MystikIncarnate

There's several segments done about the atrocious practices of trailer parks. If you do any research into how predatory it is, you wouldn't be so excited about it.

A brief history lesson relating to Intel and ARM.... Intel made ARM processors. They were not great. Of course, this was many many years ago, but even compared to others of the same from the same generation and year range, they were kind of poo.

The product was Intel Xscale. Manufactured starting in 2002, and only lasted about 3-4 years before being dropped. Right before there was a big smartphone boom. The processors found their way into the smartphone predecessor, the PDA. Notably, I purchased one device with this type of processor right before the whole thing collapsed.... A Dell Axiom x51v. It ran Windows Mobile, which later turned into Microsoft's attempt to compete with the likes of Google and Apple in the smartphone space, and it's obvious how that worked out for them.

Intel is saying this because they have to believe it's true. They've abandoned all ARM development and seem to have no intention of picking it up again. They failed in the ARM space, creating fairly poor versions of the chips that they did produce, and they seem to have no intention of repeating that failure.

Mark my words, Intel will likely go all in on RISC-V if anything. They'll continue to build x86, they have way too much invested in that space and it's one of few that they've actually had significant success in, but when it comes to mobile/RISC, ARM isn't something that they will be picking up again.

So bluntly, this is true... For Intel. They must believe it because they have given themselves no alternative.

Thank you, I will take this under advisement.

I truly appreciate you. Have a wonderful day.

Have you been to a trailer park?

looking into this, broken down by links:

techworkerscoalition.org

• this looks good on paper but no canadian branch exists currently. A good option for those living in an area covered by them (not me, but others may benefit).
• countries with chapters include the USA, Brasil, India, Germany, Ireland, England, Italy, and The Netherlands.

joinifpte.org

• International Federation of Professional & Technical Engineers.
• They exist in Canada, but seem to be more oriented towards professional engineering (structural, electrical, that sort of thing), less-so things like network engineering.
• I.T. staff missing from their "Occupations" under "whom we represent" on their about page. No related technical jobs are listed beyond Programmers, which could be computer programmers but also could be something else. They also list "Technicians" but that can really be anything also, so I have no idea.

Potentially worth contacting them to inquire further about whether they cover IT/support workers, and if so, what companies they represent, so I can focus job searching on the companies that are local to me.

upte.org

• Part of the CWA
• seems to represent mainly healthcare researchers and professionals, along with technicians (I assume in the medical field, like lab techs and assistants).
• California based, seems to be US-centric, no international coverage, good for US workers in healthcare.

cwa-union.org

• Has presence in Canada
• "Communication Workers Association"; specifically referring to media workers, like TV and multimedia companies. Most notably for canada, they represent the workers of the CBC, or Canadian Broadcasting Corporation; which is great, but not really in the computers/technical field I'm in, and likely exclude I.T./support staff from contracts.

aflcio.org

• Seems to be an umbrella for several other unions, most notably SAG-AFTRA, NFLPA, trades (electrical workers, machinists and aerospace workers, fabrication, etc). Very little if any unions listed seem to be computerized-tech related or specialized.
• Their tagline is "America's Unions" which should tell you all you need to know about their focused locale, probably not a great option for locales outside of the USA.

My main issue is with the fact that none of these explicitly list, and very likely do not represent workers in the computerized technologies, with the possible exception of programmers, which I am not a programmer. This is great information for anyone living in the USA or working in a highly technical/skilled environment, but does not pose an answer to my initial inquiry, which was a union that includes the IT support workers. For someone working a non-IT position, or someone working in the USA, there's likely a union that only needs to be found.

I'm not angry or upset at the response at all, you tried and I appreciate that. Hopefully this is good information for other people, and I hope it helps them. It does not however seem to help me much or at all. Regardless, I appreciate the effort. Unfortunately as IT support, I'm generally cornered into non-union positions, which makes me vulnerable to more exploitation than other fields; which isn't to imply other workers and groups are not exploited, they just usually have some options where they can have better representation that I could have to advocate for their wages and benefits compared to what I can do individually.

Regardless of all of the above, I wish everyone who reads this all the best in their career. I hope you all get the best representation possible, and that you're successful in negotiating for your livelihoods regardless of your locale, chosen vocation, experience, race, religion or any other factor beyond your specific skill set. I bear no ill will towards anyone who has a union simply because I do not have the same opportunities.

Have a wonderful day.

I understand this entirely; the only statement I can make about "wearing multiple hats" at work, is the companies I've worked for (both the former employer, and this one) are both very small, so sometimes there's not enough of your work to keep you busy, and making yourself useful for other departments is key to maintaining your employment. Sitting around waiting for work to fall from the sky, is not a good look.

