December 13, 2008 at 11:48 pm
Talking like this brings me to another similar topic. Let me start from the beginning. Whenever I get software with whatever hardware I buy I like to keep it safe because I might never use it again or I might just need to use it again. I have a room in my house I call my office (you might call it a study). In this office of mine I keep all my software, cables etc. from ages ago to new. Now, and maybe the ladies can explain this, my wife sometimes get the hibijibis and start spring cleaning. This normally happens when I am not home. I also have to confess that my office is not always so very neat but hey, I work there and this is my space. Now, one day I would look for something and would go straight to where I know I put it and it is not there. I start shouting and screaming and throw all my toys out of the cot because I can't find what I am looking for and she's been in MY office springcleaning.
:crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy:
:-PManie Verster
Developer
Johannesburg
South Africa
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. - Holy Bible
I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times. - Everett Mckinley Dirkson (Well, I am trying. - Manie Verster)
December 15, 2008 at 11:31 am
Steve Jones - Editor (12/12/2008)
I'm not sure you need to change ladders. Making big saves, however, does make you look good, it's remembered, and it might mean that at review time you stand out and get the biggest raise.
If only in practice that were always true. Unfortunately, companies just are not that perfect. This is even more true when changes are rolling through the company, which many are happening these days. It is rarely, "what have you done for me", but rather, "what are you doing for me". Loyalty from an employer has always been rare, and is even more so now.
I still say, I'll give them all I've got (within reason), and usually stay on even when it is not great. I do not care much about money, as long as my family has basic needs (plus a little extra) met.
However, the historical fact is that changing ladders remains the fastest way to change your pay by more than 15%. I have only personally experienced one exception (sort of) to that in 25+ years of employment, but that only happened because of a company buyout. I went from hourly with horrendous over-time, to salary... but effectively the increase was only about 5% overall... once the OT was considered with salary. And since the OT didn't stop it was even less. So I guess effectively I personally have not experienced an internal increase effectively breaking 10%, let alone 15%. And I am not sure I have ever heard of any either. I am not saying it doesn't happen; only saying it is considerably rare. On the other hand, I have twice increased over 10%, and once over 15% while changing "ladders". (Granted, the big jump was leaving military service after nearly 10 years, and going into civilian IT sector... that 28K~32K was poverty, and IT careers started around 45K to 50K.)
Just to get perspective on numbers (dropping trailing digits):
50K to 60K is 16.7%
60K to 70K is 14.3%
70K to 80K is 12.5%
80K to 90K is 11.2%
90K to 100K is 10%
100K to 110K is 9.1%
110K to 120K is 8.9%
(Amounts considered are in the USD pay range for IT based jobs of less than "Director/Department" title).
My point here, to stay on topic, is that citing potential pay increases for saving the day as a reason to hoard all the nearly useless antiquated IT paraphernalia over 7 years old just doesn't equate. There are a plentitude of other ways to save the day, that will garner far more notariety and employability, and won't fill up half my basement and my all of my storage site.
Versioning over time, for both hardware and software, must have a sunset. For me, 7 years (and at the long end, 10) should be as far as it goes. Value beyond that would be very hard to prove, unless it was and is still the "current" system in use. But the costs of maintaining will eventually climb higher than the costs of upgrading. The headaches, hassle, the lack of plug-and-play, and many other head-bangers push the issue.
By the way, would anyone like a case of 1 and 2 mb RAM sticks (and the mammoth towers they came in)? 🙂
Or, any of 50 network cards, all old, and various types?
Or 4 HP3LJ printers (1 with MICR!), or 6 other brands in various stages of operability?
SparQ, JAZZ, ZIP, SuperFloppy, 2nd Gen Tape, or any of many 250/500 mb HD drives?
I can't even recycle the miles of cabling (CAT 2/3/5/5E/cable/antenna/phone/etc.); they want the insulation stripped off first!
December 15, 2008 at 11:41 am
dphillips (12/15/2008)
Steve Jones - Editor (12/12/2008)
I'm not sure you need to change ladders. Making big saves, however, does make you look good, it's remembered, and it might mean that at review time you stand out and get the biggest raise.If only in practice that were always true. Unfortunately, companies just are not that perfect.
I concur. Most companies that I have worked for seem to take accomplishments in stride. You may get a "good work!" email, but it does not directly translate into cold, hard cash very easily. Maybe most Canadians can be bought with pizza and donuts ... or maybe that is just in some Canadian management course that most of my managers have taken.
Naw, my managers haven't taken any management courses. My bad. :ermm:
Mia
I have come to the conclusion that the top man has one principle responsibility: to provide an atmosphere in which creative mavericks can do useful work.
-- David M. Ogilvy
September 11, 2013 at 10:17 pm
Provisioning an environment is easy these days with virtualization technologies running rampant. And figuring out what DBMS version you need to provision for a given back up is as simple as RESTORE HEADERONLY. 🙂
From my perspective, keeping ahead of the patch-cycle has more benefits than just security. It also prevents developers from hard-coding exploits of bugs into their procs/functions/SQL-CLR code.
YMMV
September 12, 2013 at 4:16 pm
jeremy 60599 (9/11/2013)
From my perspective, keeping ahead of the patch-cycle has more benefits than just security. It also prevents developers from hard-coding exploits of bugs into their procs/functions/SQL-CLR code.
That's a useful advantage of staying up to date. However, my experience has been that it's not a big advantage. Most exploitable bugs don't get fixed until a release and a few service packs have followed, so the developers have plenty of time to build them into their code and forget that they will need to change it. That's not just on Microsoft systems, either.
Tom
September 12, 2013 at 6:06 pm
Reading through the old comments on this topic, I was amused by some of the discussion about what being the man who saved the world (as opposed to the man who is now saving the world) can mean for you; and about whether jumping ship is the best way to get a pay rise. I thought I'd shove in some comments on those two topics.
However, the historical fact is that changing ladders remains the fastest way to change your pay by more than 15%.
Not in my experience. I've had bigger increases in pay and benefits when staying with the existing employer than when switching - except that when I switched from academe to industry that was quite a large rise (32%) because academic salaries were terrible. I've had a bigger rise than that without switching employer, but only once; in addition to that once I've had 8 other rises of over 15% from my employer at the time. Apart from the one time mentioned above, I've never had a rise as high as 15% when changing employer (the average, excluding that one 32% as the switch from academe to industry isn't realty relevant to the discussion, is a bit under 5%). If you include times when I've had massive non-salary benefit increases that together with the pay rise made an effective rise of over 15%, that 8 becomes 11.
As for saving the day: it can get you friends in high places, promotions, increased pay, and improved non-pay benefits. It can also cause problems. Once people start assuming anything you are doing must be right you are in trouble: if no-one is properly evaluating and criticising your proposals it's easy for big and nasty mistakes to be missed; and you can find your managers are shouting down any criticism of you and using your reputation to ensure that they get their way (their way, not yours). Also, it doesn't last: although you may still find some people blindly following you many years later, the company will have moved on and those people will be out of step. Also, something everyone should remember is something that my boss's boss in the late 70s used to tell us all in just about every management meeting he chaired: one Awshit! cancels a thousand Attaboy!s.
Tom
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