First a little background. I work for a small IT shop in the mid-west. Although we are small, we have many clients. We manage nearly every school in a fifty mile radius, several large financial institutions, and most of the fertilizer plants networks. (fertilizer is bug business in the mid-west) I have worked here for about 3 years. In that time I have become the backbone of this office. Since I began working here, I have brought in a ton of money, due to my skill set. For instance, before I worked here, if a client need cisco routers and firewalls installed, it had to be sub-contracted because there was no one here with that knowledge. Same for Exchange, IIS, UNIX, Linux, and AS400. There are only 3 people who work here, myself, the owner and his wife. After about a year of me working here, I noticed that they began to take more and more time off. In larger organizations this is not a problem. But in our’s, it is absolutely crippling. When they take time off and go play, it means that I have to sit here and answer phones all day instead of satisfying our clients. It is so bad that I have been told to put off a bank with a server down because they wanted to go away for a long weekend. If they would just hire a full time secretary this problem would be solved. But they claim that there is not enough money coming in to justify another salary. This is an outright LIE ! I know how much money comes in and how much money goes out. The fact is that they are just greedy. The crux of it is this. They are shooting themselves in the foot by not hiring some one to answer the phones. they could get some one for about $8.00 per hour. By not hiring some one they are losing the $65.00 per hour that I bring in when I am out at client sites. My other problem is this. I am essentially running the business by my self. I now have to do the ordering, quotes, invoicing, scheduling, and still find time to get out to client sites and fix their issues. I am only getting a little under $30,000 a year for all of this. I do not get overtime. I do get bonuses, but there is no predictable pattern to them. I do not get ANY benefits. But not everything here is bad. The dress code is relaxed and they do not micro-manage me. Mainly because everything I do is way above there level of expertise. So here is my question…. What do I do? Do I tell them that I need more money if I am going to perform my job and their job ? Do i tell them to hire a secretary or else ? (this would keep the clients from getting angry when I have to put them off) Do I look for another job that will pay me better and not be so greedy? I need to tell them something. They own this business and their work ethic is appalling. They are riding my shirt tails and getting rich. I am living pay check to pay check. Something needs to change.
Sorry if I rambled. I needed to get this out there to you guys for some suggestions and I just wanted to paint a decent picture of my situation so you could give me some helpful advise.
avid