IT Contractor - Overpaid

Posted by Few-Dance-855@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 176 comments

So I work as a it manager at a company of roughly 150 users. Since it’s just me I am able to outsource some help to another contractor that the company has been using and they absolutely love him. The only problem is well he kinda sucks sometimes. Idk if it’s because he is old or because he knows that this company is his golden piggy bank earning him crazy money but he bills us so many hours worked when in reality someone competent would have figured it out within one hour. He is my backup when I’m on vacation so I don’t want to break any bridges so to say but man I gave him some work I needed help with , and o was charged 8 hours and he didn’t fix anything and I still have to fix it. Smh! 🤦‍♂️ Idk man, what do ya think- how do I approach this?

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176 Comments

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many_dongs@reddit

OP is jealous and insecure

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J-VV-R@reddit

Late to the post, but I'm glad so many of you are calling him out. As a contractor myself, you run into internal guys like this who worry more about that outside contracts/consultants/advisors compared to their own work.

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fio247@reddit

If anything it's because he is a MSP, not because he's "old". smh

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Few-Dance-855@reddit (OP)

Idk man, I agree is is incredibly busy he at times doesn’t remember what we told him 5-10 minutes ago. I believe he is 60 yrs strong.

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flecom@reddit

are you telling him things in an email? anything I am "told" at work face to face I immediately forget because I have 10000 other things to do with actual tickets/emails to keep track of everything

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J-VV-R@reddit

I'm late to this post, but OP sounds like a fresh graduate tool. Just look at the emoji's and his responses... As a consultant (contractor) I have bumped in to guys like him over the last few years. They are more concerned with the work you are doing compared to the work they need to do.

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HugeConfusion9505@reddit

Seems he's not overpaid if people keep paying him.

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Less_Traffic2091@reddit

You sound very ADHD and confused. You repeat yourself a LOT, and your writing tells me you generally do poor, sloppy work. My guess is you cannot relate to an older person with a work ethic and are jealous he is liked more than you, does a better job, and is just more skilled. I'd try to learn from him.

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Sufficient_Prompt125@reddit

Ask him to hire you. He will make clients pay for your knowledge and you will be happy. Worse part of my life was when I was trying to be cheap as possible.

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18ekko@reddit

Since it's not your budget anyway, maybe just start farming out work to him that he can get done, on a regular weekly basis, so that you are less swamped when it does get swamped, and you have more time to handle the issues that he would fail at. Maybe the more consistent billing will incentivize him to not pad the hours, maybe you even hint at that in a discussion.

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ADynes@reddit

Why do you need outside support for 150 users is the real question. I have 280 and it's me and another guy who works half his time in a unrelated department. And if he was in for 8 hours and didn't fix the problem and then you fixed it why didn't you just fix it in the first place? Either this is a troll post or you should look in a mirror and figure stuff out.

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Few-Dance-855@reddit (OP)

Cause im busy? I fixed it 1 week later. I’m paying him to fix thing because he has 30 years of experience. But he just calls tech support and charges me for alll the hours he spent on the phone .

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jwb206@reddit

Lots of crappy 'engineers' do that now... Rather than learn and fix, they just call the experts. Not my way but it does get stuff done... Slowly

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SM_DEV@reddit

So… you want him to sit on the phone, just like you would, for free? What you want is an either an outcome based fee negotiation, or a slave.

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Top_Boysenberry_7784@reddit

Spoken like a true MSP god. Sounds like a typical response from someone in the field of hiring mediocre at best techs and finding the best way to charge top dollar and maximize billable hours with them. MSP: We have several Cisco certified engineers. Customer: Great, here is our issue. MSP: Charges 6 hours at $175 an hour to relay messages from customer to Cisco TAC and takes a full week for resolution.

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SM_DEV@reddit

Not hardly. We actually DO have Cisco engineers, and charge much more than $175/hr for their time. However, we do not charge for their time when in research, or have them waste their time sitting on the phone. We have other warm bodies for that and a magical thing known as call transfers.

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jwb206@reddit

Each company is different.... Some need 1 IT staff per non IT staff... Others could do 300:1. It all depends what services and security you're providing.

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Zestyclose-Bit-9761@reddit

Sounds like you have plenty of info to show that you require at least 1 additional FTE IT person on your team.

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JaschaE@reddit

"... he bills us so many hours worked when in reality someone competent would have figured it out within one hour. " I can't help but notice that you went to the trouble of calling him in, instead of just figuring it out in an hour. Either you need him, and thats the price he shows up for, or you don't and find somebody better&cheaper.

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SartenSinAceite@reddit

"Someone competent would have figured it out within one hour" why aren't you hiring that person then?

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Pump_9@reddit

Maybe it wasn't his decision. I get to delegate work to an MSP that I have no say in hiring - they're just good at the dog and pony show to management and for the right price, then they get handed to me.

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SartenSinAceite@reddit

Hah, in that case I can't blame anyone but management for letting themselves be swindled like that (and not accepting feedback)

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nigevellie@reddit

"I should be the competent person, but I'm not."

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Pump_9@reddit

Arrogant tone-deaf remark. I could spend 24 hours a day troubleshooting and fixing the endless issues in my company but I work what I can in the time I can. Some issues take minutes to resolve but they're not on the list of priorities at the moment. OP is doing what he can and delegating work.

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SartenSinAceite@reddit

OP has already established they're too busy tbf

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Raalf@reddit

Or more importantly, just taking an hour to do it if it's so easy.

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InfraScaler@reddit

As per Op's, he is not working on the issue because he has many other responsibilities to attend, then after many hours where the contractor hasn't figured out the problem, Op finally has some time and finds the issue.

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lordjedi@reddit

Likely by working extra hours. What he should be doing is simply not approving the invoices when they come in. If he doesn't have that power, then he needs to peace out.

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TipIll3652@reddit

My guess is since it doesn't come out of his budget it's not his decision. I would bet as the one man IT dept OP doesn't have shit for power around there and is just holding things together with bubblegum and duct tape.

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DeifniteProfessional@reddit

150 users an a sole internal IT department? 100%, the outsourced person is a small MSP owner who knows the owners of OP's company, but is too busy to handle their IT support 100% so they hired OP, but OP has no pull power because the company doesn't yet realise their reliance on IT. It's a sad case for a lot of companies under 200 staff, or companies that grow really quick

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the_painmonster@reddit

Presumably because he didn't know it would take one hour when he started, but he can't exactly be checking that for everything he assigns.

