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Cubicle Blues Blamed On IT
Ant wrote to us about depression and the cubicle blues. That's what the International Labor Organization, the UN's labor and human rights agency, says at least. They say that around 1 in 10 employees is either depressed, has anxiety, or is burnt-out -- do you find that to be true?
Imagine rewriting a kernel for the twelfth time, but this time with a view from atop on of the plateaus in the Grand Canyon, or possibly on the beach in Cabo San Lucas?
Possibly to save a bit of money, the company can just wire in a row or group of cubicles and have them all the same views and automatically change scenes every so often!
It'd be cool!
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Vote Homer Simpson for President!
4) Drink lots of water.
7) Take your holidays.
I agree with these two points the most. The water thing may seem weird, but I got into a habit of drinking alot from the fountain at work and it really kept my energy up and it also got me up out of my chair every hour or so. It also gives you time to walk around and think about your problem without having to sit in your little cube. Taking time is very important. Not just holidays, but vacation in general. Don't hoard your time off and take it all in one lump sum at the end of the year, it won't help you. You might enjoy those weeks but not the whole year. I like taking half days and random days off just to relax if there is no deadline to meet. Even if there is, there is nothing wrong with taking a day off in the middle of the week to relax and making up for it by coming in on the weekend. I really dislike the whole 5on 2off work week. It was nice in school, but for work i would prefer the days off seperated and i've done so in the past with the permission of my employeer and it really helped me relax more.
I do tech support.
I fool myself DAILY that my job is important, and it's easy to do, because when you fix the customer, they are quite often very appreciative, and say "thanks" or "you're great" or stuff like that. They send letters, they send coffee mugs, etc. I get to be the hero.
As far as materialism and motivation go - we get paid for survival purposes. Most people lose the fact that they're getting buy, that they're surviving, that they're paying the bills, feeding the kids, buying them college degrees, and even getting enough toys and trappings to keep up with the Joneses. Often, it's mistaken for greed, but it's the escalation of the perceived bar for survival. At some point, say when you have more than 5 or so million dollars, if you're still fighting for survival, you've got to sit back and realize you're sick and need help. Wonder if the reason you're working so hard is for survival, or if there's some other bogus rationalization, or if you're REALLY getting something beneficial out of it.
The world would be a better place.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I use to think like this, but the thought of sitting in that luxury retirement home at 70 yo, all by myself, seemed very lonely.
Luckly, at the rate Im going, I should have great-grandkids by then.
At least someone will be cryin at my wake.
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
better than nothing.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Maybe... I suspect that the real problem is that U.S. companies are too cheap to hire the number of people to allow their employees to avoid burnout.
I work for a US$15B company and have been trying for two years to get my boss find someone to act as a backup for my position. So far they've tried to have someone (a former tape-hanger) learn UNIX on their own and that failed. Currently, they're trying to have one of the NT administrators learn UNIX in his copious spare time (har har har) and that's not gone anywhere. We run clustered UNIX servers and someone who's learning UNIX by running down to Border's and (maybe) doing some reading is not going to cut it when there's a problem. (UNIX has to be second nature to someone in that position, IMHO) Sure, I document the hell out of everything I but if your backup person doesn't have a thorough knowledge of UNIX basics they don't have a chance. At least there's documentation now. I inherited the systems from a guy whose ``documentation'' was an unfinished outline and a file folder stuffed with napkins that he and a consultant had written notes on (I'm really not kidding about that.)
Taking a vacation is a joke when you have to drag your pager around with you. We recently went through an IT audit performed by one of the big consulting firms and the folks that were interviewing me were incredulous that I didn't have a backup. When they picked their jaws off the floor they asked: ``How do you take a vacation?'' I have some close friends with their own consulting business and they've asked the same thing. (They'd love to be my backup but the boss is too cheap to even consider that as an option.)
Anyway, the way I see it, anyone using the tight job market is using a convenient excuse to avoid looking for people. ``Gee, it's so hard to find poeple in this tight job market! (translation: ``I really have more important things to do like gossip about the consultants and I really don't understand UNIX anyway.'')
"It looks like you've been missing a lot of work lately."