In any company that has even 4 or 5 people per department, it should never be a problem. at my former employer (the first one mentioned in the original post), we had 5 or 6 support-focused team members, I rarely stepped outside of MSP support, beyond generating leads for inside sales to existing clients for stuff they needed from a technical aspect. at the "new" place, most deparments had fewer than 4 people. The team I was on, was three support techs.

What irked me, is that as MSP, I had to know everyone else's job, but nobody was required to cross train on my team. All the other departments were solely focused on their specific tasks, but since I had to take total ownership of all the needs of the clients assigned to me, I had to know how the ISP operations and voice operations team's jobs entirely. That was problematic for me. I raised the issue a few times and did not get positive responses. I persisted in succeeding at the role regardless, but I still didn't like it. If I got a support ticket that was for an add/change/remove for a VoIP extension, I should have been permitted to forward that to the voice team and continue with my normal work, doing little more than traffic control on the ticket as a result; if a company wanted faster/different internet, or had an internet related issue, I should have been able to do the same for the ISP team, but it was expected that I would make my best effort to find and solve the problem before I engaged with that team, so I still had to know their job.

The irony of the whole thing is that the other departments jobs were so straight-forward that I was often able to do their jobs better than they could. I'm not meaning to brag or anything that I'm better or something, I don't believe I am. With my specific disability, I'm classified as neurodivergent, so there's a certain structure I always look for when dealing with issues. Simply having that structure seemed to lead me to better solutions than that team otherwise would have. The neurotypical workers in those teams would focus on just completing the immediate task, while I would go through the whole thing from top to bottom, trying to understand the full scope of the issue, from a fundamental level. This often led to me catching issues that were otherwise unnoticed. It also resulted in me taking much longer to do simple tasks than others took; which is a big reason I don't consider my approach to be "better", just different. It could be argued either way which is "better", and such an assessment is really a matter of opinion. The fact is, me doing their work often resulted in finding more issues, and taking longer. I got blamed for slow working, and they shot the messenger more than once for the problems found; so I get blamed for things a lot. I'm okay with it because I know it's not my fault. As long as nobody yells at me, or threatens my job for what I've found, I'm going to keep doing it.... but my interest in doing that work was to resolve the problems so I don't need to deal with it again later; so I always try to do root cause analysis, or RCA. RCA is not a short process.... sometimes it's as simple as changing deborah to sally, or whatever, on a phone system, and resetting the voicemail password, then emailing that information off to the customer. Other times it's that the user is assigned but to an offline or incorrect phone, or the phone is assigned as the wrong model in the system and it's not picking up the changes because the configuration file is wrong for the phone type (or any number of other errors). Things happen.

Sorry for the mini-rant, I kinda got off topic there for a bit.

Thanks, I appreciate your confidence in this matter. I'm not sure I have such a sunny outlook, but I don't really have a choice but to find something. I can't sustain myself on what I'm currently getting from my insurance.

I'm in Canada, and with the exception of some healthcare and related things (like parental leave), we're very similar in employment laws at a high level. I still plan to inquire about it with an attorney, but I'm not exactly hopeful that will result in something.

Speaking to some people who know the system better than I do, locally, they've informed me that our government employment insurance system (which has been covering me financially since I became "disabled", may launch an inquiry, since it's very legally dubious that a company doesn't take back a worker after a disability).... based on the results of that inquiry, I may have legal options..... that's a lot of if's, and relying on others to do their jobs and results of these things being in my favor. At present, I'm apt to leave it be, but I will pursue it if advisors say otherwise. I will be seeking official legal advice on the matter at some point in the near future. I can't and won't promise any specific action because I don't have all the information required for the matter; in my mind it could go either way. what I can promise is that I'll be looking into it. I don't know that I will update anything in any meaningful way to relay the results here, but it will be examined as an option.

What's important to note, is that this is a layoff. A layoff is different than firing (termination of employment), you still don't have a job at the end of the day, but a layoff is more along the lines of "we are currently unable to fulfill the requirements of employing you", which opens the option of employment later if the conditions change on the companies side of things. I'm still unemployed at the moment, so I'll see what happens, I don't officially come off disability until the end of the month, and I don't report that to employment insurance for a few weeks yet; but I may give them a call on Monday just to inform them of the change, which may accelerate the process. Regardless, I don't want to force them to employ me, since that's usually a recipe to have them seek out any/all infractions and reprimand me whenever possible to justify firing me with cause, which would be worse for me overall; EI here only covers job loss where there is no fault of your own contributing to the loss. If you are fired with cause, then you're on your own. While EI doesn't provide enough income to sustain myself properly, it's something, which is more than nothing.

if you know of any company that has a union that includes the IT support team, I will pursue it aggressively. Sadly, even the companies with unions often omit the IT/support staff as covered under the contract. But if you (or some future reader) finds such a company, let me know and I'll add them to the list of places to watch for openings.

