I work on a small team and recently realized my boss is falling victim to survivorship bias. Another colleague and I handle our work, which is mission critical to the org, competently and fairly opaquely, only raising issues as they arise. However some other members of our team have less critical but more visible work that they tend to bungle. The department invests hiring dollars, training efforts, and materials purchases in service of remediating those issues. But my colleague and I are both burned out, eyeing the door, and fully aware there’s no one who understands what we do or is capable of doing it within our organization - aside from each other, but our respective scope of work is non-overlapping and there’s truly not wiggle room to cross train or support each other’s work. I’ve said all I know to say to leadership about this issue but they seem willfully ignorant.
When one of us goes, I think the other will follow quickly. Hiring takes almost 2 months at my work, so the gap/lack of knowledge transfer will make for a huge shit show.
It’s not quite like that. My workplace is surprisingly good on the hours, they just aren’t great on responsibilities or scope.
For reasons, I’m going to delete everything below this line approximately a half hour after this comment is posted.
In terms of my role, I’m not in a position that carries authority, but my responsibilities to my 200-person section include:
Web Content Administration: Fortunately, I don’t have to deal with the server or development, but I ‘lead’ and ad-hoc team of 12 people (who have no responsibility to me and only have web duties as an ‘add on’ to their core responsibilities - it’s seen often as a throwaway designation, that folks use while trying to become management) to update our website. We are legally and contractually obligated to ensure all the content is functional, accessible, and accurate, which entails frequent audits and coordination with my web editors who bear no responsibility to me.
I am the only person at my organization/on my team that understands permissions/SharePoint/Office well enough to administer our 2 intranets, 5 extranets, the 25 Teams Shared Workspaces, maintain/develop business critical PowerApps, and despite my pleas, am the only person that has bothered to fucking learn Power BI so we can report on our data. The extranets are of special note, because of the strict requirements my organization has for access, people are constantly messing up their Authenticator. One of these Extranets is used to hold documents used in litigation, and every email (which thankfully arrives during business hours) is an emergency.
Related to the above, I also deal with (in terms of being the person who submits tickets to the engineers and higher level techs) for user access, account creation/deletion, list changes, Network permissions.
Also, all of our other tech issues. My section provides ‘white gloves’ support to my area before we turn loose the vendor techs, company reps, and engineers. I’m ’the guy’ for my team. If someone else can’t figure it out, the issue comes to me, and there are a lot of issues that come to me. It’s a running joke that everyone on my team is named ‘Monument’ because people will email our shared IT box with “Hey Monument, can you…” I’ve been in the room to witness executives look straight into the eyes of a colleague, and say “Thanks for all your help, Monument” while being completely serious. I’m that ubiquitous at work that my colleagues are kind of relegated to the role of being NPCs. Sometimes the jokes about everyone being named me feels really fucking weird, if I’m honest.
I administer our ArcGIS Online instance, also ensuring accessibility/functionality under threat of legal punishment. I’m also one of about 10 people in my broader organization of 50k people who sit on its guidance council. I’m in approximately 20 hours of meetings a month for status updates and ELA negotiations (that conclude and resume every 3 years with a 2 month break between). Every other person in those meetings has GIS as their sole responsibility.
I’m the liaison between our in-house developers and my work area. I oversee all of our internally developed apps (that aren’t built on Office). Most of these are web apps, but mercifully, I do not have to directly deal with their security audits or accessibility compliance reviews. I mean - I have to be in the meeting, but I get to mostly limit my involvement with them to yes/no’s.
I’m the backup administrator for 5 of our 8 Salesforce instances. Fortunately, the 5 that I backstop are managed by my competent colleague, because I just don’t have time to learn another system. And the work that transpires to support those systems is significant. I am in charge of ensuring the site templates are accessible, though.
I’m not just the administrator for my org’s mass email solution (and am responsible for a team of people there, too), but I’m an account admin for not just my agency, but the entire department.
Speaking of the broader whole, I serve as a backup administrator for their website, sharepoint, and the aforementioned mass email solution. These jobs are done by different people over there. (But they’re 10x our size, so…)
Oh, and I also am the only person authorized to handle our web analytics. Fortunately I’ve largely automated the reporting on those.
I don’t have to take on every one of those responsibilities every day, and I can delegate to others, but I have tremendous responsibility and zero authority.
And I just got an email from someone who needs help with Word. They sent it direct, skipping our shared help inbox. Hah.
I work on a small team and recently realized my boss is falling victim to survivorship bias. Another colleague and I handle our work, which is mission critical to the org, competently and fairly opaquely, only raising issues as they arise. However some other members of our team have less critical but more visible work that they tend to bungle. The department invests hiring dollars, training efforts, and materials purchases in service of remediating those issues. But my colleague and I are both burned out, eyeing the door, and fully aware there’s no one who understands what we do or is capable of doing it within our organization - aside from each other, but our respective scope of work is non-overlapping and there’s truly not wiggle room to cross train or support each other’s work. I’ve said all I know to say to leadership about this issue but they seem willfully ignorant.
When one of us goes, I think the other will follow quickly. Hiring takes almost 2 months at my work, so the gap/lack of knowledge transfer will make for a huge shit show.
You burning out is a process failure. Work normal hours and let shit fail 🤷♂️. Say the reduction in hours is “health related” so they can’t pry.
It’s not quite like that. My workplace is surprisingly good on the hours, they just aren’t great on responsibilities or scope.
For reasons, I’m going to delete everything below this line approximately a half hour after this comment is posted.
In terms of my role, I’m not in a position that carries authority, but my responsibilities to my 200-person section include:
I don’t have to take on every one of those responsibilities every day, and I can delegate to others, but I have tremendous responsibility and zero authority.
And I just got an email from someone who needs help with Word. They sent it direct, skipping our shared help inbox. Hah.