Management flaw on my part

As a manager I have a hard time delegating work that is required off hours. A lot of times I find myself coming in to do the work since the other techs have things going on. I have a family myself so I find myself losing time with them by allowing the technicians to not have to work those days. Some of the guys volunteer and other don't.

I started to create a schedule and I am going to lock people into these weekend hours starting soon. I am getting worn down and to be honest I thought I would gain respect from my employees. That couldn't be farther from the truth. They end up exploiting me and taking advantage of me.

Oh boy I have a long way to go. I have really gotten stern and even told on guy to leave his badge and laptop if he didn't plan on coming in. This is my first true management position and I am learning. Sorry for this word soup, but I am frustrated and need to get this attitude embedded in our environment.

Thoughts?

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cyberguypr

Two questions. Are these preplanned tasks/maintenance windows? Does your team know weekend duties would come at some point or is this something completely new to them?

Turgon

N2IT wrote: »

As a manager I have a hard time delegating work that is required off hours. A lot of times I find myself coming in to do the work since the other techs have things going on. I am have a family myself so I find myself losing time with them by allowing the technicians to not have to work those days. Some of the guys volunteer and other don't.

I started to create a schedule and I am going to lock people into these weekend hours starting soon. I am getting worn down and to be honest I thought I would gain respect from my employees. That couldn't be farther from the truth. They end up exploiting me and taking advantage of me.

Oh boy I have a long way to go. I have really gotten stern and even told on guy to leave his badge and laptop if he didn't plan on coming in. This is my first true management position and I am learning. Sorry for this word soup, but I am frustrated and need to get this attitude embedded in our environment.

Thoughts?

STOP.

You cant expect the guys to work off hours unless it's in their contract. Is it? Any manager has to go the extra mile and work extra hours to stay on top, either in the office or at home. Most people who moan about managers have never been one, mainly because they dont have the spine to handle people. A difficult thing to do really well. It isn't easy to be really good at managing situations that require lots of quality work from people to get results. Unless you are a born natural at managing (few people are, many people think they are), you really, really need to work at it. For that you need elapsed time with your people and have to put a lot into getting to know what makes your staff tick. That's a headgame and many managers have no time for it. They fail. Be very careful of simply managing by results. Many managers do that. Epic fail. It's about being not only a good leader, but good with people. Expect some problems with people and occasionally some shitty times.

It takes at least one year to build a team with potential and during that time there are many bumps on the road, particularly for an inexperienced manager like yourself. You will have some bad days. It takes two years for it to really fly. By then you should have enough hardmiles under your belt with the team for them to really trust you and get some loyalty in there. You will have shared victories and failures and will know what it takes to get results as a collective.

The good managers put the extra hours in, the less good ones **** it on the people working for them. A lot of hours put in by hard working managers goes unseen, but thats part of the territory Im afraid. Asking people to work unsocial hours unless they will be rewarded for it will not go down well with the ranks and is unsustainable. If you point to the hours you are putting in to encourage others to follow suit it will rile some people who work for you. They will see you as a better paid employee with everything to gain by cajoling others who are paid less to work unsocial hours just to help you hit your targets.

I recommend evaluating what you are trying to achieve vs what you have to work with in terms of staff and reset the expectations of your boss so you can deliver without:

A. Killing yourself
B. Getting grouchy with your staff
C. Have a mutiny on your hands

Postscript. On C, staff have a tendency to whine as a collective when you are not in the office and this can get blown out of proportion because once one starts they all chip in because you are not around. If your boss gets wind of it you could have issues when you report back to work. Watch the morale of your staff. It's important.

never2late

Turgon wrote: »

STOP.

You cant expect the guys to work off hours unless it's in their contract. Is it?

I recommend evaluating what you are trying to achieve vs what you have to work with in terms of staff and reset the expectations of your boss so you can deliver without:

A. Killing yourself
B. Getting grouchy with your staff
C. Have a mutiny on your hands

Postscript. On C, staff have a tendency to whine as a collective when you are not in the office and this can get blown out of proportion because once one starts they all chip in because you are not around. If your boss gets wind of it you could have issues when you report back to work. Watch the morale of your staff. It's important.

True, management can sometimes suck and you can never obtain the perfect relationship with your team. You can't manage and be their friend. Just like parenting, you have to know when to be stern and when to give in.