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JaschaE@reddit

I have no stakes in this either way, but I have worked on other peoples problems with the information other people provide. It's a good day when the person who is providing the info is also the one experiencing the problem. Sometimes the info isn't related to the problem... Many a problem I could have solved in mere minutes if I had gotten actual info on the issue. So "Rebooted server" should, of course, not be a multi-hour billable. "Karen from Accounting says her Desk-phone is behaving weirdly" problem description that leads to "Somebody decided the patch-cables in the VoIP Server needed to be more symmetrically spaced" is multiple hours plus compensation for emotional damages.

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Raalf@reddit

Rebooted a server becomes a multi-hour activity when: you don't give them the correct credentials because your documentation is shit, no one knows the application owners or roles so that has to be hunted down for approval window, you can't provide the proper change approval path because your cmdb is shit, And yet: yet somehow you can't find time to do this 30 second activity yourself. Show me a contractor that takes 3 billable hours to reboot a server and I'll show you a company that has its head up their ass and can't do simple activities because of existing incompetence.

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JaschaE@reddit

Yip, my point was "Just because it looks easy on the invoice you get doesn't mean it wasn't a comedy of errors on your side"

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yaahboyy@reddit

comedy of errors describes half my billable time

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GreatEffort9746@reddit

im a it technician that has worked in the field for 3 years now . where are the jobs located and what is the pay scale ?

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JaschaE@reddit

All held securely in the great Job-vault of St.Jobsburg (You do realize this is an international forum? I am going to assume you are a US citizen, as this unawareness is a common symptom of that. So, my german ass can't really help you with the job hunt)

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Special_Luck7537@reddit

Good, fast, cheap... choose any two.

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TheFluffiestRedditor@reddit

Good, Fast, Cheap, Secure ; Pick any two.

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VernapatorCur@reddit

Except he's not getting Good, Fast, OR Cheap with this guy

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iBeJoshhh@reddit

Sounds like with OP, he only gets one choice from the guy.

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mrdeadsniper@reddit

Ding ding ding. OP needs to expand talent pool. If you think other contractors are so much better hire them instead. You can either find out that "Every contractor is a miserable incompetent thief" or you have a better resource that can accomplish goals faster and for less money.

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lordjedi@reddit

> You can either find out that "Every contractor is a miserable incompetent thief" or you have a better resource that can accomplish goals faster and for less money. One of our new people is finding this out. He didn't like the existing MSP and wanted another one. Now he's getting some experience with that MSP and he's finding out that they're all different levels of suck. I'm finding it out too though since I never really had a problem with the other MSP. The truly competent among us are the minority. Everyone else is just kind of there. I wouldn't call them incompetent, but they aren't super stars either.

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Additional-Coffee-86@reddit

I inherited a guy like this. Been with the company through multiple IT Managers because the ones before me weren’t actually IT people they were ERP people. It’s not worth the political capital or the time to find and propose a change because all of management knows him and I don’t own the failures or the costs. Whereas if we change and something happens then I’ve got the answer for that. Luckily for me our management doesn’t actually budget so I can simply not call him out much

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Winter_Raccoon1268@reddit

Need a contractor? I’m sure I’ll beat his rate and save the company some money lol.

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Commercial-Finance34@reddit

Eric halmeton looks like my dad know and his 63

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billbillbilly@reddit

\> he bills us so many hours worked when in reality someone competent would have figured it out within one hour. Give an example of something you would consider to be "quick" and some ballpark figure for how much you are paying this person, if you can. Depending on your own background, you may be severely underestimating how long it takes to correctly solve a problem. Or underestimating how much time it would take someone to get up to speed from a cold/cool start.

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msalerno1965@reddit

When I was 17 starting as a consultant, I was introduced to what my boss/mentor called the "Consultant's fudge factor". Elapsed time has almost nothing to do with billing hours, except you never charge less than that. What you charge for is, what the job is worth. It might take a "network guy" to fix it in 5 minutes. But that 5 minutes is the only call you got for the month from that customer, and it happens to be for a production system that's pulling in 6 figures a week. And the overhead of handing them a bill, using whatever the hell BS system they require you to subscribe to so you can receive payments, etc. etc. etc. I've spent 40+ years in IT, all of it as a consultant woven in with a W2 once in a while. My career is filled with wearing the hats of 5 to 10 different disciplines in any one day. So when I figure out billable hours, it may or may not reflect that I had to be three different people for one issue, and if I were to hire those people, and they had to work together, well, it sure as shit would take 8 hours for them to solve the problem. I bill what the customer will bear, and how much it's worth it to me. (Side consultant's rant: Being forced to bill hourly when you really just want a fixed $ per month, and it would be better for the customer. But noo......) PS: These days, I've been charging a lot for the "fluff" - the time Azure takes to hand me a VDI desktop so I can access the internal network. The 5 minutes it takes Outlook to start up just so I can read emails that I can't read from the outside Internet. The time it takes me to go into the IDM management system and pull a random 8-hour password so I can sudo that day. This stuff all adds up. And I clearly mark it on timesheets. And the people that approve my PO every year know that. For one in particular, I'm the only US citizen in this department's IT "team" so I'm the only one who can "own" the root accounts. LOL. 25 years and counting. Gotta love Oracle dead horses.

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rdwing@reddit

This is the way. Being a consultant is an entirely different billing strategy to a straight hourly rate one might make working internal.

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ErikTheEngineer@reddit

> finding good help is hard. Really hard Ours is the only profession that doesn't have any education standards or accreditation (beyond vendor certs) to signal competence. It makes it so difficult to (a) find good people, and (b) make yourself known as a good competent practitioner. I would be all for a professional organization if it meant some improvement on this front beyond "hey, I know a guy..." Even if being a licensed IT practitioner meant things like mandatory continuing education and an enforced code of conduct, it would be a million times better than the cowboy stuff we have going on now. The other problem is that IT consultants are like plumbers or electricians. Yes, the plumber charges me $200 an hour to snake my drain or fix leaks, but that's because they're not working 40-hour weeks usually and have huge fixed expenses to cover. I know there are some people that make the permanent contractor life work, but you have to be comfortable with constantly hustling for work and always having one foot out the door when you parachute in somewhere.