This is something I've recognised for a long time. I will never get what I am worth 100% because I'm just a worker. Value from my work will be extracted because the sales staff needs to be paid, and the accountants need to be paid, and management, and everyone I rely on as a worker to both do my job and get paid. There will always be something additional removed for profit above and beyond the cost of all of those other labor needs that make my job possible, since I'm not the only person contributing to the earnings of the company, and the only way to make what I'm worth is to get out on my own, and become a contractor. I don't want to do that. I have a certificate from a local college for business; I have seen the processes and whatnot that make up the accounting, marketing, sales and other processes that contribute to the success of a transaction. I am not interested and actively dislike having to do any of those tasks.

For me, this is understood, and I've accepted that, since I don't want to do all the jobs. I'm willing to accept a certain amount of loss for my labor so I don't have to think about or engage in any of those other activities. The work I do is, to my estimation, worth at least $150k/yr, extrapolated from the amount my employers charge for my time, multiplied by the number of hours they expect me to achieve in billable time per day, times five days a week, times 52 weeks per year. I struggle to extract half that in wage. If I could get half of that in wages, I'd be pretty happy, but I can't. Therein lies the problem. I don't and never have expected my full value, but I don't think 50% is too much. Honestly, it should be higher, but bluntly, companies are not in the right position to entertain that, either psychologically, or financially due to mismanagement.

The value I'm seeking to be recognised for is that I'm worth paying a higher percentage of the earnings I'm capable of bringing in. I am useful beyond my role in almost every aspect because I've taken the time and gotten the relevant education to actually understand the factors that go into these things. I have a deeper understanding of business practices than the average, and I can all but sell a product or service to a client that they currently do not have; aka, priming a sale for the company. I have been directly responsible for several sales at multiple clients over my career. Not nearly at the same rate as our dedicated sales team, since that's literally their only job, but I've given easy sells to so many of our sales staff that, while I'm on the clock billing time for something else, sold another product with all but the papers signed and money transferred. I make other workers jobs easier, which IMO, is worth more than the direct technical value provided. It's a skill set that I don't see in my coworkers that are exclusively focused on the technology. There are many other aspects I can enhance that is valuable, and I often step out of my immediate role to help others. That's just how I am. I want to be helpful, and if something is in the best interest of the client, I will sell it. Even knowing this, and experiencing this first-hand at work, my employer still decided on a layoff.

I don't feel like any of what I've said is unreasonable. 50% of the earnings I directly bill for is my salary, and I provide value beyond that which justifies the amount spent.

I'm neurodivergent, with an executive function disorder, and that classifies me as disabled, yes. I have done everything in my power to meet everyone on their terms, so nobody needs to make accomodations for me. It's still hard to fit in for me, but I take on the challenge of that as part of the experience of employment; I do everything in my power to make sure that my differences don't affect the ability for others to operate as they normally would.

yet, I still feel rejected by the systems I've worked so hard to fit into. I'm tossed out like trash whenever they feel like I'm not doing enough, when I'm fighting very hard to survive in their world, not made for people like me. All I've ever wanted was to be helpful. Let me be helpful, and pay me for the significant efforts I take to be helpful.

The doctors note said little more than (I'm paraphrasing) $employee can return to work as they have recovered from the disability. X, y, and z would still be beneficial to $employee whenever possible.

That last bit was mostly about doing whatever is possible to prevent it from happening again, and little more than a suggestion for the exact kind of environment you should find in an office.

If someone were to give it 30s of analysis, it basically reads that I'm good to go and I can work in a normal office environment.

I am disabled. I have an executive function disorder. I have been working on it and continue to work on it with several healthcare professionals so that I can function normally (as expected) relative to everyone else. I take on the responsibility of making sure I can keep up with everyone and little, if any, burden put on others to make accommodations for me. My doctor knows this and worded the note accordingly.

I just want to work.

Ironic that I'm saying that.... As a millennial.

I have a friend who is a paralegal, and while her opinion does not constitute legal advice, she thinks I should talk to an employment lawyer as well.... I'm seriously considering it, but at the moment I'm biding my time a little bit as I still have personal effects at the workplace that I would like to recover before pursuing any action that could sour the relationship between that employer and me (from their perspective) any more than it may already be soured.

I resisted the urge to make the comment "laying someone off after they recover from a disability? That's awfully brave of you."

I don't think that would have gone over particularly well with them. Needless to say, my first priorities are to find reliable employment and recover my belongings. I'll consider it further when that is accomplished. Lucky for me, I had previously been given the name of someone who is exactly this kind of lawyer by someone I worked with. Let me paraphrase them by saying, it's not the first time, and probably won't be the last.

I feel like it's unfortunate since I actually liked the people I worked with. I didn't care for management, but bluntly, most management rubs me the wrong way, so no love lost there... But they had some really great people working there that I genuinely enjoyed working with. Oh well. Life goes on.