So, i started working for a guy who runs a managed services comany in Dallas. This entire network was band-aided and half-assed at best when I got here. He started me at pretty low wage considering the job, but i was ok with it for a starter salary. I committed to him to get things fixed and running smoothly. He agreed to take good care of me. So eight months later, after i've poured my blood, sweat, tears, 60 hour weeks, late night work, making customers think this company was great(even thought it isnt), etc etc etc, he pulls me into his office. Tells me how great of a job ive done, how the call volume has dropped way down because of me, how they network finally runs the way they have been wanting it run run for the past 5 years, how much he appreciates all my hard work, and he offers me............................

a 5% raise.


I swear to God.....when i build my fastlane business(or slowlane for that matter), I will NEVER piss in my employees faces the way this guy did me......ESPECIALLY if they have clearly sold their soul to my company. This guy can bite my a$$....i am devistated.

I know the feeling well. You have to realize every employer has a salary range and will always try to get you for as cheap as possible, that's business.

I recently had a review coming up and read this book.

It's still slow lane, but I got a 29% raise after proving my market value. Without standing up for myself, I would have gotten the standard 2-5%.

Sounds like exactly what you needed. Get mad and pour all that energy into your own business.

dice.com
monster.com
dallas.craigslist.org

I am waiting to see your resume there, like, 5 minutes ago.

And start advertsing your services as a contractor.

What you did is very valuable to many small and mid size businesses.

Dallas is booming these days.

Maybe it is Life telling you it is time to go independent.

Best of luck!

hey he could have done to you what happened to me! ohh you have done such a great job, ohh you have written systems so people can do your job without instruction from you? ohh my how wonderful, no no you dont want to take that nice new cushy job with that new unproven company... we are family here... then when you try to go back to work after taking an approved medical leave they send you cobra papers and inform you that you are terminated...


At least you have a job... there are alot of people who would kill for a job(any job) and no raises...

have you tried to speak with him about your expectations? about what you believed was going to happen for you when you accomplished everything? if not then I suggest you do... dont get all mad and pissy... simply put your thoughts together and have a conversation with him. maybe it really is the best he can do and feels bad about it?

maybe he lowballed you expecting you to protest and then begin a negotiation?

bottom line. noone values you like you value yourself. this is/should be all the motivation you need to get your plan in gear so you dont have to rely on a j.o.b. and 5% raises...

Thanks andviv.....I will get right on that.....just as soon as I wipe the tears away. Seriously, I am heart broken. How someone could be so cruel is beyond me, but I shouldn't be surprised. He pisses on his customers just as badly. I should have known this was going to happen when he told me that I wouldnt get holiday pay for Christmas eve, when he told me that he expected me to take support calls during memorial day, when he told me that I am 100% responsible for any dependant healthcare coverage, when he drove up in his brand new 2012 Jeep wrangler, I could go on and on.

Did I mention that he didnt have me sign a non-compete or an NDA ?

G-man422 said:

Sounds like exactly what you needed. Get mad and pour all that energy into your own business.

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GREAT post! I have an exboss that I loathed BUT now I would give her a BIG wet kiss because she is the reason I worked so hard on the business I have now.

Carrie, ordinarily, for your average employee, I would agree. However, I didnt work like a normal employee. When I say I sold my soul and bent over backwards for this company, thats what I mean. I would expect a measley 2-5%, if that, for an average employee. For the shitty benefits+low pay I was getting, plus the level of work I was putting in, I expected to get a 50-75% bump in pay. This guy is WAY out of touch. I know it and my co-worker, his brother, knows it. He is pissing on his brother even worse than he is pissing on me. He told his brother that he expects him to answer the support calls even if he is on vacation. This guy doesnt give a shit. We probably would get better treatment at the Foxconn factory in China..... !!!

Hope you didn't sign your soal away. If not take the brother and the contact list and start your own company competing with him. If he really treats his customers like crap then you should be golden. Good luck

I didnt sign anything.....thats how out of touch the guy is. The only paperwork i ever saw was my w2 and health insurance form....thats it....nothing else.

biggeemac said:

So, i started working for a guy who runs a managed services comany in Dallas. This entire network was band-aided and half-assed at best when I got here. He started me at pretty low wage considering the job, but i was ok with it for a starter salary. I committed to him to get things fixed and running smoothly. He agreed to take good care of me. So eight months later, after i've poured my blood, sweat, tears, 60 hour weeks, late night work, making customers think this company was great(even thought it isnt), etc etc etc, he pulls me into his office. Tells me how great of a job ive done, how the call volume has dropped way down because of me, how they network finally runs the way they have been wanting it run run for the past 5 years, how much he appreciates all my hard work, and he offers me............................

a 5% raise.


I swear to God.....when i build my fastlane business(or slowlane for that matter), I will NEVER piss in my employees faces the way this guy did me......ESPECIALLY if they have clearly sold their soul to my company. This guy can bite my a$$....i am devistated.

Click to expand...

It just shows you that you are not in control of anything when you work for someone else.