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greenie4242@reddit

Well said. People don't realise that they're paying for an hour of work, but the contractor may have spent hours or days reading up on your issues off-site, and if he's a home-labber he'll understand that rushing things can make everything worse in an instant. Some jobs also require certifications and training which can be expensive for contractors who don't know if they'll even need them after the current job is sorted. When I travelled all over the place IT contracting, I'd come across all sorts of different random systems every day and had to know a little bit about all of them. "Jack of all trades, master of none" is the saying. I'd ask as many questions as seemed relevant about the job beforehand and read up on it so I didn't look completely clueless upon arrival at the workplace. I could often diagnose very basic things that permanent support staff missed, because they operated on the "it was working yesterday" principle but I was operating with "I've never seen it working so need to start from scratch" which took longer but didn't skip steps. Knowing which end of the problem to start at helps too. Sometimes I'd diagnose things over the phone because five other clients had the same problems that week after an update, but other times I'd miss basic things because I didn't have a password to their router and had to make do with what was at hand. A clueless contractor can easily cost big bucks if they rush things and make a mistake, so it's better they take time to understand the problem before touching anything.

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DigiSmackd@reddit

>Some jobs also require certifications and training which can be expensive for contractors who don't know if they'll even need them after the current job is sorted. 2 things: 1- We all understand the theory of "paying more because the guy has the knowledge and experience to do the job right". But I'd argue that padding hours isn't how this should be represented. If you're charging more because of a factor - then charge at a higher rate and note that. Otherwise, it's disingenuous. 2- The same is true for the "certifications and training" piece. If the job requires more - then you explain that, show that on the invoice, and charge appropriately for that. Just padding on 7+ hours to a 1hr task is just lazy and asking for the kind of distrust that OP is expressing. OP is simply asking for transparency, honesty, and competence.

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greenie4242@reddit

Original Op said he didn't hire the consultant, it didn't come out of his budget, and he didn't know of any payment deals being made. When I was in IT consulting, if a job was in the city it was difficult to get there (usually no parking nearby, need to catch train or bus while carrying large toolboxes, printers, computers etc) so I arranged a minimum 3 hours payment. No point spending half an hour there and back for a 15 minute job. Going to the effort to get there, and knowing they were paying for at least 3 hours worked out great for me and them, because they could give me a laundry list of large and small issues to sort out, and I wasn't rushing to fix them. If 3 hours was a stretch I could usually extent to 4 or 5 hours (depending on my schedule). This consultant we're discussing may have had a similar deal, be on-premises for 3 hours minimum per call-out, but we just don't know.

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DigiSmackd@reddit

Sure, I can understand that. But that's still different than what OP seems to be suggesting. OP is still at least *seeing* the bill (he said he was "billed for 8 hours" so OP is involved in payment/billing in some way. If you've got a 3-4 (or whatever) hour minimum, that's fine. You make those terms clear ahead of time. Not uncommon for on-site assistance. I've worked with some that required at least a half-day minimum (4 hours). But again, that's very different than showing up to a 1 hour job and milking it for 4 hours (regardless of your minimum or not). If OP's company legitimately only has 1 hour worth of work for someone who's billing a minimum of 4-8 hours, then yeah, there's a bigger problem on OPs end. But I took OPs complaint to mean that the issue was more than the work the consultant is doing is happening at an unusually slow pace and often still resulted in a task not being completed (the latter of which removes the possibility of OPs company not having more/enough work for the guy to do)

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Mr_ToDo@reddit

And while it's implied here, that huge billing also includes overhead other then the techs time. Odds are they see a fraction of what they bill But getting not only on demand but on demand when they want it is not supper common either. A lot of MSP style companies eventually end up at a place where you get basic support and advanced support gets scheduled in. I think responsiveness is one of the reasons some companies go with small, less skilled, MSPs and just take the cost to the bottom line(or maybe flexibility in contract types) But that's the great thing about hiring contractors. They're on contract. You don't like them then find a different one. If they want the stability of being employed with the company they need to be an employee(Or be sticking you with a better contract that insures years at a time). And if you're their only client they have some issues they need to look at.

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j2thebees@reddit

So many stories come to mind. You only have the authority you have, until you possibly earn more. I was once warned not to “slaughter sacred cows” at a place where lifers had friends and relatives working for decades. On quality of work, my brother staffed IT years ago and ran a bunch of contractors. He said, “Don’t give me the middle aged team player coming in working 35 hours straight, ‘We are gonna get this thing done’”. He said, “Give me the kid that was up all night gaming, hadn’t had a bath in 3 days, with a donut in one hand, pounding a keyboard for 45 minutes with the other. Kid hands me an invoice on his way out the door and the problem is solved!” - Sadly, that’s rarely anyone’s attitude or reality. I’ve brought this up in a lot of old-guard meetings as a “joke”, and I personally want the kid to take a shower with some frequency, but skill weighs heavier than anything. It’s hard to get old-guard folks to think about anything but hours. For instance, if my guy does 2 weeks work in 6 hours, that’s better than someone who milked a lock for 2 weeks. But I digress, … it’s hard to get rid of your guy due to his relationships in the company. Best you can do is probably hope he has a genius on staff that will take over your company’s account, or find a genius somewhere else and “ease” them in on a job or two (carefully). If a project (say rendering video for company social) comes into play, which is 100% out of the contractor’s wheelhouse, this might be an opportunity.

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Few-Dance-855@reddit (OP)

Solid advice - thank you!!

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Due_Neighborhood_226@reddit

It's pretty simple- whoever assigns the jobs to him should know that networking jobs go to you, anything else can go to the contractor.

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i_am_weesel@reddit

so many people didn't read the actual post. IT is done.

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EmbarrassedLeg4505@reddit

It’s not YOUR money - stop pretending it is. You’re paying for his years of experience, you want to micro manage and complain then hire someone out of college. You’re paying for peace of mind, being able to go on PTO and not have to worry, etc etc

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Entire_Device9048@reddit

Review the bill and question the fees listed against deliverables received. If they didn’t deliver then don’t pay.

