Abused IT Workers Ready To Quit 685
An anonymous reader writes to tell us that new research is suggesting as many as a quarter of all IT staff in small to medium businesses have suffered some sort of abuse and are looking for careers elsewhere (PDF). "The study also found that over a third have suffered from sleepless nights or headaches as a result of IT problems at work, while 59 percent spend between one and 10 hours a week working on IT systems outside normal hours. ... The biggest cause of stress among IT staff is problems arising from operational day-to-day tasks, the survey found. Another major cause came from loss of critical data, according to Connect."
It's not so bad (Score:5, Interesting)
59 per cent spend between one and 10 hours a week working on IT systems outside normal hours.
That's the problem right there: in IT, work can be endless. Saying no is key to keeping your sanity. But 2009 is not the best year to take risks. Good luck finding a job elsewhere.
It's bad in IT, but at least you get to use your brain (to some extent) and some of it is sometimes fun. That's a start.
Do fun stuff on the side and keep your skills current. That could become very handy sooner than you think.
--
FairSoftware.net [fairsoftware.net] -- the community for fair entrepreneurs
Re:It's not so bad (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone who migrated away from a direct IT job to an HR job that is tangentially IT related, allow me to say that I am far far happier now than when I was doing the death march for people who thought of their IT folk as "geeks" who lived for abuse and being taken advantage of.
And my mind still gets a work out, and I still get to keep my hand in the water. And, as an extra bonus, when I go home at night. I can actually enjoy tinkering on my own projects instead of feeling as if I'm just bringing 'work' home with me.
Yes, right now is a bad time to jump for some people. On the other hand, I also realize that as a group, those of us drawn to IT often wait too long before jumping. Don't wait for the perfect moment. Pick one and make it 'perfect'.
I bet you are! (Score:5, Funny)
As someone who migrated away from a direct IT job to an HR job that is tangentially IT related,...
All the babes work in HR!
Re:I bet you are! (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, but they have boyfriends or husbands.
*sigh*
Re:I bet you are! (Score:5, Funny)
A number of scientific studies have found that 30 to 50 percent of women cheat.
You're welcome!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You must be the first geek to think that your geek talents do not trump husband/boyfriend.
Re:I bet you are! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I bet you are! (Score:5, Funny)
And being in HR, the "babes" know the sexual harassment policy word-for-word
Re:I bet you are! (Score:4, Insightful)
And being in HR, the "babes" know the sexual harassment policy word-for-word
Sure, until you get them next door to the bar an get a couple of drinks into them. Then ... not so much. A great many people present a different personality at work than away from work, and guess where the people who were partying when us geeks were studying ended up?
Re:It's not so bad (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe you should have become an electrical engineer. My job's ridiculously easy, with long periods of not doing anything, while the bosses try to decide what project they want to do next.
Or maybe that's just because I work for the defense industry. (shrug)
Re:It's not so bad (Score:4, Interesting)
To be honest, EE was one of the things I was interested in early on in life. However I made the mistake of going to an engineering college for my CS degree and after spending four years putting up with the condescending attitudes of the "real engineers" (students and staff) towards CS, I resolved to never pursue any sort of career choice that would involve having to work with "that crowd" again.
Honestly, I thought 'jocks' in high school had egos but they had nothing on these folk.
Which, is probably a sad thing. I imagine taken out of the "Huah! We're number one cause we can do maths!" atmosphere that the university fostered, most of them would have probably turned out to be passable humans.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You flunked all your computer courses and you can't so much as boot up a video game without a call to the IT helpdesk.
And yes, that IS the only possible reason for you to have made that post. You'll claim it isn't, but that lie won't even fool yourself, much less anyone with a functioning brain.
Re:It's not so bad (Score:4, Interesting)
With respect, while I'm sure both of those places had wonderful engineering programs, they weren't colleges dedicated towards engineering.
When I said it was an engineering college, I really meant it [mst.edu]. That, I assume, was the major contributing factor to the attitude.
What always amused me was how many people I saw trying to get a liberal arts degree there. It wasn't that liberal arts wasn't worth it, but UMR (as it was named while I was there) had a minimum number of engineering courses you had to take to enroll, and often enough the 'liberal arts' offerings were sparse enough that between the required courses and attempting to "Tetris" your way to required number of credits in your major, you'd be stuck there for six to eight years. It was like these folk were masochists.
And as far as the simularities in jobs, yes. That's one of the reasons why I was so drawned towards EE. If you get right down to it, EE is where CS came from.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So why not just ignore him and get on with the job? If he complains then ask what else to do.
Re:It's not so bad (Score:4, Insightful)
I almost always clock over 40 hours PLUS the off-hours time I spend working in my head on problems at work.
My wife caught me logging on a couple of weeks ago at three in the morning -- I just REALLY wanted to check ONE MORE LITTLE THING.
My boss doesn't worry about giving me work -- he worries about keeping people out of my hair so I can be more productive.
Being a sysadmin is DEMANDING, HARD and often THANKLESS. You either love it and live it -- or you're better off going elsewhere. There's great money to be made if you go the distance, but that's not going to be enough if you don't love this job.
Thankfully, I DO love this work! The stats in the article about hours worked and losing sleep -- I was REALLY surprised the numbers were that low. It's all worth it, though, when you do the impossible -- even if very few people at your office realize it.
Re:It's not so bad (Score:5, Insightful)
What I can't understand is how these long-hours heroes can claim honestly that their mind is still functioning at full capacity after all that time.
Some people claim long hours when actually they are chatterboxes - standing around at the water cooler talking nonsense or spouting verbal diarrhea on the phone or on meetings and having to come in on Saturday to finish their work.
I am contracted to do 7.5 hour days, 5 days a week. I have worked genuine very insane hours in the past (14 hours for 8 weeks) and it nearly killed me. It was a real struggle after about 9 hours to keep my brain focused on the task.
I've also worked at an industrial site where they limited the number of hours you could work in a certain period, because the manager's best friend had been a hero once and worked something stupid like 23 hours non-stop and got himself killed driving home when he fell asleep.
