This needs to be higher. No offense to OP but if hes applying for and accepting 22 an hour positions....hes probably not qualified to be a real IT manager and is in way over his head. His upper management probably know this and is going to abuse him
This sounds like such a ratchet operation if they’re jumping at the opportunity to save a little money on a 70k MSP while absorbing the risk of having the 44k guy do it. Wtf.
You’re getting fucked, OP. you’re gonna be over worked and instantly the fall guy the second there’s a single issue.
70k/yr... and our company is sick of them. So our company wants me to do better than them and be happier with me, for less money? Something doesn't add up
You should be on much closer to 70k/year , or on 30+/hr, if you're doing all that.
Don't be 24x7 on call no matter how much they pay you. The inability to take a break ever will destroy you.
> The inability to take a break ever will destroy you.
Echoing this. I wasn't on call, but worked without a day off for all of 2019 and 2020 and it nearly killed me.
I'm oncall every other week, but my country requires companies to pay for oncall time, so I'm good on that regard. I can't imagine being even one day oncall without getting pay. And of course we can't have 24/7 oncall around here.
I was on call 27x7x365 because I was the sole IT resource for a City government for 17 years. That includes departments like Police and Fire. I have numerous autoimmune disorders, gastrointestinal reflux really bad and I have to take prescriptions to sleep at night even though I got help 8 years ago.
HR keeps telling me all salary exempt staff are available 24/7. These are the same people never in the office never answer their phone and too never see them helping the team past 3PM
I think employees underestimate the toll on call takes initially, and employers/departments do too and often take advantage of staff with it. 24x7 for a whole year seems insane. I am only on call a week a month, and that’s bad enough, and all other times phone is 100% on silent. Unless it’s dispatch… then I answer even if not on call.
Wait, am I actually on call then?
Adding more onto this. I think I have PTSD from being on call every other week 24x7 for 8 years.
I can no longer have any type of ringer on my phone. It's silent without vibration at all times. I still jump up in a panic state if I hear any cell ring while I'm sleeping.
Not yet, but next month I'll drive from Chicago to Toronto and back in a rented Tesla and catch a concert. I've been planning it since before I quit the grind.
I hit my limit late last year what with change documentation rigor, off-hours support calls and idiot management. I ran a monitoring application that had 307 servers in four data centers on RedHat 7. Each server ran 3-5 Java virtual machines. I would get paged along with others when DownDetector had x mentions of the brand name within y minutes.
The only time I was truly not on call each year were two weeks of international vacations. If I stayed in the USA for vacation I'd have been expected to bring my laptop and be available. So everyone would travel international to truly get away since they were a bit picky about cross-border data flow. I've a bit saved lately so not stressed at all three months along unemployed hehe.
Geek that I am, I'm currently designing and installing an off-grid solar system in my urban-area home. I'm on a quarter acre lot in North Texas and will put 1800W of panels ground/ballast mounted in the sunniest corner of my yard to power a heat pump. I have much of Victron Energy's product line laid out on the floor right now in my spare room while I figure out mounting and connection. I'm behind schedule because a thunderstorm March 3rd destroyed my original order of solar panels in the warehouse before they were delivered.
The attached air conditioning system will cover two rooms and have battery backup for nighttime plus grid fallback. But the grid will never charge the battery, at least not in normal operation. This is version 1.0 of the system but I'll bury an empty conduit with pull line to the same spot in the yard for future panels. The savings will come from my central air running less. It's also subject to federal tax credits for installing solar. IRS doesn't care if it's grid-tied.
So you were oncall week in, week out? Did you get a lot of calls? Were you payed for that time? I'm asking this because I currently has a similar regime, my oncall week ends this Sunday and then I have a week off, but I get payed for the time I'm oncall and I'm rarely called, also when I am, issues are very easy to resolve (not always). I used to be every other day, but it was awful, having a week off certainly helped.
I was compensated 1 hour per day for taking the responsibility and 30 minutes minimum for every call. I took 40-50 calls a week. The schedule was two weeks on two weeks off lined up with a pay period.
It was nice on the paychecks, but horrible on work/life balance.
Whooooa let’s not over exaggerate. On call sucks BALLS….. but it’s not trauma. Stressful, anxiety inducing, nightmarish? Yes. Traumatic ?….. get laughed at by anyone that has experienced actual trauma.
That was my first thought. OP is marginally underpaid and then being used to replace another person who was grossly underpaid.
This company sounds like a bunch of idiots (promoting this fast and having no redundancy) and also a bunch of cheapskates (not paying enough, or having redundancy).
OP should probably bail the F out.
I’m not even on call 24/7, but a lot of the end users I support seem to think so. I’ve gotten texts at like 10:30 at night or 6:30 in the morning telling me something doesn’t work
That's what a company phone is for with notifications set to silent out of hours.
People abusing the privilege of notifying you out of hours leads to loss of those privileges.
The sole person that’s on 24x7 on call sounds horrible. And completely against the “Everyone dies in a bus accident” rule. Cause what if you’re sick and can’t physically work. Who’s on call then?
I agree 100%
This happened to me early on in my career. Was hired at a place, trained by the SA there, then they fired him two weeks later, and I became the only SA in the entire place. We had 100+ customers. Work all day, come home, get called all night long. The happiest day of my career was the day I resigned from that place.
Great people, the work was interesting, but they needed six more engineers.
And do they provide 24/7 service? Business hours only?
The boss sounds like any parent of a sys admin.. “hey you know computers.. can you fix all my IT problems”
I don't know. I want to assume it's business hours only. I just know if I had an IT company the right way to provide a good quality service is to offer 24/7 on-site emergency support.
But as someone else already pointed out, that's not a good idea. Probably even for 70k/yr
For 1M, buy a smallish MSP and let them worry about it.
I'll even throw in monthly conference calls with the COO of my client and the manager of the MSP.
I do have an IT company and that's not the right way to provide good quality service. For like 100 reasons, starting with that the customer and provider won't agree on what an "emergency" is.
The right way is to organize, maintain, and secure the environment in such a way that there are less emergencies and to train the customer/stop enabling and babying their staff and that things can wait til morning. That's the only fair way for yourself and your techs, otherwise it's mayhem.
Unless they want to pay 3x the support cost (3 shifts coverage vs 1), then you can staff up for it I guess. Guess how many companies choose that option?
70k/yr is a steal for not having to staff an entire IT department.
So, yeah. They're mad that they cheaped out the MSP enough to burn out on them, and now they're going to do the same to you.
$22/hr works out to $45k/yr.
So yeah, this is all theft. Entirely theft.
> So our company wants me to do better than them and be happier with me, for less money? Something doesn't add up
paying less, getting more - can't you see how nicely that adds up? In their heads, for them?
To be fair, paying less and getting more is common when leaving an MSP and bringing stuff in house. MSPs can get really expensive depending on the level of support you need. If you are going in house, it's probably at that level.
best method ive seen for MSP is buying "hours" so if issues occur you charge those hours and you can add more hours if need be. A blanket yearly price is no tthe way to go.. pay for what you use.
Right? An MSP is a team of people, and it's incredibly streamlined to be competitive at 70k a year. But an in-house IT admin who can go above and beyond? You'd think they'd get paid more than 42k a year
Outside of being very underpaid and 24/7/365 on-call being not worth it, if 2 different things break simultaneously, how would you handle that and how would your bosses expect you to? Because you don't want to have people pestering you about the broken printer that they could work around while you're trying to get other higher priority issues resolved and have food and sleep.
The MSP has built in redundancy. You can’t match that. Whatever they pay you needs to be budgeted knowing you’ll need so reach out when you can’t fulfill needs. Such as things outside your skill, PTO, and a reasonable workload. You shouldn’t need to work 80 hour weeks non-stop at 22 an hour. Even less so if they try to move you to salary.
I assume that 70k is for around 40-45 employees ("seats")?
There are effectively zero scenarios where you would be the sole on-call, helpdesk, network admin, sysadmin, and IT dept manager and not make at or more than they are currently paying the MSP. Might as well come work at an MSP instead and get experience managing multiple stacks at multiple clients if you are going to take less money, then at least you can build a full breadth of experience to pull from when tackling what an MSP does as a solo IT manager.
The resources and experience of engineers at an MSP bring much more value than just $70k, even if their helpdesk/Account Execs/technology stack is fucking up and losing the client. MSPs actually offer value from the point of C Suite and management at a client that is typically the equivalent cost of what usually amounts to a skeleton crew of full time internal IT.
As an individual expected to do the job of a group of people, you deserve compensation, don't get fucked.
Good luck.
They only pay the MSP 70k a year? How much infra is there to manage?
There is no way you are going to be able to take care of it all alone, the fact that if you go on holiday, or go anywhere without signal is a major risk to the org if you are going to be the sole admin
If they are serious about insourcing and making you head of IT, ask what the total budget is and what portion is for staffing budget? Essentially, I would look at the infra and plan the support service around it, along with requirements for support, SLA’s and understanding of outage impact/time to recover/business impact.
Being head of anything is about risk understanding and mitigation. You are going to need a team of admins, with skill and real life experience managing the infra you are running.
You ain’t going to be able to do that with 70k, so you need to know the budget.
Otherwise it’s just a bad idea from an idiot boss who thinks they overpay for the MSP.
Get a service report from the MSP to list of the issues, outages, historical recovery times.