If you have trouble keeping up ask for help. I know that my team(all hourly but no contract) will be happy to help me when the need arises. But if I wait for unsolicited volunteers, I'm doing the job alone. You need to learn when to push and when to prod, if that makes sense.

Management is mostly a thankless job with long hours and little appreciation. But it can be rewarding if you have the right team. I agree it can get out of hand if your not in touch but it is amazing how your people will stand with you if they know you will go to bat for them with upper management. Good luck.

Forsaken_GA

N2IT wrote: »

As a manager I have a hard time delegating work that is required off hours. A lot of times I find myself coming in to do the work since the other techs have things going on. I am have a family myself so I find myself losing time with them by allowing the technicians to not have to work those days. Some of the guys volunteer and other don't.

If you're expecting them to work extra, you're probably being a bit unreasonable. If you're giving them time off during normal business hours to do after hours work, and your employment agreement doesn't specifically disallow you from compelling them to work outside of their 'normal' schedule, then they're being whiny bastards.

Speaking for myself, as a salaried employee who doesn't qualify for overtime, expecting me to pull my normal work hours, and then give up some of my free time is a good way to make me mad. I don't mind doing it every once in awhile, I understand things happen, but if it's a regularly occurring kind of thing, and no provision is being made for it, that's a planning failure, which means it's a management failure.

If you expect me to come in on Saturday and put in a decent amount of work, but you give me one of my regular days off, then I'm ok with that, and I may be a little bit grumbly, but I'm not feeling exploited.

Now, if I *did* qualify for OT, I'd be happy volunteering my days off for this kind of work.

petedude

N2IT wrote: »

As a manager I have a hard time delegating work that is required off hours. A lot of times I find myself coming in to do the work since the other techs have things going on. I am have a family myself so I find myself losing time with them by allowing the technicians to not have to work those days. Some of the guys volunteer and other don't.

I don't have a hard time delegating, but I have a hard time dealing with the flak from it. I have a backstabber in my department who is frequently dissing me in my department and outside it, and have not been able to gain support in addressing with it so far.

powerfool

What exactly is the work that needs to be performed? This isn't Britain, so there isn't going to be any sort of contract or draconian law that is going to stop you from getting them to work extra hours... so let's think about it rationally. They won't like it unless they are going to be treated respectfully, which will mean being flexible and/or paying them (depending on if they are salary or hourly), and even then, some people won't want to do it. As I don't know what the work is, I cannot really say. However, most work now doesn't really require someone be onsite unless they are setting up or replacing hardware. If that is the case, have them do it from home.

I know that I am in a pretty flexible situation right now, and if someone told me that I had to work X hours that wasn't in my normal routine, I would expect comp time or more pay. While they could certainly tell me that it was a requirement or I would need to look for another job... I would look for another job... but that is just me... I have turned down three jobs in the past two years; not everyone is in that situation.

It is going to become more common for people to work in more flexible arrangements. How can you make this better for them? That is how I would approach it.

instant000

If you have required night/weekend maintenance, then you need to consider what this workload is, and see if there is some kind of rotation you can employ for this.

However, as others have previously stated, if these hours are required of the employees all of a sudden, and wasn't something they were previously aware of, then there will be backlash.

I would hope that you attempt to minimize the night/weekend maintenance tasks. If this is just regular work spilling over onto the weekends, then you either have a lazy team or you have too much work on your hands.

In either case, the appropriate thing to do is get the work scheduled out in advance, and provide for comp time/compensation for the employees.

I can tell you from my own personal experience, as I went through a similar issue, and I was forever sour with the manager (though I never complained to other team members about it, as a professional matter, I did eventually leave for a better opportunity). My situation was that we did not have an on-call roster, nor an on-call phone, nor weekend duties at the time I was first employed there. Then, a few months down the road, this gets added, and we're issued pagers, placed in on-call rotations, and are expected to come in for after hours emergencies, and on weekend maintenances. The worst part of all of this is that there was no comp time for any of this.

I assure you that I may have been happy in this situation IF I knew of this prior to starting, and had negotiated a salary that more closely matches someone who would be working 60+ hour weeks, versus the 40 hour weeks they had us all working when I first started. It is this type of change that makes a good, hard-working employee leave, as your employees have lives and families too.

