Company not holding up their end of the deal

Whats up guys,

I recently got my big networking break or at least I thought I did. I was hired on at a company as a network technician to help troubleshoot some networking and voice issues. I was pretty psyched as I was going to get some good hands on experience and on the job training with cisco gear. However this company is a complete meat grinder i.e. everyone hates their job is miserable high turnover ect. The guy that is supposed to be training me is leaving at the end of August and I’m taking his job. Now what really irks me about this is during the interview they did not disclose this little tid bit of information even though they knew this was happening. The other problem with this situation is, I don’t have the experience or the know how to do his job correctly. Ive asked my boss about additional training and he says just learn all you can from the other training which I responded is kinda hard when hes on vacation or calling out. Both the network and the cisco voice are horribly screwed up and I must field like a 10-15 calls a day from people saying my phone isn’t working properly. I’m just not sure what to do I feel like I’m a scapegoat at this company and when something goes wrong just blame the Sean and I really don’t want to be that guy. It just feels like a bad situation all around. Any advice from the very knowledgeable tech exams crew would be appreciated.

Take care,
Sean

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Blackout

Knuckle Down Buckle Down, In the military they call this Trial By Fire, you will either sink or swin, you say you don't believe you can handle the job by yourself, you need to believe you can. My first year in the military I really thought I couldn't handle the grind, but I overcame it. Now im the final inspector of Parachutes and Aviation Life support equipment, nothing goes out the door without me saying its good. Its allot of pressure but its good to be at the top. Keep pushing bro you will be surprised at what you can do outside your comfort zone.

Kelkin

Ive been in similiar situations and I can tell you Ive learned more by that then I did by any training class.. The company I use to work for rolled out cisco voice to 250+ sites, (4k handsets and a UCCX Cluster) and I walked in one day and was told ok now its your job to manage support this beast without any sort of training.. Me, the local Cisco SEs and TAC became fast friends

It will be rough at first but it will get easier and you will see alot of growth with yourself..

VAHokie56

Did you make it clear the level of experience you had when they hired you? if so once the other guy leaves they hopefully wont slam you immediately. Just do the best you can and like the other poster stated, TAC is your friend...its there job to help you. So grab something and hold on tight, time to step it up to the big boy league. You got this

jibbajabba

Been there, done that. But it is an awesome achievement when you feel you can't handle it but at the end managed to get it all done / working. Also, this is a nice way to impress your management, which is always good for future performance reviews.

Plus let's face it, the best way to learn to swim is being thrown into the water and google your way out (ok, rubbish analogy, I admit)..

Turgon

irishpunk wrote: »

Whats up guys,

I recently got my big networking break or at least I thought I did. I was hired on at a company as a network technician to help troubleshoot some networking and voice issues. I was pretty psyched as I was going to get some good hands on experience and on the job training with cisco gear. However this company is a complete meat grinder i.e. everyone hates their job is miserable high turnover ect. The guy that is supposed to be training me is leaving at the end of August and I’m taking his job. Now what really irks me about this is during the interview they did not disclose this little tid bit of information even though they knew this was happening. The other problem with this situation is, I don’t have the experience or the know how to do his job correctly. Ive asked my boss about additional training and he says just learn all you can from the other training which I responded is kinda hard when hes on vacation or calling out. Both the network and the cisco voice are horribly screwed up and I must field like a 10-15 calls a day from people saying my phone isn’t working properly. I’m just not sure what to do I feel like I’m a scapegoat at this company and when something goes wrong just blame the Sean and I really don’t want to be that guy. It just feels like a bad situation all around. Any advice from the very knowledgeable tech exams crew would be appreciated.

Take care,
Sean

In a situation like this you need to assess it in a very pragmatic way. You will hear people say that this is test and you need to rise to it and its great experience and the rest of it..and all of that is true.

At the sametime you do need to be honest with yourself about a few things..
A. How big a job you have on your plate there.
B. Will you truly be able to cope with it all
C. Has the ship already sailed?