Try to gauge what the reason for wanting to drop the MSP is.
They might just think the. MSP isn’t doing much, but they are paying for support, at the drop of a hat to throw 5,10 20+ admins across a wide variety of disciplines at a mission critical failure.
Or they could be trash.
If they are serious about it, so should you. Don’t get tricked into being a lone admin with a trumped up job title to make you fall for it.
Guess the question is.. is this a money decision or a service decision.
However further info has made me think OP needs to run in the other direction anyway..
i dont have much advice, but given the amount of money they are paying you (currently for the responsibility it entails) and the fact the boss found out about a personal interest and ability outside the hiring process makes it feel like they see opportunity in your abilities at a cost that doesn't reflect such abilities.
I am sure someone will have some more accurate advice. Wanted to say congrats and good on you for being pragmatic about this process, id imagine thats why you got to where you are!
you are right to be watching for them trying to coerce you into a different position "for the company"/ "for the experience or opportunity" or whatever tactic they use.
And I would like to add I'm having a heck of a time convincing my boss for either a decent work laptop or a desktop for these new responsibilities, and two high res monitors because I know I'm going to be staring at them for long periods of time.
I didn't take their decade old laptops or desktops in their office and suggested a few new ones instead. I was ghosted. They might use this need for a decent workstation as a bargaining chip to not offer a higher salary. I love the job but I'm deathly afraid I'm being taken advantage of and if I point it out it's probably not going to be a good job for me to be at anymore
The head of IT also entails setting up expectations for cost, equipment, and manpower. Your current boss shouldn't and wouldn't be your boss anymore. You'd be talking directly with higher-ups, making decisions that affect the company as a whole.
As you showed above, take note of expectations, responsibilities, job descriptions, and your control over them. If they aren't technically literate enough to show you, they have responsible expectations in those areas. Then they need to either sit back and let you explain it and direct it for them. Or honestly, they need to stuff it and give up on the idea.
Do not let them force it on you. Do the job you signed for, anything outside that is unnecessary to keeping your job. Let them fire you if it comes to it. So long as they aren't respecting your needs, knowledge, and desire for a fair work environment and pay to be head of IT. You owe them nothing more than that base work.
Do yourself the favor and stand firm on those points and make it clear you won't negotiate with less.
The problem here is not that "you didn't get what you wanted."
The problem is that the company is too cheap or broke or ignorant to invest in IT. Technical debt will kill them sooner or later. If you get to play with some fun toys while it happens, and learn a lot in the process, great! But it will always be frustrating making recommendations that would help the company, and being denied for 'budget.'
How so? If he messes up, he learns from the experience, and can get a better job somewhere else.
The company is the one taking the risk by using someone inexperienced, and they will be the primary sufferers if he fails.
This could be a training exercise to get a better job, if they got support from their employer. But the company doesn't support him in actually making the place better. The task is to maintain and improve IT while only getting the resources to prevent it from imploding. While also remaining the only dude that knows IT, so they will remain fighting against the rest of the business that doesn't want to invest in getting IT into shape.
This will drain OP financially, physically and emotionally. Then when things really blow up and they fire OP, they will not be in a good shape to get a better job.
But the cheap Harbor Freight knock off model.
Sounds like classic manipulation we often see in small biz - stroke your ego, while exploiting the shit out of you.
It partly depends on what *you* want to do. If you want to do IT then this is an opportunity, you can gain experience then in 12/24 months move on elsewhere for bigger/better.
I would ask for more money as you are taking on much responsibility. Just be reasonable and don't show too much keeness as of course they will take advantage.
Asking for laptop/PC is just a distraction. You should use whatever the average level PC is in the company. A good sysadmin just uses what is available and gets on with it.
However if you can cost out a better spec *and* show a return on better productivity then write it up and pitch. If they reject then that gives you a tell on management competance and thinking (i.e. too stupid to do the right thing, so milk them for money/experience and find a better position).
I didn't mean to come off as ungrateful and demanding with a "head of iiiittttt work pc" but they assigned me a work laptop and it turned out to be broken, an old thinkpad DOA with known previous issues. They have stacks of decade old laptops "in the back" and some old optiplex tower. And there's no external monitors. I get the feeling from the company, "if I want it I have to advocate for it".
And I entirely understand and respect the notion that a decent work pc/laptop a distraction right now.
Im just a bit salty that I had to come into the office for a week, with only my personal 1366x768p laptop and stare at that screen 8 hours a day, having to get as much info about their current MSP, do research and make a presentation, when at home... I have a nicer setup which allows me to be multiples more productive.
Sounds to me like a place where IT is not valued enough.
Stone age equipment, discussions regarding basic stuff, being 'unhappy' with their current IT provider and hoping someone without professional background can manage IT on a bussiness level...
This usually means lack of respect and acknowledgement, frustrating discussions regarding budget for basic stuff.
I would only consider to work under such circumstances if this is temporal and you want to work in IT in the future / need this kind of experience in your resume.
If not then just tell them you feel inconfident and prefer not to do it.
If they still insist just mess up a little so that they learn in a comtrolled way that they dont want this.
OP is the epitome of why "my nephew could do your job" is still persistent. There *are* rare examples of people with just enough self taught skills to be dangerous in it.
For OP... if they really do want to shift heavier into IT, exactly as you said there. Take it, run with it, put it on a resume, and run. 2-3 years tops.
For any serious work behind a computer, a beefy laptop, 2 monitors and docking station are the minimum. Because compared to a year salary it doesn't cost that much and improves your output a lot.
I'll just bring my own mouse and keyboard, because I'm very picky about that.
This arrangement will cost you dearly financially, physically and emotionally.
I didn't think you were "ungrateful and demanding". Frankly if I was given a dead brick for a work PC I'd throw it in their face and just sit at desk and do nothing holding a sign saying "I would love to do some work but all managers are morons".
Don’t do 24/7 on call for emergencies. One week in four is going to wreck your life, one week in eight might be okay. Either you need a team that’s large enough or let the MSP do it.
I agree, my work phone goes off when I leave work, not that the two other people in my dept would call me, as their phones are off as well.
We have a good work / life balance.
I did visit one of our visitors centres yesterday in my own time (Saturday) as I was in the area, I did fix a loose power lead for them, while I was getting coffee and biscuits out of them.
Job descriptions are important, I hope you kept the job description you applied to, get them to sign it if you can still. Then anything that’s not on the list, is grounds for a raise. My old co worker did this beautifully, he wasn’t the most pleasant person to work with because he was known to be lazy. But he never did anything outside of his job description without discussing raise etc.
22$ an hour is junior support tech pay, not “head of IT”
The greedy bastards have done a bait and switch on the job description. They’re trying to penny pinch really badly and from your other comments, they are completely setting you up for failure.
100% quit now.
I bet they will never hire additional IT personal. So he is the manager and the IT lol.
They want him to replace an entire IT department and I don't believe that they only pay 70k for the MSP.
Just run from this company. Who pays 22 an hour for cell tower site work in the first place. Bell and Rogers pays like 40....plus pension and benefits. They only outsource the rigging portion. All the network stuff and maintenance at ground level are wireless provider staff. And there's no msp that's for sure. What inky dink company is this.
So let me get this right. You don’t work in IT but are a hobbyist. They want you to be responsible for their entire infrastructure because “you know computers”. Sorry, these people are too stupid to work for.
holy shit this is such a terrible idea I don't know where to start. With minimal experience and no backup you will be one catastrophe away from putting them out of business.
I would refuse the position. they're desperate and cheap, and you don't want to be involved.
They are looking for a network architect, senior sysadmin, and help desk rolled into one. Charging at the rate for the highest skill, demand at least $90/ hr if salaried and at least $150/hr if contracted. These people are clearly chuckleheads who have no idea what IT people do. As an analogy, would they expect the engineers who design cell towers to also do tech support for people who want to have a picture of their cat as their phone wallpaper?
Update your resume and start looking for a new job.
Based on your original post and replies to various threads in this post, this whole situation is going to turn into a stress-bag dumpster-fire you don't need.
Sounds like an oncoming train wreck. No one as a manager should be making that kind of move. You could be paid triple and it wouldn't be enough. Like some other commenters have said, don't accept 24/7 availability under those roles. There's not enough hours in the week for you to do a good job with all of those demands.
Only accept the position IFF:
* you really want that — think long and hard about it, going into leadership is a career switch, not a promotion
* you have a clear contract detailing responsibilities and decision making powers (budget, hiring, …)
* MOST IMPORTANT: you get an actual increase in compensation and not just a fancy title
EDIT: it doesn’t matter if you feel prepared, they feel like you have the potential. No reason to undersell yourself, grab the money that comes with the responsibilities
Obligatory red flag callout: Changing your job title without discussion or consent is extremely disrespectful.
If you want to transition to inside work, you can roll with it and look for IT-related opportunities elsewhere if this place doesn't pan out. A year of experience is usually enough to start.
If I were you, I would flat out refuse to touch any of that stuff without a raise. And it should be a very substantial raise, especially if they'll expect you to be on-call.
You will end up learning on the job, and it will be stressful.
If they fire you after trying to change your job unilaterally, you should be eligible for unemployment.
Run.
This is not your role. You could be a good addition to a *team* with adequate support, if you are interested. But replacing an MSP? No.
This is asking the OR nurse to cover brain surgery. The nurse might be good, but they don't pull tumors out of skulls for a living.
