Loaded with old responsibilities on the job

[etherealfocus]

I'm the webmaster, front end developer, and a large part of the ecommerce team team at my job. I manage our SEO for half a dozen sites, am working on replatforming our ecommerce, and generally have a decent mix of workloads.

The good news is that I got in on the ground floor of a growing company, get paid to expand my core competencies, and have a fairly dynamic environment.

The bad news is that I came in with a low level position (it was just supposed to be a little extra side income) and I haven't been able to shed one of my old roles - tech support. I took it just to demonstrate skills and add value when I was new, and it's followed me around ever since. I'm in my third year now and quite ready to never fix another printer or crapped out VPN again. Our tech is messy and we have no dedicated support so stuff breaks regularly: I probably waste 30-60 mins a day on support, average. Which costs me 2-3x that in lost productivity now that tasks are complex and require sustained focus.

My chief concerns are:

a) this crap gets coworkers complaining when I don't drop everything to fix the printer right away AND hurts my ETAs (I can either give very long ETAs even for simple stuff, or I can miss them when someone loses internet). If the complaining and ETA problems make their way into a performance review, I'm at risk of hurting future job prospects.

b) I've voiced my concerns over this several times with minimal response. They're making a few minor bandaid tech investments to mitigate issues, but there's not much proactive problem solving and zero interest in hiring another fixit monkey. In short, I'm likely gonna be stuck with this for a long time.

How would you guys handle this? I've been raising flags for the last six months or so and there has been some movement, but new problems appear at least as fast as old ones are fixed.

I like the company in a lot of ways and I'm not looking for a reason to quit, but I am concerned that this may be sabotaging my longer term prospects in and out of this company.

Should I be happy this job is as good as it is and just deal with the annoyances or start looking for greener pastures? FWIW, other jobs I've had have been with bigger companies who've been happy to dump old responsibilities as I move into new ones. I've also never been someplace where a busy webmaster got saddled with tech support. Maybe it's common and I have limited experience?

Thx guys...

 

[Howard]

Find another job.

 

[jlee]

IMO always be looking. You never know what alternatives might surprise you if you don't.

 

[etherealfocus]

Yeah I try to keep an eye on the market but I hate jumping between jobs for short-term gains. In the past I've gained value from showing that I don't leave at the drop of a hat, and promotions have, as much as I can tell, outweighed the value of taking competitive offers.

This company is definitely growing and improving. I like the amount of influence I have in major strategic decisions and my direct implementation powers and I dig the team of experts I work with. We've got a database ninja, an enterprise ecommerce marketing/strategy ninja, and another front end dev with more focus on marketing - good match for my tech focus and we work well together.

Believe me, if the job were just crap I'd have bailed long ago... although TBH I hate driving and other offers I've gotten would have at least doubled drive time lol.

So, do I leave a good job because of a flaw that's at least annoying and maybe a ding for my longer term prospects? I can deal with the annoyances; every job has that. It's the inability to perform at 100% and risk of future impacts that gets me.

Just not sure if I'm making a big deal out of a common annoyance or if I should really be concerned.

Say I did interview somewhere else: I explain my issue with the previous employer and say "they'll probably say I got my work done and found new avenues of growth but had some trouble with finishing projects on time." Are employers likely to buy that along with my explanation?

Thanks!

 

[Ruptga]

I wouldn't be ready to jump ship over it, but I would make it clear to my supervisor that starting next Monday (or some reasonable but soon deadline) I wouldn't be answering any support calls. It's one thing to help out when something comes up, but it's another entirely to accept an increase in responsibility that's uncompensated and unaccounted for when planning your workload.

You already have a full time job to do, just make it clear that you can't do that and all this other stuff, just like you did in the OP. If they don't like it or try to guilt you into it, go along with it for as long as it takes to get hired somewhere else.

 

[drebo]

Outsource it to a competant local IT company.

There are companies out there that exist solely to do what you don't want to, and it'll always be cheaper than you can hire someone for.

Some of them even do break/fix contracts.

Almost all of them will have the knowledge to help you resolve the issues you're having and recommend what should be purchased to resolve them.

 

[1sikbITCH]

I'm the webmaster, front end developer, and a large part of the ecommerce team team at my job. I manage our SEO for half a dozen sites, am working on replatforming our ecommerce, and generally have a decent mix of workloads.

The good news is that I got in on the ground floor of a growing company, get paid to expand my core competencies, and have a fairly dynamic environment.