Having to work long hours is a failure in the system. If it's not you, it's management's failure to plan or having unrealistic expectations from the staff. It's down right inhumane and uncivilised.
It produces ill, bitter and twisted people, poor quality work, and poor company performance.
Re:It's not so bad (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's not so bad (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess one of the pitfalls is that there still exists management who believes it's all about turning the right kind of switch and everything will get fixed auto-magically.
Windows IT workers to get the shaft (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah I'm talking to you. The wannabe computer programmer who thinks they are good at computers because they can click around the computer enough times and find the reboot button and 'fix' an inherently flawed windows system. You think you're cool because you can pirate photoshop but not know anything about it, get Microsoft Office for free but have the literacy of a 1st grader when writing a paper, and get a copy of Norton Anti-virus because your inherently flawed system is useless without Administrative pr
Re:It's not so bad (Score:5, Interesting)
Funny you should say that.
Back in the late 90's I was doing some side work in vulnerability testing and a client actually asked me if there was some sort of "program that you use where you can just click a button and hack into somebody's computer".
When I started to explain the actual process of analyzing a network from the outside, he lost interest.
No idea why.
Re:It's not so bad (Score:5, Insightful)
In *every* Job work can be endless. In my experience (as a scientist) good management can break the endless task into sub-tasks which are doable in a reasonable time, while bad management will do the opposite. That is, shifting the responsibility for the schedule of the whole project to the lower levels. This is *extremely* stupid. If you manage a project, it is your responsibility to stay within costs, time, and promised goals. Over-hours count as costs. If not directly, then indirectly because it may drive your best workers away. Or the person who worked 40hours overtime/week the last year (good luck with replacing him/her).
Other reasons i have seen for stress and frustration: bad information system infrastructure. For example everybody handle backups himself. That is plainly stupid. I have worked as sysadmin for a long time. And there are few things i very willingly leave to be done by experts, and one of them is backup/archiving (the other one is the mailserver...). Distributing these functions makes sese fro mthe viewpoint of your boss (since assuming you may go doe not leave them woth their pants down. They at least can sent you a mail, and from your viewpoint (you dont take additional stress if things go wrong just wo restore your capability to retrieve backups needed for recovery or e-mail to communicate). I figured that accepting certain troubles is sometimes worth it if you reduce the responsibility of a single person/admin/programmer. This includes bad code.
Last but not least: If you are responsible you have to live with the coworkers/programmers you are given. If you have a person writing not so fancy code, let him/her work in a productive way (e.g. i had a coworker who wrote code i would call uninspired at best, and a if-then-else hell at worst, but well documented - but there where tasks when exactly that was needed - e.g. for writing instrument drivers). It is not good to force newbies in OOP to design a base class and the interfaces in a framework. This will cause additional night-shifts (and headache to everybody).
Re:It's not so bad (Score:5, Interesting)
+1
Thank you, I don't feel so alone.
That is, shifting the responsibility for the schedule of the whole project to the lower levels.
#1 reason I want to fly
Pushing scheduling for two projects that involve restarting _all_ in house OLTP apps & DBs (config change) and related servers (monthly, patching) onto a UNIX SA. Might not sound so scary if we weren't processing financial transactions
Me: Everything is redundant right?
Dev: Sometimes
Mgmt: Do it with no downtime, everything is magically redundant, push your easy button dumbass
Average uptime on servers: 2 years
Time with company: less than one year
Me: This clearly hasn't been done before, and I'm not so sure I should be testing our redundancy in the process
Mgmt: Hey dumbass, a new partner goes live next week, don't fcsk it up
Other reasons i have seen for stress and frustration: bad information system infrastructure. For example everybody handle backups himself.
So true. Letting everyone do backups is the same as nobody doing backups. Every SA thinks they can do backups, but miss the entire point of it. It's not about 'doing' backups. That part is like putting parachutes on a plane or life preservers on a ship. The difference between a team of SAs and a backup admin is how they answer this one question.
How safe are we?
----------------
We have some parachutes
I think our seats float
We're not really flying that high
Sharks don't like shallow water
If you roll in the air, it'll soften the impact
We can all swim
Haven't lost anyone yet
------ vs. ------
We have thirty passengers on board, sixty parachutes, forty life preservers
and four life rafts
a flare gun, a map, a swiss army knife, and Chuck Norris.
You will not lose anyone
How safe are we? (Score:5, Funny)
That was just beautiful, man. Just perfect.
The fact that you can demonstrate such an awesome grasp of this fundamental concept makes me want to vote you IT Czar.
Seriously. I want you to go all around the world and talk to absolutely everyone and repeat that little speech. I wanna see you show up as a guest on The Daily Show. I want to see them make "Backup Plane: The Movie" I want you to wander the Earth like Johnny Appleseed and Samuel Jackson in "Pulp Fiction," getting into adventures and imparting this wisdom to all you meet.
And then maybe, just maybe, on some faraway golden day, in a better world than the one we have now, I'll pick up my phone to hear some poor netadmin chump cry out for help and when I ask that vile bastard "Do you have any backups?" maybe, just maybe, he'll say "Yes, I took them yesterday."
And when that glorious day comes, ToasterMonkey, I swear I will find the tallest twin peaks in the world, and dynamite the first into the shape of a toaster, and the other into the shape of a monkey, in your eternal glorious honor.
Doesn't work in IT (Score:4, Interesting)
The issue in IT, at least from my experience, is not about missing deadlines or other planning, it's about work that springs up suddenly or constantly. These tend to be because of many factors:
a) Budget: A lot of small or mid-sized companies can't afford a huge amount of redundancy. If a server goes down, there's not a drop-in replacement for it. If you're smart there are backups, but one still has to get them up and running.
b) Time=Money: a little different from (a) Time is money. In environments that require near 24/7 uptime, downtime means money lost, which means that you're required to get things up and running ASAP, whether it's 3:00pm or 3:00am. Often again going with small-mid businesses, you may be able to afford all the expensive resources to keep things up (this includes redundant staff)
c) Other People: Plan all you want, but when your development team's latest project breaks a server at 1:00am, or marketing needs a last minute push, or a million other things... and you're the only one who can update or fix a live server... you're going to get a call.
