The Job That Ate My Brain

Back again. I think my appearance here might just be a case of 'spring fever', where the rather positive change in the weather gets me all pumped up and energetic enough to get myself off the couch and do something for a change. Yeah, off the couch, and all the way over to the computer. Good job, Stu.

Job, yeah. I actually have one now, after spending two years here doing absolutely nothing. It didn't take me long to get back into the same old routine of jaded cynicism at this place, it was like I'd never left the workforce.

I'm in IT again, something I had kind of hoped I wouldn't go back to, but at the end of the day I have to be honest with myself - I don't really know how to do anything else at this stage in the game. I won't get into too much detail about the exact company I work for... apparently some things have changed in the world since I used to write my journal at Allied, and I'll probably no longer get away with tearing apart Vice Presidents that I hate who I'd specifically mention by name then send the link to all my friends. Let's just say I work for one of Canada's fastest growing Wealth Management companies and be done with it.

It's technically a step back, from a career point of view. My official title is 'Desktop Support Specialist', which basically means I'm just a nobody computer tech on their Help Desk. This is in stark contrast to my position in Allied UK, where I was the King of the Castle and everyone else was pretty much just a dirty wee rascal. Still, it doesn't bother me much... I deliberately didn't set my sights too high when I was job hunting early last year, mainly a confidence thing, but I wanted to ease myself back in to work, be rid of some of the responsibility (and the politics), especially since I'd never had a proper job in Canada before... but the beauty of it is, I get paid considerably better here than I ever did at Allied, even with the profit & loss cheques. I'm talking about a difference of what works out to be several thousand pounds a year, plus at this company we get big fat yearly bonuses at Christmas... even without a full year of service I bagged myself a big fat bonus of about $3000. It's still not the greatest salary a man could hope for, but with me and Janette now both working full time (and with her being a teacher for the rather well paid Durham region), we're doing pretty good financially. Remember, too, that you generally get more for your money over here (depending on what you're buying). Hence the house, the cars, and all that stuff.

At times, though, it doesn't feel like it'd be worth it for all the money in the world. I actually have to work myself to death here, as opposed to Allied where for the larger part of about half a decade I did as little as I possibly could (and spent the rest of the time taking sick days or sitting on the internet). Compared to the industry standard, it's a bit of a shambles of a Help Desk. You look at a company like Scotia Bank, they've got an entire floor full of guys just to answer the phones. You look at us, we've got five full time techs, with no phone monkeys to man their call center. It's utterly bizarre.

They say the industry standard should be something like one tech for every 50 employees... with us, it's like one to 500, and we still have to answer the phones ourselves. There's no structure, no policy, no procedure, it's just a crazy insane free-for-all. Nothing like the good old days of Allied where there were three of us at any given time, but nothing exciting ever happened because most things just worked.

The problem is mainly that the company has just exploded in the last half-decade... the IT department was built for a company of about 300 people (back when it was more of a Mom 'n' Pop company), and while the company is now ten times the size, the IT support isn't. The IT department as a whole is about 100 people... but that's split into various groups (Help Desk, Networking, Comms, Development, Project Management etc), and half of the IT floor don't actually know anything about IT.

Another issue is that we're all just really burnt out right now. There was a major project going on before Christmas where we moved from our one location in Toronto to not one, not two, but three different locations. For about 3 months straight, I didn't get a weekend. I got very well paid for my time, but I didn't see a single weekend. It wasn't difficult work... just unplugging hardware and plugging it back in at the other side... but you keep doing that, as well as your regular work, without a day off for weeks... it get rough, especially when you've got a family, a wife and a son, who you end up hardly seeing. There have been other big projects going on which for some reason became a big deal over the holiday season... conversions to other systems, email migration projects, that kind of thing... it all happened at once, and it all happened at the time of year when everyone else in the country is winding down and enjoying the holidays. I've probably never worked so hard during any festive season in my life, ever. It was brutal.

Still, I complain too much. It's not that bad. In fact, if it wasn't for the chronic staffing issue, I'd actually be enjoying it. It's a long commute to and from work (because I work in Toronto, but live in Durham, which is a gazillion miles away), but it's a good crack. I work with a superb bunch of guys, a really good team. We're a little, how can I put this... 'ethnic'. We've got me from Scotland, we've got a guy who came from Hungary, a guy from Sri Lanka, an Indian guy who was born in Canada but lived in East Africa and England before coming here 20 years ago (so he's sort of a fellow Brit), and a good old-fashioned native born Canadian. I'm the youngest on the team, which is odd.

We also work really well with the other infrastructure groups... the network team, the Comms team, and ourselves, we're like one big melting pot of awesome, for the most part. Most of us try to jump on for a few rounds of Unreal Tournament on the odd Friday afternoon, good for team building. Plus we're always throwing stuff at each other (there's a story behind this, but I'll save it for later). It sure as sugar doesn't compare to how awesome it was working with Cuff and Stevo and Big Gee, but I'm happy with what I've got. For all I tried to just sneak in and be invisible, avoid all the politics and just do my job, I've actually got quite the reputation of not taking crap and being very outspoken, too. No idea how that happened.

Add that to the decent pay and the fact that (now that the moves are done) I can largely turn up, do my shift, and go home at the end of the day without having any kind of real weight on my shoulders, I've certainly got it way better than some. If only they'd hire more people...

I had no intention of writing so much about my job on here. I've got tons more to say, too, but this is probably already long since the most boring blog entry ever posted on the internet. Oh well. Most people I know back home haven't heard from me in at least a year or two, give or take, so if I'm catching up on here my entries are going to get a whole lot more boring and a whole lot longer than this...