How to save $150 a month by spending $2800

Posted by NoFliesOnFergee@reddit | talesfromtechsupport | View on Reddit | 39 comments

A little background; I'm a paralegal at a small law firm who is slightly more tech savvy than anyone in my office. About 9 months ago, my boss gave me a raise and a small reduction in my required billable hours so I could make IT stuff a part of my job. Overall, I like the new role and additional responsibility, but to be clear I'm not especially tech savvy, I basically set up hardware and people call me with their problems to see if I can solve it. Most of the time, I just have them call our third party IT company., I just know that the HDMI cable goes into the hole shaped like an HDMI cable

My boss, we'll call him Dave, is a wannabe hardass in an extremely not-hardass law firm and has been on a bit of a tear lately over IT costs. Dave is a lawyer. He's not an accountant or IT guy.

He's been micromanaging, sending me contradictory emails within minutes of each other (almost every 2 weeks he tells me to start looking for a new third party IT company and then recants within the hour), and becomes angry when he gets any pushback or suggestions whatsoever to his ideas

Last month, the big thing was the number of computers being serviced by our IT company. He gave me a list of ten computers that he wanted taken off service with our IT company. I mention that maybe we should keep a spare or two in case something goes wrong with one of the 75 other computers we have at the firm (Our IT company expressed this concern as well). He is not interested and tells me to "just get the fucking computers off service. I can't believe we're still paying for this bullshit." So I do. Every computer he listed is taken off of service. The firm saves about $150 a month in IT costs.

Fast forward about two weeks to yesterday:

An attorney's laptop died and needed to be replaced, and an offsite office had a similar issue with an attorney's desktop. I call our IT company to get two computers put back on service, but for reasons beyond my tech understanding, there were issues and it took almost four hours to get everything up and running as needed and out to the proper parties.

Here's the thing:

The firm charges $115 an hour for my paralegal work. They charge $0 an hour for my IT work.

The firm lost out on $460 in my billable time as well as $2400 for the two $300 an hour attorneys without working computers because the boss wanted to save $150 this month.

The best part? I'm not telling anyone. Not Dave, not accounting, not the partners. I don't care and it's not like any money saved will be used for future raises (I hadn't gotten one for about 3 years before the IT role came along).

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Xjph@reddit

I'm a paralegal at a small law firm who is slightly more tech savvy than anyone in my office.

Based on my experience doing IT for law offices the bar for this is approximately "able to operate a toaster".

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wiseapple@reddit

Start documenting his decisions and the costs associated. One of these days, someone is going to ask you about cost overruns and your documentation will be your saving grace.

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NoFliesOnFergee@reddit (OP)

I'm a BIG fan of CYA. I have a flash drive with all of his ridiculous emails in case shit hits the fan and he tries to blame me

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someone31988@reddit

Keep a backup of that flash drive because they can easily get lost or stop working.

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MoupiPics@reddit

As the wise man kevin fang once said, follow the 321 rule

3 copies, 2 medias, 1 offsite

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kaktusmisapolak@reddit

why are 3 copies needed instead of 2 and why are media types needed?

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Mr_ToDo@reddit

OK so I'm not sure about the origin of that whole saying or what its intentions were but my reason for starting with 3 copies minimum way back was because I was using removable drives and it meant I'd have one on site doing a backup, one off site relaxing, and one being transported to replace the one doing the backup. With 3 copies it meant that you'd never have all the backups in a single location. It also meant that if one failed or was bad and I didn't know it then I'd have two that were good and we'd only lose a day's work.

Two media types is probably just a redundancy thing. If you only put in the cloud and that gets shut down or the backups get corrupted without you realizing it then a second backup media would raise the chances of you recovering. If tapes are stored improperly and you don't know then another backup type would help too. A local copy also is a faster restore option then a remote one but I'm not sure if that saying cares about convenience

And off site would be about "what if fire". Although I personally might say 3,2,1,1 and add "at least one offline copy", what with how funky ransomware can be these days.

Really backup is all about cost vs return. What are you willing to spend vs the possible outcomes. 3,2,1 is fairly flexible but hardly the only way to run things and not nearly enough if you wanted to really be paranoid since there's always some way things can hit the fan where your chosen backup scheme has failed(My favorite thought on that front is ransomware that starts with files that haven't been touched in 6+ months, and at some interval moves that date forward slowly. How many people would be ready for files that have been locked down for 3, 4, 10+ months? Big companies maybe, but there's going to be a lot that just toss backups between one and 6 months. But is that off chance worth the extra cost?)

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caboosetp@reddit

Flash storage is notoriously more volatile than other forms for long term, especially when they're made on the cheap.

Flash drives are good for transferring files. They are not great for backups.

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Shazam1269@reddit

And they will also occasionally go through the washer and dryer and work just fine. IT is a mystery.

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K-o-R@reddit

Can confirm.

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himitsumono@reddit

But the computer says "no".

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Loudergood@reddit

I deliberately buy ones that claim to be waterproof at this point. Who knows if they actually are, but they've survived a few trips.

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coming2grips@reddit

If you don't have three copies you don't want to keep it

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Rapunzel1709@reddit

Please do not take that flash drive out of the office as that’s a data protection issue waiting to happen.

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alf666@reddit

"Printed copies in a safe deposit box at the bank" is better.

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highlord_fox@reddit

The best part? I'm not telling anyone. Not Dave, not accounting, not the partners. I don't care and it's not like any money saved will be used for future raises (I hadn't gotten one for about 3 years before the IT role came along).

Oh no, you should absolutely tell a partner pre-emptively before they start asking why you are several hours short this week on billable hours.

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meaniecrimepoet@reddit

Im looking for an IT job ask him to hire me lol

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NegativeStructure@reddit

My boss, we'll call him Dave, is a wannabe hardass in an extremely not-hardass law firm and has been on a bit of a tear lately over IT costs. Dave is a lawyer. He's not an accountant or IT guy.

is dave a managing partner? or is he just your direct supervisor? dave sounds exhausting (and dumb).

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creamybastardfilling@reddit

This will continue until someone above him finds out he’s losing money, or someone important is directly affected by his idiocy

Keep up the good work!

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NoFliesOnFergee@reddit (OP)

but if I report all this money that could be saved, they'll DEFINITELY reward me with a raise, right??

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Numbar43@reddit

No, because giving you a raise won't increase money saved as you already told them the information. Trying to bargain ahead of time and say you'll tell them valuable information about saving money if you get a raise, otherwise you'll keep it to yourself will not go over well.

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krennvonsalzburg@reddit

A raise, maybe not. But not all rewards are monetary; imagine if this got the other partners to tell Dave to shut the fuck up and stop micromanaging you, or even putting you under a more decent boss?

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