Posts made by tirendir

For the record, I'm not necessarily saying that SMBs are great and Enterprises are evil or anything absurd like that. I'm just more focused on the concept that operating SMBs well is difficult for a variety of reasons that are likely more complicated than just poor decision making (although that's definitely a much greater factor than in Enterprise, and probably the single biggest and easiest issue to point out). My take is essentially that everything about SMBs success or failure boils down to every decision having a far greater impact in SMB than it has in Enterprise, because the greater the scale, the more scale mitigates the impact of every decision. In my mind, it's a minor miracle when almost any SMB manages to successfully grow to Enterprise scale because it's immensely easier to fail as an SMB than it is to grow to out of the SMB space.

@scottalanmiller I think what we're really pointing at is that SMBs settle when it comes to staffing, a LOT. Enterprises often don't settle until they feel they have to, because they can afford to do so while SMBs I believe more frequently cannot. It's much easier to leave a position unfilled because of a specialized need when you have 2000 employees and we're talking 0.05% of your staffing unfilled in comparison to an SMB with 20 or 50 employees who is leaving between 2%-5% of their entire staffing empty. Scale mitigates the issues of leaving 0.05% of your workforce unoccupied, specialized need or not. Also, Enterprises will typically have the resources to pay someone else to do the job until they can fill it the way they prefer, or even still they may not even need it badly enough to do anything about it at all in a very immediate sense.

Just because SMBs hire a lot of people quickly doesn't mean that's a good thing, and I think we both agree upon that. SMBs take a far greater hit for not doing so than Enterprises whose scale mitigates the issue dramatically in comparison. As we've brought up earlier in this thread, just because there are people doesn't mean but a very small handful of them are actually good people for IT roles. SMBs lack the resources and as you point out, and also frequently the understanding about the value of good IT to ultimately pay them what they could be worth. So the good ones often move on quickly unless they find an SMB that affords an abnormally good workplace.

I would argue that SMBs struggling to hire talent may or may not be due to a process problem, as I would point out that a great many SMBs have no HR or hiring department at all. They usually can't afford such a luxury unless they farm those things out to a contractor. Then once again, they are kind of at the mercy of the skill and talent of said contractor. I would posit that a big part of the problem is that it takes a talented individual to size up another talented individual well. Numerically, the odds are against SMBs having the personnel required to do such things well in most cases. Sure anyone can spot talent, but figuring out how much talent they have will likely require at least a similar level of talent. Would you agree?

@dashrender said in Is Most IT Really Corrupt?:

@tirendir said in Is Most IT Really Corrupt?:

@dashrender Time costs money, and forcing 40 people to two or three printers costs a LOT of time when they're only printing five or six pages each, and they're all different pages for difference cases etc.. It's a time cost problem, not an ink or toner cost problem.

Huh - it's a time cost problem you say - lol, unless they are printing 4-5 pages like every few mins I don't see the issue. On a typical desktop printer, a page costs $0.25/ea or more. So those pages cost a $1 or more.
Granted I have to include the cost of printed pages from a big printer, My Konica department printer costs about $0.02/page all costs included (cost of machine/cost of paper/electricity/maintenance, etc) I don't think the $0.25 included all costs, but lets assume it does, that's still $0.23/page more on the desktop printers.

So, how much time did the user spend walking to the printer?

Even at $20/hr, the user would need to spend 3 mins walking to/fro to make the cost roughly the same.

40 people vs 2 printers (not all of the employees need to print like that) = a lot of not able to print at the same time, or a lot of standing around with not so trustworthy clients in their offices where their purses, phones, etc. are. I don't know if any of you deal with the public a lot or not, but our clientele are not to be trusted, as they have stolen from many of our employees before. Also, the cost for laser prints isn't remotely $0.25/print (we do use laser printers), though it's absolutely more than a big multifunction, I concur. We tried consolidating printers, it wasted a lot of time and money, because wasting 2 minutes a person per day X 40 X 5 X 52 = a lot of money wasted in useless labor. Only a little shy of 350 hours a year in wasted labor money. Not even remotely worth considering worth it in any way, because that's thousands of dollars in labor in a year that is 100% wasted.

