About this time two years ago, I was working for a large multi-national firm doing technical support for specific companies (ie: a company buys an annual contract for my services and my salary is paid by that contract — At this point, I had three open contracts). I had been in that role for about three years-plus, but I'd been supporting the product for over a decade, through an acquisition and a divestiture and another acquisition. I knew where all the bodies were buried (ie: major bugs, etc).
Earlier in the year, we changed up managers for some of the teams, including mine and the manager of the tier 3 support team (for the worse; both guys were super-political, zero-technical skill, personnel managers). Of course, within months, people were resigning left and right until the tier 3 team dropped to zero members and on my team I was the last man standing for my product. Inexplicably the team with zero members, the manager remained a manager with no reports, just doing nothing and cashing paychecks, I guess.
Right before we all got furloughed for the holidays for two weeks (basically burning five days of PTO for everyone), my manager pulls me into a one-on-one. Apparently, because we lost all of tier 3 and (in his eyes) I had a lot of free time, he wanted me to take on those duties in addition to my own when we returned from the furlough.
I said, “That sounds like a great idea to me. Could we talk about specifics?”
He said, shocked, “Uh, yeah. Wow, I thought you were going to refuse.”
“No, I can do that role, easily.” — Note that in my (then-)current role, I was basically doing that for the contracts, but not having Tier 3 authority meant I had to convince Tier 3 people to let me file bugs, so I was happy to have the power to tell devs what to work on for all my customers. But… “I'd like to know, as I'm taking on the duties of three tier 3 people, will I be receiving additional compensation for it?”
He choked back a laugh. “No.”
“Oh, that's too bad. Well, I wish you and
“Wait, wait! So you're saying that you won't do the work if we don't pay you?”
“That's generally how jobs work. You pay me, I do work. If you want me to do more work, then I'll need more pay.”
“But we're in a bad way with no one on that team and things are piling up over there. Can't you be a team player?”
“Let me ask you a question. If this is a team, would you say we're a major league team?”
“Sure.”
“Then don't I deserve a major league contract?”
“But, but… you have free time in the day to work on this, don't you?”
“The only reason I have that extra time is because I'm really good at my job and I have all my customers sorted properly. That's why they renew their contracts every year.”
“That's not relevant.”
“Okay, well… since this is my choice and I've already told you what I'd need to pick up the extra work, if you're not willing to pay me at least one of the tier 3 salaries in addition to mine, we're done.”
After that, we ended the call and he never brought it up again. Now, I totally destroyed our working relationship with this call (likely because he probably told that other manager that I would do the work), and I've no doubt that when the next round of layoffs hit I was #1 on his list for dismissal (about 8-9 months later)…. but I have no regrets, and honestly, I got a much better job with the pay I wanted in addition to the fat severance with credit for all the years of service added.
Hope you guys have a great winter and thanks for all the amazing posts!