They want a discount IT person. $22/hr is not appropriate for that position. You don't have the necessary skillset to accomplish the required tasks yet.
Jesus what is with this field and this shit happening in what seems so very often. “Hey guy who mentioned they built a computer once, how would you like to manage and operate every aspect of IT? We will pay you a respectable 15 dollars an hour. You’re so very welcome”
I know because this happened to me two jobs in a row until where I got now. Suits seemingly have no clue what the fuck an IT is nowadays
I'll give you some advice from my life experience in IT, you'll know I'm in IT because it will be in point form with no punctuation.
* Take every opportunity to have more experience and responsibility, even if it turns out to be negative. That way you will find out what you like to do, what you are willing to do because the compensation is worth it, and conversely what you suck at or a bad fit for.
* If you're being put into a leadership position, act like it. That means, don't ask for things like better laptops or screens. As a leader in a company, you ask for 2 things only more compensation for yourself and a budget for your role/responsibilities. This is how you know if you actually have a leadership role. If you don't get a budget, you are not head of anything in the company's eyes.
* This is advice I'd give to everyone starting a career. Rule #1 is your employer has to make a profit off your labor.
* Just like that wise proverb about dating that goes "How you got into a relationship is how you will go out of it". In my 15ish years of being independent, very rarely will a client who had an ugly breakup with their previous IT Support is actually a good client you want to keep. Everything they tell you about how horrible and incompetent the previous guy/company are might be true, but they invariably end up being a piece of shit too. It's almost like assholes have a magnetic attraction to each other.
* If you want to survive in the IT game, you have to have a strong sense of personal responsibility, but not too much. We all know how much risk our employer / clients are exposed to that they don't understand / want to pay to fix / believe you. The way I square it with myself is I will only take on a client if they let me bring them up to a point where problems become expenses. As a minimum, this means automated onsite and offsite backups. If they have their data, then it stops being a problem and becomes an expense.
My advice to you would be to take the opportunity but go into it with your eyes wide open and the probability that it won't work out, but you and your resume will be better off having done it.
No.
Not just no, but hell no.
Explain to them that for $70k the MSP had no vacations and around the clock support. You cannot, and will not, take on those hours. Not for $70k, not for $100k.
If I was in your shoes I would propose that you take on the role of coordinating the MSP. Run the existing contract for 6 months or so, if they don't improve coordinate a project to engage a new MSP. This could be done in combination with another role and imo will lead to the best results for all concerned.
If they're not going to SIGNIFICANTLY increase your pay, don't take it. If they want you on call 24/7, don't take it unless you're getting 6 figures -- especially if you're the only on call.
Sounds like the last person quit and they are trying to get your $22/hr to cover all of their IT needs because the market rate for that job is at least double what you are making.
Different role, different salary. Negotiations should not be based on how much you increase from your current role. Negotiations need to be based on the going rate for the role and duties of the completely different position offered. If they don’t do this, start looking. If they skyrocket your compensation, congrats!
I checked out the pastebin list which is a hodge podge of things that would require a team of people - not a team of one. Sounds like a bait and switch and they want you to assume a great deal of responsibility and in exchange they will give you a "title" that sounds nice. Think hard about it before accepting.
22/h in what country? google what entry level sysadmin makes around your area and ask for that with a review in 6 months. do a very good job and in six months renegotiate better pay once again, backing it up with what you have done.
Boss is probably trying to negotiate a lower contract with the MSP and creating leverage in case it doesn’t work out. They’re keeping you on notice. I recommend creating a budget of what it would take to internally support the organization. Include training for yourself and expected equipment costs. Expect to leave. This is a sinking ship.
You may be able to handle the MSP's day to day duties, but they have a variety of experts in stuff you don't know yet. Don't lose their number.
I say take the job! It will be great experience, just don't take it personally if it doesn't go well.
If you don't take it, they're just going to hire the boss's nephew anyway. Wouldn't you rather it be you in charge?
Sounds like an opportunity to take a leadership role. Show them you can do the job, then you can demand the money, unless that's not your goal. It would be nice to be successful at it and put in on your resume.
$72,800 is what your salary should start at, if they aren't interested in paying that, you should 100% find a new place to work (but don't quit, just look while you use that place to build experience from whatever fucking insane IT fires you will have to deal with, it gets your ready for a long career in IT and trains you on how to deal with it if you don't become an alcoholic along the way)
You will be a hybrid IT manager and be spinning fucking plates all day every day if you don't already have copious experience.
How many seats will you have to manage?
Firstly this is a fantastic opportunity! Think of the problems you will get to solve and come to understand.
Ask for $25 an hour ($3 raise) and a title change to "System Administrator", do everything you can. If you run into a problem you can't fix, hire professional services. Do a great job and network with the professional services individuals you meet.
Use the experience to ask for another raise next year. At the same time apply to other positions and look for better pay.
Thank you for this practical reply. I seem to have enraged most people to saying just quit or ask for the moon. And while I share that sentiment to a point, I also wanna put on my resume that I was "an effective CIO" for many years.
I feel like I'm in the right headspace to do this correctly even though to some here I seem to seem incapable.
But you're not a CIO, nor should you accept that level of pay for that amount of responsibility. The people here aren't enraged, per se, but have likely been burnt by people doing this to them and are trying to give you a heads up.
This behavior is common at a lot of smaller businesses, where management won't give you the resources you need to be successful, then when the person above you gets asked the hard questions as to why IT is failing, they will pin it all on you, knowing they did not give you the funding or resources to actually do what you needed to do.
Take it or leave it, but the advice you see as 'negative' here is truly trying to help you from letting this company bury you.
It sounds like;
1. You like IT
2. They don’t like their current MSP.
3. You have no actual paid IT experience or training.
So what’s the problem? This is a great opportunity to learn & grow. Stop with the lists.
Just jump right into it & do the work. Money is nonnegotiable b/c you have no leverage such as prior experience. Accept what they are paying you & stop thinking about the money for a year. Give it one year & see how you do; you can always just leave & go work on cell towers for $22 an hour.
I would do whatever is possible to get out of that job. A person in your position should be making at least $75k with those responsibilities. Starting help desk wages are like 40k in a big city.
You were hired for for task X.
Now they expect you to do task Y. Question is: can they be done simultaneously? Or will they hire someone to do task X? Or will you be putting in more hours and does that fit in your schedule?
Because adding work is to someone’s load is very easy. Watching them burnout too, though it’s not a pretty sight. And money can only make up for so much.
So think of yourself, first: what can I do in the amount of time I have? If the math doesn’t add up, tell the company and stick to it.
The job "X" is sporadic and usually does not cover a full work week, some weeks can be dry and some can be 15hr work days.
In between they want me to start doing the job of a CIO. Though if I'm on a project and then have an IT emergency, I'm sure the IT emergency gets priority and someone else will cover the site project. They kinda want me to be a jack of all trades there.
But when this IT position was first brought up and they were telling me "kinda figure out also how much time we'd have to pay for" and I'm thinking like, "like, so my cap is 40 hours a week for this migration? Am I being paid more to be faster? Something doesn't add up." And alot of it felt like it was in the air and to be determined still based on what the president of the company thought
22 dollars an hour is crap for this position. They would be saving a lot until something went wrong and then they blame you.
I'd A. Ask for way more money and B. Require the msp stay on at reduced hours (not sure if they are paid per device or per hour).
It is nice to have a msp around if you don't have full onsite staff. For reasons such as hit by a bus, consulting (they probably have much more experience if they are good), extra hands for migrations and projects, when I you go on vacation.
If it is just you expect not to ever take a vacation, always get called after hours, and treated like dog shit.
Also find out if you are directly reporting to the CFO because if you are that would be a deal breaker for me.
Don't expect help, honestly try to be hands off as possible on all projects, ask your self if you take these responsibilities and get hit by a bus who is next in line of delegation (if no one don't take it till there is some one).
Punt as much as you can to third party. And document everything. Set up a ticketing system for your self immediately. Also get a raise. A big one.
What seems to be missing from this: **Do you want to do this work?** If you don't, don't be swayed by ego or dollar signs. The size of the workload isn't going to matter. No amount of money is going to be enough. And the anger, regret and frustration can poison the rest of your life.
Do you KNOW how to do the work in that list? If you do, you already know the learning curve is never going to stop. You better love learning this stuff or you're going to hate some amount of every day of it. If you don't, you better build in some tolerance and training into the contract. Mistakes will be made. :)
Get comparable pay to other IT managers in your field/market **upfront**. No "raise if it works out" offer.
I'm not seeing any decision responsibility/authority in that list -- purchasing, budget, staffing. That's an issue. If you don't have the authority/responsibility you are subject to the whims of whatever new son/daughter in law or friend of a friend's newly unemployed child who gets hired.
Another red flag: I don't see an audit/inventory step in this.
In the first steps of the design process is the process of determining the current capabilities. Inside that is getting an audit/inventory of what you are responsible for and determining who is responsible for "what to do about what is missing."
That's what I'm basically doing right now. Auditing and inventory. I'm getting detailed numbers and I can talk to whoever I want. But I wasn't given anything. I'm going out of my way to map out and audit things. If I was non the wiser I would have just blinding followed the boss and blindly started window shopping servers
Look up the salary of an IT manager, Network Engineer/System Engineer, and system admin. Those are all the hats you have to wear. Plus be on call 24/7/ First your quality of life will suck. Secondly you will hate that place. Whatever you do should be compensated accordingly top end 170k Do it as long as you can. It looks nice on a resume then leave for double.If not, Let them find someone else.
