This is a post like every other r/antiwork post, but I just need to unload this.
I am a business analyst by trade. A business analyst’s job is, generally, to look at business systems and find efficiencies to implement, gather requirements, and implement changes once a solution has been decided upon and created.
I accepted a 6 month contract through a third party firm in February with a prominent telecom company to work with their Accounts Payable department, toward automating their systems and processes which are heavily manual.
When I started working with this organization, I was under the impression that they had hired me as a business analyst. They began by having me work with the AP department to “learn their systems,” and see “where improvements could be made.” Their words. So I go along. I spend a couple of weeks doing verification, a couple of weeks doing scan, then it’s time for me to get to work with the project team and help find solutions using the new technology and assist in automating some of the processes.
I did very little BA work in the time I was there. What I did do, early on, was push the project forward. I collected requirements, documented things, made an agile schedule proposal, created like 10 work flows, put together business rules, worked with other teams to get things moving. But, as time went on, it became more and more clear that the organization didn’t want to change.
Automating workflow requires impeccable data— garbage in garbage out— so if the datasets that you’re automating with are trash, your automation is going to be trash and probably break every other execution attempt. I made this clear. Was explicit that things needed to be cleaned up before dev could write anything effective. I found other issues. Purchasing didn’t have any standardized processes, and that further screwed up development. And the nail in the coffin, the dev environment had antiquated data. … Ask about all of these things— “Oh there’s no ROI to make these changes and clean this up.” …Uhm… What? K.
So time goes on, I’m working with dev to find work around a for all the crap that won’t work. But, they kept having things “come up,” and saddling me with AP Clerk work that was not what I was hired for. I bucked at this. I told my supervisor that this is not what I thought I was hired for, that my goal was to implement some KPIs, get a baseline of performance, and work with development to get their systems automated like they wanted. I was placated again and again that I was in fact a BA and that’s what they wanted from me, but that “…[the company] values team players and filling in where needed.” But then, the manager had a meeting about my work load without me, and didn’t ask me what work load I would take on before assuming I would take on the full duties of an AP clerk. {What is this bullshit? They think they own me? But I digress…}
Today they cancelled my contract. Why? They told my contracting company that they hired me as a “Data Analyst,” working with their current manual tech doing data ENTRY into their ERP. They also said they, “No longer needed my services.” What the actual fuck is this bullshit?
I am an MSBA, am PMI-PBA certified and am a certified PMP. And they wanted me to be an AP clerk doing data entry? What the actual hell were they thinking? I’d have to be the most expensive AP Scan clerk on earth! What is this nonsense that companies are fucking with right now? Have to have a master’s degree to do fucking DATA ENTRY? Get the fuck out of here.
I’m am so frustrated by this company’s bait and switch. I’m sick of this job market and sick of being the bad guy because I won’t bend over for some predatory capitalist fuck-wad.
Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.
TL;dr Fuck capitalism.