@dashrender The fix would have run us some 10s of thousands of dollars, because the Host was setup on RAID5 with four drives prior to my arrival. We had a triple-drive failure on that Host, and the backups they were supposedly managing never actually happened off-site, and the on-site backups it turned out were scrambled so badly by the box they were being sent to on-site, that they were completely un-readable, meaning that the only fix they could offer was essentially a complete software-side environment rebuild from the ground with an on-site exchange orphaned from it's domain in that case.

The problem was largely terrible configuration, and the MSP never bothered to even attempt to do anything about it, advise on what a lousy config it was, or anything of the sort. The only reason we were able to avoid an essentially catastrophic trainwreck was because it so happened that I was in week two of being there, and I had setup a Server 2012R2 VM to tinker with in the environment. I had been working on putting it together as a replacement for the existing, sloppy file server we had that showed obvious attempts at reigning in the file sprawl and instituting better organization at least twice without success. Rather than try and go a third time on a Server 2003 VM that had had this attempted twice, I thought it would be smarter to setup a 2012R2 VM that we already owned licensing for. I ended up basically getting our environment functional enough to get by for a week by being creative while rebuilding the rest of the environment in pieces since the structure was still 2000 architecture, PDC and all (which was on the failed host and nowhere else).

At the time, my org was offering me 36K/yr, because I had zero Admin experience whatsoever, although I had well over a decade of IT experience. The quote we got was crazy. Suffice to say, we ditched that provider, and they were bought out not long after with little staff retention. In business terms, they were taking a significant risk on me with no Admin experience, but it turned out very much in their favor. I've been getting pay raises every year plus merit raises since I started, which has gotten me up to where I am now. Enterprises wouldn't give me a chance, but that's a different topic altogether.

@dashrender Time costs money, and forcing 40 people to two or three printers costs a LOT of time when they're only printing five or six pages each, and they're all different pages for difference cases etc.. It's a time cost problem, not an ink or toner cost problem.

@dashrender In my mind, a bench tech actually does tech work. Like troubleshooting issues that can't be done remotely, like a workstation that won't boot. You're not troubleshooting that from a few hundred miles away very well lol, someone has to put hands on that to do anything with it. It's difficult to maintain cost effectiveness except in particularly good SMBs with multiple spares sitting on site, and it takes more time to do a workstation swap managed by a clueless user versus a legitimate technician of just about any level. If they have any issues at all, it's burning vastly more expensive MSP time at over $100/hour minimum for direct support that isn't covered in a contract.

In my agency, we have about 40 printers on desks, and we buy them because it was enormously expensive to try and pay for those to be supported (though our large multi-functions are all rented and contracted for support from a printer company). Sure the users can change paper and cartridges themselves.. and that's about it though, lol. They don't understand enough about printers to troubleshoot them (it's not their job, which I can understand to a point). Outside of IT, there are exactly zero people in my organization that would be remotely comfortable disassembling part of a printer to replace parts. Desk printers suck, and they're tedious as hell to support, or expensive as hell in our experience. Certainly not necessary in many organizations, but even without highly paid staff, it's just WAY too expensive to try and funnel that much printing through a few big printers.

Also, I'm early 30s and I've been at my current org for about five years @Wirestyle22.

For me, benefits don't cost us anywhere remotely close to 25K/yr, it's more like 15K/yr. My organization was paying about 60k/yr rate for maintenance and management of the entire environment between my predecessor and when I was employed, and that was the best option available from any MSP within 150 miles. The month I started, we had a major server failure (host failure) that nearly shut the company down for a full week and change. We quoted costs for having MSPs help us, it was (at the time) almost a full year's pay for me to pay for the least expensive MSP offer we got to resolve one major failure. It turns out, there were far better MSPs available, and they all cost substantially more to contract than what I'm paid to do what I do, and our cost savings are still much greater yet for MSPs to do what I have from a project standpoint in rebuilding the entirety of our IT infrastructure over the past few years.

My organization still requires a security officer (I'de argue that honestly, most SMBs past a very small size really should have some sort of security post of some form or other), so they would need to pay like 80%-100% of my salary to someone regardless.. but we as an SMB save about 10K-20K per year on IT after hiring a second individual for our internal IT by not hiring an MSP. The MSP argument only makes obvious sense if you ignore all the other roles that IT makes sense to do in an SMB. Reality often doesn't bare that kind of division of roles and responsibilities out well, so it's kind of a theoretical benefit in many cases. That however, isn't to say that I don't agree that a lot of SMBs really should be contracting out all of their IT, my argument from the beginning has been that it's just bad advice to suggest that Every SMB should contract an MSP because it's cheaper/better etc., because it quite simply isn't the case. Being an exception to the norm helps make that more apparent of course, and I realize I'm an exception in a myriad of ways. I realize though that I'm far from the only one, and my issue is only really with the argument using the word "always".