It's funny though, because my previous job in a union shop with strict hours was irritating in the opposite way. I wasn't even *allowed* to work overtime except with large amounts of paperwork, so that means cramming what you would normally do "after hours" in a rather open schedule in a small and very stressful "window"
Re:It's not so bad (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It's not so bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is part of the damn problem. The manager expects you to do work outside of work.
In any other job it's unthinkable, but because of the long standing tradition of putting in more hours then expected IT workers get screwed.
Re:It's not so bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's not so bad (Score:4, Interesting)
This is true. However, this culture is based (I have learned from an HR professional) on the flawed HR assumption that a salaried person is in control of their own hours, is capable of planning their own work, and so forth. It originally imagined that such professionals might work less than 40 hours/week if they were good enough.
This is not reality: 40 hours/week is the minimum, assuming you and your co-workers are perfect and management doesn't feel like giving you extra work to do in your spare time for free.
Hence, the fact is that labor laws need to be aggressively changed to deal with this flawed, inaccurate culture. For a variety of reasons (but mainly that he is too gutless), I sincerely doubt "Mr. Change" himself, Barack Obama, is going to do a damn thing about it.
People in developed nations live in economies that can be described to varying degrees as "capitalist" (capitalist-enough, at least, to use a price system) -- so why are the white-collar professionals in these economies (most-notoriously those of us in the U.S., though I'm biased here) giving away their time for no extra pay?
That is, why are we working for free? Isn't that what communists do, "for the good of the collective" (or "the good of the firm", which is a form of collective)? Out of the greedy desire to get more for less, that is what businesspeople demand of us...
(Yes, as a salaried consultant, I work lots of unpaid overtime, with the promise of rapid title and salary increases and corporate ladder-climbing. Ultimately, I enjoy my work, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't like my free time back.)
Re:It's not so bad (Score:5, Interesting)
Well ... yeyeyey my life sucks too and I am programming 8 hours straigh and blabla ....
but recently I wnt to my boss and told him that I WANT to get paid for every minute I stay over and every call that comes from the office, and that I want my salary to be a raised because new year's bonus sucked and I worked my ass of for an OK salary.
They switched me to an hourly pay and got a %25 raise.
I guess your balls need to drop and then stand up for yourself.
Needless to say I stay extra hours and when shit breaks they call me. Also I fix problems in other departments even though I am a programmer (networking, unix, DBs (mysql mostly) and sometimes help with OSX machines too)....
But at least I get paid for it now....
Sometimes you can't say no. (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't always say no.
I literally was up until 3:30am last night. During that day our SAN's SPS went offline and as a result, write cache was disabled on our SAN. This affected our file server and it would lock up, resulting in users locking up.
So I had to stay up late with Dell trying to get it fixed. What would have happened if I had said no? I would have to deal with all the problems in the morning, and listen to it from over 100 users.
Sometimes you just can't say no. But to make matters worse, once you give your boss the notion that you will work outside of business hours, they will expect you to do it more.
Much like getting a business phone...When I first hit the industry, I thought getting a work phone would be awesome!...Now? Because I checked my email so much outside of work, they expect a response out of me when they send an email.
Re:Sometimes you can't say no. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's not so bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Saying no is key to keeping your sanity.
And saying "no" is not something that geeks enjoy, because it takes a certain ability to withstand emotional games that geeks aren't good at. A common reason that geeks (including me) are attracted to scientific and technical endeavors is that we're socially a bit obtuse and aren't good at getting other people to appreciate us. We yearn for objective and scrupulously fair evaluation. We don't want to argue about our performance; we want it to speak for ourselves. It's even better to be alone with the computer: the computer is scrupulously fair.
We try to excuse ourselves from normal social maneuvering and rely entirely on our intelligence, competence, and ultimately, our good work. Unfortunately, that doesn't work when dealing with people who are angry, fearful, and willing to trample other people. And who isn't willing to trample on the lowly IT geek? Who isn't angry and fearful in an IT crisis?
When a geek encounters aggression, unfair accusations, and outrageous demands, his response to the social stress is to withdraw (leaving the accusations unchallenged) and fall back on his technical skills (by working overtime to fix the problem.)
The geek might try to stick up for himself by using facts and logic, but his aggressor will just become more aggressive and insulting. The aggressor understands the audience (bystanders and management) better than the geek and is able to snow them with indignation and misrepresentation, leaving the geek feeling shamed, embarrassed, and sorry that he stuck up for himself. What is his refuge? Demonstrating his ability with a scrupulously fair audience: the computer. So he works overtime to fix things for the guy who just abused him.
I've never worked an IT job, but I've experienced this as a software developer for a very small company. I no longer work there, and they still pay me a retainer and frequent consulting fees because they haven't managed to entirely replace me :-) Line up a better job and QUIT! Easier said than done, I know. Good luck to everyone stuck in that position. Read a few books like this one [amazon.com], work on sticking up for yourself, and keep it cool.
In another news (Score:5, Funny)
The number of BOFH increased significantly in 2008.
Re:In another news (Score:5, Funny)
I actually think that the absolute number of BOFHs is constant. They are wilfully more exposed now by the survey. And, as all good BOFHs will do, is make sure that the survey is tainted by a --clickety-click-- unfortunate mishap caused by the surveyor. There is nothing more rewarding than a good survey beating.
Re:In another news (Score:4, Informative)
Time to order another tape safe...
Re:In another news (Score:4, Funny)
Obviously... (Score:5, Insightful)
These 'small and midsize' businesses don't have the staff to hire a DBA, a sysadmin, a helpdesk guy -- you're it. You're the jack of all trades.
It's rather logical to think you're going to get abused, because the same person who is fixing SQL queries is now known to be the helpdesk guy, and unfortunately can't keep up with the work.
