I started a new job almost 5 months ago in the I.T. department of a growing call center here in Maine. Everything I.T. related, from workstations and VoIP phones, to servers, PBX, T1's, switches, firewalls and changing toner cartridges was being handled by one person, who happens to be a friend of mine. I was brought on to lighten the load by dealing with hardware problems and help desk tickets. In the past 4 months my position has gone from very flexible 10-20 hours/week to 50-70 hours/week. I also have several small business clients in the area I do support work for as-needed, which as you might imagine has become more difficult.

This company is growing fast. Last month they had me open a new 24 seat call center in Florida which consisted working an average of 13 hours/day 12 of the 14 days I was there. Over the next year, I only see this company growing more. I'm quite certain in the next 6 months I'll be converting the Florida facility to a 100-150 seat office.

My boss would now like me to become an official full-time employee. I'm not exactly sure how to negotiate, nor what I should be asking for, so I figured I'd throw it out to some of you that may have been in similar situations.

I know that I have a tendency to work all the time, as long as there is work that needs to be done, I'll work. I really need to avoid getting stuck in this trap- that is my first concern. The boss wants me to be a salaried employee, but I'm dead set against it for the reason above. The idea of working any job where you could potentially work an open ended amount of hours/week on a regular basis and be locked into a fixed salary has always seemed foolish to me. It's realistic to say that I will never work less than 45 hours/week.

This company is open 24/7. I will be expected to be on-call some nights and weekends to handle emergency calls. My counterpart handled more than 8 such calls during sleeping hours just last week. Where there will be just the two of us, I'm sure I will be expected to be available 50% of the time I'm not already working.

I'm accustomed to working 4 10-11 hours days/week. I would love to work alternating 5-day and 4-day weeks, allowing for a 3-day weekend every other week. The boss is more interested in having us working 5 and 6 day weeks making sure there is a 4-hour I.T. shift on Saturdays and Sundays.

When I have to travel to open a new facility in a far away place, what kind of compensation should I be getting?

Cheers