If my organization could get better benefits from an MSP, it's the MSPs fault for not making themselves easily accessible enough for my organization to detect them. I doubt there are or would be many that could offer nearly the value they receive from me, but I'm certain some MSPs might be capable of offering superior results in some ways... but at how much greater cost? We've basically spent about 340k to manage and administer the environment for about five years, while replacing and upgrading everything from top to bottom (literally, all the things) for about 50 employees including the physical hosts, server software, switches, wiring, phone system, all workstations, our entire environment's implementation as well as how and with what we do our security. There are few MSPs using what we do at my organization, which is fine. However, they're taking advice from me more often than the opposite where I am. Again, I realize I'm very much an anomaly though.

@dashrender I'de like to know how MSPs can magically find people to do the same job (in this case, referring to bench-techs) for less money than an SMB can, just because they're MSPs. If they're dedicating an employee to an organization at the SMBs location, I don't see why there is any reason they can do anything cheaper than the SMB who can grab any joe local for the same cost at least.

How is a remote MSP going to find someone in a place they don't have any physical presence to pay a pittance to do bench work and have even the slightest inclination of getting anyone worthwhile? It's a very confusing notion, because it sounds kind of ridiculous. Lets hire a complete stranger in a place we've never been and do it cheaper than the local company who knows the area and the options available from the get-go. There's extremely few scenarios in which that's likely to work out that way except in extreme off-chances. Yeah, no. The local SMB already knows the going rates for bench work in the area, they know where to find local bench techs, and they already have access. Why would they look at what amounts to effectively a foreign entity without experience in their area to know their market, lol? You don't buy real estate that way, or pay for skilled tradesmen that way for most other things, so why is IT different somehow? The alternative for MSPs is to get a tech locally and try and move them, or get them to move on low pay which is either much more costly, or highly unlikely. There's really no way a remote MSP is likely to hire a local tech and move them on a local bench tech sort of pay grade to where an SMB is out of area and do it for a lower cost than a local SMB or MSP can hire local talent. Hiring a day laborer to do bench tech work is likely going to either cost more to pay another, local MSP to borrow a portion of their labor force, or it will involve hiring people they don't know and can't ensure they complete the work properly, resulting in a negative experience for the SMB with the MSP knowing that most folks working in IT aren't that good at it, so odds are very much in favor of that working out poorly.

Regarding a slew of specialists, the problem is that there are not that many situations in which the ratio will actually work out in reality the way folks keep suggesting. Why wouldn't in-house IT be able to automate the generic and interchangeable functions just like an MSP does? Specialization isn't required, so there's no need for specialists to do that as we've already covered, right? Or here's a better argument, why would an SMB have any desire or need to pay for a bunch of specialists continually when they can pay them for contract work to automate all of the generic stuff and pay a single generalist to handle the odds and ends? Is there some mistaken understanding about how SMBs need continuous tinkering with their systems like Enterprises? They don't. If say a dozen specialists can take 15 minutes a day to handle an environment, why can't a single generalist spend their week without the MSPs profit margin built in to do the same things along with some other things? We've already established there's basically no benefits provided to an SMB by specialists most of the time except debatably helpful efficiency to the cost of a profit margin for the MSP; so why should an SMB feel the need to pay for the MSP to make money off of the services they offer to an SMB if they can get the job done for less by employing a less skilled individual to handle the same routine tasks along with some others?

As far as job sharing, that's precisely why I said that SMBs require generalists. There will likely never be a time or place where SMBs don't need generalists (not just in IT), and an IT generalist is a cost-saving factor that no one who has posted here has seemed to enter into their calculations. If you try and consider SMBs in Enterprise terms, you're quite likely doing it wrong, because SMBs aren't generally like that until they reach a certain size. They're entirely different types of entities whose similarities largely end at the point where you acknowledge that they are businesses of different scale. You can't run an SMB like an Enterprise, because SMBs don't possess the scale to staff like an Enterprise. It's extremely rare in most fields that it is cheaper to hire a contractor than it is to utilize your own staff. The cost-savings only ever comes when expertise is required, or regulation requires typically. The on-staff IT in an SMB is probably not only doing IT, you're correct. That is precisely why the MSP saves money argument is wonky, because it fails to account for the other tasks that that in-house IT staff does in addition to the basic management and maintenance of the environment. Sure, one can make the argument that the IT staff may not be adequately managing the environment... but it's a may, not a will or a must. It's also entirely possible that they're bringing lots of added value over an MSP by doing other tasks that an MSP won't do at all, or will only do for added, cumulative costs that simply don't exist with on-site staff.