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Fatality@reddit

Query the bill, ezpz people did it to my MSP all the time.

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Coupe368@reddit

This sounds like a problem that I don't get paid to fix. Contractors always cost more, that's becuase they can be dropped at anytime.

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HoochieKoochieMan@reddit

MSP management is the bane of modern IT. Talk to your account rep. Review cases, and discuss escalation resources - does the msp have an infrastructure team that could do the specialist work more efficiently, that this guy can’t? Review time to resolve, first touch resolution, and other KPIs. Are there categories of tickets that point to systemic problems or user training gaps? Finally, if your MSP can’t or won’t support digging into these questions, maybe it’s time for a new one? Talk to your boss, and discuss the problems, the cost and risk to the company, and the effort it will take to improve the situation. It will take your time to get a handle on this, and maybe that means a compromise on when other things get done. Be transparent about it, but managing the issue the way to make things better. It’s also the path from Sysadmin to IT Manager.

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redex93@reddit

In Australia we have a saying for this, which I use regularly in a similar position as you. "Don't take the piss", like "Hey dude I say you charged 30 hours to fix what should have taken you like 2, fair enough it may have been a bit hard going in blind but I kinda feel like you took the piss on this one, I know you're a good experienced worker so I'll always make the time to help answer any questions you have, because if we'd just chatted for 10 minutes probably could have had this sorted a lot quicker".

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No_Criticism_9545@reddit

At 150 people you can have a second person at the IT department to help you....

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wayofthelao@reddit

Brutal, but this is the type of stuff I read when I need more motivation to study harder

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twhiting9275@reddit

“Someone competent……” Great, hire them then Next case

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Mysterious_Army8231@reddit

Where are you located ? I could either come review or recommend another msp? This sounds like a nightmare ! Since they have been engaged so long they should know your environment back to front

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thundersnake7@reddit

What are some of the things he can do that you can't? Someone can't know everything. You point out his technical weaknesses, but what are his technical strengths? Maybe that is what evens the scales. I'm not calling you out in any way. I just wanted to show you a different point of view if you hadn't looked at it that way.

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Anomalypawa@reddit

Unless he has broken a system or an infrastructure beyond repair I would slow down and learn from the man. Just not things down for now and be prepared as the person from the hiring side for cases where things break. It is not easy to be a contractor and charge high and still keep your work for long. The really bad ones are known by all and don't survive long. Respectfully ask questions and learn how he does what he does. I would even use this as a chance to build a relationship with him to get in with his contacts for down the line when u want to go out on things on your own

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apples_r_4_weak@reddit

I remember that story where an eng fix a machine using a chqlk and charge them for xxx amount. He can probably do it, but he wants to slow things down just because he felt his solution amounts to 8 hrs? I know several programmer friends who can do their task foe 3p mins but they erase and rewrite their code so they have something to do fornthe next 8 hrs, otherwise, they will be given task or will not get paid. Also, if yoh felt he's not worth it, why hire him?

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2k3Mach@reddit

Sometimes people don't think outside of the box. I picked up a side gig by accident as the MSP that was providing service to an animal clinic couldn't figure out an issue in almost a year and their fix was to reboot the server then all workstations. Took me 1/2 hour as I was just coming into this issue and actually did some research into the issue rather than believing it wsa to do with xx. Their issue was that their RRAS used the same IP range that the workstations used and the server was registering both DNS records into DNS. A workstation couldn't see the RRAS IP address and would drop connection to server, then soon after another, etc. Just saying, if he's a big help don't complain too bad. Some people just need to take a step back and open their mind to other options rather than "this should work" or "it has to do with this".

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RepublicNaive4343@reddit

I could record mend other MSPs in Minneapolis. Some are better than others. ALL of them have technicians who work on issues for hours and hours and remaining n unfixed. All of them. Even my favorite smartest techs get stuck on issues. I think you are discovering a secret truth of IT. Most issues have standard fixes but the ones that don’t sneak up on you, disguised as regular issues, and they take inordinate amount of time to fix.

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iSurgical@reddit

I’m not sure why people are being disrespectful to be honest and saying you’re jealous or whining. I am a bit confused though. Is he doing work that you could be doing or is he doing stuff that is above your pay grade/experience? If it’s the ladder, then you need to go to your boss and tell him that he is wasting money on someone that is not good at what they do and you could have better service for less money. Or let’s say he’s doing networking or something. You should offer to get the certification and then get a raise and get rid of him.

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IAnetworking@reddit

What is his hourly charge?

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bloodpriestt@reddit

Same question.

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desmond_koh@reddit

I am having a hard time figuring out what is going on here and what the problem is. If they "absolutely love him" then it seems unlikely that he is as grossly incompetent as you say. I mean, if he cannot solve people's problems then why do they love him so much? Or is it that he is friendly, amicable and decently competent (albeit not as competent as you) yet he makes more money than you who are more competent and it's frustrating because they also like him better? Familiarity breeds contempt and everyone loves the “new” guy or even just the “different” guy. And in-house IT tends to get dumped on and a semi-toxic relationship with their userbase develops over time. How many office workers would say something like "our IT sucks"? That gives you an idea of the relationship that often develops over time. My suggestion?? Start your own company, hire the contractor and your former employer can be your first customer.

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Obvious-Jacket-3770@reddit

Company that size, they love him because he's what they know and familiar. I worked in a company that was 180 when I started and 350 when I left. It was my boss, me (admin), and our help desk/dev at the start. That was later broken to 4 people with the dev doing dev and a help desk person. They loved the help desk/dev and the guy who was there before my boss and I, he was there forever and did enough to make everyone happy but never anything big or impactful that could be a negative in some way. So people loved him. When my boss was hired before the guy passed, and then me, we had to break a ton of things to fix the horrendous practices he used. They had a flat 192.168.1.x network for all servers, printers, users, and wifi. We had wifi barely accessible in most of the building, we had extremely aged systems, we had no UPS just a ton of marine batteries in series I believe, we paid a ton to an MSP to host a bunch of servers and we had no standard computer model let alone an image system. He was friendly so everyone loved him. As time went on that veil was lifted and people had a lot of negative things to say. Apparently him and our help desk/dev custom built their computers since they "needed" it, they built gaming systems and would game most of the day. At work. People will love the person until they won't.