That said, I've been there. And working 80 hour weeks, I had enough, and moved to a large, massive corporation with good job deliniation. Not only do I learn more because I have the time, I work 40 hours a week (barely) and make far more money with better benefits.
Just a reminder folks, work to live, don't live to work. There is no such thing as a 'dream' job, because at the end of the day you'll always want more, best to find a job that allows you to live your life to the fullest and provides you a good salary as a bonus :)
Cheers and good luck to those out of work in '09, it's shaping up to be a tough year.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:They're Called Masochists (Score:4, Interesting)
They like to be stressed, over-worked, exploited, have no personal time and also appreciate being handed enough rope with which to hang themselves?
Guess I'm one of those guys (although a mere 80 hours/week seems a bit slacker.) On the plus side:
1. Stressed? Yes. But if I want a day off, I just take it. No one is counting vacation and personal days in any real way.
2. Over-worked? Sure. I get stuff done on time and with zero supervision: tell me what you need and it happens. Heck, half my time is spent browsing the web to get up-skilled.
3. Exploited? Hmm... I produce results, you pay me obscene amounts of money. I can deal.
4. No personal time? Maids, nannies, accountants, PAs, etc, fix a lot of this. True that I don't get a few long Sundays fishing with the kids, but I still have time to read them a book every night.
5. Hanging rope? Bring it on! I'm doing what I think is right, and if it ever gets to the point that management and I can't agree on the right course of action, I expect to be fired -- I'm happy to do tactical, but I won't do stupid. The few times this has happened in my career, I've bowed to the inevitable and taken a 20% pay raise at a new company.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Obviously... (Score:4, Insightful)
Because working longer has rapidly diminishing returns, even going negative after a certain point. If you wondering how returns can go negative, it is pretty simply. Stress, exhaustion and simply not caring are negative symptoms that appear with longer work hours or "hostile" environments.
Re:Obviously... (Score:4, Interesting)
I have a good, stable job with the occasional overtime, plenty of opportunity to grow, great benefits and good pay. I talk to those that work in small companies, and it's exactly the opposite.
Small companies rock. (Score:5, Interesting)
At least they do for a certain type of personality.
While you are responsible for EVERYTHING, that means that you get to set up everything the right way. Your way. If there's a problem, you can fix it the right way.
As long as you can put up with the salary and hours, the job should be a cake walk.
Re:Small companies rock. (Score:4, Interesting)
While you are responsible for EVERYTHING, that means that you get to set up everything the right way. Your way. If there's a problem, you can fix it the right way.
How I wish this were true. You have to do things the bosses way. And if you work for a small company, the boss is probably so hard-set in his entrepreneurial control-everything mindset that you spend more time cleaning up messes than you do actually making progress. He won't ask you what he should do, he'll make some spontaneous, completely uninformed decision and order you to do it -- trying to be circumspect, like you must in this line of work, is considered insubordination.
What's worse is that you're often viewed with contempt because you alone know about a super-critical aspect of the business. People don't like to feel helpless, or at the mercy of another, ESPECIALLY small business owners. Sure, someone else could come in and fix it, but not on short order. And in small business, even a day or two of downtime can break the books.
It's twice as hard for half the pay. It has its benefits, but I wonder if they're really worth it on almost a daily basis.
Re:Small companies rock. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Small companies rock. (Score:4, Informative)
Sure, there are stressful moments, where I am definitely out of my normal comfort zone. But I prefer it to the mind-numbing boredom of doing the same task again and again, as I did when I worked for a large company.
That said, while smaller companies are usually better, small companies can suck too - especially when they are losing money. When I worked for a company with 40 people, I still had no autonomy, no diversity of tasks, no learning of new skills, and I was routinely asked to work long hours for no extra pay. So rather than working for a small company at all costs, I'd say work for a successful company.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
My first computer related job (early 90's) was at a small company (maybe 40 people in the office) and I really liked it. This was long before I was anything close to a real sysadmin, but I was basically the only "computer guy" (not really even IT, hell "IT" wasn't a term yet IIRC). I'd lean to the culture being the more imprtant factor then size.
The pluses a smaller place can have if it has the right culture and atmosphere is that you're more like a family and much better communication around the place.
Un
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I work for a small company because when my CEO behaves like a complete fucktard, I can actually walk straight into his office and tell him that... he's behaving like a complete fucktard.
I used to work for a company with 120k employees. I could not do that, and it was frustrating as hell.
There are loads of other benefits/freedoms in similar vein.
Re:Obviously... (Score:4, Interesting)
On the other hand, I've been part of some tech departments of just a few people, and there's been so much more opportunity to learn and grow. Sure, it means you get stuck doing grunt work like crawling under desks and changing toner cartridges, but a job where I get to design and build the web site, select and install the mail system, configure the standard user desktop settings, plan and spec out the server room, write the training materials and teach the users, map out the IP addressing scheme and assign names under DNS, diagnose and repair workstation problems, implement the backup strategy
(And if there's anybody in West Michigan who thinks they could use (not abuse) someone like that, drop me a line.)
Re:Obviously... (Score:4, Interesting)
It'd be nice to end this story by pointing out how much happier I am now. But that's hard to say when I'm working part-time at a job I was qualified to do 20 years ago, because that's the best replacement job I can find. It's little wonder that workers are abused when the employers hold all the cards.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I've worked in IT, and been an IT manager, in both small and large organizations. My experience is, both types of organizations are abusive to their people, sometimes in different ways. The small organizations tend to overwork their people, paying for inadequate numbers of people but expecting them to provide world-class service as if they're a Fortune 500 corporation. The big organizations tend to turn into Dilbert-land, with pointy-haired bosses torturing everyone with the stupid management paradigm du jo
Re:Obviously... (Score:4, Interesting)
All very true. But what many IT people fail to see: the converse is also true. Many IT workers work in a dumb way that leads to more and more work. In more than one company I've worked, I've had a person leave, then I absorb their job, largely automate it/make most of the work go away and not really increase my workload. Then someone else leaves, and I repeat that process. One company I worked at, I absorbed/automated the jobs of 5 other people.