If this is a tremendous burden of work, you may need to hire a couple people to work a schedule that covers this additional work, and/or transition some of your current employees to a schedule that covers this additional work.

The easiest way to accomplish this would be via compensation. If you don't have the flexibility with the pay for the employees, you should have the flexbility with the hours worked.

Please be mindful of safety regulations in your area. Some areas may require that at least two employees be at work, because if there is a safety incident, the injured would need someone to assist. I know that IT is a low injury incident task, but there is lots of pulling, pushing and bending that goes on (and that's just to sit at your desk

). Risk of electric shock is always present when electrons are flowing through the equipment, too!

Hope this helps!

N2IT

Great responses.

I really don't know where to start......

@Cyber They are planned at an high level and as the deadline get's closer we start to get more into the actuals.

All staff is offered Comp time when they are asked to do out of normal office time activities. I keep track of it and then they are allowed to use it when they need to. So they are getting compensated. These are hourly contractors who do not get paid when they do not work, so the Comp time does have serious value. I'm not sure what the contract states to be honest. That was taken care of by HR. (I can't know and do everything)! Obviously the guys would rather get OT, but that's not going to happen right now. Once the operation stabilizes a little bit more and our revenue starts trending appropriately we should be able to offer OT. Right now it's up and down but now it's trending upward. Really upward.

I agree with Turgon that you shouldn't just manage for revenue, but when you have a COO choking down your neck asking why the high level deliverables are not being met or why they are a little light you start to refocus on what is being driven down from the upper ranks. So I have mixed emotions about this.

The guys who do step up are going to be given raises and promoted to higher level position. We have 4 RFP's out their and one is nearly done. The projected growth of our operation could potentially grow from 8 total resources to 25. The guys who helped out are going to get nice raises and some training free of charge, (which is coming out of our operational revenue).

shodown

N2IT wrote: »

Great responses.

I really don't know where to start......

@Cyber They are planned at an high level and as the deadline get's closer we start to get more into the actuals.

All staff is offered Comp time when they are asked to do out of normal office time activities. I keep track of it and then they are allowed to use it when they need to. So they are getting compensated. These are hourly contractors who do not get paid when they do not work, so the Comp time does have serious value. I'm not sure what the contract states to be honest. That was taken care of by HR. (I can't know and do everything)! Obviously the guys would rather get OT, but that's not going to happen right now. Once the operation stabilizes a little bit more and our revenue starts trending appropriately we should be able to offer OT. Right now it's up and down but now it's trending upward. Really upward.

I agree with Turgon that you shouldn't just manage for revenue, but when you have a COO choking down your neck asking why the high level deliverables are not being met or why they are a little light you start to refocus on what is being driven down from the upper ranks. So I have mixed emotions about this.

The guys who do step up are going to be given raises and promoted to higher level position. We have 4 RFP's out their and one is nearly done. The projected growth of our operation could potentially grow from 8 total resources to 25. The guys who helped out are going to get nice raises and some training free of charge, (which is coming out of our operational revenue).

Learn what there contracts say, this could get you in hot water if you are violating it, and ignorance of it won't fly if its a serious infraction.

Great that you already have put in a plan to reward those who step up, but keep in mind that it has to be fair. A guy who comes in bust his tail, but has daycare or some other evening activities is just as worthy or a raise than the guy who works avg, but has the off hours time( don't know the specific situation on this).

"I have really gotten stern and even told on guy to leave his badge and laptop if he didn't plan on coming in."

Hope you said this in private and didn't raise your voice. Saying this in front of your team will make you look like the bad guy 99% of the time especially if this guy is respected by his peers. If this was in public address this right away with everyone. I was threatened like this in front of my boss before. I asked for a apology, she declined, I went to HR and quit a few weeks later, a few weeks later she was fired(other stuff happend, but this was the last straw)

One last thing I want to add

Most people want to say their managers, very few people want to be "Managers"

Find out which one you are. I had the bad luck of inherting 10 people. This was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. Everything that I did wrong was magnified x10 and everything done great was "exepected". Read some books on leaders, learn what the differnece is between management and leadership and team building. It all starts with you. Identify who the problem childs are and slowly bring them on board. Find out who are your go to guy and get them to back you up. This will slowly bring people on board.