So eight months later, after i've poured my blood, sweat, tears, 60 hour weeks, late night work, making customers think this company was great(even thought it isnt), etc etc etc,
...
a 5% raise.

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oh come work for me

or get mad enough to never work for anyone else again.

biggeemac said:

So, i started working for a guy who runs a managed services comany in Dallas. This entire network was band-aided and half-assed at best when I got here. He started me at pretty low wage considering the job, but i was ok with it for a starter salary. I committed to him to get things fixed and running smoothly. He agreed to take good care of me. So eight months later, after i've poured my blood, sweat, tears, 60 hour weeks, late night work, making customers think this company was great(even thought it isnt), etc etc etc, he pulls me into his office. Tells me how great of a job ive done, how the call volume has dropped way down because of me, how they network finally runs the way they have been wanting it run run for the past 5 years, how much he appreciates all my hard work, and he offers me............................

a 5% raise.


I swear to God.....when i build my fastlane business(or slowlane for that matter), I will NEVER piss in my employees faces the way this guy did me......ESPECIALLY if they have clearly sold their soul to my company. This guy can bite my a$$....i am devistated.

Click to expand...

You know what they say...

If you want to get paid what you're worth, work for yourself and find out.

It's a dog eat dog world. You must use your leverage when you have it. that is after you show him some value, but not after you have solved all his problems. Can you get more selling a steak to a hungry person after giving them a bite or after they've eaten the whole thing?

I love this thread, because
1. I love the empathy everyone has for you
2. I love the fact that most of us have been at the same or similar crossroads
3. I love the encouragement I hope you are getting here
4. I love your work ethic, and the resolve this situation has thrust upon you
5. I love that you posted this here, because there's a group of people here that get it

You will be better of for this situation having happened. Use the emotion, turn it into STEEL, and it will help you on the way towards blazing your own path. You're 36 years old, and you might have just gotten the (painful) catalyst that you needed. Hang in there. This isn't the end of this story. This is the beginning of what I suspect is going to be a beautiful chapter.

I agree.....I love this thread too, which is why I started it. I knew exactly the kind of things people would say to me. I just wanted to make sure that I vented to the RIGHT crowd The ones that are going to say the things that I need to hear right now.

Like PatrickP said, this guy did you a huge favor. If he gave you a large raise and treated you nicely, you might want to continue working for him out of a sense of appreciation and loyalty.

But, the way things turned out should motivate you even more to start your own business; turn that anger and frustration into fuel for your own endeavors.

Continue working for him while you get your business started so that you can have money to use in building it and also taking care of your general welfare like paying your rent, etc. Good luck in your journey.

Naw, im gonna look for another job. If this is the way its gonna be, i'd rather work somewhere that isnt so completely half-assed while I put my plan together. The five components that I have identified that are missing from this company are communication, setting expectations, planning, staffing, and documentation. With ALL of those things missing, I am completely buried and outgunned. Keeping in mind that we are providing I.T. infrastructure for over 1000 users. His brother and I are running this company while he sits at home with his kids and calls and bitches us out when we dont get back to someone in a reasonable amount of time.....I wonder how THAT would ever happen.....lol

Please do tell me more about the services you provide... Networking and cabling? VoIP? Setup and configure datacenters, racks, servers?

You are in the Dallas area, correct?

Yeah, Dallas area. Basically, the company provides the I.T. infrastructure for healthcare facilities. We host applications like carepoint, allscripts, and american healthtech on terminal servers in our rack at a datacenter in downtown dallas. For the carepoint users, we host the application on our terminal servers and sql servers...and thats it, thats all we do for them. For the rest of our clients, we either built their infrastructure on our domain....complete with MS office/outlook/exchange and special apps and give them an RDP connection into the infrastructure, or we built an entire sub domain for the client off our domain and drop servers at each facility that is a part of a given company and manage their entire I.T. infrastructure. My bosses brother manages the entire I.T. infrastructure for our largest client and manages the installation of everything.....cabling, data, voice, voip, etc. Much of this is through third party vendors. We only do the domain management piece, servers, pc's, printers, software, etc. This is....in a very brief nutshell minus a lot of details, how everything is SUPPOSED to work.

I still have a lot of cleanup to do to get everything right, but after this whole thing went down, I decided I am going to focus on my own company and take the model above and build it CORRECTLY with the components that I mentioned earlier. I met with the brother today and he told me that he knows the way his brother thinks....his brother wants to maintain the upper hand on me and probably is looking at me at this point as though I have one foot out the door already. He said since i got everything stabilized, he will probably kick me to the curb and hire another guy at the same cheap rate and sell him the same bs story he gave me. So we are putting together a game plan. The brother has told me that some of the vendors that he works with in the area want to pass some pretty big business to the company, but he wont allow it because he knows just as well as i do that these customers would get crappy service and he wont risk his reputation with these clients. So we are going to move forward with building our own company based on this model....and grab that business. Our plan is to get everything down pat in the Dallas area and expand to the rest of Texas.

biggeemac said:

Naw, im gonna look for another job. If this is the way its gonna be, i'd rather work somewhere that isnt so completely half-assed while I put my plan together. The five components that I have identified that are missing from this company are communication, setting expectations, planning, staffing, and documentation. With ALL of those things missing, I am completely buried and outgunned. Keeping in mind that we are providing I.T. infrastructure for over 1000 users. His brother and I are running this company while he sits at home with his kids and calls and bitches us out when we dont get back to someone in a reasonable amount of time.....I wonder how THAT would ever happen.....lol

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You will probably feel the same way at another job. If you do get another job, you better negotiate a high salary going in. I think that expecting a 50-75% raise is unrealistic. You set the bar low when you agreed at your initial wage.

