Oh By The By…

So my review went really well. But I knew it would. I’m happy to report that I did not have to do a self-assessment, but I have been warned that I’ll need to do one in November when my one year anniversary arrives.

I just thought I would let you know that this post is being dictated through Dragon Naturally Speaking, which I bought a couple months ago to use with my freelance transcription business. Supposedly there is a way to connect Dragon with my transcription software so that I can actually convert speech to text from my audio files. However I have yet to figure out how to make that work. But I have to say Dragon is actually pretty cool — it understands my speaking voice very accurately and it’s very rare that I need to make corrections when I speak.

Back to my review talk. Basically my boss said she had nothing negative to say. She said that in normal reviews she always tries to have at least one topic or subject that can help a staffer improve their quality of work, but in my case she has yet to be disappointed by anything I’ve done. She likes my quality of work, my vast knowledge of IT/computer stuff, the speed with which I finish my work, my willingness to take on any new tasks she assigns, and my rapport with the other staff.she said that she regularly tells her boss how glad she is to have me on board.

I did mention my concerns over my pay, and that the salary I’m earning is near the ceiling for this particular position at this company. I pretty much told her that I’m very much underpaid. She understood my concern and explained that I would always be eligible to earn additioanl raises even after I hit the salary ceiling.she said if I get to a point where I’m not satisfied with that, that she could always try to have my position title change in order to go into another pay bracket with a new ceiling level. Basically what this means, is that I can get raises, I can earn more money down the line, but that I’ll never get a lump sum raise to the levelthat I feel I’m more. For example, I am being paid 30% less than I earned at my last job. I was hoping that I could ask for and receive a 15% raise after having shown how good I am. That’s not going to happen, certainly not at one time. If I stay there seven years, I will have learned that 15% back. Man, seven years. That’s a long time to get back to a level that still is less than what I earned last year.

Economic downturns suck.

The company does offer bonuses although they do cap them at a certain dollar amount. All I can do is try to earn those bonuses (of which I’ve already earned one) to help make up the difference.

I still love this job. I still love the people that I’m working with. I still love the commute. And I enjoy what I do every day. So I’ll put up with the low pay and see what happens. I’ll continue to do freelance work at home in an attempt to make up some of the difference, and we’ll continue to pay off our consumer debt in order to make our money stretch further.

So there you have it – my job update, mostly dictated into a microphone, with only a few words having to be corrected manually as I go. Not bad!