Be genuine with your team about whats expected, dont' try to manipulate them as I see a lot of managers do.

N2IT

petedude wrote: »

I don't have a hard time delegating, but I have a hard time dealing with the flak from it. I have a backstabber in my department who is frequently dissing me in my department and outside it, and have not been able to gain support in addressing with it so far.

Yeah the moaning and excuses and negativity really gets to me. I am growing as a manager and I am trying my best. MOST of the techs are willing if they can. I know from my upper managers and our customer they think I am doing a stellar job. Infact their operation manager and his boss both said this has been the smoothest transition they have ever seen. Our engagement manager also agreed and I was given huge praise.

I also feel I am fair with the guys and I do go to bat for them. So when I ask for something fair and they moan or make excuses or say I am not doing it, I get the idea to replace them. I know that is an emotion based feeling, but it may turn out to be the right one.

Maybe I am just venting. I will say this I am much better about stepping away from the situation and coming up with a resolution. Rather than just jumping to the answer right away. Nothing wrong with saying I don't know lol

Thanks again

N2IT

shodown wrote: »

Learn what there contracts say, this could get you in hot water if you are violating it, and ignorance of it won't fly if its a serious infraction.

Great that you already have put in a plan to reward those who step up, but keep in mind that it has to be fair. A guy who comes in bust his tail, but has daycare or some other evening activities is just as worthy or a raise than the guy who works avg, but has the off hours time( don't know the specific situation on this).

"I have really gotten stern and even told on guy to leave his badge and laptop if he didn't plan on coming in."

Hope you said this in private and didn't raise your voice. Saying this in front of your team will make you look like the bad guy 99% of the time especially if this guy is respected by his peers. If this was in public address this right away with everyone. I was threatened like this in front of my boss before. I asked for a apology, she declined, I went to HR and quit a few weeks later, a few weeks later she was fired(other stuff happend, but this was the last straw)

One last thing I want to add

Most people want to say their managers, very few people want to be "Managers"

Find out which one you are. I had the bad luck of inherting 10 people. This was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. Everything that I did wrong was magnified x10 and everything done great was "exepected". Read some books on leaders, learn what the differnece is between management and leadership and team building. It all starts with you. Identify who the problem childs are and slowly bring them on board. Find out who are your go to guy and get them to back you up. This will slowly bring people on board.

Be genuine with your team about whats expected, dont' try to manipulate them as I see a lot of managers do.

Believe me I am going through the same growing pains. I didn't inherit I signed up, but it's challenging. So much is expected of me it becomes quite overwhelming. Sometimes I long for those days of being a technologist.

I have these techs best interest in mind, but I am a go getter and I work extremely hard and I expect the same. Maybe that's not realistic, like I said I am growing as a manager. No one and I mean no one is good at what they do when they first start. I am not a quitter and I usually achieve my goals. I just have to stay focused. Reading all this great information has been great and has taught me some good points.

powerfool

It's hard to find and get motivated people... that isn't going to change. It frustrates me beyond belief. When I was a team lead at my last job, it was very difficult to get people that are actually my peers hired. I don't understand, really. I guess it comes down to competent and motivated people move up quickly and find work... so when you are trying to find people, it is going to be slim pickings.

Actually, I have to imagine that a previous boss of mine was in the same position. He had extremely high standards... and for whatever reason, he didn't think that I shared them. I came onto the job expecting that I would have a lot more responsibilities and he never let run with things. Heck, he would go as far to map out how to perform tasks and then hand it to me... I told him that if he wants somebody on his level he has to expect that they aren't going to be satisfied just punching keys and following instructions. He tried to ease up, but it really wan't going to work out. We actually got into it pretty rough a couple of times because of this. I guess his previous experience got him to just outline all of the work because he couldn't count on others to get it done... I see myself falling into those habits occasionally.

As a matter of fact, I was trying to hire someone to write documentation for me that is focused on the average home user. I went through people (granted they were foreign, so there was a cultural barrier, and they lived abroad, so there was a time difference) and they had multiple college degrees... I just couldn't find someone that I could give a clearly defined task and have them run with it.

It's difficult.

How this correlates back to working off hours and such... if these people are at least mediocre... you don't want to just make them angry and resent their jobs. I know you have deadlines as well, so it is just you pushing on them... you are being pushed on as well.