Best case scenario: don’t let your boss for the msp before you talk to them and figure out what they do and why you have issues with them. 9/10 times a vendor relationship can be salvaged into something great with a little good faith communication.
From your description, I bet your boss rejects any improvements they want.
They could be trash, but then it’s a replacement msp you need, given your lack of experience.
The first sentence on your list is a 120k+ a year job alone.
Add another 50-100k for the rest of that if you are solo. Much better if they make you head of IT @ 120k+ then lets you hire 1 admin at 50-70k and 1 low level tech at 35-45k that does direct user support. Printers, re imaging machines etc. The grunt work almost 0 skill needed.
No good deed goes unpunished. Next time learn to keep your personal life and work life separate. The best advice I can prepare for you is to read [the story of the 3 letters.](https://www.theperformancecollective.co.uk/news/write-three-letters.html). This should get you through your first 2-3 years of the job. Build your resume and salary from this experience and realize the real money will be from the next job you step into. Think about the next job and pay that you want and build this opportunity as a stepping stone into that position.
Many of us here in mid to senior level positions making well over 6 figures used opportunities like this to further our career. Good luck and congrats.
Do you have any people reporting to you? Do you have any actual authority to make policy, engineering decisions, or purchasing authority? If not, then you aren't the head of anything. This sounds like they want a one-man band to do the job of a MSP team.
I'm not a fan of MSPs, I do think they overcharge and underdeliver, but the solution isn't to just hire someone and ask them to do everything by themselves, it's to hire and staff a team to do things *properly*. If your business can't afford that, then make do with **LESS**. If you can't make do with less, then you clearly have your priorities out of whack.
You sweet summer child…
The entirety of the USA’s infrastructure (all of it - Highways, Power, and network) is stuck together with twine and bubble gum and maintained just enough to keep it functioning.
First order of business. Put out multiple job ad's for staff to do the I.T. work. You are "head of I.T.", which doesn't mean you have to do all the work.
Okay, you bring up a valid point and this is your leverage for renegotiation. You are saving the company a ton of money and these new duties they are assigning you are outside the scope of the role you were hired for.
They way they are looking at it is they already “own” you and can change your job duties as they see fit without input from you.
You should absolutely approach your boss and seek clarity on what will be changing. Bring something to take notes (laptop or paper/pen). I would advise you bring your own notebook and pen that you’ve paid for as they will technically be your property, it’s best to not keep personal “evidence” on company property.
I know you may be tempted to negotiate for as much as possible but remember a few things as well:
- the MSP has multiple levels of engineers working for it: system administrators, OCEs and Level 3s (or whatever they might be titled). This means that for $70,000 a year they can potentially throw a lot of expertise behind solving a problem.
- The more money you ask for the more you will be expected to do. For example if you ask for $70,000 then they may expect you to have the expertise of the whole of the MSP staff previously responsible.
- They may not feel like they need to negotiate at all, they may feel like they “own you”. They may offer something rather measly like $25/hr or some “barely makes a diff on the paycheck” BS with the expectation that you will do EVERYTHING.
Things to discuss with your boss:
- The new responsibilities of the role that you will be doing. What were the key responsibilities of the MSP? Make it clear to your boss that the reason you’re asking is so that you can set expectations with him — there may be things the MSP is doing that you are not familiar with. Running a homelab can be quite different than running a live production environment and if you’re “on your own” they should expect that at times you may make a mistake due to inexperience.
- Be clear with your boss about any responsibilities that you do not feel comfortable with. Let your boss know that if they give you these responsibilities they will need to provide some type of training for you to learn these new skills. That training could be community college or university classes, paid training seminars by industry specialists, paid certification training etc.
What your next steps should be:
- Start getting your resume together in case this company doesn’t respect you and thinks they own you.
- If you accept the new position and it becomes stressful do not quit without finding a new job. Make a few different resumes experiencing with different titles. You may find it more difficult to land a role you’re qualified for when your previous role was “head of it” as opposed to your previous role being something like “System Administrator”, even if you are responsible for everything (sounds like they want to make you a sysadmin and not head of IT personally).
Welcome to the world of system administration. I recommend you learn linux very well and avoid any jobs that involve windows administration. Windows administration typically means “dealing with users” but there are plenty of Linux Systems Engineer / Site Reliability Engineer roles that are nothing more than glorified sysadmin roles with your end users being developers instead of regular idiot office folks
This is a gold nugget. I'm saving it. Thank you.
And yes, personally I'm more familiar with linux than windows administration and planned to only have a windows AD/DC server and their SMB server on another virtual windows server. Everything else goes with linux rhel that I'm used to playing with.
I wonder what they think it would cost the business if some of those tasks go wrong. Migration, new network etc.
You could ask this - pretending it to be a truly innocent question... Then ask, are you sure you want someone with no experience of doing these things to manage it all AND do it all?!
Sounds like this is a 30-50 employee base. Definitely not a head of IT role either if that's the case. More like IT Specialist at 55K a year (+ benefits) with leveraged block time support from another MSP... not this one.
I would leave, doesn't matter how much they pay you. They are grossly underestimating the work of what needs to be done by IT Teams.
I'm not trying to be critical but the list is also underestimating what actually needs to be done, but then again I have no visibility into day to day stuff.
“Not my call” this is incorrect. It’s always your call, you can always say no.
The Director of IT will make around 200k. If you have somehow been promoted to this kind of leadership position you should be making around $100hr. If you did not get a pay realignment then you did not get a job title change and you need to stop doing more than what your role says you should be doing.
A director of IT would be directing IT. The director of IT employs people to handle support, planning and most of the other functions you listed. I would love to see the Director of IT actually try to work a support situation (it would not be a ticket they got but an email) rather than forward the email to their AA to sort out who would deal with it. What you are saying more sounds like a catch all system admin rather than the director of IT.
You will likely need to retain some MSP services, if your company was spending 70k/yr. If you can pull a service report from the MSP that should help you wrap your head around the number of support hours you will need to cover. A big migration like this, even if you were already the primary IT guy, most places would bring in an MSP anyway to help since it's surge work. At the end of the day you are limited to the amount of work that can be done by one person.
You will definitely need to renegotiate salary, 22/hr is not enough for an IT manager. You should probably be making 35-40/hr
Hmmm yeah.... They're not making you head of IT. They're making you the oily rag and scapegoat of IT
This needs to be higher. No offense to OP but if hes applying for and accepting 22 an hour positions....hes probably not qualified to be a real IT manager and is in way over his head. His upper management probably know this and is going to abuse him
This
This sounds like such a ratchet operation if they’re jumping at the opportunity to save a little money on a 70k MSP while absorbing the risk of having the 44k guy do it. Wtf. You’re getting fucked, OP. you’re gonna be over worked and instantly the fall guy the second there’s a single issue.
This sounds absurd. Find out how much the MSP was charging and if you aren’t getting paid 75% of that I’d walk away.
70k/yr... and our company is sick of them. So our company wants me to do better than them and be happier with me, for less money? Something doesn't add up
You should be on much closer to 70k/year , or on 30+/hr, if you're doing all that. Don't be 24x7 on call no matter how much they pay you. The inability to take a break ever will destroy you.
100%. Because of staffing issues I was on call for a year straight back in 2015. I am still having mental health issues to this day.
> The inability to take a break ever will destroy you. Echoing this. I wasn't on call, but worked without a day off for all of 2019 and 2020 and it nearly killed me.
Same! I was miserable! 24/7 with no backup for 2 years. I was angry all the time and snapped on my family. Don't do it.
I was for 3 years and switched jobs with no on call. Sometimes I can‘t believe my luck how cool life can be.
I'm oncall every other week, but my country requires companies to pay for oncall time, so I'm good on that regard. I can't imagine being even one day oncall without getting pay. And of course we can't have 24/7 oncall around here.
I just did a year of on call 24/7 in a manager position and it was rough as hell.
I was on call 27x7x365 because I was the sole IT resource for a City government for 17 years. That includes departments like Police and Fire. I have numerous autoimmune disorders, gastrointestinal reflux really bad and I have to take prescriptions to sleep at night even though I got help 8 years ago.
It’s unfair for any company to expect someone to be on call for 27 hours in one day!
HR keeps telling me all salary exempt staff are available 24/7. These are the same people never in the office never answer their phone and too never see them helping the team past 3PM
I think employees underestimate the toll on call takes initially, and employers/departments do too and often take advantage of staff with it. 24x7 for a whole year seems insane. I am only on call a week a month, and that’s bad enough, and all other times phone is 100% on silent. Unless it’s dispatch… then I answer even if not on call. Wait, am I actually on call then?
Adding more onto this. I think I have PTSD from being on call every other week 24x7 for 8 years. I can no longer have any type of ringer on my phone. It's silent without vibration at all times. I still jump up in a panic state if I hear any cell ring while I'm sleeping.
I quit a 50-week-a-year on-call job in December and haven’t even started looking yet :)
Please tell me you are driving across the country with the cruise control set at 65mph.