My organization would still need a security officer, and that security officer wouldn't be as good if they weren't also involved in/with IT. Paying an MSP for that wouldn't provide them what they get out of me for instance, even if they offered such a service at all, because I'm filling 2-3 different but related roles. Paying for part of three separate people's salary for one persons' job isn't necessarily going to mean saving any money. We actually have historically had exceptionally inexpensive MSP service offers just for technical services that were comparable to what my SMB offered me when they were deciding between on-site IT and MSPs. Most of the particularly "good" MSPs anywhere near us would not even come close to the other MSP offers we had or the organization's cost for me. Even though the MSPs were technically very capable, they wanted to do all sorts of things that were unnecessary for my organization that would make them immensely more expensive. Likewise, the cost even for the least expensive local MSP we could find to put a bench tech on-site was only slightly lower than doing it ourselves after benefits.. but we could have that bench tech do all sorts of other things that an MSP employee would not, so we get significantly increased value for only a minor cost hit.

@storageninja I'm saying that if there were enough good MSPs, I would agree with you. But there simply aren't enough of them, which means many of the realistic options for MSPs for most organizations aren't much if any better than the lousy SMB IT Scott's been talking about for a while. Reality doesn't realize a world where good MSPs are available to everyone in practical terms. The good MSPs aren't large enough, plentiful enough, or spread out well enough to service the vast majority of organizations that need good IT services is how it seems to work out ultimately. That's the reason there is so much meh or even poor IT going on, imo.

SMBs can't replace people as easily as Enterprises, because most of the best talent is gone before they can get to them. We've kind of already covered that that is the case just a few posts ago. Further, while their technical needs aren't as expansive as those of Enterprises, they require a LOT more variety of their staff on the average than an Enterprise will. SMBs Need generalists, because they don't have the scale of an Enterprise that can/will chop up as much of the tasks in their environments as they can into specialized roles.

It's absolutely correct to state that honesty and technical skill aren't in any way mutually dependent, but they are both required in both Enterprise and SMB settings to different degrees. SMBs have less internal oversight because they frankly typically don't have the time and resources of Enterprises to mitigate the effects of people sucking at being good people. The trust requirements of SMBs seems to generally be higher than for Enterprise where they can build safeguards into everything, and then have safeguards for their safeguards, etc. The problem is getting that much trust in someone who is also competent enough to get the job done. It's most certainly not a simple endeavor, or SMBs would have a much easier time doing it consistently. The problem is, as Scott seems to have suggested, that SMB needs are often pretty generic and interchangeable... and yet the best solution is to hire an entire firm of specialists and pay the price for an organization full of specialists for generic and interchangeable needs? what?

Sure SMB needs aren't generally that complicated, and yet there are still countless organizations who seem to struggle to secure good outside IT services. There's a gap between the tangibility of service availability from good MSPs to most organizations, and what most organizations can actually see is available. Plus, as this thread is addressing, the people factor makes things far more complicated when there are all sorts of individuals who are happy to participate in shady dealings for their own benefit. The problem is and always has been people, and it will continue to be in all likelihood.

Most people aren't cut out for IT, and I don't even necessarily mean from a technical perspective. The level of trust required for IT to be good is just not something that some people are able to handle well. Then add on the technical skills and expertise required, and the type of thinking required and there just aren't that many people left who are well suited for the job once we get to the end of the assessment. MSPs are a stopgap for that, since they can as Scott said: mitigate those things and hire more specialists to do a better job. However, if as you suggested Storageninja, most SMBs have pretty basic needs.. why would they need specialists once their systems are set up? It doesn't take a specialist to maintain a basic system, it's not that complicated right?