For example, one person did a lot of custom reports, worked that job full time 40 hours a week. When she left, I absorbed her job, designed and implemented 5 key reporting views, then trained the users how to do ad-hoc reporting on those views using Oracle Discoverer. Poof, all that was left of what she used to spend 40 hours a week on is 15 minutes a month of answering questions. A lot of IT workers make more work for themselves than is really necessary.
name of the game, sucka. (Score:5, Insightful)
Like the post office or public education...it never stops.
Unlike those examples, it never pauses. Face it guys...you are babysitting. Networks, servers, desktops, whatever... IT is babysitting. And this baby always needs sitting....
Instead of quitting in an "employers market"... try something like Gracie Jiu Jitsu... choking a motherfucker out makes me feel better after a day of IT BS.
On the bright side, we'll all be up shit creek when we use all the fossil fuels. At least your servers won't need babysitting anymore.
Re:name of the game, sucka. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:name of the game, sucka. (Score:5, Insightful)
I never considered IT to include Development/Programming. Most Universities seem to agree, as there are CS programs and CIT/CIS programs.
The Dev's are a step above the IT guys, IMHO. I am saying this as an IT guy, btw.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
CIT/CIS/MIS can do development. It's just day-to-day business development rather than theory and simulation stuff. CS in many schools is actually a theoretical mathematics degree with some time learning the syntax to run the math on a computer.
Abuse. (Score:3, Funny)
"But it is hugely disappointing that, all too often, this has led to them being verbally or even physically abused.
They fired me! They would spank me, and would respond with "Faster! Harder! Tell me how I've been a BAD BOY! Tell me that I'm a filthy little whore!"
That's when they discovered that I was a masochistic pervert and canned me.
Backups aren't all they're cut out to be (Score:5, Insightful)
And at the very end of TFA:
"Ten per cent of the companies surveyed said they had lost critical data through backup tape failures."
Is it just me, or does 10% seem like a huge loss rate?
/Test your backup
Serious cause of IT stress (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Serious cause of IT stress (Score:5, Interesting)
The other day management was screaming about the number of servers we have and demanding to know what the function of each and every one was. They put a freeze on buying new equipment (but not a freeze on the projects moving forward which require new equipment). IT suggested that we do virtual machines on existing hardware, but management gave a flat-out no on VM. Management must have discovered some immunity to paradox.
The Book (Score:3, Funny)
* cat-5 strangulation
* bayesian water torture
* physical loopback devices
* burning and branding
* PROFIT!
Stress, eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
The biggest cause of stress among IT staff is problems arising from operational day-to-day tasks
In other news, doctors get stressed by having to do clinicals, and retail workers get stressed out by daily customers.
I am glad I work with UNIX systems. (Score:3, Insightful)
1 to troll in 2 seconds...
Honestly I think this acceptance of things going wrong and "thats just the way IT is" belongs in the Windows world.
I have personally quit 2 jobs in the past because I was asked to work with Microsoft products.
User friendly and sysadmin friendly are two different things.
Re:I am glad I work with UNIX systems. (Score:5, Funny)
If that's your idea of abuse, the waaahmbulance is definitely coming to pick you up.
Re:I am glad I work with UNIX systems. (Score:5, Informative)
If that's your idea of abuse, the waaahmbulance is definitely coming to pick you up.
Clearly you've never managed Exchange servers. Or Windows desktops, for that matter.
I am purer than you (Score:3, Funny)
I have personally quit 2 jobs in the past because I was asked to work with Microsoft products.
Pshaw.
I quit an all-Unix shop when I found out my boss used emacs.
Burn, infidel!
I got out of IT and into a new career (Score:5, Funny)
write-only backups (Score:5, Insightful)
While I don't condone abusing the incompetent, we have been doing our own source code repository backups in engineering, since IT admitted that they cannot recover the repository from backups. We can't recover the repository either, since IT "owns" it, nor are we permitted to use an alternative, but we do incremental and full backups regularly of a "latest" sandbox, and at each release tag, so we can reconstruct the data set.
We have a Linux development environment, but those systems are hobbled by a Windows-centric IT shop that has firewalls blocking access to Google from non-Windows systems and Linux-centric forums everywhere.
This level of incompetence is typical of IT at many small-to-medium (once, even large) places I have worked. Mordac(s), the preventer(s) of information services, work(s) at too many places, and I wouldn't miss them if they all quit and got jobs where they could be useful.
I work in IT (Score:5, Interesting)
Severe lack of respect for IT (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a severe lack of respect for IT; a number of comments in here are unexpectedly examples of it.
IT work can be easy. IT work can be hard. IT is generally very time consuming; whether it be easy, or difficult.
I've done the gauntlet, from network drops, router configurations, firewalls, server installs, application suites, application development, end user training, requirements gathering. In the end the biggest problem is that everyone seems to think everything takes only about 10% of the time it actually takes. They see that one instance when everything goes right and decided that it must always be that fast and easy. It seldom is.
definitely agree (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a computer science academic, and so our department at one point got the brilliant idea that they could save money by greatly reducing the IT staff. After all, computer scientists have PhDs in Computer Stuff, so can run all their own IT, right? It turns out not really---and even when they can, it'd be a full-time job to do so, and they already have other full-time jobs (like writing papers and research grants and teaching classes and supervising grad students).
What's kept the whole thing running at all is that the reduced staff has two really excellent people who manage to pull things together, both of whom are much much better at their jobs than any numbers of CS PhDs would be at that job, because being a top-quality IT staff member and being a top-quality CS researcher just aren't the same job.
I suppose the change has sort of increased the respect the IT people around here get though: you definitely notice all the stuff that used to Just Work after the IT staff gets canned.
what burns me (Score:3, Interesting)
Rant begins>
What's driving me mad at work is dealing with buzz-word spouting idiots. They can barely spell "computer" but they'll come with requests that I perform some half-witted change to fix a problem that they created. (that, of course, won't work)
If they could just summon the brains the come to me with a goal (i.e. we want the application to run faster) I could fix their problems. Instead, I'm not allowed to address the garbage they've created for themselves so they can avoid looking as clueless as they really are. And just forget about introducing new tech to make everyone's life easier. They'd have to learn something new. That makes me a bad guy, until we NEED that new tech, in which case I'm a slacker for not having already done it!
