Career Advice - Am I being exploited ?

[sous2817]

Here is my advice to you.

Talk to management and tell them that you see the benefit this type of work does for the company and that you are really interested in doing more of this type of work. Then ask them where they can see this taking you with the company (i.e. other positions within the company), and ask maybe if they can help structure a "plan" for you to get there.

This serves two purposes. It shows that you are interested in doing what is best for the company, but at the same time you are probably not going to be content staying in the same position you are currently in. So they probably know if they don't offer you other options, you may shop your services elsewhere.

Very subtle, but could be an effective way of getting your point across without issuing any ultimatums or burning any bridges.

I second this approach. When I started in my current role, I was doing something non-Excel related, but tinkered with it quite a bit. After about 6 months I was the local "Excel expert". During my evaluation my manager asked me the "where do you see yourself in 3 years" and I told her that I wanted to created Excel-based solutions for our common office problems. She laughed and said "the company would never hire someone like that!". I fished around a little within the company and about 4 months later, I was pulled from being a billable staff to a non-billable position doing just what I wanted. Here it is two years and two promotions later and I couldn't be happier.

So the long and short of it is, in addition to doing all of these side projects, make it known that you could see yourself in that kind of position and work towards making it happen. Not sure how large your company is, but see if there's a similar role in IT or maybe as a business analyst position.

Good luck!

 

[Taul]

I am in a similar position, I generally get the "projects" to play with outside of my job role. They range from Excel spreadsheets, automating AutoCAD and generating web pages, none of which could be done by anyone else in the company (as far as I know). I do it for fun and to improve my own knowledge. It's something to do at home while my wife watches a rom-com on the telly.

At my age I'm not interested in career development (although continued employment would be good) so I generally remove my name and contact details from any document I produce, don't want the numpties asking for more!

If you are young-ish, adding your name is a good idea though, you may find your documents end up in other companies. Ex-employees spread them around like seeds in the wind.

 

[AMAS]

Paul-H I like your attitude . Keep up the good work. It is fun to learn new techniques (I guess that what Clark Kent felt when he learned he could fly) and use them to make your life (and others) more efficient. I guess that's what these forums are really all about. A bunch people helping each other out. It does feel good when you feel your talents are not wasted on mediocre tasks like getting a new high score on World of Warcraft (not that I ever did, but it was fun trying). Anyways, thanks everyone for sharing.

Good luck with all your day to day activities and remember the old motto:

"Work smarter, not harder" and my own personal one "its better to automate than to delegate"

AMAS

 

[Rasm]

wow - I get thirsty from just reading - what Pub we goin 2

 

[ClimoC]

I had a similar overall experience and 'career progression' to the OP - I started off simply doing some whizzy little sheet functions (Nesting 4+ layers, Index/Matchs that people had no clue about, conditional formatting etc).

By the Time I got 'handy' enough with VBA, my first job in London, I ended up writing Applications for scheduling and Lifecycle tracking.

When I was still being paid and only recognised as 'Data Entry' despite several requests for my renewing contracts to be changed, I put out my CV with VBA, VB, .NET etc on there, and within 2 months got a job in Soho as a VBA Developer (40k!).

Now I'm back at my old company, on a much more suitable salary, and am "The go-to guy" and people are far more aware of the power of what I can do.

So hang in there, and remember it doesn't hurt to float your CV out there.

Remember, especially in the Cities, If you can upskill or learn derivatives or have some Market/Finance experience (no, not Camden Market experience!) and get good with the Mathematical side of things as well as general object and sheet stuff, a financial institution pay circa £80k for a good Developer.

So much for VB being a 'dead' language... I was laughed at by the Pascal/PERL developers at my last job - but Managers were far more impressed by my ability to turn data into information than they were with guys who could pull x no. of records from a database...

 

[ClimoC]

Here is my advice to you.

Talk to management and tell them that you see the benefit this type of work does for the company and that you are really interested in doing more of this type of work. Then ask them where they can see this taking you with the company (i.e. other positions within the company), and ask maybe if they can help structure a "plan" for you to get there.

This serves two purposes. It shows that you are interested in doing what is best for the company, but at the same time you are probably not going to be content staying in the same position you are currently in. So they probably know if they don't offer you other options, you may shop your services elsewhere.

Very subtle, but could be an effective way of getting your point across without issuing any ultimatums or burning any bridges.

Agreed. My work were far more interested in what I could do when just using some 'common sense' as someone who wasn't a 'Legacy' staff member, I turned 60 manhours of manual data entry into 3 seconds VBA runtime.

If you can show a business case for your abilities, and show the managers bottom-dollar type stuff, they're always far more interested.