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flecom@reddit

> we had no UPS just a ton of marine batteries in series I believe so it sounds like you had a battery plant... which is a UPS except usually better.... there's a reason telco's/utilities use them

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Obvious-Jacket-3770@reddit

For one server rack with 2 or 3 servers in it. Batteries also didn't work more than 50 seconds. They had never been replaced.

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flecom@reddit

>For one server rack with 2 or 3 servers in it. I have a battery plant at my house to run a couple APs, a switch, modems and one proxmox box... not sure how that matters >Batteries also didn't work more than 50 seconds. They had never been replaced. that's a obviously an issue, sounds like your guy wasn't maintaining things... but if he had UPS' with dead batteries they would not work either

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Obvious-Jacket-3770@reddit

He had to play Minecraft instead. That was more important.

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flecom@reddit

I thought I was replying to the shittysysadmin thread for a second hehe Should have updated adobe reader

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Obvious-Jacket-3770@reddit

And pay for WinRAR.

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MundaneWriting1616@reddit

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Silent_Dildo@reddit

I’m solo IT for SMB and it takes a lot for me to tap in the MSP. So be honest with yourself, if you’re tapping them in for “simple” problems you expect to be fixed within an hour is it that you think those problems are beneath you and refuse to figure them out because you can’t be bothered to be pulled away from doing nothing?

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northstar57376@reddit

You are the problem

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itmgr2024@reddit

God do you sound jealous. Find someone better, or shut up, or don’t take vacations.

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michaelpaoli@reddit

Good thing you're manager, so you can solve it! If he ain't worth it, find somebody else - or at least for that which he's not worth it. It's not like there's a grave shortage of good talent out there presently. Market is a bit soft, talent is out there, go find and "hire" - or, well, add to your available contractors. And do it now. 3 or 6 months from now, things could be different, and it could be damn near impossible to find sufficiently qualified person - or they may only be available for way higher cost than the current guy you're dealing with. So, hop to it!

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Obi-Juan-K-Nobi@reddit

Feel free to reach out to me for remote support items. I guarantee I can solve them in an hour. 🤣

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discogcu@reddit

Like most things in this sub , I gave up reading after the first paragraph.

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coldazures@reddit

I'll fix it in 7 hours mate, hit me up.

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Fire_Mission@reddit

Not your money, not your problem.

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HeligKo@reddit

Why worry about this? Seriously build the resume and figure out what you want to do next and use this place as a launching point into. If the bosses didn't care, there isn't anything to fix, but clearly you want a better experience. Do what you need to so you can find that.

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DJustinD@reddit

Automate him out of a job if you want. Up to you but he’s earned his keep there so personally I wouldn’t be so concerned about the cost.

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peteybombay@reddit

So, overall he is skilled, very well liked and in fact invaluable to you personally...but you are not happy because sometimes he can't fix an issue or takes longer than you would? You seem to be hung up on this one 8-hour invoice. How often does that sort of thing happen? I also ask this sincerely, but how long have you been a manager? It doesn't sound like you have any staff, so this **could** be an opportunity to try and guide a team member towards better performance. But a 30-year MSP veteran is different from a year 1 HelpDesk tech and not as likely to be appreciative your advice. If you go this route, I would tread lightly. Of course, you are well within your rights to demand whatever you want of your team, but as you mentioned, you could upset the apple cart, for something that to me just sounds mildly annoying. I am mainly thinking if he decides to leave, how long would it take you to train a backup? Is your management going to be as eager to bring someone else in if they feel you "ran him off"? Not having anyone else to help you seems to be a bigger deal vs. a tech that takes longer than I would like sometimes.

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pln91@reddit

Sounds like he spent hours troubleshooting a complex problem and laying the groundwork for a solution, and you swanned in at the last minute to polish it off and take the credit.

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Fwhite77@reddit

Find out how they chose him or how he got that contract, if by nepotism or nepotism by proxy then he has to stay. If not, I would say shop around for other vendors and try them out. Chances are in his contract he probably has a minimum of 8 hours or so per call, look into this and see if this can be negotiated. I ran into this before when a company was trying to break hourly pay into smaller increments, but the rule is if a call takes 59 seconds or 59 minutes, it is still billed as an hour, plus for any call it should be at least 4 hour minimum billed if they're a proper MSP/contractor.

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MidninBR@reddit

200 staff and I’m solo IT. We do have an MSP covering for me when I’m off. But still a lot. Keep logging everything that was done by you or him. It might be needed in the future.

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Ok-Bill3318@reddit

You oay for the time. Sometimes diagnostics is a process of elimination. If you think you can do better, do it yourself.

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Fast_Cloud_4711@reddit

The op is a person that calls me up. Ask me to custom develop a piece of software and telling me that it should be easy and it should be cheap.

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stufforstuff@reddit

The real issue here is did you have enough cheese to go with all your whining?

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Jadelizard247365@reddit

Clearly, you don’t know anything about contracting. A contractor doesn’t get paid by the hour typically he’s not an employee. He gets paid via a minimum standard amount. So the average contractor that I know even if he fix something in five minutes, he bills out for two hours minimum . It’s standard. Call an electrician and they will do the same. Especially if it’s a place like Massachusetts in Boston where there is zero parking minus garages and traffic is horrifying.

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moffetts9001@reddit

You say he “billed me 8 hours and didn’t fix the issue” but you also say “it does not come out of my budget.” Would you be happy if he was making less money but all other things are equal?

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Few-Dance-855@reddit (OP)

No I want the issue fixed.

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LastTechStanding@reddit

What’s the issue?

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moffetts9001@reddit

Okay, so the fact that he is “overpaid” is not the actual issue. Does he make more than you?

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uptimefordays@reddit

I don't know about you all but when I 1099 I bill in minimum increments of time for house calls. If something takes me 15 minutes to fix, I'm still billing you for several hours, my contract outlines costs, it's not like they're a secret. It covers both research time and discourages endless "quick question" type follow up work.