One thing I have been thinking of doing is holding lunch 'n' learn sessions that focus more on planning, organizing, and researching... some of the fundamentals of engineering type work. I don't know if it will be something that can truly change someone or just turn on a light for them, but I guess it is worth a shot.

N2IT

powerfool wrote: »

It's difficult.

How this correlates back to working off hours and such... if these people are at least mediocre... you don't want to just make them angry and resent their jobs. I know you have deadlines as well, so it is just you pushing on them... you are being pushed on as well.

One thing I have been thinking of doing is holding lunch 'n' learn sessions that focus more on planning, organizing, and researching... some of the fundamentals of engineering type work. I don't know if it will be something that can truly change someone or just turn on a light for them, but I guess it is worth a shot.

Agreed very difficult.

I agree I think my team is really starting to roll, last thing I want to do is piss them off. I just need to channel my emotions into something productive. I also need to set the expectations and communicate more clearly. Although I will say this I am finding this out to be true as well. You can communicate till you are blue in the face, it also takes execution. Sometimes people just don't execute what you ask of them. No matter how much you communicate that with them.

That lunch and learn sounds like a great opportunity.

Turgon

N2IT wrote: »

Great responses..

.. but when you have a COO choking down your neck asking why the high level deliverables are not being met or why they are a little light you start to refocus on what is being driven down from the upper ranks. So I have mixed emotions about this.

Tough. Welcome to management. All you are experiencing are the growing pains of any manager that really wants to make a go it it. I have been there! You can read all the leadership books you want on this subject but at the end of the day you have go in there and play things as you think best.

Be wary of trying to manage like someone else, it can't be done, you have to learn to rely on your own instincts. It all takes time. We have got to a point today where things are really piechart driven. So someone at the top makes a glib, grandeous statement and they sit back and wait for the bonus to arrive. Guess who has to deliver on it? You guessed it, middle management. And what do they have to work with? Often operational people with a mixture of cynicism about anything that perculates down from the top. Learn to play the game well. No MBA will help you.

N2IT

Turgon wrote: »

Tough. Welcome to management. All you are experiencing are the growing pains of any manager that really wants to make a go it it. I have been there! You can read all the leadership books you want on this subject but at the end of the day you have go in there and play things as you think best.

Be wary of trying to manage like someone else, it can't be done, you have to learn to rely on your own instincts. It all takes time. We have got to a point today where things are really piechart driven. So someone at the top makes a glib, grandeous statement and they sit back and wait for the bonus to arrive. Guess who has to deliver on it? You guessed it, middle management. And what do they have to work with? Often operational people with a mixture of cynicism about anything that perculates down from the top. Learn to play the game well. No MBA will help you.

If you had to make an assumption how many years does it take to really hit your stride as a manager?

shodown

N2IT wrote: »

If you had to make an assumption how many years does it take to really hit your stride as a manager?

10,000 hours to be a expert

2 years with 4 honest evaluations to work on things to be effective.

N2IT

shodown wrote: »

10,000 hours to be a expert

2 years with 4 honest evaluations to work on things to be effective.

Sound good. I am at the 6 month mark getting ready to hit number 7

However I do have 6 months experience as a team lead on a project.

Bl8ckr0uter

N2IT wrote: »

The projected growth of our operation could potentially grow from 8 total resources to 25. .

8 people to 25 people. Someone calling someone to a resource always reminds me of that scene in the matrix where Morpheous says that the matrix is about turning people into one of these (batteries). It is just creepy.

At any rate, I have worked at my current job for one month (on Monday). I have done two late night projects (12:00am -4:00am). I didn't have a problem with it because that's IT and you can't go taking down your firewalls in the middle of the day (It might piss your customers off). IT isn't a 9-5 job. I did the work, went home, went to sleep and came back in at about 12:30pm the next day and worked till 5. It wasn't that big of a deal. If I had to do it every weekend, I would be ultra pissed but I am being paid pretty well so I would suck it up (for a while).

The main thing is letting people know A: How long they are going to do extra work B:Why they are doing extra work. The Why is extremely important. Was it scope creep? Was it a hiccup? Was it something else entirely? These are important things to a person. I personally think a lot of managers don't like to tell the Why because it can make them look back. Work late because I said so does not sit well with anyone.

