Is This Work Normal? --Need Some Advice

Hey guys,

Ninja Edit: Sorry this is turning out to be a long post...

Background: As many may recall, I switched careers almost a year ago from education to IT. In early September, I landed a gig that seemed to be a great opportunity for me to grow professionally. The company is a small start-up MSP that has been around for about 3 years total. I was hired on to be a jack-of-all-trades but I basically do mostly remote desktop support and sys admin work. I knew the work was going to be tough and the hours long, but I'm starting to see many things I dont like plus I'm starting to feel burned out.

Here's what I see that I dont like:

Before me, there was no documentation. We have about 50 clients which total 100+ physical and virtual servers. We manage about 30 desktops and 5 different client networks (2 of which I've deployed myself). No documentation from nearly all my clients. I'm the only one that documents anything. I've been able to put together diagrams/network information/server information for only about 15 clients to-date. There is no working knowledge base other than what I've put together. There is no ticketing system that is being used on a regular basis, so I have no idea what other techs/engineers have done.

Piss-poor monitoring. We currently use LabTech. They literally dumped this on me. Deployment, configuration, everything. I have no idea what I'm doing, have no support from management/colleagues. The guy that originally deployed and configured it is unavailable to help. LabTech support leaves a lot to be desired and googling only gets me so far as many of my issues are pretty technical in LabTech. I was told that I simply need to "figure it out."

No standardization. How we configure server A for client 1 is different than how we configure server A for client 2. And both clients are using the same application. Why are we not configuring it identically? With no documentation in place, how am I supposed to know how it was configured?

No on-call rotation/shift rotation. I'm literally on-call all the time. LITERALLY. I took a call on Thanksgiving and Christmas when my boss knew I would be out of town. There are other engineers who I can share on-call time with. They rarely pick up when the call rolls to our cell phones. My co-worker consistently rolls into work around 10:30am. My boss consistently rolls into work around 9:30am. I am at the office at 9am, often getting there at 8:30am, waiting for everyone to come in. I often stay later than everyone.

No cell phone reimbursement. I consistently go over on my minutes. I've increased my call plan and have purchased a skype account. The company will not reimburse or pay for my phone.

No comp time, no holidays off. My offer letter said all 10 federal holidays off. I've only had Thanksgiving and Christmas off (and I was still on-call and took support calls!). All the other holidays I've worked. I've received no comp time for it. I work (on average) between 50-60 hours. The last few weeks I've worked a whopping 80-90 hours per week. They said they would give me a SINGLE day off as comp time. Is this a joke? Is this the industry standard?

I've spoken to our operations director about all this and he basically brushed me off. I feel like I'm about to burst, mostly from exhaustion and frustration. I dont even have the energy or motivation to come home and study for certs like CCNA, etc. This is making me not like IT. Is this normal? Am I being over-dramatic? Do I just need to deal with it, put in my time and then peace out after a solid year or more with them?

EDIT1: To add some positivity to all this, I've gotten some great experience/exposure: 6 months ago I was doing simple desktop support stuff in Windows 7, now I'm doing: network deployments, wireless AP, switch, router configuration, VMware stuff, Linux CLI, batch scripting, Windows Server 2003/2008 server administration, etc

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Comments

MrAgent

That is not normal. I have never ever had any experience like that, including my time in the military. If youre not liking where you are working and are getting burned out already, find something better, it sounds like you deserve a company that could use your attitude.

lsud00d

That sounds pretty terrible, but as you've stated you are getting some good experience.

In addition to technical xp, it sounds like you are getting good design/architecture/documentation experience, which is good for team lead and management skills. Since you're being forced/taking it upon yourself to document these things, you are getting a holistic view of a clients network and these skills are not only very important as a sys admin, but easily scalable to enterprise-size setups. I'm sure you are learning what a bad vs good implementation looks like, and that's not an easy thing to learn if not presented with the opportunity.

cyberguypr

Wow, pretty screwed up. In my years in IT I have encountered most of the things you mentioned, just not all in the same place. Lack of standards and documentation is a pretty common issues in shops that are not properly managed and lack vision and direction. When I found these issues I took it upon myself to change the culture. And I don't mean just documenting. Change has to be pushed from the top down. You need to sell the importance of documenting ans standardizing to the higher-ups. Otherwise, you'll be the only one doing it while others benefit from it and contribute nothing. Have you talked to management about this?