And, no, I'm not perfect, but when I make a mistake I admit it and fix it. Meetings are a lot shorter when you say "yeah, that was my mistake. Sorry about that. I'll fix it" instead of blame-storming the issue for an hour or two of my life that I'll never get back! FUCK!!! FUCK!!! FUCK!!!
So I guess I'm saying, it not the job, it's the people. In the end, it's way less stressful to lower yourself to their level and play the blame-game instead of trying to achieve something useful. Note: this drives you insane if you have a brain. Never forget:
- no good deed goes unpunished
- if you fix something it's your fault that it broke in the first place
Anyway, that why I think about quitting 5 times a day. Unfortunetly, now is not the best time.
Note: there are some rare semi-competent to competent people out there who can at least partially do their job (whatever it is). They are no problem to deal with at all.
The real issue? (Score:4, Interesting)
"But I am MCSE certified! I know exactly how to do it."
Reactive vs. Proactive (Score:5, Insightful)
I find a lot of folks in the IT trenches tend to be reactive rather than proactive.
They seem to enjoy being the "goto" guy that saves the day by resurrecting the server with the melty motherboard and toasted power supply while hundreds of users anxiously sit by their desks in breathless anticipation. Merely, switching to a failover server would never be as rewarding.
They regale in bragging to their co-workers and more importantly, their bosses about how many hours they spent rebuilding databases and applying emergency kernel patches at 3 am.
Face it, what kind of attention do you get when your servers never fail? When you never lose a database?
Nothing.
Re:Reactive vs. Proactive (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Reactive vs. Proactive (Score:5, Insightful)
Face it, what kind of attention do you get when your servers never fail? When you never lose a database?
Actually, you get asked to justify your existance in the company since "you never seem to be doing anything".
There is nothing more professionally satisfying than having a company tell you they're replacing you with a (generally Indian) Outsourcing firm (having been advised to do so by HR), for 2 reasons:
1. Things have been going so well they don't think they have any IT "problems" to fix.
2. They will be calling you (or if they're completely without humility, another firm) once they realise how bad things can be without someone who knows what their doing at the helm.
Good IT people "fix" problems. Great IT people prevent them from happening at the first place.
I think the biggest reason most IT people are abused is because they care too much.
When I spoke to a Psychiatrist how he dealt with having everyone tell him their personal problems his response was "I only care when I'm being paid for it".
Probably the best piece of advice I've heard from someone in the Mental Health industry.
Yup yup yup (Score:5, Insightful)
And IT is still the industry that refuses any form of unionization. Everybody is too smart and too privliged because of the technicality of what they do to see the benefits of working together to make things better for us.
And before you start flaming, think where you would be if you were actually on your own, if you had to code your own OS, compiler, library and every other piece of software you use in your job. Yeah, but you are a lone wolf. Keep it up IT
Sleep Data Sleep (Score:3, Informative)
Don't sleep at your desk. Find a spot to catch those 2 or 3 hours of sleep before sunrise.
I preferred to sleep behind the big environmental units (AC + dehumidifier). The loud buzzzzzz of the unit was a lullaby to me. And sleeping on the floor was better than sleeping in a chair head in arms on desk, neck pain ow.
I prefer small to mid-sized comps. (Score:3, Interesting)
My last job was of the better ones I had. We start out small, not IT related (env. engineering). The work was interesting, e got to rollout new technology. Since it was a smaller company we spent a large amount of time with the end-users getting to know them, their problems etc. We really developed a good rapport.
We not only set up the infrastructure (email, networking etc.) but as there was no software to do many of the unique tasks of the company (I would look about 2 times a year) we got to do some interesting software development.
I left for two reasons:
1) I became very interested in Hydrology and decided to pursue that. I wanted a job with some field work.
and
2) As we got bigger the principals decided to hire a "real" manager. Big mistake. Up until then we were shipping software every few months in small increments to improve work flow, finding ways to do tasks for clients so we could bill out hours and be largely self-funded and basically maintaining a positive atmosphere. Within a short period of time costs skyrocketed, billable hours disappeared, the environment became toxic, the rapport with clients deteriorated and the department began to show no results. I'm glad I got out when I did.
The upshot is, if you find the right company and can create a good environment it can be fun.
This is amazingly instructive (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm looking over the postings here and have realized that the people who are saying that IT workers are whiners and should suck it up - they have never worked in IT and have no idea what it's like. It must be just like any other job, right? No, it's not.
It's a job where upper management sees you as a cost center; you contribute nothing to the bottom line. They don't want to spend any money on IT upgrades either; that old server has been working this long, it can keep on working for years. Problems? That's why we have IT staff.
When things are working you've got management wondering why they pay you. They are constantly finding busy work for you so that you're not just sitting there. But when something fails - be prepared to work as many hours as it takes to resolve the issue. And don't be surprised if you've got executives standing over you and berating you while you're trying to fix the problem.
Imagine (if you can) the Exchange server taking a crap (like they're known to do). The database is corrupt? No problem, that's why we have backups. Now, restore the last backup and while it takes HOURS to complete you get to deal with every asshole in management demanding to know where their email is and why you haven't got it fixed yet. It's a test and if you don't have the right answer you're out of a job. Too bad there's no right answer - good luck trying to think one up.
I survived for eight years doing this job for a major international corporation. Would I go back to it? I'm not sure; the money wasn't too bad but oh geez, the working conditions were awful. It's not the actual problems with hardware and software that get you, it's the problems with all those managers and executives that seem to think that nothing should ever go wrong because they have an IT department taking care of it. And when something does go wrong it's because those IT people didn't do their jobs right and should be punished.
For those of you who think that this is overstated - go get yourself a job in IT and see how you like it. After you've done it for a year or two let's see if you still think the people who have actually done it are nothing more than whiners.
so check your egos and get a Union already (Score:5, Interesting)
No, unions do not prevent people from being fired for cause.