Point C is the lynchpin. Sometimes a job is too much of a stretch to hold down because the place is too far gone. In such a scenario any lack of experience or skills in specific areas will only be amplified. In the worst case you practically kill yourself simply keeping things afloat with no space for significant improvement. Turning things around requires a management serious about what is needed in terms of people, time, money and crucially realism that how things are presently promised and provisioned to customers needs to change. If the maintenance has been poor and the documentation isn't at the very least adequate you could go to hell in a handbasket.

You need to be honest with your boss and set his expectations accordingly about what you are capable of doing in there and what you need to do it properly.

higherho

I agree with everyone here in this thread. I would also look at the other guys responsibilities look over his shoulder and see what he / she does. IF you have great troubleshooting skills and can learn quickly then you should be alright. The first month might be rough but if you can hack it out the end result might be really beneficial to you.

Then when the time comes find a new job because I would not want to deal with that kind of management.

MrRyte

Here's what I would do:

I would give the company a thorough assessment of what exactly is causing these issues and what it will take to fix them. If they give you the proper tools to fix the problems then stay. If they make excuses (we can't afford that; it will take too long to implement; that isn't feasible; that's not how it works around here; blah blah blah) then bail.

No point in constantly plugging holes in a sinking ship.....

shodown

You can hire me as a as needed VOIP consultant. I've done the work for others before in your situation.

erpadmin

When I first became an "erp admin" (in real life, not on TE) I knew nothing about ERP administration. However I was hired to be the "fall guy" [long, long story]. I spent a good portion of my life literally reading about ERP implementations, project management, and about tasks specific to what my duties would be. I was initially hired to be trained on how to deal with one aspect of the PeopleSoft ERP (security, which is based on Role-Based Access Contol....a popular Security+ topic...

) I then had to learn and administer the entire ERP infrastructure.

It was daunting...and I lost a lot of friends and dating opportunities but the time I invested in learning it has paid off in dividends. I made what was supposed to be a failed project turn into a success and WITHOUT it costing extra. Many folks who were 9-5 guys were hating me, but I really didn't care. If I didn't have the drive and passion to help get that project off the ground, I would not be "erpadmin" today.

It is very easy to bail when life/work gets hard, but you will feel a tremendous amount of pride when you can put on your resume that you helped turn around a sinking sink. You have a tremendous opportunity in front of you. You can either be that 9-5 guy, or you can do what YOU have to do to learn all you can to make your job and VOIP at your shop a success.

Seriously, the choice is yours and the ball is in your court.

Turgon

erpadmin wrote: »

When I first became an "erp admin" (in real life, not on TE) I knew nothing about ERP administration. However I was hired to be the "fall guy" [long, long story]. I spent a good portion of my life literally reading about ERP implementations, project management, and about tasks specific to what my duties would be. I was initially hired to be trained on how to deal with one aspect of the PeopleSoft ERP (security, which is based on Role-Based Access Contol....a popular Security+ topic... ) I then had to learn and administer the entire ERP infrastructure.

It was daunting...and I lost a lot of friends and dating opportunities but the time I invested in learning it has paid off in dividends. I made what was supposed to be a failed project turn into a success and WITHOUT it costing extra. Many folks who were 9-5 guys were hating me, but I really didn't care. If I didn't have the drive and passion to help get that project off the ground, I would not be "erpadmin" today.

It is very easy to bail when life/work gets hard, but you will feel a tremendous amount of pride when you can put on your resume that you helped turn around a sinking sink. You have a tremendous opportunity in front of you. You can either be that 9-5 guy, or you can do what YOU have to do to learn all you can to make your job and VOIP at your shop a success.

Seriously, the choice is yours and the ball is in your court.