"Well, Bob, I wouldn't say I've been missing it."
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IMHO, of course.
May the SOURCE be with you.
Point-Counterpoin t: Technology
-- Piracy is a vicitmless crime, like punching someone in the dark.
Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
This past summer my wife and I joined a gym. We go several times a week, although I'm sure we're not as consistant as most of the other patrons (physique bears this out ;). In any case, I certianly feel better after an hour there than after nine at work!
It's my strong belief that the technologic society is "wrong" for people in that we weren't made for it. People were designed for agriculture, not computers. Physical labor is good for us, actually. I'm glad that some research is adding a little bit of creedence to my already-held belief.
Jeff
Jeff
Is it an accident that I first read this headline as "Cubicle Blues Blamed on NT"?
I gave up the idea that I had much control over things at work long ago. I haven't had any mental breakdowns that I was treated medically for, but I certainly have had my share of days of hopelessness and despair with the actions of my corporate masters. After a certain point in time, I decided to give up on changing them and work on my own life. People are going to act on their own self-interest. I might as well do the same. If I can't prevent my CM's from doing something idiotic, then at least I can mimimize it's disruption to my life, or eliminate it by leaving.
I see the the constant change in workload and information flow in the same way that I see weather or the ocean. Every day I go to work I am surfing on this complex system. Sometimes the waves are small, erratic and annoying. Nothing much happens. The next day they might be absolutely gigantic and give me a fantastic ride. The only thing I know for sure is that the work will be there tommorrow and that the system as a whole will feel slightly different than it did today. And I will still have no control over it, but I might be able to use some of it to my advantage. Surf's up!
My wife is like Unix. Lots of commands. Lots of arguments.
Id have to agreen Quantax. I feel its atleast over 50% that are either depressed, stressed, exhausted, and nervous. Should we consider adding that extra wall to the cublicle now? Maybe with a doggie door to get it? Slmcav
... that I am too burned out to participate in this thread
Marx ignored human nature. We are a competitive species. Life itself is competitive (predator, prey, limited resources and all that). We excel when challenged. Communism/socialism/whatever ignores this and places people in situations where their productivity is totally irrelevant. Imagine if the fruits of your labor were divided over 250,000,000 citizens. I could go out and double my productivity and it would make exactly zero material difference in my family's lifestyle. Why, then, should I bother? In our present system, which is flawed in that it confiscates about half my money to distribute around the country, if I go out and double my productivity, gain new skills, etc, I can get a raise or a better paying job and make drastic improvements in my family's standard of living. I have done this, and will continue to do so. Many people have done this and will continue to do so, and that is exactly why capitalist societies prosper, and socialist societies fail.
I just want her to grow up with a happy, fulfilling life.
She may never invent a new OS, or cure cancer, or win the lottery, but if she can look back on her childhood as a happy time where she learned good habits, I will feel that the entire struggle was worth it.
Not everyone will be world famous, not everyone wants to, some of us just want a happy, content life.
I understand that most of Europe has similar vacation systems. We had an Austrian web developer at my last job who was utterly shocked that he only got a week of vacation in his first year (These guy were bastards about time off. I seem to remember that it took three years to build up to the "normal" two weeks of vacation.) The European company he used to work for apparently gave 6 weeks to everybody. Personally I am thrilled that my new job comes with two weeks vactcation (4 weeks after three years) and (Hold on to your hats) two weeks sick time per year. Yes friends I can actually get sick without using up all my vaction time.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
For the record.. I have an IT job, in a public company, in a company in the IT sector. Lots of engineers, programmers, etc.
I keep reading all these horror stories about Silicon Valley and how 'horrible and stressful' working there is. 80 hour weeks....
Yet I hear so many people moving there saying 'but I can make $100,000 a year'.
Hey.. that's twice what I make.. but wait, I only work *gasp* 40 hour weeks..... and I'm NOT stressed out.
I also know that if I decided to work 80 hours a week, like at a second job, I could make that hundred grand a year, and I would be sick and unhealthy and stressed out.
There are several things needed to make you happy at work.
1) Job Security. You can't feel 'good' about work if you worry about every single thing you do causing you to get fired.
