Annoy a Liberal, Work Hard

I'm sure you've seen the bumper sticker.

I'm a "Liberal", so why am I working so hard? I work in IT and there is never enough time to make up for the underfunding of our core infrastructure. Yet the projects and initiatives the company pursues never stop and continue at a frenetic pace.

In the corporate world, IT gets treated like liberals do in our society. IT is labeled as a "Cost Center" and our resources and efforts are always considered to be free and unlimited. We put in more hours in support of the company than our "Revenue Center" colleagues, yet we are salaried workers - i.e. no overtime, no comp time, and no commissions for our efforts. By the time you divide our salaries by the number of hours we work, we make less than some of our lesser paid colleagues. No, we don't really get paid the "big bucks" - that is an illusion and an IT "in" joke. All we have is the ambiguous pride that we are salaried "professionals." Another classist label that obscures reality.

We save the company money rather than pull it in. We make it so the company doesn't have to hire more people, eliminate the need for manual processes so peoples' efforts can be focused on more important things, and provide the tools that make all employees more productive. We have little time to quantify these savings because we spend the hours that we have trying to keep up with the neverending demands for our services.

So for the next while - i am going to be on vacation - but I'm working half time so I don't delay roll out on the current important projects and avoid donning the label of "not a team player."

This labeling thing is pretty pervasisve isn't it? I have to say i am enjoying this blogging thing. I haven't been so thought full in years.