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'You just need to prioritize': Employee told that they need to "prioritize" better after being overworked for years, decides to prioritize their sanity and quits

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    "Soon [to be] Ex-Boss: 'You just need to prioritize' [...] I handed in my resignation and start my new job next month."
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    Soon [to be] Ex-Boss: "You just need to prioritize"

    I have been working in IT for the last 10 years. 4 of those in the company I am just leaving. I joined this company after a few bad experiences with coworkers and bosses. After getting to know some of the staff in the company, I was really happy about the coworkers and colleagues, because most of them seemed to be really friendly.
  • 3
    Into my second year at the company I felt like we were understaffed in IT. "Not to bad still" I thought. That was up until our workload increased. Before we could handle the daily stuff and projects and on top could do some system upgrades over the year. Now we were getting more and more work due to new regulations from corporate and more software that needed to be supported. During this time, I started asking my team leader to look for a new guy. We needed more hands.
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    After a year of bringing this up at least once per month, my boss started with his speech about "You just need to prioritize (your work)." Of course this would not help if the work is at like 110% of the load that the current team could handle. We increased our hours and could get it done, but that was only for half a year. At this point I was done with this whole ordeal. Corporate IT got more and more hostile (if you did not message some people. directly, what was prohibited normally) and on to
  • 5
    After around 3 years of being with the company I saw our trainee leave. I talked to him about pay and why he wanted to leave. Not to deter him, but to understand his reasoning and show my support. And at that point I have been passively looking for a job for about 6 months.
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    I was at this time talking to my team leader and telling him, that he needs to increase my salary by around 8% at least and bring more hands to the team. He was asking me, why I wanted to leave. I told him about the problems, that he knows and said that I can't bring myself to stay in this company with the problems the team is facing. "I just need to prioritize myself" - He did not react unfortunately, but I think he got the point.
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    As a side note: Later I heard from my boss (basically the one above my team leader and me), that my team leader has never asked for more people. And to be honest, I want to trust this guy, because he was sincere all the time as far as I know.
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    Edit: Now I see the problem with my post. I should proof read a second time... I changed one of the quotes as the quote was sometimes "You just need to prioritize" and sometimes "You just need to prioritize your work". Second edit, because I did not say it word by word: I handed in my resignation and start my new job next month
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    This Guy_33 · 6h ago Either his bonus was based on being under budget or he was to lazy to recruit or both.
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    theoldman-1313 • 6h ago I have worked in a lot of places where the potential workload far exceeded the man-hours available. More often than not when I asked about priorities I got told "They're all number one priorities". So I just worked on what I wanted to. After all, anything I did was a number one priority
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    • algy888 3h ago The fact that the big boss didn't know is why I ignore our chain of command where I work. If I think someone needs to hear it, I'll say it. I don't trust anyone else with it. I've been here for over 12 years, and mostly my efforts to further communications has been appreciated.
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    TechnOght 7m ago I had a manager say this after we lost 1/3 of the team, so I started directing all help requests through him and asking to prioritize my list. If he didn't prioritize the list I wouldn't work on the new items until my list was done, which never happened.
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    When asked why so and so's request wasn't done I'd remind him he didn't put it in the list and I was working on high priority items. I also told him I wasn't working free overtime (salary) because they didn't want to hire more staff.

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