It's an important job. But is it sufficiently respected?

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Those lucky tech people.

They get hired for a lot of money. They get poached for even more money.

Their cash buys them big houses. Their charm earns them resentment.

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You'd think there wasn't anyone in tech who earns less than$250,000.

But then there are data management employees. They're really quite important. They're not necessarily well paid.

A quick squint at Glassdoor shows that the average base pay for a data management employee is$61,100.

If you work for JP Morgan, says Glassdoor, then you might average$130,802. Banks have money. Why, an hourly data management intern at JP Morgan makes$28-$33 an hour.

Then again, if you work in data management for Peloton, how about$3,534 a month?

But it's not necessarily an easy job, and it is important.

Please listen, then, to the tale of data management employee u/kaihoneck, who wanted Reddit to know what happened.

"I put in my two week notice 14 days ago," they began. "Working as a data management worker, with tons of I/O, in a very unintuitive workflow. It'll take weeks (maybe months) to train a replacement for the custom workflow our system has."

Perhaps you've experienced difficult workflows. Perhaps they've annoyed you once or twice. Well, our hero didn't have it so good.

"I'm the only person in my department, and been working for$17ish an hour for the last 3 years, with laughably small raises. (+-$.20/year)," they said.

"How much?" I hear you sniff. "The only person in the department?"

Our hero, perhaps unsurprisingly in the current economic climate, asked for a raise to$22 an hour. They received a counter-offer of$18.50.

Our hero resigned. His boss was understanding, of course. He "brought up that I had been offered more of a raise than the last 3 years combined, so I didn't need to quit, resignation not accepted."

Could it be that some IT bosses are unfeeling? Surely not. This boss, with whom our hero says he has a good relationship, continued to not accept the resignation. Or the obvious.

"For the last 13 days, I have mentioned every day that I'm leaving on the 19th," said our hero. "Every time, he has told me that I can't leave, because that would be debilitating for all my coworkers, and that maybe I can renegotiate a raise after the first quarter, but leaving now would result in untold losses for the company."

Also: The shocking reason people are quitting tech companies (No, it's not money)

I hear a thousand echoes of "you should have thought of that sooner, dear boss."

And then came more demands from our enlightened IT manager. Our hero would have to be available to onboard their replacement. Oh, and there was the implication of, Lordy, legal action if this polite request wasn't complied with.

As if legal action would ever happen.

Our hero never went back after the 19th.

You might think this tale is extreme. You might think our hero's manager is a sniveling nincompoop.

I suspect, though, our hero isn't alone in enduring the experience of a halfwitted, arrogant manager in a tech sphere. Indeed, a recent survey by GoodHire reported that 87% of tech employees say they can do their jobs without a manager at all.

I've heard many stories of feelingless, singularly self-directed IT managers who believe their employees should be glad to work in their fiefdom.

I wonder how many have witnessed the new realities of employment and instantly changed their ways.

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