@scottalanmiller It sounds like we may to a degree be talking about different things, which is probably my fault for not clarifying. I was referring to the phenomenon of individuals (in management especially) passing off responsibility to anyone/everyone they can, thereby typically insulating themselves to failure somewhat. I agree that those doing the total opposite of what they're hired/paid to do is just mind boggling, and I can't say I've really ever seen that happen more than once by any individual outside of IT either. I mean, I've run into some REALLY shady salespeople, including some who were all about trying to sell the absolute most (insert item X here) that I could possibly afford, and then some if I would let them. It's not unheard of, but those sorts of people don't last very long in that role at all in my experience outside of IT.

As far as underhanded or shady purchasing deals with kickbacks, I would agree that IT are pretty uniquely situated to participate in such practices far more so than the vast majority of fields. I'll also agree that SMBs get the short end of things in terms of quality personnel of course, because they don't have the scope of reach for talent recruitment, nor the vast resources that Enterprises typically do, so oftentimes the Enterprises will scoop up much of the best talent before SMBs ever get a chance. Such scenarios obviously would leave the SMBs with far less comparable or adequately capable talent to choose from, forcing them to have to make due with what they have left to select from. Ironically, the biggest issue with SMBs may well be Enterprises gobbling up much of the best talent, perhaps as much as the fact that SMBs may not be great businesses. It's difficult to tell if the problem is poor business management, or lack of remaining viable talent once smaller orgs get to the recruitment stage that is the underlying cause of many of their issues (probably some of both in most cases), but I digress.

@scottalanmiller Totally agree it's often really obvious in SMB, but to them it's not a question of whether there is theft or not even when they notice it, but whether the individual is worth losing over it. Enterprise minded people have this mistaken idea oftentimes that everyone is replaceable or interchangeable. SMBs don't have the luxury of such a silly notion, so when they detect theft they must weigh relative value where Enterprises often simply don't bother because they seem to think they don't have to.

I think we both agree that theft is never a good thing, and that anyone choosing to engage in theft automatically makes their value questionable. Just because Enterprises can hire the best doesn't mean they do, likewise just because SMBs obviously have the deck stacked against them doesn't mean they always get the worst either. The saying comes to mind: different strokes for different folks. Some of the best refuse to work for big Enterprises, while some absolutely refuse anything else of course. Increasing scale mitigates failure and success, it's not a one-way street.

@scottalanmiller It's ultra-common in management of any kind from every field of work, and every workplace I've ever spent any time at or around. It's the primary reason I discarded my notions of pursuing a college education in business management in my early 20s. There will always be someone higher up, and less responsible who is more than happy to pass their responsibilities onto whomever else they can. Enterprises in general of every field or industry are a fantastic example of that, as they consistently show what management bloat and incompetence looks like at every level. That's not to say that all Enterprises are horribly managed, but they virtually all seem to have some terrible managers and executives at various levels, working in positions they do not belong in. They benefit from better churn than SMBs because of more eyes, ears, and potential for expertise available to help detect lousy performance. They both access the same labor pools, with Enterprises simply having access to more of them than your average SMB.

It's also worth pointing out that like most with a well established career, you likely carry a significant bias, albeit I would suspect unintentionally. For instance, you or any MSPs you work with/for are highly unlikely to be called in to work for clients who are doing just fine. It's like talking to a car mechanic to find out what cars are good rather than bad. If all they do is fix broken stuff, why would they be an expert in knowing who makes very good solutions if they've never had contact with them and know they exist in the first place? What they do is fix broken things, so asking them what breaks often and what doesn't work makes a lot more sense to assume is a question they will have a fairly useful answer to. I'm not attempting to impugn your skills or understanding so much as point out that it's only natural that you might conclude that only IT has the issue if you've basically been working in IT virtually your whole career, as that is what you know well.

@scottalanmiller You used the key phrase in your response: desired results. While great success is generally pretty widely agreed upon, specifics vary widely because desired results vary widely from individual to individual. It's difficult to argue that everyone desires the same results, when that doesn't bear out as the case on a regular basis in reality.

In spite of the fact that great success is pretty widely acknowledged as such by most, the bar for success varies very wildly all over the spectrum, to the point that many people even consider what you or I might consider a failure to be a modest success. It's really not so black and white as essentially that desired results = yours or my definition of success when desire is such a subjective term. Just because you or I want a certain level or type of success doesn't in any way mean that the level or type of success that everyone wants is remotely identical, even though there is some level of commonality present in all likelihood.