The "you have to figure it out" thing is also normal. Many years ago my then boss told me the same thing about DR and backups. I hated it back then but today I can talk authoritatively about data recovery, retention, replication, and others. I say embrace whatever is given to you and go the extra mile. This is how people get places.

The phone thing is plain ridiculous. How people expect anyone to use personal property for the company's benefit is beyond me. Something definitely happened here and I'm not clear what it is. Did they assume you would use your phone? Did you assume they would reimburse? Was the on-call topic ever discussed during interview? Please clarify.

ChickenNuggetz

Thanks for the feedback so far guys. I suspected "move on to other opportunities" would be the singular response from others; I'm just worried that moving on after only being there for 6 months is going to look bad for me when applying for other jobs.

To answer specifics:

@cyberguypr: I have indeed spoken to management, at least to my Operations Director. Specifically, I cited that I wanted on-call/shift rotations and standardized configurations/documentation. He seemed to casually brush it off. He wasnt even making eye contact with me when I spoke to him (he was playing on his phone)! On-call was briefly discussed at the interview, they basically said that I would have to work some weekends on-call. They also did not make any mention of me having to use my personal phone for work. When I casually asked if the company would ever get us a work cell phone my manager literally laughed at me...

rsutton

I also work for a small MSP, and have worked for other MSP's prior to this. My last MSP was pretty similar to what you described. My current MSP shines in all of those areas however. It really just depends on who is running the company and if they care about making it better. My advice is to look for a new company that has values aligned with your own.

pwjohnston

Welcome to working for an MSP in 2013. I've worked for four of them since 2002 and they've all had elements of what you've listed above. This one sounds like a particularly shitty one, though. Your boss probably thinks he's the end all be all of IT because he's charging at a rate or $125 to $200 an hour and if you're lucky you're making $25 an hour of it on a 1099. Learn what you can write off tax wise, it will come in handy. He's not going to change his ways because as long as the customer sticks around, the more problems the client has, the more money the boss makes. Don't try and talk trash, just try and do the best job you can by the client and don't let it get to you.

What you need to do is stick it out and hit the certs as hard as you can. Use this time to find something you're working with that you kind of like and try to focus your energies on it. Once you feel like you have a direction, start getting your resume in order and interviewing. Crappy MSPs are the new desktop support if you want to be an Admin/Engineer, IMHO. Just keep doing the certs, learning what you can and interviewing. Keep in mind you should probably have at least a year under your belt before you leave. It will just look better. When you get the new job you may need to repeat this process. After doing it 3/4 times over the next 5 to 10 years you should be in a good environment if you play your cards right.

Good luck.

paul78

If this is your first job in IT, my suggestion is to stick it out another 9 to 12 months.

You describe a very young and immature organization. I am surprised to hear about the culture. Normally, I would not advocate this but since you are there only 6 months and I do suggest staying a little longer, perhaps you ought to consider adjusting to the culture a little. I.e. (1) come in once a week at 9:30 (2) don't pick up the phone if it rolls over once in a while.

WafflesAndRootbeer

It's definitely normal for an MSP, especially a small one. Those outfits tend to be fly-by-night, have no real technical folks for the most part, and often engage in duplicitous business practices. The good news is that this is obviously a great opportunity for you to learn a lot. The bad news is that you obviously have to learn a lot just to make sense of any of it. Make your documentation as thorough as possible and keep yourself out of trouble with the other workers. This sounds like one of those lazy butthole outfits where the other guys spend most of the day planning their next WoW mega-raid or something like that. Put in some time and move on as fast as you can.

W Stewart

On the downside, these guys don't have their stuff together and expect you to fix their mess for them. On the upside, it seems like you're in a position to have a lot of control over how things are run if you do help them get their stuff together and you're getting some pretty great experience on top of that. If the pay doesn't suck and you can stick it out then I'd say document what you can and push for everyone else to start documenting things and using a central ticketing system. If you can get things to run smoothly around there and save the company some money then you'll be doing what an IT department is supposed to be doing in the first place. Using technology to benefit the company. I would say to put in at least a good year or two just for the vmware and linux experience but if you can get things going smoothly then a year from now, it won't be nearly as rough and you'll be the top IT guy at the company. If things are still the same after a year then you have some solid experience under your belt.