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grumpyfan@reddit

A similar perspective from the other side. I was working a fixed price contract with a very large cellular network company in the U.S. a while back. My job responsibilities were very narrow and my access even moreso. My actual work hours were probably less than 10 hours a week but the company billed for a full 40 every week. I tried repeatedly to get more coverage for the project and software I was hired to work with, but it never went any further. I got a lot of resistance from the other teams to “stay in my lane”. So, I went about doing my job for more than 6 months. Sad part was to watch the company go thru some layoffs on other teams of full time employees who were actually doing work. Eventually the contract came to an end and we parted ways. It’s just a sad reality of how big businesses sometimes operate very inefficiently.

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VNJCinPA@reddit

I had this scenario before, and I was always cordial but simply made his work disappear by doing it. Once they realized they didn't need him because of me, they stopped using him. Then I asked about it and requested a raise, which they doubled from my ask. It's the simplest way to remove the issue; make it no longer needed.

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Site-Staff@reddit

Become a contractor as well and make what he makes.

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Time_Turner@reddit

Yeah, it's that simple. Just start your own business, deal with having zero clients, market yourself and try to convince your current boss/company why they should stop benefiting from your way employment and should rather deal with invoices and contracts to keep you on.

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eighto2@reddit

Paying a contractor is cheaper than paying an employee. No managerial/hr overhead, no payroll tax. This is corp money not your money. Even if you saved the day and figured it out in an hour your employer will never return that savings to you in the form of a raise.

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8stringLTD@reddit

I see a few different things here: 1. When outsourcing vendors, someone has to manage them, always treat is as a project and part of that is measuring deliverables and holding them accountable for the deliverables. I would never approve an invoice for work not finished. not sure if this is on you or your manager? 2. this is also a good opportunity to learn from them, I used to get so frustrated in a previous job from the "citrix expert guy" we used to outsource high level work to because he was billing like $200/hr, till one day it clicked, I'm not mad, I'm jealous, then I changed my angle with him and invited him to lunch and just asked for some general advise as to how sell my skillset better, Im sure I do consulting for some clients whom their own IT department hates me, ultimately I don't care because I'm billing some nice hours, however I do finish my work properly and meet deliverables, and have the proper documentation to back it up and cover my ass.

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Cmjq77@reddit

I mean, the simplest answer is to get a second contractor and test them out. It’s not a marriage. The harder answer on you would be to make them tier 1, have them come in and do simple stuff and you do the harder stuff.

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silentdon@reddit

If it's not coming out of your budget, you can either let him do his work, don't try to figure it out yourself, and pass on the invoice. If the boss wants to spend less money, they'll find someone else

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ZathrasNotTheOne@reddit

So tell the contracting company you want someone else. Fire him. Get someone who is “competent.” Don’t get me wrong, terminating someone is never fun, but you have a responsibility to the company, and if he’s not doing what you expect, replace him with someone who will. That’s the perk and risk of being a contractor, good money, but you can be replaced with no notice. If he’s not doing what you need, then as a manager, you should replace him with someone who can

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lordjedi@reddit

> He billed me 8 hours and didn’t fix the issue and I’m basically doing the work anyways. You're kind of emotional on this. Keep it to this. He billed you 8 hours and didn't fix it. You fixed it. Don't pay. Tell accounting that the invoice is not approved because he didn't fix the issue. In short, let him bill all he wants. If he doesn't fix the issue, don't pay. Make him justify the work that he's billing for. Check the notes on the tickets (you are keeping tickets, right?). Make sure you're adding your own notes to the tickets.

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cousinralph@reddit

I had a similar situation. We used one tech at a MSP who was very friendly with staff and sociable but also tried to bill me 6 hours to reinstall Windows on a single desktop. The billable rate was more than the desktop itself. It normally only took 45 minutes (most of that computer think time) thanks to a great automated imaging process. He might have thought I didn't review our bills and descriptions carefully. I got most of the billable time credited back and had that particular contractor banned from the premises for his lack of ethics. I let his boss and my boss know why. After a while he was forgotten, until he showed up after I quit for a sys admin job interview. He....didn't get it.

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TheDeaconAscended@reddit

I’m in the position of your contractor. I have a day job working for a major media company but have some leftover clients when I worked for an MSP. There is one that I charge the friends and family rate as I used to manage their solution for like 20 years. They keep asking me to work on stuff outside my expertise and while I get it done it will take me longer to do so. I keep pushing them to use someone more appropriate but they seem resistant to the idea. While the money is good I would rather work on something I am comfortable with.

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Centimane@reddit

If you're really worried about the numbers, switch to paying for fix instead of hours. E.g. dont offer $100/h for as many hours it takes. Estimate it takes 4 hours and offer $400 for the fix. If they fix it faster they pocket the difference, if they take longer it doesn't have unforseen impact on your budget, and if they do nothing they dont get paid. I can understand the frustration when they dont fix it. If I called a plumber to fix a leaking pipe, and they billed me 4 hours of work and I still had a leaky pipe I wouldn't be impressed. But expect that if you go this route they'll turn down jobs they think are lowballs.

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JimmySide1013@reddit

No way in hell would I let a client estimate how much time it’s going to fix something and then pay me for what they think it’s going to take. That’s absolutely insane.

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Centimane@reddit

As long as they're upfront I dont see the issue. If the contractor doesn't like the number they can either: * negotiate it * turn it down But it does put more mental load on the contractor (they have to worry about if a job is worth it or not), so it could come with frustration. However since the contractor has already been doing work with them they'll have better context for making their own time estimates. It wouldn't work so well if it was the first interaction though, because the contractor wouldn't know what the environment is like.

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persiusone@reddit

Either hire someone else willing to work in those conditions or move on. Maybe he would have to try and fix so much stuff if your system was more resilient, which is also a cost consideration- but one you should consider given your staffing limitations..

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gangaskan@reddit

Welcome to contract work. Every second is accounted and a minimum time as well.

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shanlec@reddit

Hire me for a modest wage, i will figure out anything you need :)

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mrdeadsniper@reddit

Contractors get paid much more per hour than employees. Because you have lots of protections as an employee, including a minimum number of hours. This guy has specialized knowledge of your systems, and is available on demand. It's a valuable resource. You or your company could find a new contractor and never give him another penny. So yeah. He is going to charge a high hourly rate.

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lildergs@reddit

Is his pay coming out of your budget? If not I'd just let things be.

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Few-Dance-855@reddit (OP)

Prob the best advice 😂 I don’t care about the budget I care about my time tho you know. If I’m buying for soemthing to be fixed to give me time back in my day and I still lose that time it sucks.