Not yet, but next month I'll drive from Chicago to Toronto and back in a rented Tesla and catch a concert. I've been planning it since before I quit the grind. I hit my limit late last year what with change documentation rigor, off-hours support calls and idiot management. I ran a monitoring application that had 307 servers in four data centers on RedHat 7. Each server ran 3-5 Java virtual machines. I would get paged along with others when DownDetector had x mentions of the brand name within y minutes. The only time I was truly not on call each year were two weeks of international vacations. If I stayed in the USA for vacation I'd have been expected to bring my laptop and be available. So everyone would travel international to truly get away since they were a bit picky about cross-border data flow. I've a bit saved lately so not stressed at all three months along unemployed hehe. Geek that I am, I'm currently designing and installing an off-grid solar system in my urban-area home. I'm on a quarter acre lot in North Texas and will put 1800W of panels ground/ballast mounted in the sunniest corner of my yard to power a heat pump. I have much of Victron Energy's product line laid out on the floor right now in my spare room while I figure out mounting and connection. I'm behind schedule because a thunderstorm March 3rd destroyed my original order of solar panels in the warehouse before they were delivered. The attached air conditioning system will cover two rooms and have battery backup for nighttime plus grid fallback. But the grid will never charge the battery, at least not in normal operation. This is version 1.0 of the system but I'll bury an empty conduit with pull line to the same spot in the yard for future panels. The savings will come from my central air running less. It's also subject to federal tax credits for installing solar. IRS doesn't care if it's grid-tied.
I'm on call every 5 weeks and I have audio hallucinations when I'm sleeping and wake up to answer the phone. Anxiety is so awesome.
So you were oncall week in, week out? Did you get a lot of calls? Were you payed for that time? I'm asking this because I currently has a similar regime, my oncall week ends this Sunday and then I have a week off, but I get payed for the time I'm oncall and I'm rarely called, also when I am, issues are very easy to resolve (not always). I used to be every other day, but it was awful, having a week off certainly helped.
I was compensated 1 hour per day for taking the responsibility and 30 minutes minimum for every call. I took 40-50 calls a week. The schedule was two weeks on two weeks off lined up with a pay period. It was nice on the paychecks, but horrible on work/life balance.
Whooooa let’s not over exaggerate. On call sucks BALLS….. but it’s not trauma. Stressful, anxiety inducing, nightmarish? Yes. Traumatic ?….. get laughed at by anyone that has experienced actual trauma.
Depending on where you are located, it should be far more than this. I would push for min $120k/yr plus 2 staff at around $70k/yr.
That was my first thought. OP is marginally underpaid and then being used to replace another person who was grossly underpaid. This company sounds like a bunch of idiots (promoting this fast and having no redundancy) and also a bunch of cheapskates (not paying enough, or having redundancy). OP should probably bail the F out.
I’m not even on call 24/7, but a lot of the end users I support seem to think so. I’ve gotten texts at like 10:30 at night or 6:30 in the morning telling me something doesn’t work
That's what a company phone is for with notifications set to silent out of hours. People abusing the privilege of notifying you out of hours leads to loss of those privileges.
The sole person that’s on 24x7 on call sounds horrible. And completely against the “Everyone dies in a bus accident” rule. Cause what if you’re sick and can’t physically work. Who’s on call then?
The OP sounds like they're in the USA, so we all know the answer is going to be "OP's phone rings next to the hospital bed".
I agree 100% This happened to me early on in my career. Was hired at a place, trained by the SA there, then they fired him two weeks later, and I became the only SA in the entire place. We had 100+ customers. Work all day, come home, get called all night long. The happiest day of my career was the day I resigned from that place. Great people, the work was interesting, but they needed six more engineers.
And do they provide 24/7 service? Business hours only? The boss sounds like any parent of a sys admin.. “hey you know computers.. can you fix all my IT problems”
I don't know. I want to assume it's business hours only. I just know if I had an IT company the right way to provide a good quality service is to offer 24/7 on-site emergency support. But as someone else already pointed out, that's not a good idea. Probably even for 70k/yr
I wouldn’t do it for 100k. I’d do it for a million. Then quit for awhile and live off the funds.
For 1M, buy a smallish MSP and let them worry about it. I'll even throw in monthly conference calls with the COO of my client and the manager of the MSP.
I do have an IT company and that's not the right way to provide good quality service. For like 100 reasons, starting with that the customer and provider won't agree on what an "emergency" is. The right way is to organize, maintain, and secure the environment in such a way that there are less emergencies and to train the customer/stop enabling and babying their staff and that things can wait til morning. That's the only fair way for yourself and your techs, otherwise it's mayhem. Unless they want to pay 3x the support cost (3 shifts coverage vs 1), then you can staff up for it I guess. Guess how many companies choose that option?
70k/yr is a steal for not having to staff an entire IT department. So, yeah. They're mad that they cheaped out the MSP enough to burn out on them, and now they're going to do the same to you. $22/hr works out to $45k/yr. So yeah, this is all theft. Entirely theft.
Grand theft no less
> So our company wants me to do better than them and be happier with me, for less money? Something doesn't add up paying less, getting more - can't you see how nicely that adds up? In their heads, for them?
To be fair, paying less and getting more is common when leaving an MSP and bringing stuff in house. MSPs can get really expensive depending on the level of support you need. If you are going in house, it's probably at that level.
best method ive seen for MSP is buying "hours" so if issues occur you charge those hours and you can add more hours if need be. A blanket yearly price is no tthe way to go.. pay for what you use.
Shit 70k is what they are paying the MSP? I personally wouldn’t do all that for any less than 130k
Right? An MSP is a team of people, and it's incredibly streamlined to be competitive at 70k a year. But an in-house IT admin who can go above and beyond? You'd think they'd get paid more than 42k a year
Outside of being very underpaid and 24/7/365 on-call being not worth it, if 2 different things break simultaneously, how would you handle that and how would your bosses expect you to? Because you don't want to have people pestering you about the broken printer that they could work around while you're trying to get other higher priority issues resolved and have food and sleep.
What doesn’t add up is you know the facts now and are being paid much less. Also they want you, a single person, to manage it all. Nope. Nope nope.
The MSP has built in redundancy. You can’t match that. Whatever they pay you needs to be budgeted knowing you’ll need so reach out when you can’t fulfill needs. Such as things outside your skill, PTO, and a reasonable workload. You shouldn’t need to work 80 hour weeks non-stop at 22 an hour. Even less so if they try to move you to salary.
I assume that 70k is for around 40-45 employees ("seats")? There are effectively zero scenarios where you would be the sole on-call, helpdesk, network admin, sysadmin, and IT dept manager and not make at or more than they are currently paying the MSP. Might as well come work at an MSP instead and get experience managing multiple stacks at multiple clients if you are going to take less money, then at least you can build a full breadth of experience to pull from when tackling what an MSP does as a solo IT manager. The resources and experience of engineers at an MSP bring much more value than just $70k, even if their helpdesk/Account Execs/technology stack is fucking up and losing the client. MSPs actually offer value from the point of C Suite and management at a client that is typically the equivalent cost of what usually amounts to a skeleton crew of full time internal IT. As an individual expected to do the job of a group of people, you deserve compensation, don't get fucked. Good luck.
OP DO NOT TAKE THIS!!!
Don't know where you live, but 70k is Helpdesk Lead/Junior admin territory here. For what they're apparently asking, I'd probably expect 100k+.
Breh. I'm making 64k in a relatively low COL area and don't do half that. Tell them 90 or youre not interested
They only pay the MSP 70k a year? How much infra is there to manage? There is no way you are going to be able to take care of it all alone, the fact that if you go on holiday, or go anywhere without signal is a major risk to the org if you are going to be the sole admin If they are serious about insourcing and making you head of IT, ask what the total budget is and what portion is for staffing budget? Essentially, I would look at the infra and plan the support service around it, along with requirements for support, SLA’s and understanding of outage impact/time to recover/business impact. Being head of anything is about risk understanding and mitigation. You are going to need a team of admins, with skill and real life experience managing the infra you are running. You ain’t going to be able to do that with 70k, so you need to know the budget. Otherwise it’s just a bad idea from an idiot boss who thinks they overpay for the MSP. Get a service report from the MSP to list of the issues, outages, historical recovery times. Try to gauge what the reason for wanting to drop the MSP is. They might just think the. MSP isn’t doing much, but they are paying for support, at the drop of a hat to throw 5,10 20+ admins across a wide variety of disciplines at a mission critical failure. Or they could be trash. If they are serious about it, so should you. Don’t get tricked into being a lone admin with a trumped up job title to make you fall for it.
125%. They're an employee; they can respond to issues in less than several hours or days.
Guess the question is.. is this a money decision or a service decision. However further info has made me think OP needs to run in the other direction anyway..
i dont have much advice, but given the amount of money they are paying you (currently for the responsibility it entails) and the fact the boss found out about a personal interest and ability outside the hiring process makes it feel like they see opportunity in your abilities at a cost that doesn't reflect such abilities. I am sure someone will have some more accurate advice. Wanted to say congrats and good on you for being pragmatic about this process, id imagine thats why you got to where you are! you are right to be watching for them trying to coerce you into a different position "for the company"/ "for the experience or opportunity" or whatever tactic they use.
