What do you do?

Go international if you aren't tied down. I work for one of the American schools in Mexico, and its pretty fucking sweet. When I finish up my gig here and have the additional experience on my resume, I can start looking at even better locations and much better paying schools.

Superhiro_sl said:

Go international if you aren't tied down. I work for one of the American schools in Mexico, and its pretty fucking sweet. When I finish up my gig here and have the additional experience on my resume, I can start looking at even better locations and much better paying schools.

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What's your salary? Perks (paid accommodation, travel expenses, etc.)?

McCheese_sl said:

What's your salary? Perks (paid accommodation, travel expenses, etc.)?

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About 30k salary, plus a $900/month housing stipend. Moving bonus of $750. Yearly flight stipend of $750. Matching savings fund and retirement fund (5% and 7.5% each).

It's not stellar, but cost of living is pretty cheap. Central and South America are notorious for having among the lowest paying schools in the international school circuit. This is my first job though since getting my teaching degree, so I'm pretty happy.

Stupid question but how does one even get into one of those teaching gigs? I know I have to get my masters to teach at DoD schools. They never tell us shit about anything except teaching locally.

My advisor in grad school worked internationally for a while before she got her PhD. She recommended I try out Search Associates. They run international school job fairs and have a huge database of schools and teachers. You pay $200 to join, and you get 1 job fair included along with access to the database so you can search openings and schools can search for candidates. I did the 3 day fair in Boston, interviewed with 10 schools and got 2 offers (Mexico and Cairo). Mexico was the better job, so I went with them. Well worth the price to join. There are a couple other companies that do similar things. The fairs generally run from Jan to May, and are all over the world. If you are midwest somewhere, or willing to travel, there's another major fair that's run by the University of Iowa.

Superhiro_sl said:

My advisor in grad school worked internationally for a while before she got her PhD. She recommended I try out Search Associates. They run international school job fairs and have a huge database of schools and teachers. You pay $200 to join, and you get 1 job fair included along with access to the database so you can search openings and schools can search for candidates. I did the 3 day fair in Boston, interviewed with 10 schools and got 2 offers (Mexico and Cairo). Mexico was the better job, so I went with them. Well worth the price to join. There are a couple other companies that do similar things. The fairs generally run from Jan to May, and are all over the world. If you are midwest somewhere, or willing to travel, there's another major fair that's run by the University of Iowa.

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Here's the linkhttp://www.uni.edu/placement/overseas/osfair.html

When do you finish your degree? I could also send you any openings at my school when they get posted internally. It's a great starting place for a career teaching overseas if you are interested. Lot's of professional development opportunities, and a fairly high turnover, so opportunities for some advancement. I became our grade level coordinator during my second year here. Looks great on my resume for when I'm ready to move on. Plus all the IB training I've received.

I graduate in December, it's cool that I get to student teach at the beginning of the school year but at the same time it sucks I graduate in the middle of it. I appreciate the link and its something I'll definitely look into. It looks more legit than the posters we have on campus that proclaim "Teach English in China! Good Pay!" then you look more into it and find out it will cost you 2k just to apply.

Jx3_sl said:

I graduate in December, it's cool that I get to student teach at the beginning of the school year but at the same time it sucks I graduate in the middle of it. I appreciate the link and its something I'll definitely look into. It looks more legit than the posters we have on campus that proclaim "Teach English in China! Good Pay!" then you look more into it and find out it will cost you 2k just to apply.

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There's two ways to teach abroad: international schools and English schools. International schools are a lot harder to get into because a) they tend to be more reputable and b) you need a higher degree and the ability to teach something like civics, history, math, science, etc. English schools are a dime a dozen and most of them are shitty little one-room operations and the only requirement to get hired is that you're a native speaker of English. Most of the international teaching advertisements you'll probably see are for shitty English schools.

Ronaan_sl said:

Got more of the finance stuff now that we've switched to MS Dynamics NAV, so the other dude can do more financial planning & controlling. Basically I am the asshole that does the footwork.

Pay is slightly less sucky but still 70% of what you make in normal companies.

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And it's "I hate my job"-time again.

It's not really the job itself, I can endure that. Good mix of pushing numbers and doing hands-on IT stuff, coupled with some brain work.

It's the assholes surrounding me, thinking I'm here to do their job, all while wanting everything served on a silver platter.
Fuck you guys, seriously. If you did your job right, I wouldn't have to ask you for documents all the time.

