I just read the famous “My 5-year getting paid for doing nothing is over. I'm heartbroken” post in this sub and decide to share my story.
Using a throwaway for privacy. Not in the US. Not an English speaking country.
A little backstory: I've always worked in IT as a side job/freelance since before I even entered college (I'm in my late 30s now). I'm not the best programmer, I'm not the best webdesigner/webdev, but I can do a lot of everything. It never paid my bills or was the main focus of my life but it was nice to have some extra money every now and then. I had a lot of other jobs, I once even started my own business. It was really small but I loved it, such a chill life, made a lot of friends, paid the bills and a few vacations. Things started to get rough in 2016, Country's economy was in shambles and my “management style” didn't help, so I sold it, paid all the few employees what I owed them and left with basically nothing, so I need a job ASAP. I applied and got hired to work a 9-to-5 job by a company that already knew me from my small business, I used to buy some things from them. It was painful going back to the 9-to-5 life, my business was more relaxed… imagine a “bar”… but I endured it for about 1 year. The Country's economy state got to my employers and they were cutting some positions, I was one of the first ones to go.
I desperately applied for other jobs but wasn't getting hired so I tried to restart/revamp my freelance work in IT to pay the bills and tried to spread the word. Somehow an acquaintance that worked at a high position for a government agency heard I was looking for IT work and contacted me, they needed some simple and quick database work and I said I could do it and got hired for this specific work, pay wasn't great but I needed it.
I guess I need to explain the “government agency” thing. It's more like a “town agency”, it's attached to the town hall and filled with public servants, it answers to the town's mayor. It's a small town near the big city where I live, about 30 miles away. I don't know if there is an American equivalent to it but I really don't want to be more specific about it.
I quickly noticed the whole agency and even the whole city hall had basically no IT structure, just a couple of dudes being paid the minimum and absolutely doing the minimum. So right when I was about to finish my job, one of the big wigs at the agency called me and asked me to take a look at the agency's website cause it was “hacked” a while ago and they didn't even care to put a new website up or something, even though they are required by law, and the two IT guys “could only take care internal network (barely), and knew nothing about websites”. So I did take a look at the website and there was nothing, just what was left of a really old WordPress website.
– Can you put it back up?
– Look… there is nothing to “put back up”. You need a new website and you probably need to hire a company to do it.
– That's gonna cost a lot of money, we already contacted a few companies. And even worse, that's gonna cost a lot of time cause we need to hire the company, it's a lot of bureaucracy as a town agency. It's easier just to hire a guy as a temp employee of the agency and let them do it.
– Ok… are you saying you want to hire me to do this?
– Yes.
– It can't be a temp worker, a website needs constant maintenance and support, that's why you hire a company.
– hm… the “temp” time can be any length of time that we need. We can hire you and you gonna be the “website guy”. Can you do it all?
– Like design, maintain and everything? I guess first I need to see what's your plans to the website, what you need.
– It's pretty simple and standard…
– Look… I can probably do it if you show me exactly what you want, but I can't come to work here everyday, I have other clients (lies)…
– Don't worry, you can work remotely, we just need the website running. I'm gonna send you an example of what we need.
– hm… Ok. I'll take a look but I don't promise anything…
So they send me, as the example, a website of an equivalent agency from the close town (also a small town). I look into it and again, it's just a simple WordPress website with some agency info and some “news” section where they post something every now and then. Anyone that ever did webdev stuff knows you can do this in a lazy afternoon, WordPress is a basically a “plug and play” system created to host blogs/news sites (but you can do “a lot” with it). You basically install it on your hosting server, chose a “theme template”, edit a little to make it “yours” and voilà. So I decided to see where this would go.
– So, did you take a look at the website we sent you?
– Yeah, I can do one exactly like that one. It's gonna take some time (more lies) but it's doable.
– Excellent! Can you start now?
– Wait… what's the salary? You know this is gonna need daily maintenance and support like I said before and like the companies you contacted also said.
– Right, the best we can pay you as a “temp employee” is XXXXX (basically 3x minimum wage in my region). That's a little more than what the companies asked for the monthly maintenance, but we are not paying you anything for the “setup/creation” of the site…
Where I live, it's normal for Companies to charge more to government agencies than to regular costumers since they have to deal with a lot of bureaucracy and unqualified employees.
– How about the “news” part? Who's gonna post the news? I can't do that, I'm the “website guy”, not the “news guy”…
– No, don't worry. We have a “press guy”, you just need to train him on how to post the news on the website.
– hmm… Ok then, I can do it…
– Hired!
So I did it. I basically “copied” everything from the “example” site, changed the color scheme and a few details to match my agency's and gave it a little more flair since the “example” really sucked. I did it in an afternoon but decided to wait a few days to present it to make it seems like I was working very hard as a solo guy instead of a whole company. They requested a couple of very simple changes that I could have done on the spot but made them wait a few more days and that was it, website approved. I made one last commute to that city to “train” the press guy and never set food on that place again since 2017. The website platform is set to auto update, every now and then I login to check if everything is ok and running. Every 2 months someone contacts me to say the site is down or something isn't working but it's just the hosting company doing maintenance or some auto-update that f*cked something up and I “fix” it in 2min. The “press guy” changed a few times and I had to re-teach someone on how to login and where to click to write the news, all done remotely cause “I can't go there right now cause I'm working on another client” (more and more lies).
This was my main (and mostly only) income for a few years but I got another part-time job a couple of years ago when the town elected another mayor and I was certain that my “website guy” job was going to end since they usually change a lot of people, but after a few months the new head guys contacted me to say that I was going to keep my job since they liked the website, they just needed to change a few things. So one more afternoon changing a few texts and a couple of colors and that was it. If I had to guess they also tried to contact a few companies and figured out it was going to be a lot of work (for them!) and decided to just keep me. I kept my part-time job since the extra income is very welcome and I can also time-thieve a lot in this job, but that's another story.
Sorry for the long post. It's my true job story with some “fun” summarized dialog. Hope you enjoy it.