Pro-athletes, writers, directors, and actors can make vast sums of money, are rewarded for success and creativity, and yet are members of unions. There is nothing about unions that would prevent you from making that six figure salary and getting that Viper you've wanted since you were 16 - nothing.
Yes, sometimes unions make mistakes, and some union members are lazy. But who hasn't worked at a non-union shop and seen lazy people who manage to keep their jobs.
Enron. Worldcom. Bear Sterns. Morgan Stanley. AIG. CitiGroup. Big companies that probably managed to lose a trillion dollars between them. Therefore, big companies are bad, will never work, and should be eliminated. Hey, it's the same tired argument that get's used against unions.
Unions haven't driven a single job overseas. Not one. You can blame executive greed and "free" trade for that.
No, union workers in Detroit do *not* earn $71 an hour. That figure is a lie, created by adding up all the compensation paid to current workers and the benefit costs to retired members, and dividing that by the current number of workers.
You work hard, you get rewarded. That's how it's supposed to work in this country. Yet if the minimum wage had increased at the same rate as the rise in productivity from the American worker, it would be $19 an hour today. If it had increased at the same rate as CEO compensation, it would be over $50 today.
Union workers make at least 11% more in compensation, have more vacation time, have *much* better health benefits, and have much greater job security than non-union workers. You may think you can do a better job negotiating alone, but it's simply not going to be the case. Unless...
Finally, say you really are the hot shit you think you are, AND ignore point #2 above. If you really are 10x as smart and work 10x as hard as the next guy, you don't want to be a worker bee in any case - you want to be in upper management, where union rules don't apply.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
And why do doctors and lawyers "put up" with working lots of overtime? Could it perhaps be because it's more of a choice and because they actually get some serious compensation for it? I seem to remember some article a while back about a doctor who was found to have endangered his patients by working way way too much, and his reason was summed up as "I wanted to buy a new boat"...
/Mikael
Re:That sucks but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What I do in such situations is to record my unpaid hours, and then at the end of the year when the workload slows down, take off that number of hours. So I might get paid 40 hour salary, but only work 19 hours that final week before Christmas, due to the fact I had 21 hours of unpaid work back in August.
BTW if you are getting paid $80,000 salary a year, but your dumb boss has you working 80 hours a week, that means you're only getting $20 an hour. You'd be better off becoming a factory worker or truck dr
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The terminology tells how bad it used to be: "interns" used to not leave the building. "Residents" lived there but were allowed to leave during time off. "Attending" physicians actually lived elsewhere and came to the hospital. Those are not the conditions these days, but ask a resident you know how far it really is from the truth.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You mentioned illegal. Are you working on an H1B visa or something?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That most people I know who work in some form of medical profession or in various "legal" roles work overtime because they want extra disposable income while most people I know in IT work overtime because it's that or "You're incompetent and lazy".
/Mikael
Re:My pu55y aches (Score:5, Informative)
God complex? You must be in a small shop where the "experts" always say "I'll do it" instead of explaining to the new hire how things work, which helps them keep their "know it all, do it all" facade intact. Most large shops have people who are more willing to help others by explaining how things work, DON'T copy corporate secrets to their USB drives, and try to make things easier for everyone. Emotional? Sure. Stress makes people want to become emotional. Whiny? maybe on some message boards, but most of the IT people I work with are stoic, in person. If ANYONE reads another employees mail, unless directed by corporate security or HR, will be fired if caught. I imagine most other large businesses have similar policies.
You're still missing the point (Score:3, Insightful)
I work in a medium sized business, where I am the only full time IT staff. And your generalizations are still way off.
I'll grant you that there are a few that act that way, and they do tend to get the lion's share of the spotlight, but most of us enjoy the unique challenges the small/med sized business presents. And yes, I have worked as part of the large, mammoth organization as well.
I enjoy the variety you get from doing a little bit of everything. I enjoy having to learn about new technology and h
Re:Part of the problem is Ego. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but I am smarter than most of the people I work with. Because not only do I know how to do my job, I often times have to tell them how to do THEIR job. I have to know how to do their jobs, well enough to tell them how computers help them in their job, and to help them learn how to use computers to do their jobs.
I may not know all the details, and peculiarities of their job, but I know what their job is, and how to do it.
I'm fully convinced that I could actually "do" their job (well, most peoples jobs), should they get hit by a car. Or at least do a passable job of faking it (which I'm also convinced that many of them do anyway).
And that isn't ego either. I don't want to do their job. I would hate it. And often times, pays a lot less than what I make.
Re:Part of the problem is Ego. (Score:5, Funny)
I watch a lot of hockey and I know pretty much everything the players are supposed to do. I could just step right in on an NHL team and fill in. I'm that awesome.
Re:Part of the problem is Ego. (Score:5, Funny)
I know I could skate around and not score any goals too. Seems to work for a lot of them.
Re:Part of the problem is Ego. (Score:4, Insightful)
None of these jobs explicitly requires intelligence. None of them require the ability to problem-solve, to creatively find solutions to seemingly impossible problems, to make things do things they aren't meant to do.
While I only spent a few years in IT, before moving into the job-security and summers-off of education, I realized this quite well. I also had co-workers who realized this, and would put in obscene hours "keeping the company afloat". I did not. Why? Because while I was smarter than a lot of my co-workers, I also realized that I would see NO benefit from busting my ass doing over-time work. There would be no promotion, no additional job security, no additional pay, no accolades from the higher-ups in the business.
I was pretty glad that this had been my attitude when lay-offs came, because they were pointy-haired-boss style. Our corporate overlord did random lay-offs. RANDOM! Not need-based, not performance-based, not cost-benefit-analysis-based. RANDOM! People who had been working there 2 weeks to 15 years got laid off in a mass purging, at RANDOM! Had I been busting my ass up until I got that pink slip, I would have been pissed. As were a couple of the account executives who had been putting in serious OT to save "important" accounts.