A few examples:

- Someone needs a CD with pictures from the holidays we organized for our handicapped people last year. He has a $1k notebook complete with docking station and everything, and a degree in social something something. Still not able to burn a CD off the network - or hey, you could just copy the pics you need to your notebook for two days.

- Someone else is responsible for 12-20 handicapped people, in this case they are not at our site but with "normal" companies doing "normal" work. We get paid for that. Most of that is handled on a monthly basis. Two or three people they have agreed hourly rates on. Why, I have no idea. Not a single month passes where I get the hour lists without asking for them. I'm in fact still waiting for the lists from February for two people. How in all fuck am I supposed to create an invoice? Fuck. The lady in question even had the balls to tell me to just "call them, they are so nice there, else I'd have to drive all the way out there to pick up those papers".
No, asshole. YOU call them, it's YOUR job. Don't try to push your job onto me without paying me for it.

- Bunch of freeloading assholes. We go on a company "trip" once a year. It's a workday, but it can't start before 7.30 or end after 15.00 (fridays) because that would mean OVERTIME! This is not a corporate decision but is unwanted by the people working here. Disregard the fact that you don't have to work for that one day, plus get money to buy your lunch with. They get something for free and it's still not good enough.

Sometimes I really just want to flip my desk upside down and say "fuck this shit guys, I'm going home".

But then I've been here for 14.5 years, can basically not be let go unless I really (really really) fuck up (i.e. punch someone in the face - which might still happen one day), and some of the guys are really cool, one even my best friend and also best man.
Plus if I wanted to leave myself, I have six MONTHS notice to the end of quarter, because I've been here for over 12 years. So it's basically impossible unless I negotiate something. Not keen on just dropping out with something else lined up, but who in their right mind would hire someone and then wait half a year until the guy is free...

So I'll just sit it out and wait for the idiots to drop into retirement. Should be fine in ~10 years.

Or maybe I'll just do my father-in-law's farm thing when he retires. That would be really cool but the wife is very much against it. Guess she sees me sitting around doing nothing all day. That just might happen too.

All that and even if I wanted to go back into industry instead of public, I'd still only have qualifications for customer service or maybe low level team-leading stuff (on paper). Here, if I should be gone for more than a few weeks (for whatever reason), people would shit bricks the size of a transcontinental container. It would also mean a lot more work for a little more pay. And then it's a very unsafe situation out there too. Probably going to just stay put, surf rerolled a bit, and play WoW during lunch break some more.

Thanks for listening, some days it's really bad.

It sounds like your main problem is that you give too many fucks. I'll show someone how to do something once, MAYBE twice if they are really nice otherwise, but you better believe on that second time I step them through it I mention that they better write down the steps if they think they might forget. And I don't do it again. If you constantly show someone how to do something, and they don't make an effort to learn it, then they basically just want you to do it for them and will never learn. Don't fall into that cycle of suck. Of course, this is all assuming I'm showing someone how to do something that isn't rally my job/responsibility to begin with. If I'm officially training someone new, I'm a lot more tolerant.

As far as the people not doing their jobs and not getting you the info you need to do yours, there's a real easy solution to that. You ask nicely a couple times via email, then the next time you ask you CC in their boss, if nothing gets done then you CC in the next boss up the line and so on. If it gets to the point that you've CC'd in like 4 different levels of management and still no one does anything, then fuck that, the company is a sh*thole and start planning your exit ASAP. Alternately, just sit on it and don't worry about it at that point, it's not your problem. You have email proof that you did your due diligence and you tried to excuse yourself from the situation when the shit hits the fan down the line once someone decides to care that this isn't getting done.

I've turned into a real asshole at work much like joeboo suggests.

We needed this guy to confirm whether or not he needed to do some thermal testing on a new product. Asked him via email and he said he'd take a look.. one week later nothing. Ask him again, a little firmer.. nothing. I gave him a third shot.. nothing. At this point it's been about 5 weeks since I originally asked. I find out his boss name and emailed his boss with him on CC and ask if we could have anyone take a look as we've been waiting 5 weeks. Magically, within one day we have an answer. He sent the answer to the team and didn't include me on CC (was probably pissed).. I learned that day to just be a dick to everyone if they don't give you results right away.

Unfortunately for us we have so many buildings distributed over MA (and international areas). I could've gone to his building but I looked up his profile and he looked weird. Didn't look like someone you wanted to meet.

At least I'm smiling, this guy looked like a robot with skin on it

I liked my very vivid description better than your label, Walter

Going to people's offices doesn't do shit usually if they won't even give you a response over email. They just say okay I'll do it and then never do it.