Thats a good example of turning things around and what it takes. At the same time you do have to have something to work with organisationally. If the opportunity is there, do it. If the opportunity isn't there and no amount of honest endeavour is going to make it work, do it for the experience and move on before the job gets too silly. Depends on what you have on your hands.

pham0329

irishpunk wrote: »

Whats up guys,

I recently got my big networking break or at least I thought I did. I was hired on at a company as a network technician to help troubleshoot some networking and voice issues. I was pretty psyched as I was going to get some good hands on experience and on the job training with cisco gear. However this company is a complete meat grinder i.e. everyone hates their job is miserable high turnover ect. The guy that is supposed to be training me is leaving at the end of August and I’m taking his job. Now what really irks me about this is during the interview they did not disclose this little tid bit of information even though they knew this was happening. The other problem with this situation is, I don’t have the experience or the know how to do his job correctly. Ive asked my boss about additional training and he says just learn all you can from the other training which I responded is kinda hard when hes on vacation or calling out. Both the network and the cisco voice are horribly screwed up and I must field like a 10-15 calls a day from people saying my phone isn’t working properly. I’m just not sure what to do I feel like I’m a scapegoat at this company and when something goes wrong just blame the Sean and I really don’t want to be that guy. It just feels like a bad situation all around. Any advice from the very knowledgeable tech exams crew would be appreciated.

Take care,
Sean

I'm going to play the bad guy here and ask what part of the deal aren't they holding up? Did they say they'll send you to training or that their network perfect (quite frankly, I've never had a company tell me that their network is sh!t when I interviewed). It seems like they gave you a chance to do what you wanted, and now you're overwhelm by the work. Also, I don't see why a company would be obligated to tell you that their lead technician is leaving.

I don't want to be harsh, but it sounds like you ask for a shot, you got it, but you're not really sure if you wanted it in the first place. If you don't have the experience or don't know how to do something and the guy isn't training you, so what? Go and learn on your own. You're on TE so I assume you're pretty smart and resourceful person, so why depend on someone else to teach you something when you could do it yourself?

higherho

pham0329 wrote: »

I'm going to play the bad guy here and ask what part of the deal aren't they holding up? Did they say they'll send you to training or that their network perfect (quite frankly, I've never had a company tell me that their network is sh!t when I interviewed). It seems like they gave you a chance to do what you wanted, and now you're overwhelm by the work. Also, I don't see why a company would be obligated to tell you that their lead technician is leaving.

I don't want to be harsh, but it sounds like you ask for a shot, you got it, but you're not really sure if you wanted it in the first place. If you don't have the experience or don't know how to do something and the guy isn't training you, so what? Go and learn on your own. You're on TE so I assume you're pretty smart and resourceful person, so why depend on someone else to teach you something when you could do it yourself?

You do have a point but the only thing I disagree on is the lead technician part. I think its very important for a company to give you a heads up if their lead is going away in a few weeks. Why? well it gives you time to prepare and get ready to take on all those new responsibilities. However, no one is forcing you to take the position.

whatthehell

Been there and done that as well. I would just dig in, learn as much as possible as quickly as possible, and do what you can. Keep work at work, and don't bring it home, and make sure to have proper stress relievers and exercise!

If they start blaming you for BS, then fire back (in a PC manner) that you didn't have any proper training, and could use some additional training to do your job properly, or perhaps a consultant or assistant to help.

Good luck! It will get better!

DevilWAH

While I agree it is sink or swim, and if you do manaage it you will get an enormous sence of pride for sorting it out. The point Turgon makes about has the ship already sailed is a fair one.

A person with the best tecnical skills and managmetn skills in the world will fail if they don't have the support and respect of there own managment.

It is a very delicate situation, on the one hand you msut be honest and not allow the buisness to suffer due to you lack of ability/knowalge. But on the other hand you don't want to ask for help every time you hit a snag.

Good managment of your skills is a must,

Some things you will be able to do with out help.
Some though you will struggle with, balancing the learning you get from perserving and finding the answer on your own, and knowing when to hold up your hand and ask for help with it is best for the buisness is the key.