Problem is that as an employee, you threaten to quit or do quit, he will find someone else to take your place. He will survive. Isn't everyone's goal here to sit at home and have employees working for them? Isn't that your goal in the future? Don't be mad at him. Learn from your mistakes. "He agreed to take good care of me" means nothing without specifics. You even said 5% is a good raise, so isn't that taking care of someone? I don't remember many employees ever thinking that they get paid enough for what they do.

No, I dont expect to sit at home when MY company is falling apart. He told me that the rate he hired me at was a starter rate just to make sure they werent getting a dud....which is what the last two guys were. I care about ppl, he does not. He doesn't give a shit about his employees or his customers. I will NEVER be like him, and neither should any other business owner. That kind of mentality is what is going to make my business the best. The competition really wont be competition because the competition has unhappy employees and unhappy customers. I took a large pay cut to come and work 4x as hard, so no, it wasn't unrealistic, I just believed him that we three were ALL going to reap the rewards. His expectations of his current employees was unrealistic. And being able to sustain this business model, with this many customers and this many employees is also unsustainable. His two workers are ready to walk. Im not mad at him, but he is totally an a**hole.....and anyone on here who had to deal with this would agree. I think that he has customers only because he is so cheap that they just deal with the crappy service. His brother and I even sat down one night while strategizing and tried to figure out what his strengths were.....something we could leverage to get him on the right track.....we could not come up with one single strength. He is thrifty(cheap), which can hardly be considered a strength. His brother said that even his mom thinks he is an a**hole. Picture a punk a$$, idiot, immature high schooler running a company. Very reactive, diverts responsibility, temper, cant take constructive criticism, HUGE ego, and thinks that any sort of standard business practices are ridiculous....and the guy went to college !

PS, my last job was the best job i've ever had. I was very happy....employees were treated great and so were the customers, but still wanted my freedom.

biggeemac said:

I care about ppl, he does not. He doesn't give a shit about his employees or his customers.

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Sounds like your first business/competitive advantage if you should compete.

biggeemac said:

His brother and I even sat down one night while strategizing and tried to figure out what his strengths were.....something we could leverage to get him on the right track.....

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You might want to be careful about consorting with the brother... blood is thicker than water.

Harsh love ahead beware.

I was surprised when I looked at how old you are.

Reading your posts with things like I care about ppl, he does not. He doesn't give a shit about his employees or his customers. I will NEVER be like him, and neither should any other business owner. That kind of mentality is what is going to make my business the best.

To me it sounds like a teenager ranting about his father not a 36 year old adult talking about someone he chose to be associated with.

Grass is not greener on the other side of the fence. Stay where you are, don't waste your time looking for another job, and start your business while you are working for him.

Success is the best revenge.

I am resentful.....i have no issues admitting that, and i am ranting. I will most likely stay because i will have a much easier time building my business since he has no idea what is really going on, plus i can stay close to his brother. I know the grass is slightly greener in someone elses pasture, but only from a financial aspect. I am interviewing with another company tomorrow, but only so that i have documented proof that his expectations of me as an employee are way off. But, ultimately, i will probably stay.

Ps, i appreciate tough love....i have tough skin.

biggeemac said:

So, i started working for a guy who runs a managed services comany in Dallas. This entire network was band-aided and half-assed at best when I got here. He started me at pretty low wage considering the job, but i was ok with it for a starter salary. I committed to him to get things fixed and running smoothly. He agreed to take good care of me. So eight months later, after i've poured my blood, sweat, tears, 60 hour weeks, late night work, making customers think this company was great(even thought it isnt), etc etc etc, he pulls me into his office. Tells me how great of a job ive done, how the call volume has dropped way down because of me, how they network finally runs the way they have been wanting it run run for the past 5 years, how much he appreciates all my hard work, and he offers me............................

a 5% raise.


I swear to God.....when i build my fastlane business(or slowlane for that matter), I will NEVER piss in my employees faces the way this guy did me......ESPECIALLY if they have clearly sold their soul to my company. This guy can bite my a$$....i am devistated.

Click to expand...

He didn't piss in your face, he gave you a job. He paid you, he gave you a raise after 8 months. Quit your whining

mmmk, thanks, you're helpful

biggeemac said:

But, ultimately, i will probably stay.

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In life, you don't get what you deserve, you get what you settle for.

The moment you stop blaming others for your situation in life, the moment you start improving it.

The "Poor me" attitude rarely begets any other situation than exactly that.

What are you choosing to learn from this whole endeavor that will benefit you in life & business?