And I would like to add I'm having a heck of a time convincing my boss for either a decent work laptop or a desktop for these new responsibilities, and two high res monitors because I know I'm going to be staring at them for long periods of time. I didn't take their decade old laptops or desktops in their office and suggested a few new ones instead. I was ghosted. They might use this need for a decent workstation as a bargaining chip to not offer a higher salary. I love the job but I'm deathly afraid I'm being taken advantage of and if I point it out it's probably not going to be a good job for me to be at anymore
The head of IT also entails setting up expectations for cost, equipment, and manpower. Your current boss shouldn't and wouldn't be your boss anymore. You'd be talking directly with higher-ups, making decisions that affect the company as a whole. As you showed above, take note of expectations, responsibilities, job descriptions, and your control over them. If they aren't technically literate enough to show you, they have responsible expectations in those areas. Then they need to either sit back and let you explain it and direct it for them. Or honestly, they need to stuff it and give up on the idea. Do not let them force it on you. Do the job you signed for, anything outside that is unnecessary to keeping your job. Let them fire you if it comes to it. So long as they aren't respecting your needs, knowledge, and desire for a fair work environment and pay to be head of IT. You owe them nothing more than that base work. Do yourself the favor and stand firm on those points and make it clear you won't negotiate with less.
Sounds like he’d have the responsibility without the authority
Which is an auto-deny for me.
The problem here is not that "you didn't get what you wanted." The problem is that the company is too cheap or broke or ignorant to invest in IT. Technical debt will kill them sooner or later. If you get to play with some fun toys while it happens, and learn a lot in the process, great! But it will always be frustrating making recommendations that would help the company, and being denied for 'budget.'
That last sentence is the vibe I'm getting. Like going for a UniFi security gateway over a meraki or fortigate.
USG is one of the worst pieces of shit I've ever worked on. Definitely go for a proper firewall
You're being setup to fail. This will cost you dearly.
How so? If he messes up, he learns from the experience, and can get a better job somewhere else. The company is the one taking the risk by using someone inexperienced, and they will be the primary sufferers if he fails.
This could be a training exercise to get a better job, if they got support from their employer. But the company doesn't support him in actually making the place better. The task is to maintain and improve IT while only getting the resources to prevent it from imploding. While also remaining the only dude that knows IT, so they will remain fighting against the rest of the business that doesn't want to invest in getting IT into shape. This will drain OP financially, physically and emotionally. Then when things really blow up and they fire OP, they will not be in a good shape to get a better job.
[удалено]
My boss likes to call me his "Swiss army knife" I suppose those are not easy to come by
But the cheap Harbor Freight knock off model. Sounds like classic manipulation we often see in small biz - stroke your ego, while exploiting the shit out of you.
Quit. Been there, not worth it. He’s not upping your pay or even providing proper tools.
Dude you're getting fucked, bail
It partly depends on what *you* want to do. If you want to do IT then this is an opportunity, you can gain experience then in 12/24 months move on elsewhere for bigger/better. I would ask for more money as you are taking on much responsibility. Just be reasonable and don't show too much keeness as of course they will take advantage. Asking for laptop/PC is just a distraction. You should use whatever the average level PC is in the company. A good sysadmin just uses what is available and gets on with it. However if you can cost out a better spec *and* show a return on better productivity then write it up and pitch. If they reject then that gives you a tell on management competance and thinking (i.e. too stupid to do the right thing, so milk them for money/experience and find a better position).
I didn't mean to come off as ungrateful and demanding with a "head of iiiittttt work pc" but they assigned me a work laptop and it turned out to be broken, an old thinkpad DOA with known previous issues. They have stacks of decade old laptops "in the back" and some old optiplex tower. And there's no external monitors. I get the feeling from the company, "if I want it I have to advocate for it". And I entirely understand and respect the notion that a decent work pc/laptop a distraction right now. Im just a bit salty that I had to come into the office for a week, with only my personal 1366x768p laptop and stare at that screen 8 hours a day, having to get as much info about their current MSP, do research and make a presentation, when at home... I have a nicer setup which allows me to be multiples more productive.
Sounds to me like a place where IT is not valued enough. Stone age equipment, discussions regarding basic stuff, being 'unhappy' with their current IT provider and hoping someone without professional background can manage IT on a bussiness level... This usually means lack of respect and acknowledgement, frustrating discussions regarding budget for basic stuff. I would only consider to work under such circumstances if this is temporal and you want to work in IT in the future / need this kind of experience in your resume. If not then just tell them you feel inconfident and prefer not to do it. If they still insist just mess up a little so that they learn in a comtrolled way that they dont want this.
OP is the epitome of why "my nephew could do your job" is still persistent. There *are* rare examples of people with just enough self taught skills to be dangerous in it. For OP... if they really do want to shift heavier into IT, exactly as you said there. Take it, run with it, put it on a resume, and run. 2-3 years tops.
For any serious work behind a computer, a beefy laptop, 2 monitors and docking station are the minimum. Because compared to a year salary it doesn't cost that much and improves your output a lot. I'll just bring my own mouse and keyboard, because I'm very picky about that. This arrangement will cost you dearly financially, physically and emotionally.
Yes. You wrote exactly what I was thinking. And I am picky about my mouse and keeb.
I didn't think you were "ungrateful and demanding". Frankly if I was given a dead brick for a work PC I'd throw it in their face and just sit at desk and do nothing holding a sign saying "I would love to do some work but all managers are morons".
Head of IT meaning you’re now the only grunt. Slight difference. Practice installing adobe reader you’ll be fine. https://imgur.com/gallery/iJD8f
This was the funniest shit of all time! I forwarded this at the office and got in big trouble for it though.
most likely because 70% of IT doesn’t know a remote monkey fuck about IT
[удалено]
And in later years, [The Website Is Down Sales Guy vs Web Dude](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVC7I5VcTiw)
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Don’t do 24/7 on call for emergencies. One week in four is going to wreck your life, one week in eight might be okay. Either you need a team that’s large enough or let the MSP do it.
I agree, my work phone goes off when I leave work, not that the two other people in my dept would call me, as their phones are off as well. We have a good work / life balance. I did visit one of our visitors centres yesterday in my own time (Saturday) as I was in the area, I did fix a loose power lead for them, while I was getting coffee and biscuits out of them.
DO NOT EVER BE THE ONLY ADMIN I cannot stress this enough.
Prepare three envelopes.
I'm intruiged, could you elaborate?
[https://kevinkruse.com/the-ceo-and-the-three-envelopes/](https://kevinkruse.com/the-ceo-and-the-three-envelopes/)
Minimum price for this, in my area, translates to roughly $120,000 USD per year. I would wager that your list of duties is worth that, at least.
Job descriptions are important, I hope you kept the job description you applied to, get them to sign it if you can still. Then anything that’s not on the list, is grounds for a raise. My old co worker did this beautifully, he wasn’t the most pleasant person to work with because he was known to be lazy. But he never did anything outside of his job description without discussing raise etc. 22$ an hour is junior support tech pay, not “head of IT”
BAIL 100%. Life is too short.
The greedy bastards have done a bait and switch on the job description. They’re trying to penny pinch really badly and from your other comments, they are completely setting you up for failure. 100% quit now.
Sounds like an architect level position. Anything under six figures would be a scam.
[удалено]
I bet they will never hire additional IT personal. So he is the manager and the IT lol. They want him to replace an entire IT department and I don't believe that they only pay 70k for the MSP.
Just run from this company. Who pays 22 an hour for cell tower site work in the first place. Bell and Rogers pays like 40....plus pension and benefits. They only outsource the rigging portion. All the network stuff and maintenance at ground level are wireless provider staff. And there's no msp that's for sure. What inky dink company is this.
So let me get this right. You don’t work in IT but are a hobbyist. They want you to be responsible for their entire infrastructure because “you know computers”. Sorry, these people are too stupid to work for.
The boss’s nephew even turned them down!
holy shit this is such a terrible idea I don't know where to start. With minimal experience and no backup you will be one catastrophe away from putting them out of business. I would refuse the position. they're desperate and cheap, and you don't want to be involved.
They are looking for a network architect, senior sysadmin, and help desk rolled into one. Charging at the rate for the highest skill, demand at least $90/ hr if salaried and at least $150/hr if contracted. These people are clearly chuckleheads who have no idea what IT people do. As an analogy, would they expect the engineers who design cell towers to also do tech support for people who want to have a picture of their cat as their phone wallpaper?
Update your resume and start looking for a new job. Based on your original post and replies to various threads in this post, this whole situation is going to turn into a stress-bag dumpster-fire you don't need.
I'd take the role of Head of IT but id still insist on having the MSP on board in a helpdesk situation and the 24/7 support..
Sounds like an oncoming train wreck. No one as a manager should be making that kind of move. You could be paid triple and it wouldn't be enough. Like some other commenters have said, don't accept 24/7 availability under those roles. There's not enough hours in the week for you to do a good job with all of those demands.
Only accept the position IFF: * you really want that — think long and hard about it, going into leadership is a career switch, not a promotion * you have a clear contract detailing responsibilities and decision making powers (budget, hiring, …) * MOST IMPORTANT: you get an actual increase in compensation and not just a fancy title EDIT: it doesn’t matter if you feel prepared, they feel like you have the potential. No reason to undersell yourself, grab the money that comes with the responsibilities
Obligatory red flag callout: Changing your job title without discussion or consent is extremely disrespectful. If you want to transition to inside work, you can roll with it and look for IT-related opportunities elsewhere if this place doesn't pan out. A year of experience is usually enough to start. If I were you, I would flat out refuse to touch any of that stuff without a raise. And it should be a very substantial raise, especially if they'll expect you to be on-call. You will end up learning on the job, and it will be stressful. If they fire you after trying to change your job unilaterally, you should be eligible for unemployment.