Forsaken_GA

Bl8ckr0uter wrote: »

At any rate, I have worked at my current job for one month (on Monday). I have done two late night projects (12:00am -4:00am). I didn't have a problem with it because that's IT and you can't go taking down your firewalls in the middle of the day (It might piss your customers off). IT isn't a 9-5 job. I did the work, went home, went to sleep and came back in at about 12:30pm the next day and worked till 5. It wasn't that big of a deal. If I had to do it every weekend, I would be ultra pissed but I am being paid pretty well so I would suck it up (for a while).

This is entirely in the perception of the holder. If you expect me to work more than the normal amount of hours, or be available 24/7, then the compensation needs to match those expectations. When I took my current job, when they informed me that part of it was on-call, I upped my salary request, and told them that if they wouldn't be supplying me a phone, I wanted my phone bill each month reimbursed (we compromised on them paying $80 bucks of my phone bill, which is fine, I understand they need to protect from extraneous charges). I'll be damned if I'm going to use my personal phone for the benefit of the company just to be nice.

I'm a team player, but I don't come to work out of a sense of altruism. The company is in business to make money, and I work for them for the same reason, and bullshit about loyalty and good of the team doesn't work with me, they'd fire me in a second if it was determined that was best for their bottom line. I have told my boss no on more than one occasion. And the first time, he tried that crap on me. I reminded him that we weren't married, nor were we sleeping together, so he doesn't get to have those kinds of expectations from me. If you don't want to be exploited, you need to set your boundaries very clearly, and very early.

Now, occasionally, I will agree to do something extra when I'm not in the on-call rotation. But I ain't going to lie, the main reason I do it is because I suspect the aftermath will cause me alot more work and pain if I don't handle it myself up front.

Now it was previously mentioned that these guys were contractors, so basically, IT mercs. Expecting them to perform above and beyond for the good of the company is laughably naive.

shodown

forsaken_ga wrote: »

this is entirely in the perception of the holder. If you expect me to work more than the normal amount of hours, or be available 24/7, then the compensation needs to match those expectations. When i took my current job, when they informed me that part of it was on-call, i upped my salary request, and told them that if they wouldn't be supplying me a phone, i wanted my phone bill each month reimbursed (we compromised on them paying $80 bucks of my phone bill, which is fine, i understand they need to protect from extraneous charges). I'll be damned if i'm going to use my personal phone for the benefit of the company just to be nice.

I'm a team player, but i don't come to work out of a sense of altruism. The company is in business to make money, and i work for them for the same reason, and bullshit about loyalty and good of the team doesn't work with me, they'd fire me in a second if it was determined that was best for their bottom line. I have told my boss no on more than one occasion. And the first time, he tried that crap on me. I reminded him that we weren't married, nor were we sleeping together, so he doesn't get to have those kinds of expectations from me. If you don't want to be exploited, you need to set your boundaries very clearly, and very early.

Now, occasionally, i will agree to do something extra when i'm not in the on-call rotation. But i ain't going to lie, the main reason i do it is because i suspect the aftermath will cause me alot more work and pain if i don't handle it myself up front.

Now it was previously mentioned that these guys were contractors, so basically, it mercs. expecting them to perform above and beyond for the good of the company is laughably naive.

this right here

N2IT

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

This is entirely in the perception of the holder. If you expect me to work more than the normal amount of hours, or be available 24/7, then the compensation needs to match those expectations. When I took my current job, when they informed me that part of it was on-call, I upped my salary request, and told them that if they wouldn't be supplying me a phone, I wanted my phone bill each month reimbursed (we compromised on them paying $80 bucks of my phone bill, which is fine, I understand they need to protect from extraneous charges). I'll be damned if I'm going to use my personal phone for the benefit of the company just to be nice.

I'm a team player, but I don't come to work out of a sense of altruism. The company is in business to make money, and I work for them for the same reason, and bullshit about loyalty and good of the team doesn't work with me, they'd fire me in a second if it was determined that was best for their bottom line. I have told my boss no on more than one occasion. And the first time, he tried that crap on me. I reminded him that we weren't married, nor were we sleeping together, so he doesn't get to have those kinds of expectations from me. If you don't want to be exploited, you need to set your boundaries very clearly, and very early.