You have the optunity to shine, and they don't come along that often, if you pull it of you will have taken a massive step along the road. It might take a year may be 2, but you will find while at first the going is tough, you learnign will be slow and 99% of your time will be spent fixing issue. as you grow your see a gradualy change from reactive to proactive work. finding efficent ways to manage the reocouring issues (or better still eliminating them). untill one day your be sitting in you chair, and relise you the comany expert in all things network, and the list of skills on your CV will be sreaching on to the second page....

Many of us have been there an done that. I remember the time I signed of a 250K network contract, managed and designed myself. And thinking. Christ, 3 years ago I was lugging Printers and PC around for end users and couldn't have told you waht a MAC address was! Some people might think 3 years is a long time, but you will have to do it some time of you want to progress.

The first step is hard, belive you can do it, get your head down, spend every free minute studying and learning (inside and outside of work) and give it a few years and the reqwards will come flooding back. It might be a bit stressful now but....

Remember every Network wannabe (millions of them) wants the L3 engineer roles, there has to be a way of weeding out the good from the bad, and to be honest with you, you have just found it. No one will hand you a great job, or the certifictes to get one. Hard work is the only way.

you can do it, have faith and take it one chunk at a time. before you know it you will be wondering why you everthough it was tough.

erpadmin

Turgon wrote: »

Thats a good example of turning things around and what it takes. At the same time you do have to have something to work with organisationally. If the opportunity is there, do it. If the opportunity isn't there and no amount of honest endeavour is going to make it work, do it for the experience and move on before the job gets too silly. Depends on what you have on your hands.

I think we're in agreement on this for the most part. He has VOIP phones in his organization and he's been given an opportunity to keep making them work. A lot of entry-level CCNAs would KILL for the opportunity the OP has now. If it were me, I would be digging in to the root cause of what the problem is, document it and present it to management. In fact, that was me when I was involved in my initial ERP implementation. I had to do this for adherence to the CYA principle (especially when dealing with the lead implementers.) If management doesn't want to spend the money or whatever, then hey, he can keep doing what he's doing until he put enough time in to move on (much like I and many of us had done in our careers).

The guy has a great opportunity to succeed at this job, because it will define what he does for the rest of his career. Only he can determine if it's worth it.

higherho

erpadmin wrote: »

I think we're in agreement on this for the most part. He has VOIP in his organization and he's been given an opportunity to keep making them work. A lot of entry-level CCNAs would KILL for the opportunity the OP has now. If it were me, I would be digging in to the root cause of what the problem is, document it and present it to management. In fact, that was me when I was involved in my initial ERP implementation. I had to do this for adherence to the CYA principle (especially when dealing with the lead implementers.) If management doesn't want to spend the money or whatever, then hey, he can keep doing what he's doing until he put enough time in to move on (much like I and many of us had done in our careers).

The guy has a great opportunity to succeed at this job, because it will define what he does for the rest of his career. Only he can determine if it's worth it.

I agree. I jumped into a position that had 70% more if not higher responsibilities than my last one (and the fact I would be doing it alone). After getting to know the environment, fix particular issues, learn new technologies, etc I felt very relived and I felt that my knowledge grew alot! Now IF I go back to my other position I feel that I would be very bored and not challenged.

networker050184

Look at it this way, whether it sucks and you end up moving on or not, being responsible for all that looks great on a resume.

Good luck!

powerfool

networker050184 wrote: »

Look at it this way, whether it sucks and you end up moving on or not, being responsible for all that looks great on a resume.

Good luck!

+1

Enough said.

irishpunk

Hello everyone,

I really appreciate all the posts its really helps clear things up. I'm not afraid of a challenge I just have a hard time, sometimes deciding if all the stress is worth it. some days I just want to reset passwords is that so bad? I think I'm going to stick with it worst case they fire me right? I am however learning a lot.... usually at the expense of productivity though.