The bad news is that I came in with a low level position (it was just supposed to be a little extra side income) and I haven't been able to shed one of my old roles - tech support. I took it just to demonstrate skills and add value when I was new, and it's followed me around ever since. I'm in my third year now and quite ready to never fix another printer or crapped out VPN again. Our tech is messy and we have no dedicated support so stuff breaks regularly: I probably waste 30-60 mins a day on support, average. Which costs me 2-3x that in lost productivity now that tasks are complex and require sustained focus.

My chief concerns are:

a) this crap gets coworkers complaining when I don't drop everything to fix the printer right away AND hurts my ETAs (I can either give very long ETAs even for simple stuff, or I can miss them when someone loses internet). If the complaining and ETA problems make their way into a performance review, I'm at risk of hurting future job prospects.

b) I've voiced my concerns over this several times with minimal response. They're making a few minor bandaid tech investments to mitigate issues, but there's not much proactive problem solving and zero interest in hiring another fixit monkey. In short, I'm likely gonna be stuck with this for a long time.

How would you guys handle this? I've been raising flags for the last six months or so and there has been some movement, but new problems appear at least as fast as old ones are fixed.

I like the company in a lot of ways and I'm not looking for a reason to quit, but I am concerned that this may be sabotaging my longer term prospects in and out of this company.

Should I be happy this job is as good as it is and just deal with the annoyances or start looking for greener pastures? FWIW, other jobs I've had have been with bigger companies who've been happy to dump old responsibilities as I move into new ones. I've also never been someplace where a busy webmaster got saddled with tech support. Maybe it's common and I have limited experience?

Thx guys...

I am in my 8th year of unofficial tech support as well in my office (volunteered for bonus points when I was hired) and as you say they'd rather call me to figure out a bandaid and don't want to hear me tell them they need new equipment and hire an actual IT firm I can call on for big stuff. In a small company people end up with dual roles a lot. Another paralegal handles the birthday parties (everybody gets cake on their bday) and another orders office supplies (office manager is too busy?).

We are all trying to extricate ourselves from these extra duties.

 

[yllus]

It took me quite a few years and to see some other people do it in front of me to realize that you can, in fact, say no to more / different / lesser work at your place of employment.

If you're pulling extra hours of work to get both things done and truly feel that you're harming the more important work you do (web stuff) because of the tech support stuff, then this is actually easy: Go to your manager and tell them that the needs of both jobs are in danger of making you do both less than superbly, and that you obviously need to concentrate on the more important one. For the tech support side, you have a plan - you'd like to hire two one or two young grads at a reasonably pay grade to take over those duties (and really put some dedication into them).

If you make the choice obvious and even provide a plan for next steps, people who reasonably say yes. Just make it plain that this can't continue in the long term or things will suffer (not in a threatening way, but in a pointing out the obvious way).

 

[drebo]

I am in my 8th year of unofficial tech support as well in my office (volunteered for bonus points when I was hired) and as you say they'd rather call me to figure out a bandaid and don't want to hear me tell them they need new equipment and hire an actual IT firm I can call on for big stuff. In a small company people end up with dual roles a lot. Another paralegal handles the birthday parties (everybody gets cake on their bday) and another orders office supplies (office manager is too busy?).

We are all trying to extricate ourselves from these extra duties.

Just show them how much less expensive it is to contract out the technical support components. (lost revenue, opportunity cost, etc.)

 

[dyna]

This is the bane of somebody who is successful and stays at the same company. In your current role it is likely your job to clear the blockers. If it means you fixing the printer to get your team back on track then you probably should. These little things you do, likely add up and are reasons why you are successful in the first place.

 

[TheFamilyMan]

You didn't expand on your point b) above so I'm not sure exaclty what you took to your upper management and how you communicated it.

In my position, I'm looking to my direct reports (and on down the line through their reports) solutions to issues. Yes, I want to know what the issues are, but the real core of a good manager (or someone who demonstrates the ability and potential to move into an mgr/sr. mgr position) is the ability to present an isse, present the best solution, dollarize it and show returns in a well-defined period of time, and have an execution/implementation plan designed and ready to move on.

Your bosses don't want to simply hear what the issues are or some suggestion on possible solutions. They want dollars and if you can show them that you can generate them more dollars doing job A vs. doing job B, you won't have to wait on divesting yourself of the fix-it jobs as they will do that for you based on the get-well plan you present and the execution plan you have crafted to do so.