Now, occasionally, I will agree to do something extra when I'm not in the on-call rotation. But I ain't going to lie, the main reason I do it is because I suspect the aftermath will cause me alot more work and pain if I don't handle it myself up front.

Now it was previously mentioned that these guys were contractors, so basically, IT mercs. Expecting them to perform above and beyond for the good of the company is laughably naive.

You make some really good points no question about it. We do something similar, we reimburse 100 dollars a month on their phones. We also provide some other perks as well.

I think the bottom line here is to manage the schedule and to communicate this with the team. In fact I will do that Monday

I have been, but I need to take a different approach and some of you all have given me some great ideas.

badrottie

If you are fortunate to live where you are not automatically considered to be exempt from overtime pay, then working outside of hours that you have agreed to at the time of hiring is ultimately at your discretion, but be careful if you work in a location that is considered to be "at will employment".

I do not have that luxury of refusing overtime where I live, as information systems/information technology workers are in the same category as lawyers, professional engineers, physicians, etc. In other words, IT/IS workers are classified as professionals and automatically exempted from overtime pay statutorily. Your employer may elect to pay you overtime, but it is at their discretion.

Check your employment laws to determine what rights you have, or more importantly, do not have. Being terminated for cause (insubordination) due to ignorance of the laws of the land is not desirable.

That being said, good managers work with their team and try balance things out, either monetarily or time off in lieu. Bad managers? The less said, the better.

it_consultant

I recently had an interesting discussion with my boss / friend. We are taking a new direction in the company and it will require extra work on our parts to implement the various lines of business properly. After some complaining and jaw jacking I said "You know, to command the salaries we do we have to be technicians and business people." In a meeting a little later in the day one of our sales people mentioned that in 25 years of IT he had not seen a good IT outfit that had a 40 hour week. It is always more. The reason that I am writing at 2116 hrs on a Saturday night is because I am babysitting some Windows updates on one of my clients servers and I am tuning my exchange lab which is an almost exact mirror of a system I am going to set up in the next month that will host 4,000 (Exchange 2010 SP1 "hosting mode" installation) mailboxes right off the bat. I will do the installation and help develop all the surrounding business processes including sales, training, and billing of that system.

The moral of the story is that your employees may need a reality check of their compensation vs the work they need to perform. If they are highly paid professionals, there is no excuse for leaving work undone, or worse, having their boss do their work for them in his off hours.

Forsaken_GA

it_consultant wrote: »

The moral of the story is that your employees may need a reality check of their compensation vs the work they need to perform. If they are highly paid professionals, there is no excuse for leaving work undone, or worse, having their boss do their work for them in his off hours.

i fully agree with this. If you are being adequately compensated for your time and effort, then just shut up and do the work.

That cuts both ways though, employers need to actually adequately compensate for the demands of the job, and I'm willing to bet that in alot of cases where there's disharmony, this disconnect on one side or the other is the cause.

higherho

N2IT wrote: »

If you had to make an assumption how many years does it take to really hit your stride as a manager?

I think this question really depends on the person. If you are a people person and have a gift to motivate people / lead then its going to take that person much less time to get results. Can that person adapt well to situations and react to them in a calm manner relying on his best judgement? If you are determined this can take you a year to get your stride going or even 6 months if your that good.

Now I have an example. Prior to joining this job their was no middle manager, no documentation, no organization at all. The middle manager came in and in a year and a half their was documentation, procedures, organization, ticketing system, etc.

So in the above example it matters how many dedicated players were on the team, how dedicated was the manager on the change, and how he came across his / her employees. He also recommended people to get fired because they were not pulling their own weight (one reason why the team was slacking). What type of job requirements do you have to deal with and how can you implement your managerial skills in that situation? Again it can be a year or two years.

Forsaken_GA

N2IT wrote: »

I think the bottom line here is to manage the schedule and to communicate this with the team. In fact I will do that Monday I have been, but I need to take a different approach and some of you all have given me some great ideas.

Scheduling is usually the biggest pain in the ass. It's certainly been that way in a number of jobs I've worked at. It's always fun when the powers that be have a skeleton crew that's stretched thin to cover everything, and it barely works, but then someone gets sick. Or gets in an accident. Or actually wants to use some of their vacation time. Instead of preparing for the things that *will* happen by either adjusting scheduling, or hiring enough staff, they expect everyone else to pickup the slack.