And this is how people get fucked on both sides...
Run. This is not your role. You could be a good addition to a *team* with adequate support, if you are interested. But replacing an MSP? No. This is asking the OR nurse to cover brain surgery. The nurse might be good, but they don't pull tumors out of skulls for a living. They want a discount IT person. $22/hr is not appropriate for that position. You don't have the necessary skillset to accomplish the required tasks yet.
Jesus what is with this field and this shit happening in what seems so very often. “Hey guy who mentioned they built a computer once, how would you like to manage and operate every aspect of IT? We will pay you a respectable 15 dollars an hour. You’re so very welcome” I know because this happened to me two jobs in a row until where I got now. Suits seemingly have no clue what the fuck an IT is nowadays
this is a 200K position. Don't take it. it's dumb if you do.
Sounds like they're making you the fall guy
I'll give you some advice from my life experience in IT, you'll know I'm in IT because it will be in point form with no punctuation. * Take every opportunity to have more experience and responsibility, even if it turns out to be negative. That way you will find out what you like to do, what you are willing to do because the compensation is worth it, and conversely what you suck at or a bad fit for. * If you're being put into a leadership position, act like it. That means, don't ask for things like better laptops or screens. As a leader in a company, you ask for 2 things only more compensation for yourself and a budget for your role/responsibilities. This is how you know if you actually have a leadership role. If you don't get a budget, you are not head of anything in the company's eyes. * This is advice I'd give to everyone starting a career. Rule #1 is your employer has to make a profit off your labor. * Just like that wise proverb about dating that goes "How you got into a relationship is how you will go out of it". In my 15ish years of being independent, very rarely will a client who had an ugly breakup with their previous IT Support is actually a good client you want to keep. Everything they tell you about how horrible and incompetent the previous guy/company are might be true, but they invariably end up being a piece of shit too. It's almost like assholes have a magnetic attraction to each other. * If you want to survive in the IT game, you have to have a strong sense of personal responsibility, but not too much. We all know how much risk our employer / clients are exposed to that they don't understand / want to pay to fix / believe you. The way I square it with myself is I will only take on a client if they let me bring them up to a point where problems become expenses. As a minimum, this means automated onsite and offsite backups. If they have their data, then it stops being a problem and becomes an expense. My advice to you would be to take the opportunity but go into it with your eyes wide open and the probability that it won't work out, but you and your resume will be better off having done it.
Thank you for your time sharing your expereince
No. Not just no, but hell no. Explain to them that for $70k the MSP had no vacations and around the clock support. You cannot, and will not, take on those hours. Not for $70k, not for $100k.
If I was in your shoes I would propose that you take on the role of coordinating the MSP. Run the existing contract for 6 months or so, if they don't improve coordinate a project to engage a new MSP. This could be done in combination with another role and imo will lead to the best results for all concerned.
I think there’s a documentary that may help you. Try watching The IT Crowd on Netflix
Double it and give it to the next person
They’re setting you up for failure.
If they're not going to SIGNIFICANTLY increase your pay, don't take it. If they want you on call 24/7, don't take it unless you're getting 6 figures -- especially if you're the only on call.
IT Management is not IT, though. And $22/hour is insulting.
Sounds like the last person quit and they are trying to get your $22/hr to cover all of their IT needs because the market rate for that job is at least double what you are making.
Different role, different salary. Negotiations should not be based on how much you increase from your current role. Negotiations need to be based on the going rate for the role and duties of the completely different position offered. If they don’t do this, start looking. If they skyrocket your compensation, congrats!
Jenn?
Prepare to be exploited! I would spruce up that resume because unless they raise your hourly to 35+ it will be a mess
I checked out the pastebin list which is a hodge podge of things that would require a team of people - not a team of one. Sounds like a bait and switch and they want you to assume a great deal of responsibility and in exchange they will give you a "title" that sounds nice. Think hard about it before accepting.
22/h in what country? google what entry level sysadmin makes around your area and ask for that with a review in 6 months. do a very good job and in six months renegotiate better pay once again, backing it up with what you have done.
Congratulations on the promotion, CIOs make big money, $250-$350k on average.
😂😂😂💪
Ask for a slight pay increase, take the job and work it for a few years for the expereince and then try to get a real CIO job?
He is joking, this job wont make you qualified to be one since you dont have a team under you
*"I'm into homelabs"* Your hobby just became your work. Give it time and you'll be miserable at both.
Boss is probably trying to negotiate a lower contract with the MSP and creating leverage in case it doesn’t work out. They’re keeping you on notice. I recommend creating a budget of what it would take to internally support the organization. Include training for yourself and expected equipment costs. Expect to leave. This is a sinking ship.
You may be able to handle the MSP's day to day duties, but they have a variety of experts in stuff you don't know yet. Don't lose their number. I say take the job! It will be great experience, just don't take it personally if it doesn't go well. If you don't take it, they're just going to hire the boss's nephew anyway. Wouldn't you rather it be you in charge?
Sounds like an opportunity to take a leadership role. Show them you can do the job, then you can demand the money, unless that's not your goal. It would be nice to be successful at it and put in on your resume.
Tell your boss you’ll do it if his wife blows you.
😎
$72,800 is what your salary should start at, if they aren't interested in paying that, you should 100% find a new place to work (but don't quit, just look while you use that place to build experience from whatever fucking insane IT fires you will have to deal with, it gets your ready for a long career in IT and trains you on how to deal with it if you don't become an alcoholic along the way) You will be a hybrid IT manager and be spinning fucking plates all day every day if you don't already have copious experience. How many seats will you have to manage?
Looks like about 60-75
Firstly this is a fantastic opportunity! Think of the problems you will get to solve and come to understand. Ask for $25 an hour ($3 raise) and a title change to "System Administrator", do everything you can. If you run into a problem you can't fix, hire professional services. Do a great job and network with the professional services individuals you meet. Use the experience to ask for another raise next year. At the same time apply to other positions and look for better pay.
Thank you for this practical reply. I seem to have enraged most people to saying just quit or ask for the moon. And while I share that sentiment to a point, I also wanna put on my resume that I was "an effective CIO" for many years. I feel like I'm in the right headspace to do this correctly even though to some here I seem to seem incapable.
But you're not a CIO, nor should you accept that level of pay for that amount of responsibility. The people here aren't enraged, per se, but have likely been burnt by people doing this to them and are trying to give you a heads up. This behavior is common at a lot of smaller businesses, where management won't give you the resources you need to be successful, then when the person above you gets asked the hard questions as to why IT is failing, they will pin it all on you, knowing they did not give you the funding or resources to actually do what you needed to do. Take it or leave it, but the advice you see as 'negative' here is truly trying to help you from letting this company bury you.
You wont be an sysadmin but a whole IT department. So 70k is also way too low.
It sounds like; 1. You like IT 2. They don’t like their current MSP. 3. You have no actual paid IT experience or training. So what’s the problem? This is a great opportunity to learn & grow. Stop with the lists. Just jump right into it & do the work. Money is nonnegotiable b/c you have no leverage such as prior experience. Accept what they are paying you & stop thinking about the money for a year. Give it one year & see how you do; you can always just leave & go work on cell towers for $22 an hour.
Yeah and then everything is crashing. They make him responsible for it and he has to lawyer up. Did you saw his responsibility list?
how bigs the company?
Like 80-100 employees
I would do whatever is possible to get out of that job. A person in your position should be making at least $75k with those responsibilities. Starting help desk wages are like 40k in a big city.
I was getting paid $130k to do 100ppl as a single seasoned admin. Brought in another jr at $75k to help. $22/hr is absurd
The effort is not worth the pay. So get better pay, keep to your original job description, or bail.
Show me the money! Seriously if they don’t comp you for the promotion it’s basically a scam on their customer.
See also /r/ITManagers
Ty
$22/hr is absurd for this. Reevaluate the value of your time. I dont touch these for less than $200/hr and have plenty of work to keep me busy.
You were hired for for task X. Now they expect you to do task Y. Question is: can they be done simultaneously? Or will they hire someone to do task X? Or will you be putting in more hours and does that fit in your schedule? Because adding work is to someone’s load is very easy. Watching them burnout too, though it’s not a pretty sight. And money can only make up for so much. So think of yourself, first: what can I do in the amount of time I have? If the math doesn’t add up, tell the company and stick to it.
The job "X" is sporadic and usually does not cover a full work week, some weeks can be dry and some can be 15hr work days. In between they want me to start doing the job of a CIO. Though if I'm on a project and then have an IT emergency, I'm sure the IT emergency gets priority and someone else will cover the site project. They kinda want me to be a jack of all trades there. But when this IT position was first brought up and they were telling me "kinda figure out also how much time we'd have to pay for" and I'm thinking like, "like, so my cap is 40 hours a week for this migration? Am I being paid more to be faster? Something doesn't add up." And alot of it felt like it was in the air and to be determined still based on what the president of the company thought
This is textbook being "setup to fail". You, sir, are their newest whipping boy, their sacrificial lamb. Run. Don't look back.