Some like myself have no interest in what most consider great success, because I know what I want and don't want out of life. What most people would consider great success doesn't interest me, because corporate ladders and large multiples of dollar signs are of little consequence in my mind. I only need as much money as I need to afford the lifestyle I'm content with. Anything more is unnecessary and unworthy of the investment required to pursue it to me. Not saying that what you do or have done isn't successful Scott, far from it. However, that doesn't mean that if you were to deem my choices as unsuccessful ones, that you would be correct any more than if I said you were unsuccessful because I disagreed with your definition since success is defined as: The accomplishment of an aim or purpose.

@dustinb3403 I wish I could work from home more, but one step at a time.

@dustinb3403 I talked to some smart people and got some roadblocks sorted and solved at work. Also, I got a new chair for the first time in 4 years. ^.^

@scottalanmiller The one comment I would put forth in response is that "success" has various meanings to various people. What I consider success, you consider success, and any other individual consider successful is unlikely to coincide past a point. I dare say most would likely agree that Bill Gates is successful, but most would probably not likely suggest that attaining his level of success is remotely necessary to be successful either.

While asking how to take a journey from NY to LA and asking for advice, it's worth pointing out that there are a whole lot of ways to get from NY to LA. Just because your way works doesn't mean there aren't lots of other ways as well. Sure some may be less efficient, while there may also be some methods that are even more efficient. The question is how important the goal is versus the journey in my mind to the individual taking the journey. I do agree that the "they're already there so they don't relate" argument doesn't hold water at face value; however if you consider that of the myriad of methods and routes that exist for making such a journey, not all are accessible to everyone all the time for any number of reasons that may or may not be foreseeable from the start of the trek that make a particular plan unviable for many, then it makes more sense why such an argument has some merit.

It's dumb to ask for advice or opinions and then ignore them entirely, I agree. However it's also impractical to assume that all things are equal either, as we know that's not true.

@scottalanmiller Perhaps I could ask you this question: Because I am an SMB IT Admin, what might you suggest I do in our current configuration to maximize bang for the buck? Or would you rather a new thread be started to deal with that?

@scottalanmiller Perhaps I should have been more specific in saying that I was referring to IT folks taking your career advice. I mean, those that ask for it and apply it should have at least some level of success, but I doubt many will have the same level as you have FWIW. I'm not even necessarily trying to flatter, but if you're great at something, it's no less rude to fail to acknowledge and talk about it as it is to fail to acknowledge and talk about how someone is failing and can do better when it's recognized imo.

@scottalanmiller My take is that while many IT seem to give power away, I don't think it's so much just trying giving away power, but trying to reduce responsibility in most of those cases. They're not about trying to grab power so much as trying to shirk responsibility in my experience with people in general, I don't see that being much different with IT than anywhere else. Maybe that's just me though?

@scottalanmiller I'm big on intangibles, for instance, that my wife HATES moving lol. Both of us moved a lot growing up (my dad worked/works for NASA rather high up now), so I lived in about six different states, and moved around within a few of those states a few times much like Military do. My wife lived in about 5 states growing up. Both of us want to settle somewhere for a good while, so I'm really just not interested in the typical org-hopping required to climb the IT ladders most places. It's not that I can't, I just don't want to.

You might not believe that what you do won't work for most people, but I'm talking in pretty broad and general terms. For those that are exceptional, sure it will work, because they too are exceptional. Part and partial to the whole genie gig, if you'll allow for my stealing a movie line from Aladdin ^.^. We've already agreed that most people aren't great IT, so naturally most people aren't going to be in positions where they actually have or deserve the levels of acumen or clout to do what you do. Most people in general aren't that bright, as a general rule. Doesn't mean they're dumb, it just means they're not really capable of doing some of what you do. I for instance lack the drive to do what you do to be frank.

@scottalanmiller TBH, what you do probably doesn't and won't work for most people. They aren't you, or like you in many ways. That doesn't mean your advice is bad, it just means that for those that won't, they refuse to adapt that way. For those who can't, they simply cannot operate that way. Not everybody is the same, nor possesses the same capabilities, it's just life.

For me, I don't want more money. I don't really care tbh. Sure I'm worth more than I'm paid, and I tell my employer that regularly. I also tell them why I haven't left, which is why I have so little stress and such a good work environment. I could look around and find a better one in all likelihood, but I like where I'm at as far as physical location, and I've yet to see any great indication that there are any other such places in my area, so for now I'm staying put.