Is my employer taking extream advantage of me?

[zman574]

Hello everyone, I hope that some of you will help me to get an idea of I am way off basiss here with what I am getting paid to install a 32 call 3cx system for my company.

A little background my company that I work for is actually 7 companies all together.
We have a motorsports shop, a corporate office (these two are in the same building), a 63 room motel, a bowling alley, a real estate office, a gas station, and a nursing home and the owner also wants to have an extension in his winter home in aruba.

The hardware for the system is all paid by the company and I am not looking for the cost of equipment just the cost to do the work that has had to be done. But I do want to give you an idea of what equipment is here.

3cx server with windows 7 and 32 concurrent calls
18 cisco 504G phones
1 AAstra cordless gateway and a second headset to be configured as 2 extensions
2 Cisco 508G's with SPA500 expansion slots
A 4 port PSTN gateway
3 Grandstream 24 port analog gateways

The job is this. First to set up 3cx from scratch on a DHCP Network, Reconfigure and replace routers that need to be replaced. Run a cat 5 line to another wireless router from the main network to the outside of the corporate office and then to a wirless bridge accross the street to the motel so that we can get the motel and the 3cx on a local network. Run a 200' cable from the motel office to the wireless bridge to get the LAN from the corprate office to the center of the Motel. Then configure the 3 grandstream 24 port analog gateways for each room so that they can be reached from a digital recepotinist. Trace all the wires in the 63 rooms back to the punch down block with toneing tool, then put rj11 male ends on each and plug into the grandstreams. And then hook up one of the 504G for the motel front office. And lastly for the motel teach the help how to run the system. (not to mention one of the grandstreams being faulty and having to be replaced)

Now I have to install at the corprate office where the 3cx server is located. 3 recepnisist phones and 2 phones for the owners. All need to configured with a directory with an average of 80 different phone numbers. Plus program 2 spa500s with BLF's for extensions and transfer buttons. Teach all users how to use phones.

Next we move to motorsports still on the LAN with the 3cx. We have 3 504g phones with monitoring on 2 of the phones of eachother. Install the AAstra cordless phones. Teach all employees how to run phones in this case several times.

Now to the rest of the extensions which will use up the rest of the hardware listed above. All of these locations need to have new routers installed and an average of a half of a day of network restructing and that is being conservitive to say the least. The old tech which was outsourced was an absolute hack and had no consept of security or research. In fact we had a server down for a week that he actually took home twice and reformated which cost the company huge money, how I stole the job was fixing that server 30 minutes after he walked off the job, and might i say that the problem has never been back since. Anyway all of these extensions need to be set up on the 3cx and all the employees need to be educated as well on how to use them.

All in all here is a breakdown of what needs to be done.
7 routers installed and configured
88 actual extensions installed
35 virtual extensions to cell phones or other phones
10 phone directory's coded into the phones
40 digital recepnisit
30 call queues
phone scripts for all the digital receptonist written and uploaded
7 on hold messages scripted
1000 feet of network cable run
200 rj45's crimped
63 rj11's cripmed and wires toned
30 phone lines ported to the system and all the paperwork processed by yours truely
911 configuration on all the phone lines
9 fax lines installed
2 days of dealing with the god awful phone company that is providing pstn lines currently and trying to get the phones forwared to the system to utlize the system currently. Oh did I mention these guys are a company that is clueless and just simply cant get it right no matter how many times I call or what I do.

Anyway that is the job at hand. Given this information I would really like to know what you would charge to install the system. Travel time is not too bad all but one biz is located with in 1 mile of eachother and the other one is only 5 miles away. I need some idea here because I am really getting the shaft I believe and if I am I am more than likely going to walk from the job after it is done, unless we really come to a much more fair deal between myself and the company. I would like to know what you would charge for this job on a per job basis and also an approximation of how many hours it would take you to do it.

Maybe I am just the worst tech ever and have no business doing this sort of stuff but I really would be greatful if you could give me an idea.

Thanks

Zim

 

[leejor]

Unfortunately, given that this job involves running cable (many time consuming unknowns involved) along with other "firsts" AND the fact that you have to do it yourself (and still sleep), it is difficult to "guestimate". We all know how long some( what started off as) simple computer problems, can eventually take.
Since you're the one familiar with the job site (and none of us have seen it), and issues that you alone will have to deal with, take the number of hours that you suspect the job will take and triple it, at least. If your boss balks at the figure, tell him that it may come in at less but that the troubleshooting, even after the system is up, may add additional hours but could be separated from the initial install cost.

One difference here is that you are an existing employee and this is not a job one bids on, doe,s and then leaves. As long as you are happy with your hourly salary, just keep track of your hours. If you aren't doing this job, I assume you'd be doing something else for the same company.

I'm assuming, with this system, they expect to save money in the long run. Have them think about the long term, overall costs, with the install cost amortized over, say, 5 years.

Good luck, it sounds like you have a hell of a job ahead. After you are done, post back with what you initial estimate was and how long it eventually took.

 

[zman574]

I get paid well lets just say that I get paid a little more than I earned on my highschool job 15 years ago. I flat rated the job at 85 hours to get another piece of the pie. They took the flat rate job and left me sitting with nothing on the other piece, I then explained to them that it was not an a la cart deal and that I did not want to flat rate something for those hours unless i was getting the rest of the piece of the pie. Anyway to make a very long story short I am making under $1500 for a flat rate for this job.

 

[zman574]

Lets put the rest of the running cable and what not aside, what would you estimate the hours to be? What is the average 3cx installer getting per hour?

 

[leejor]

Is there an average? I think there could be as many different hourly rates as there are major cities in the world. What an IT person makes in one country could be one quarter, or less, of what a person doing the same job makes in another. There is no one simple answer. A good wage would have to be compared to what others doing the same sort of work, make, in your local. You haven't said where you are located. The people best able to answer your questions, about wages, are those located in your country.

 

[zman574]

I am in the US.

 

[KerryG]

The average range in the use is between $50 - $150 per hour, depends on where you are, how much experience you have, and a number of other factors.

 

[zman574]

Any idea what you would quote for a number of hours on this job...... just a ball park would be fine.

Zim

 

[KerryG]

Hard to say without knowing the building and a lot of variables are involved but I would say its probably between 120 - 140 man hours. That takes into account all the little issues that generally come up. If you are doing this "on the clock" then I don't see where this matters. If you are being asked to do this outside of normal business hours and they want to pay you $1500 to do it, then yeah, I would say that's a bit low.