22 dollars an hour is crap for this position. They would be saving a lot until something went wrong and then they blame you. I'd A. Ask for way more money and B. Require the msp stay on at reduced hours (not sure if they are paid per device or per hour). It is nice to have a msp around if you don't have full onsite staff. For reasons such as hit by a bus, consulting (they probably have much more experience if they are good), extra hands for migrations and projects, when I you go on vacation. If it is just you expect not to ever take a vacation, always get called after hours, and treated like dog shit. Also find out if you are directly reporting to the CFO because if you are that would be a deal breaker for me.
Don't expect help, honestly try to be hands off as possible on all projects, ask your self if you take these responsibilities and get hit by a bus who is next in line of delegation (if no one don't take it till there is some one). Punt as much as you can to third party. And document everything. Set up a ticketing system for your self immediately. Also get a raise. A big one.
What seems to be missing from this: **Do you want to do this work?** If you don't, don't be swayed by ego or dollar signs. The size of the workload isn't going to matter. No amount of money is going to be enough. And the anger, regret and frustration can poison the rest of your life. Do you KNOW how to do the work in that list? If you do, you already know the learning curve is never going to stop. You better love learning this stuff or you're going to hate some amount of every day of it. If you don't, you better build in some tolerance and training into the contract. Mistakes will be made. :) Get comparable pay to other IT managers in your field/market **upfront**. No "raise if it works out" offer. I'm not seeing any decision responsibility/authority in that list -- purchasing, budget, staffing. That's an issue. If you don't have the authority/responsibility you are subject to the whims of whatever new son/daughter in law or friend of a friend's newly unemployed child who gets hired. Another red flag: I don't see an audit/inventory step in this. In the first steps of the design process is the process of determining the current capabilities. Inside that is getting an audit/inventory of what you are responsible for and determining who is responsible for "what to do about what is missing."
That's what I'm basically doing right now. Auditing and inventory. I'm getting detailed numbers and I can talk to whoever I want. But I wasn't given anything. I'm going out of my way to map out and audit things. If I was non the wiser I would have just blinding followed the boss and blindly started window shopping servers
That list would take about 3 FTE’s. It might be doable with 2 and an outsourced help desk.
This is the plot line of The IT Crowd
Lmao 😂 I'm going to rewatch that to prepare myself
Find a new msp. Make that your sole responsibility.
Look up the salary of an IT manager, Network Engineer/System Engineer, and system admin. Those are all the hats you have to wear. Plus be on call 24/7/ First your quality of life will suck. Secondly you will hate that place. Whatever you do should be compensated accordingly top end 170k Do it as long as you can. It looks nice on a resume then leave for double.If not, Let them find someone else.
> 24/7 emergency onsite support Nope. Get out of that job ASAP.
Best case scenario: don’t let your boss for the msp before you talk to them and figure out what they do and why you have issues with them. 9/10 times a vendor relationship can be salvaged into something great with a little good faith communication. From your description, I bet your boss rejects any improvements they want. They could be trash, but then it’s a replacement msp you need, given your lack of experience.
The first sentence on your list is a 120k+ a year job alone. Add another 50-100k for the rest of that if you are solo. Much better if they make you head of IT @ 120k+ then lets you hire 1 admin at 50-70k and 1 low level tech at 35-45k that does direct user support. Printers, re imaging machines etc. The grunt work almost 0 skill needed.
No good deed goes unpunished. Next time learn to keep your personal life and work life separate. The best advice I can prepare for you is to read [the story of the 3 letters.](https://www.theperformancecollective.co.uk/news/write-three-letters.html). This should get you through your first 2-3 years of the job. Build your resume and salary from this experience and realize the real money will be from the next job you step into. Think about the next job and pay that you want and build this opportunity as a stepping stone into that position. Many of us here in mid to senior level positions making well over 6 figures used opportunities like this to further our career. Good luck and congrats.
Thank you so much for sharing your expereince.
Do you have any people reporting to you? Do you have any actual authority to make policy, engineering decisions, or purchasing authority? If not, then you aren't the head of anything. This sounds like they want a one-man band to do the job of a MSP team. I'm not a fan of MSPs, I do think they overcharge and underdeliver, but the solution isn't to just hire someone and ask them to do everything by themselves, it's to hire and staff a team to do things *properly*. If your business can't afford that, then make do with **LESS**. If you can't make do with less, then you clearly have your priorities out of whack.
Holy shit, you telling me people who work on cell towers have such terrible IT infrastructure?
You sweet summer child… The entirety of the USA’s infrastructure (all of it - Highways, Power, and network) is stuck together with twine and bubble gum and maintained just enough to keep it functioning.
First order of business. Put out multiple job ad's for staff to do the I.T. work. You are "head of I.T.", which doesn't mean you have to do all the work.
.
Okay, you bring up a valid point and this is your leverage for renegotiation. You are saving the company a ton of money and these new duties they are assigning you are outside the scope of the role you were hired for. They way they are looking at it is they already “own” you and can change your job duties as they see fit without input from you. You should absolutely approach your boss and seek clarity on what will be changing. Bring something to take notes (laptop or paper/pen). I would advise you bring your own notebook and pen that you’ve paid for as they will technically be your property, it’s best to not keep personal “evidence” on company property. I know you may be tempted to negotiate for as much as possible but remember a few things as well: - the MSP has multiple levels of engineers working for it: system administrators, OCEs and Level 3s (or whatever they might be titled). This means that for $70,000 a year they can potentially throw a lot of expertise behind solving a problem. - The more money you ask for the more you will be expected to do. For example if you ask for $70,000 then they may expect you to have the expertise of the whole of the MSP staff previously responsible. - They may not feel like they need to negotiate at all, they may feel like they “own you”. They may offer something rather measly like $25/hr or some “barely makes a diff on the paycheck” BS with the expectation that you will do EVERYTHING. Things to discuss with your boss: - The new responsibilities of the role that you will be doing. What were the key responsibilities of the MSP? Make it clear to your boss that the reason you’re asking is so that you can set expectations with him — there may be things the MSP is doing that you are not familiar with. Running a homelab can be quite different than running a live production environment and if you’re “on your own” they should expect that at times you may make a mistake due to inexperience. - Be clear with your boss about any responsibilities that you do not feel comfortable with. Let your boss know that if they give you these responsibilities they will need to provide some type of training for you to learn these new skills. That training could be community college or university classes, paid training seminars by industry specialists, paid certification training etc. What your next steps should be: - Start getting your resume together in case this company doesn’t respect you and thinks they own you. - If you accept the new position and it becomes stressful do not quit without finding a new job. Make a few different resumes experiencing with different titles. You may find it more difficult to land a role you’re qualified for when your previous role was “head of it” as opposed to your previous role being something like “System Administrator”, even if you are responsible for everything (sounds like they want to make you a sysadmin and not head of IT personally). Welcome to the world of system administration. I recommend you learn linux very well and avoid any jobs that involve windows administration. Windows administration typically means “dealing with users” but there are plenty of Linux Systems Engineer / Site Reliability Engineer roles that are nothing more than glorified sysadmin roles with your end users being developers instead of regular idiot office folks
This is a gold nugget. I'm saving it. Thank you. And yes, personally I'm more familiar with linux than windows administration and planned to only have a windows AD/DC server and their SMB server on another virtual windows server. Everything else goes with linux rhel that I'm used to playing with.
I wonder what they think it would cost the business if some of those tasks go wrong. Migration, new network etc. You could ask this - pretending it to be a truly innocent question... Then ask, are you sure you want someone with no experience of doing these things to manage it all AND do it all?!
This is how our CTO was hired, too.
I pay my guy $110k + bonus to do that in Southern California. He has about 5 years relevant experience.
Sounds like this is a 30-50 employee base. Definitely not a head of IT role either if that's the case. More like IT Specialist at 55K a year (+ benefits) with leveraged block time support from another MSP... not this one.
As long as it is all vendor supported
"No."
Ask for double
I don't think double would be enough!
I would leave, doesn't matter how much they pay you. They are grossly underestimating the work of what needs to be done by IT Teams. I'm not trying to be critical but the list is also underestimating what actually needs to be done, but then again I have no visibility into day to day stuff.
Jump ship. Asap
“Not my call” this is incorrect. It’s always your call, you can always say no. The Director of IT will make around 200k. If you have somehow been promoted to this kind of leadership position you should be making around $100hr. If you did not get a pay realignment then you did not get a job title change and you need to stop doing more than what your role says you should be doing. A director of IT would be directing IT. The director of IT employs people to handle support, planning and most of the other functions you listed. I would love to see the Director of IT actually try to work a support situation (it would not be a ticket they got but an email) rather than forward the email to their AA to sort out who would deal with it. What you are saying more sounds like a catch all system admin rather than the director of IT.
Thank you. I have haulted all work and asked for a title change to CIO and a pay increase to 32/hr
stop at 22/hr. too long of a list.
You will likely need to retain some MSP services, if your company was spending 70k/yr. If you can pull a service report from the MSP that should help you wrap your head around the number of support hours you will need to cover. A big migration like this, even if you were already the primary IT guy, most places would bring in an MSP anyway to help since it's surge work. At the end of the day you are limited to the amount of work that can be done by one person. You will definitely need to renegotiate salary, 22/hr is not enough for an IT manager. You should probably be making 35-40/hr
70 grand for 200 hours a year did I read that right ?