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Sushigami@reddit

Meh, especially if it's larger or impersonal company that you don't shiv a git about - good on the contractor for ripping off the company.

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Downinahole94@reddit

Can I moonlight for you? Or is this a msp situation where they hold the data , admin passwords, and so on.

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lildergs@reddit

The other thing to consider is that if everyone likes the contractor you're gonna be seen as the guy that booted him and now has extra work to do. If it's not SUPER broke, don't fix it.

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SartenSinAceite@reddit

Aye, let upper management be the angry guys who ask for a change. Shift the blame away from yourself.

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DankPalumbo@reddit

If you want, DM me. I'll give you some advice. I'm a principle of an IT MSP since 2009 and have been a part of staff augmentation and project management/solutions engineering for the last 10 years.

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Eastern-Payment-1199@reddit

i hate incompetence as much as the next person. but you have to remember that this guy uses that money to feed his family. i would find things that he does consistently bad, get data on it, and ask him how we can work together so he doesnt keep doing it. or just get a few tickets if it’s hard to get a lot of ticket data and get the ttr on a few tickets to spotlight the issue to collaborate on a solution together. if u and him r at an impasse, bring it to leadership from the angle of: this issue needs to be resolved, and not, this incompetent and overpaid fuck needs to be fired.

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wrt-wtf-@reddit

Just give him jobs in his area of expertise.

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assador365@reddit

He probably bills the full day which could make sense. An professional is not a Uber that makes his money on daily gigs

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Goodabye@reddit

If I had to guess, you hold 0 power over any of this. Maybe you should talk about it to the person that holds that power and decides if they pay or not the contractor. IMO, looking for tools to optimize the work and save time is always better. Contractors should be the last option and used only when you don't know what you're doing or in your case when going on vacation. Don't throw out the contractor until you either find a new one or get the budget for a junior who could take over tasks that are easy but time-consuming.

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subconscious-subvers@reddit

Out of curiosity, how much does he charge per hour?

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ClumsyAdmin@reddit

>he has liek 30+ years of experience This means absolutely nothing. I've met very junior people that could outperform people who had 30 years of experience. Experience is not created or learned equally.

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wrt-wtf-@reddit

Experience knows what rabbit holes not to go down.

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MuffinsMcGee124@reddit

You need to hire another IT guy. We had 3 in our department when we were 150 employee size (we also had 15 locations)

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Helpjuice@reddit

You should be doing contract performance reviews, what was the status of their review? If it was not meeting expectations then fire them immediatly and find someone else. Though, you need to stop using contractors as management fill-ins and hire an actual employee to do this.

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wrt-wtf-@reddit

Or change the structure of payment to a deliver model on break-fix. X amount of time allocated or time estimates per item with decreasing increments… and so forth.

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reilogix@reddit

I sense exaggeration and a little hostility and maybe even a little jealousy. You asked how you approached this? That’s where I would start personally. The contractor you described quite literally could be me on some days. Whether it’s baking sourdough bread, or replacing the battery on my 2019 MacBook Pro, or cloning a production server to disperate hardware, sometimes I take forever, and I just suck. Don’t you sometimes? Other times, I absolutely nail it. I work for myself as a small one-man break-fix IT support company. I try to always bring integrity, honesty, and a friendly disposition. These things alone go a long way.

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wrt-wtf-@reddit

It also doesn’t take into account the other spinning plates you’ve had going as normal tasks for the business.

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wrt-wtf-@reddit

I’ll come and do an efficient nothing for you for 8 hours pay at full rate.

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The_Career_Oracle@reddit

This sounds like the usual gatekeeper of IT that likes to do thing their way so they get all the glory but don’t like it when someone competent shows up. Probably jealous he can command a higher salary, spend more time on things and doesn’t have to deal with the drama that is your organization and working along with/for you. This is why we contract. Go stfu and cry somewhere else.

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yotengodormir@reddit

You're projecting more than my Epson projector

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Available-Editor8060@reddit

Start looking for other contract help that has skills that complement the regular contractor. Shift some work to the new guy and you’ll be able to judge their skill and the fit. If the company loves the old guy, and without him things would slip through the cracks, you may need to approach management from a business continuity angle. No company should be so dependent on a single resource for a role that could bring everything to a standstill if they’re not available.

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R0B0T_jones@reddit

look at other cheaper contractor options. you dont have to tell him you are using other contractors, just phase him out.

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longlurcker@reddit

I would hire a Jr admin and shadow him and sell it as succession planning.

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serverhorror@reddit

Trust and reliability beats cost, until it doesn't. Do you want to get rid of him? Fire him. Do you want keep him? Keep him. Best you can do is to not assign certain tasks in the first place.

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arctic-lemon3@reddit

Sounds like the guy is generalist and had a problem with a specific issue. You could just hire a larger MSP that can provide more specialized skills. But honestly, there's some signs in your language that point to the guy being pretty valuable to the company. If you are his "golden piggy bank" then he probably knows that and will put your needs above any other contracts if required. Things like these: * Is well liked at the company * Is familiar and available enough to cover for you on vacations * Is trusted by the company * Is a nice person * Has a lot of experience, both in IT and with the company Are very, very, very valuable. Sure, you could try to optimize with specialists, but don't count on getting better results.

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nullvector@reddit

Hire another contractor hourly for small jobs to vet them out. As they prove themselves, give them bigger jobs. Eventually you’ll know if what you’ve got currently meets the need or whether someone new is cheaper and works faster.

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molivergo@reddit

You want to inherit more work? You want to find an alternative solution that will be scrutinized? You want people to second guess your work? Then get rid of this guy.

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patGmoney@reddit

Suggest to your management they pay him on a formula such as average hours per month based on the previous 12 x half that average. He may go away? Wouldn't an MSP charge about $100 x 150 seats but be held accountable?

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Sushi-And-The-Beast@reddit

What was his task that you assigned him to do?