2) Personal Security. You have to feel confident about your own abilities, and not dig yourself into a job that's over your head.
3) Good coworkers. If you end up working with backstabbing moneygrubbing coworkers.. well, what do you expect?
4) Good managers/management! Yes.. VERY important. Managers who realize that programmers are not 'programming machines' that can go 40 or 80 hours a week. Managers who realize that you will get just as much quality code out of programmers who work 40 hour weeks and are expected to actually code for only part of that.
5) Good *company* management. If everyone is on the same playing field, things work fine. If corporate guys set deadlines for engineering projects, of COURSE there is stress! If software managers set deadlines on software without any idea of what is involved, same thing. Stress.
Best example I've seen of proper behavior is this:
corporate (marketing) says they want this new feature added to the product. Corporate asks VP Engineering. VP Engineering talks to his managers. (hardware guys, software guys, project managers). THey all go back to their respective groups, gather input as to what is involved, and get back together to tell the VP Engineering how long it will take. Project managers indicate when a good time to start it is.. etc. VP Engineering calls back and says 'You can have that two years from now, unless you want to shelve some other stuff. HEre are the main reasons we can't do it.
And *NOBODY GETS MAD ABOUT IT!* This is how things should work.
The programmers and engineers aren't overworked, the deadlines are reasonably met, the managers take responsibility for their departments....
I'm a sysadmin. That's pointless support job #7 in my personal book of pointless jobs, but it pays the bills, and I work for a company that intends to make a difference (albeit a small one). Every year, 400-600 Americans are killed at grade crossings. People simply -don't- survive getting hit by trains.
My company intends to substantially decrease that number.
So yeah, I can say my job is meaningful. I make it possible for my code guys and gals to write the software that stops trains.
But I'm still stressed. Job-related stressors aren't all because a job has no real worth. I make better money than I expected, I live well, and am still stressed remarkably. I doubt that it has to do with my 9-5 work, either. It's the extra hours, the bullshit from other employees, the cellular leash, and the constant low-grade harassment from customers, clients, vendors, and everyone on the team... because things aren't done yesterday. I hate my job... but I can keep doing it for a little while longer, because a) the project is -meaningful- and b) this company is willing to invest in my career in the form of training, certification, and experience.
We're all stressed. We live in America. And depending upon what you do, you'll bitch about it. Who among us wouldn't sit on their ass, or golf, or backpack, or run naked through the hills, if doing so was a feasible means of producing income?
MCH/VO S* W- N+++++ PEC+++ D(s++/r) A a+>+++ C* G++(++++) Q+ 666 Y
According to the NIMH, about 15% of the general population suffers from depression or anxiety. If that's the case, then it seems like IT workers are above the curve.
---Joe Merlino gnupg public key ID: 1E91EBAF
Im only 18 years old, and i recently got a job testing software. Do you think this is too young to be stuck in a 4x4 pen for 9 hours a day? At first it started to drive me a little batty, but now I think its great. Ive only been working here since may, but im really starting to enjoy it. Maybe there are phases, and im in the phase where im delirious and dont know whats going on. Next youll hear on the news about a crazed cubie dwelling teenager gone psychotic...
The continuing invasiveness of business marketing is annoying, too. I honestly don't mind advertisements for stuff I care about (I enjoy getting my REI catalog, certain travel-related deals, and a handful of other things), but stop wasting my time calling me at 9 on Saturday morning asking if I want to change my long-distance service! Unless you are going to give me free, unlimited, ad-free, worldwide long-distance service -- in which case you wouldn't have any incentive to sign me up in the first place -- then my answer will always, always be no. So stop wasting my time and yours.
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
So what did you do as a consequence of this? What does matter?
I do understand your point, and I am glad not to work at that kind of company (I'm in research at a university). I would just like to know what you did and what you consider to be useful.
EagerEyes.org: Visualization and Visual Communication
If I were ever to consider "cube war" fun, I would be incredibly depressed.
Maybe the 1 of 10 is the guy who is creative and intelligent enough to grok how bad his job sucks. I'm guessing that an infinite barrage of cup-cozies helps to spur on that realization.
ack...thpppt!