IT gets shat upon because IT lets it happen. Mix Ego with poor social skills, no backbone, and a fear of the uncertain, and it's all but certain that you'll get trod upon.
Saying "Fuck NO!" is as likely to get you fired/laid off as not saying anything at all. And it's far more satisfying.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Wow, I don't know why you're taking so much heat. What you're saying is exactly true. I mean, really, a good developer is going to have to know the ins and outs of all the business rules and procedures before he can write or maintain software that implements those rules.
Sure, he may not know that Sandy in accounting is touchy about people using her stapler, but he knows how to process the return requests she needs. What he doesn't know is the human element of the job. Sure, in a perfect world, that woul
Re:Part of the problem is Ego. (Score:5, Interesting)
When I first started working in IT 15 years ago, I felt the same way that you do. IT People can often walk around with a superior attitude. I was determined to be the exception.
I tried to be patient as I explained for the 10th time to a user how to login to their computer and why passwords were necessary. I tried to be helpful when users told me they had lost their documents but, couldn't remember what they named them, when they saved them, which application they used to create the documents or even a few words or phrases within the document. I considered it part of the job when I had to work 110 hour weeks for the Y2K death march because management would not purchase the software upgrades that were requested in February until late November. Of course, it would have been nice if one of the business managers that depended on the systems had checked to see if we had food or needed any assistance.
I tried to take it in stride when year after year, all training money was cut from the budget. I had to buy my own study materials and train myself at nights, weekends, holidays and vacations, neglecting my family the whole time. It was OK because I was part of a team. Every vacation that I have had for the last 15 years, I've been called and had to spend hours on the phone helping someone with a computer problem no matter how self-inflicted. I've been repeatedly called by "frequent flyers" at 3am to unlock someone's account because they can't be bothered to remember the password. I've had superiors bring their home computers into the office for me to fix as a "favor." So why is it that when they have the office Christmas party, I'm not invited? When problems occur in other people's area, it's said "Don't call them, they are on vacation, it can wait." The equipment I use is the discards from other departments.
Why do I have an attitude? I may have stayed up late every night for the last 4 months teaching my self how to support the newest technology that management is demanding, only to be verbally abused by the administrative assistant that is told not stream media over the Internet because it uses up all of the bandwidth. Finally the truth has hit me. The BOFH attitude is a response to the treatment by the users and management.
This type of treatment causes one of three responses. You either become down trodden from the abuse, you become a scowling vicious dog, or you leave. You can either be a victim or refuse to be victimized. I chose the latter. I've joined local professional associations, added to my skills, and began heavily networking. Despite this crazy economy, I have continued to generate job leads and obtain interviews. I have a very serious prospect at the moment and expect to leave within the next few weeks.
Speaking of ego, as one who has left IT... (Score:4, Insightful)
Man are you clueless.......
Your comments reek of a know-it-all ego. First off you speak like all in IT have an ego. Farthest from the truth.
I will refute your anecdotal evidence with some anecdotal evidence of my own.
I used to be in IT. Specifically, I was a programmer. It felt natural and fun and really stroked my own inherent nerdiness. (Additionally, it was a way to insulate myself from having to be in uncomfortable social situations, but that's not really germane to the subject at hand...)
I left IT last March and have since been in sales. Now I spend much of my day talking to strangers on the phone. In other words, I am doing cold-calling. How am I doing? Well, the web app I wrote that tracks the results of my calls tells me that I have made 4063 calls since then with 703 conversation with "decision makers". Additionally, I have only had one person hang up on me.
It is a very, very, very different world here in sales. It's touchy feely, talky, and decidedly NON geeky. Well, there is a slight geeky side to it, but it's psychological and thus a "soft science". So I don't consider it to be true geek.
Where is this going? Well, since I'm doing b2b and providing a technological service, I occasionally run into business owners who tell me, "Our IT department handles that, you need to talk to them." I have to tell you, that's poison to my ears when I hear that. Why? It's because IT workers view me unconditionally as some stupid uppity sales weasel who knows nothing about technology and deserves to be looked down upon. I think this is partly due to the fact that by adopting my service I would be depriving them of a job, but moreso because they view themselves as the master of their domain and don't like to be educated.
And, honestly, I empathize with them. If I were in their shoes, I would view me as a stupid sales weasel. This is partly because I deliberately sound stupid on the phone (it puts business owners at ease -- there's that "touchy feely" stuff), but moreso because being smart and competant is very much part of IT culture. I remember feeling like I had to compete against all the other IT workers in my job. My brain power was my currency and my dick size in the IT world. I haven't ever worked an IT job that wasn't like that. You have to be able to build up a defensive barrier to survive in that kind of environment -- where all of your peers are going to try to show you up with their brain. You have to be ready to show them that they're wrong and know nothing.
In fact, isn't that what you did to the Parent by telling him, in essence, "You know nothing of what you speak, moron!"?
I also talked to my sister about this, since she works doing sales for web services in the UK. She shares my opinion, calling IT workers "smug" and "condescending". And she's right. I think IT workers and trained to be that way by their peers. If they have to be ready to defend themselves against their peers, how much respect do you expect them to have for some slimy sales weasel who makes much more money than they do and never has to think about recursion or race conditions?
But it still sucks when I have talk to an IT worker the phone.
I'll also add that my many phone conversations have allowed me to gain several levels in Wetware Hacking, which is fun.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If someone did that to me, my first call would be the police, and my second call would be a lawyer. Physical assualt is NEVR acceptable, and the person who gave me the black eye would be paying the price for his stupidity.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Cars are far more reliable. I drove my Dodge Shadow 340,000 miles which is the equivalent of 7000 hours operational time, and I can count on one hand how many problems I had with it. (Brake rotor failure, spark plug failure, leaky radiator, failed emissions, and that's it.)
In contrast computers seem to have a problem every 50 hours (once a week) of usage. That's why people get frustrated because they think a computer should be more like a car with 1500 hours between breakdowns (once a year).
Re:O really (Score:4, Interesting)
My brother started his own business with the settlement money he got after a coworker attacked him.