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Crazy_Hick_in_NH@reddit

Seriously? This isn’t about feelings. It’s about expectations, results and costs associated with both. If said contractor is good at some things, but not all (well duh), direct him to focus on those instances and find another resource (or do it yourself) for the things he’s not so good at. Also, if this is a one time thing or it happens once in a while, not sure what the concern is? Nobody is that good at everything…no human being anyway. At one point in the distant past, sure, but now? Hell no…far too many variables and nuances to be a SME at all things IT. Good luck (and thank your lucky stars you have a reliable resource). Far too many believe they have a rockstar among them…until the tour starts and they experience an “oh shit” moment.

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1a2b3c4d_1a2b3c4d@reddit

As a former IT Manager I tell you this: The solution is to find another contractor or company that may have better rates or better SLAs to help you. That will then help you in two ways. One, you have a different company to lean on when you need stuff done ASAP, and two, you can use this new company to help motivate the old company to improve its delivery of solutions. However, keep in mind that a new company with no experience in your environment may take significantly longer to come up to speed with everything, resulting in a longer turnaround time simply because they are unfamiliar with your network. I think the trick here is to work with the old company, explain your dissatisfaction with their delivery times, and work to create SLAs and other process and procedure documents to help expidite solutions. If they are billing hours, but you can't see work being done, that is fraud. Now that's a giant leap forward, and you don't want to push that. You want to push them to deliver more in a timely manner.

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iBeJoshhh@reddit

Take your yearly cost of paying him, and compare it to hiring a person full time, and pitch it to your boss.

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AtarukA@reddit

Is his name Soham Parekh?

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Quick_Care_3306@reddit

Sometimes, problems take a lot of research and testing to gather information about a problem. Once you have this information, you can narrow down the root cause and implement a solution or work around. Is it possible that his testing and research results allowed you to implement the solution?

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TechSOSnet@reddit

Contractors might appear to make more on the bill, but you forget all the taxes and overhead they have to cover themselves, which would otherwise be covered by the employer. Also, contractors need to charge more per hour to cover their downtime, compared to a full-time employee who has a consistent number of paid hours every week regardless of the workload. Contractors are only paid for the hours they are actually working. So it actually comes out to less for the individual clients, but it evens out when the contractor has multiple clients to bill from. It's like an IT timeshare.

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Candid_Ad5642@reddit

Suggest management hire you a sidekick instead As is you are a single point of failure for the company, what if you get hit by a bus, or offered a position as ... I used to say "bunny tester for heffner", but he's kinda dead, and it's not exactly PC anyway. I think you get the gist though, you're offered a fantastic job that you just have to take. What happens after your two weeks notice? Can the company get someone in and trained in any kind of useful timeframe? If you already have a sidekick that's partially trained and know the company, that story has a happy-ish ending

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GaijinTanuki@reddit

You hand wringing and whining over this is the only problem. He's paid by time spent not how many widgets he finishes. STFU and pay the guy. It's no skin off your nose for goodness sake. This is a fantastic confession of PEBKAC.

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higherbrow@reddit

Welcome to Jacks of All Trades. He sucks at some things. But it's cheaper to pay him to be good sometimes and suck sometimes than to hire specialists to do the work (in most cases). If he's more expensive than an MSP would be overall, and you want to shop the contract, talk to your boss. But the grass isn't always greener.

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shemp33@reddit

The issue is that you’re calling on him for outcomes but paying him by the hour. It doesn’t take long to figure out the incentive here. Do you pay a competent HVAC repair guy by the hour? Of course not. It’s a service call and 1000% markup on parts. And if he gets your air back on in 20 minutes, do you care? The VALUE of his service is that he got your air back on and that’s what you’re paying for. Fast forward to your situation. You need outcomes but are backed into a billing mechanism that doesn’t consider the outcome at all. To your point, he could work on something for 8 hours and not have fixed the issue. Or he could also work on something for 20 minutes and fix the issue. I say that to suggest this: hours aside, (they’re just the billing mechanism), are you getting what you’re paying for? If yes, then good. If no, then consider corrective action. Coaching, training, resetting expectations, switching to a new resource, etc. Hope this helps.

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Special_Luck7537@reddit

Pretty hard to expect perfection, particularly in this field. You may cause him to walk, and end up with someone worse. You gotta be able to forgive a fuckup while intra discipline, because nobody knows it all. Fwiw, I finally got someone to take the after hours superman load off my back and I didn't care if he would have spoken Latin and only knew the vmx os. I was actually able to take a vacation instead of a day here and there and getting beat out of vacation...

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puckdoug@reddit

An open conversation with your manager likely is needed if it hasn't happened before. You say "they love the guy". Maybe they are genuinely happy to pay him to do substandard work. Worth knowing. But you can still have a conversation about how to mitigate the risk/cost of non-delivery when something is important. Tactically, two possible options come to mind to slowly deal with the situation (both possible, not xor): \- Arrange for a second contractor as alternative. Give some work to each of them. Measure and compare. Ultimately build a case if it turns out he isn't delivering value for money. Diversification makes sense if only for risk management (e.g. guy wins the lottery and moves to Bali, etc.) which could be justification to start. \- Alternatively, stop paying for hours and pay for a job done with clear success criteria. This might be harder if you need your legal team to help adjust the contract template. However, it then allows you to say "do job X, confirmed by this working by this date". Then neither of you need to track hours and you pay if and when it's done. You'll still have the hourly contract for "just be around when I take a vacation" but for other odd jobs you can be more specific. Finally, maybe it's only your example, but for a 1-hour job it might be a case of 'less than 8 hours it's not worth my time to come there'. That should be explicitly agreed, of course, but you may find it hard to find a contractor who'll show up for a quick job or only a few hours of work because it truly may not make sense (pay doesn't offset cost to travel, invoice, etc.).

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roiki11@reddit

If he's a contractor then what keeps you hiring him? Just find someone else.

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SAugsburger@reddit

This. In the current job market I have like don't that there are other consultants with availability that might be better.

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mas_tacos2@reddit

What type of system work being assigned to the contractor? Is it focused on desktop support, networking, or server administration? Also, is the contractor expected to document their work, or is there a ticketing system in place for tracking tasks?"

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MistiInTheStreet@reddit

Make friends with him and have him paying you beer, let him know about your feeling or just enjoy !

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Grass-tastes_bad@reddit

If he’s genuinely not competent, then fire him? If your issue is he’s earning good money, forget about it. You very much get what you pay for in these situations, especially if it’s ad-hoc work.

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