--just petty little things. Make of that what you will, but having seen what happened to my friend, for me the writing would be on the wall. I would consider the job over and start making other plans right away. Good luck--sorry to hear this is happening to you.
I thought I'd update this as I heard something interesting this week.
I took on a new documentation project to help standardize stuff and fill in the time. My direct manager has about thirty direct reports and we're a small team of five that was put under her from a different manager. We're in private offices and not cubes.
.
God, would love to have you at my place. One tech says "I want it done this way" then another changes how they want it. I'm going to discuss with swing lead about having someone set the standard style of reporting so as to not cause others to complain....
But anyway, VERY glad you're happy and working at what you WANT to be doing. Love the feleing when it happens.
I thought I'd update this as I heard something interesting this week.
The day I left, another employee who also turned in her resignation said the same thing happened to the last guy in the role - basically forced out by the person in the role because she wouldn't share any knowledge. Another employee messaged me on LinkedIn this weekend saying that she's leaving - that's about a third of the team that's left in a couple months.
The manager hassles local government officials on social media with rude behavior (posted a local officials BK on Facebook of an NBC station) to borderline libelous (accused city council member of beating his wife). The official accounts of the government ignore him, but he gets into it with individuals one on one all the time. All this is public and anyone googling him will find it.
Also got a call from the recruitment agency that helped place me asking why I left so soon. Didn't tell them about PIP but did say the role ended up being more desktop support and wrenching on stuff than what I was led to believe it was. Recruiter also said he got a similar complaint about the business. I do think the recruiters were honest.
New job is a better fit. Still more downtime than I'd expect (my role and another new hire were split from someone else who is moving into another org) but the fit generally seems better and I'm not making the errors I was. I had gone through a break up as soon as that job started and was just mentally done with Indianapolis at that point.
I took on a new documentation project to help standardize stuff and fill in the time. My direct manager has about thirty direct reports and we're a small team of five that was put under her from a different manager. We're in private offices and not cubes.
Still hard to not post during the day but I haven't visited C-D on the work PC in three weeks I've been there. I'll post on phone from breaks and lunch and on occasion but far less. I'll read an article here and there but i can post for hours but don't read that long. Trying to keep posting separate from work.
I did pay off one CC and finances are straightening out a bit. Actually met a little more than at
Old job.
Glad to hear you're doing better!
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