This mostly just a vent post, but maybe some of y’all can relate. I’m a student worker at an IT help desk at my university. I’ve been working here for two years as of this coming January. While here I’ve worked my way to being the lead technician, so my daily tasks are an amalgamation of tier 1 and 2 support duties, project managing, coordinating with other departments and with manufacturers, writing documentation, training new employees, pretty much a little bit of everything. However, I’ll be graduating in a month, and hopefully getting a ‘real world’ job.
I recently told my manager that I’m looking around for post-graduation jobs, but if a full time position were to open up I’d be interested, because honestly I do enjoy working here for the most part. And in response, I was informed there’s not enough funding for a full time position. Great. I wasn’t surprised, considering my department is the least funded IT department across the entire university, despite serving the largest college. The next day, however, my manager informed me that I could move my workstation to my own desk and “make my own little personalized space”. At first I kinda shrugged it off as “oh okay, cool” until I realized that she offered me the desk to try and keep me from leaving. Not a full time position. Not a raise. A desk. Over half my paycheck just goes to rent. I’ve been here for two years. I’ve held the department together through chronic understaffing, I’ve worked after hours, covered other’s shifts last minute, one summer I was the only employee for two months, the department head himself has told me I’m the best employee they’ve had in several years, but the best they can do is a desk.
At this point, I’ll be glad to leave. I keep the department running. I lead 5 other techs, 1 has been here almost as long as I have, but he’s the definition of you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. The other 4 techs are all new hires, hired this past September. They’ve been here for nearly 3 months, but I still get almost daily questions about things I’ve already told them or things that have been written down in our documentation. Two of them had to be taught how to write a professional email. One tech has no call no showed numerous times, but management doesn't want to fire him because we're understaffed. I had to cover for our asses when one of the new techs wrongly told a staff member their laptop would be confiscated, and the staff member immediately emailed the dean of the college and filed a complaint against us. Add on top of that all the annoyances of working a help desk job, such as faculty getting mad at us for enforcing new policies or thinking that just because we’re IT we should instantly know everything about every program and device ever made.
When I leave, this department is going to collapse. But at least they gave me a desk.