One of my big problems with this job is the complete lack of documentation this is no exaggeration there is next to nothing its unbelievable. I do have an open TAC case with cisco. the only problem with TAC is I need to open up a separate TAC case for every property which is a big hassle as this company owns close to a hundred properties. One of my cisco contacts today brought up the possibility of starting a partnership however that involves a contract and money so its a no go at the moment.

I'm off to lift some weights thanks again everyone!!! if anyone has anything to add do not hesitate constructive criticism is fine. I love this place and all the different perspectives its a great resource its always helpful.

take care,
Sean

Turgon

erpadmin wrote: »

I think we're in agreement on this for the most part. He has VOIP phones in his organization and he's been given an opportunity to keep making them work. A lot of entry-level CCNAs would KILL for the opportunity the OP has now. If it were me, I would be digging in to the root cause of what the problem is, document it and present it to management. In fact, that was me when I was involved in my initial ERP implementation. I had to do this for adherence to the CYA principle (especially when dealing with the lead implementers.) If management doesn't want to spend the money or whatever, then hey, he can keep doing what he's doing until he put enough time in to move on (much like I and many of us had done in our careers).

The guy has a great opportunity to succeed at this job, because it will define what he does for the rest of his career. Only he can determine if it's worth it.

I think we agree on everything really. I say its worth exploring because of the opportunity. My only concern is that the position may be impossible to holddown effectively in the shortterm if they are overrun. That's why it's important to level with the management about the challenges there so the guy has a fighting chance. Depends how bad it is. If honest endeavour is enough, stay and fight. If not, then appeal to the company management so your personal commitment is backed up with the things you need so you can start to turn things around.

WafflesAndRootbeer

networker050184 wrote: »

Look at it this way, whether it sucks and you end up moving on or not, being responsible for all that looks great on a resume.

Good luck!

From the viewpoint of someone who has done hiring, I have to disagree in this case. Unless he pulls off a big win with this mess he has been thrown into, he has no business whatsoever putting it on his resume, because somewhere down the line, someone would look at it and hire him based on something that is essentially a lie since they would assume he is competent and skilled enough to have been successful in being responsible for those things. People who fluff their resume like that are a big problem in the IT world and they cause headaches for everyone when they get thrown into positions where they end up with authority based on such falsifications.

DevilWAH

WafflesAndRootbeer wrote: »

From the viewpoint of someone who has done hiring, I have to disagree in this case. Unless he pulls off a big win with this mess he has been thrown into, he has no business whatsoever putting it on his resume, because somewhere down the line, someone would look at it and hire him based on something that is essentially a lie since they would assume he is competent and skilled enough to have been successful in being responsible for those things. People who fluff their resume like that are a big problem in the IT world and they cause headaches for everyone when they get thrown into positions where they end up with authority based on such falsifications.

Disagree he has to pull of a big win. Yes needs to show he aproached it in the correct way, stuck at it, and communicated his issue to managment. bu that does not mean at the end of the day it has to all go perfect. I am in the psotition of hireing, and I am much more intrested in peoples aproch then what the outcome has been. Often out come relise on more than jsut one person. If you can demonsate you played your part well then thats what you get mesured on. no the buisness you come from as a whole.

Turgon

WafflesAndRootbeer wrote: »

From the viewpoint of someone who has done hiring, I have to disagree in this case. Unless he pulls off a big win with this mess he has been thrown into, he has no business whatsoever putting it on his resume, because somewhere down the line, someone would look at it and hire him based on something that is essentially a lie since they would assume he is competent and skilled enough to have been successful in being responsible for those things. People who fluff their resume like that are a big problem in the IT world and they cause headaches for everyone when they get thrown into positions where they end up with authority based on such falsifications.

I think it depends what he passes the experience off as really. In my experience the only way for technical people to progress is to take on positions they are sometimes only marginally experienced for. Then they have to fight to get up to speed. Nothing wrong with that at all. Where I do have issues is where people deliberately take on things they are simply not equipped to handle and worst still, then try and pass themselves off as an expert in everything inside 6 months.