If you've got regularly occurring work windows that need to be performed outside of normal business hours, you've got to account for it in your scheduling. If your people are anything like most people I know, they do *not* like scheduling surprises.

Like I said before, if my boss tells me he needs me to pull a midnight to 8am maintenance window on the weekend, but tells me I can pick which day off I can have the current week or the following in order to make up for it, I just shrug and say ok, and let him know when I'll be taking it off.

If I'm up for either primary or secondary on-call that week, I consider myself at the whim of the company (though if I'm secondary, the primary has some explaining to do....). When I'm off the rotation though, there better be a damn good reason for calling me.

Forsaken_GA

badrottie wrote: »

Check your employment laws to determine what rights you have, or more importantly, do not have. Being terminated for cause (insubordination) due to ignorance of the laws of the land is not desirable.

That being said, good managers work with their team and try balance things out, either monetarily or time off in lieu. Bad managers? The less said, the better.

I honestly do not concern myself with whether or not the employer has the right to fire me. I assume that I'm risking it every time I say no to something (which is a safe assumption, since Georgia *is* an at-will state).

The flip side of that is that I don't have to stay there if I don't want to. I've made sure I'm not in a situation where I'm living paycheck to paycheck, and I can afford the risk of losing employment. I will do the work I was hired to do, and I will do it to the best of my ability, and often better than anyone else on my team.

But I'm nobody's *****.

Forsaken_GA

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

If I'm up for either primary or secondary on-call that week, I consider myself at the whim of the company (though if I'm secondary, the primary has some explaining to do....). When I'm off the rotation though, there better be a damn good reason for calling me.

And I'll clarify this a bit, because I am sounding like an unreasonable hardass.

Alot of stuff like this is handled within the team. Our convention is that the on-call technician handles any scheduled off-hours maintenance windows. After all, if something breaks, they're supposed to be the ones fixing it, and maintenance windows are generally when things start breaking.

Sometimes, there are certain maints that are better performed by certain members of the team, usually because it's a sensitive bit of work, and we want the person with the strongest skillset in that area to be the one performing the work. When that happens, we do a bit of horse-trading, where the guy who needs to do the maint is on call that week, and the guy that would have normally been on call covers that guys next on-call week. Sometimes personal commitments get in the way of that happening, and we either have to let the less-skilled guys handle it, or someone agrees to be gracious and do the extra work, but since we pay attention to what's going on and what needs to be done, those incidents are few and far between.

Now, *none* of this applies to emergency situations. If something serious is going on, it's all hands on deck. We all know that's the case ahead of time, and we accept that as part of our job role. But outside of that, we (and our manager) make every effort to be fair to each other and not screw each other over.

WafflesAndRootbeer

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

Scheduling is usually the biggest pain in the ass. It's certainly been that way in a number of jobs I've worked at. It's always fun when the powers that be have a skeleton crew that's stretched thin to cover everything, and it barely works, but then someone gets sick. Or gets in an accident. Or actually wants to use some of their vacation time. Instead of preparing for the things that *will* happen by either adjusting scheduling, or hiring enough staff, they expect everyone else to pickup the slack.

It sounds like you've worked for CompuCom before. That's their SOP to a T and they make you work unpaid overtime to boot.

N2IT

higherho wrote: »

I think this question really depends on the person. If you are a people person and have a gift to motivate people / lead then its going to take that person much less time to get results. Can that person adapt well to situations and react to them in a calm manner relying on his best judgement? If you are determined this can take you a year to get your stride going or even 6 months if your that good.

Now I have an example. Prior to joining this job their was no middle manager, no documentation, no organization at all. The middle manager came in and in a year and a half their was documentation, procedures, organization, ticketing system, etc.

So in the above example it matters how many dedicated players were on the team, how dedicated was the manager on the change, and how he came across his / her employees. He also recommended people to get fired because they were not pulling their own weight (one reason why the team was slacking). What type of job requirements do you have to deal with and how can you implement your managerial skills in that situation? Again it can be a year or two years.

I am a people person there is no question about that. It's probably one of my biggest strengths, I have a lot of weaknesses as well

I just need to keep learning and improving. I'm sure I'll figure it out as I go along. I believe there are natural leaders, but managing takes sometime. Keeping everything synchronized and efficient is a huge challenge.