Yes, I completely agree that the *kind* of stress in the high tech world of today is a lot different than it used to be - say 50 years ago.
But...I am currently working for a high tech company and I do not have anything like the stress levels that I used to experience in my previous job. Why? Well IMHO, the people around me, and mosre so - above me (in the metaphorical sense) were 90% to blame - including myself.
Think of a pyramid. Apply this pyramid to an organisation. At the top is one person, or a group of people. These person(s) make policy and give orders (to simplify things very much).
If these people are get to a certain stage where petty things like imposing a stationary request form for a *biro* that has to be signed by a member of upper management, then, it's only a matter of time before these people pass on their "apron strings" like management to the lower levels of the pyramid in the form of stress. Things are requested immediately, now, straight away - but the control that is imposed on all departments/offices is so tight that it makes it close to impossible for people to react to these demands. Resources are limited, cut-backs may be in operation - and the ever increasing circle of stress increases.
I've experienced it - and would not like to experience again.
Strangely enuf - the companies that I experienced this level of stress were American. Of the European companies I have worked for, I did not find this.
I am not fingering anyone, anything or any country here - this is just *my* findings.
If anyone has experienced this, it would be interesting to know.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines
I have a pet theory that as communications technology advances at an increasingly feverish pace, that while our communication *connections* and channels of data will go up, their *meaning* will go down in proportion.
so true! Just because technology gives us more WAYS to communicate doesn't mean we have anything (more) to say. More communication with less to say.
cpeterso
I see a lot of people in this thread talking about "getting meaningful work", but when they specify, they are talking about swapping *careers* into fields which are basically human services. I have trouble seeing any geek enjoying such work.
true. They don't call it "work" for nothing. For example, if you were a professional musician, music might cease being fun.
cpeterso
I've done farm work, pumped gas (outdoors in the Canadian winter), served food in busy restaurants, and did janitorial work. While each of these suck in their own way, none compares to the stress and bad health effects of office work (sitting still for that long each day causes all sorts of problems from muscle wasting to poor digestion).
Sure, there is the chance of mishaps (or asshole customers), but you're busy moving around and don't have time to focus on them. They happen, it sucks until you heal (or calm down), you don't really think about it otherwise.
Office jobs tend to put one in the role of "professional worrier". A programmer worries about bugs, a secretary worries about schedules and messages, and a manager worries about everything. The push to efficiently do non-mechanical work in isolation that requires human evaluation and judgement is brutally stressful in a way humans were never meant to deal with (the normal pattern being: spend a few minutes figuring out how to do something and worrying about how it can go wrong, then work for several hours simply following the plan you thought out).
Go work on a farm or even pushing a mop for a while, you'll sleep better, eat better, put on muscle, and have generally better health (after a short but rough initial period of adjustment). Unfortunately, you can't get paid well that way, and may find it unsatisfying for other reasons.
Office hours should be shorter than labour hours and breaks should be more frequent; the mind tires more quickly than the body. Frequent meetings without rigid agendas should be scheduled with the recognition that they serve a social meeting/group therapy function that is as important as the information sharing function that is normally considered their purpose. It might also be much healthier not to hire janitors for office buildings, but to have people clean their own work areas. It is relaxing, mechanical work that gives your body a chance to pump lymph around and your brain a chance to shut down for a moment to recouperate.
(sitting around all day worrying about everything) != (good working conditions)
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And to be perfectly frank with you I don't have a huge amount of sympathy for those people, I had to live on an extremely low amount of my entire life until I started pulling money for myself. I don't believe this is simply because I am different to them, it comes down to effort. I am currently a little uncertain about this though, I don't know if all men really were created equal anymore, I am beginning to lose faith in that.
The majority of street people (in the US) are those who have psychological or physiological problems that prevent them from working. (I.e. the crazies and the cripples) Some of the rest are also the MAJOR drug addicts & runaway children. There IS a small percentage of homeless people who are just like you and could work if they wanted to, but they are vastly in the minority.
-The Reverend (I am not a Nazi nor a Troll)
-The Reverend (I am not a Nazi nor a Troll)
=(.\')=
That may be the case for you. Somehow I think you'd find that if you stopped for a while, you'd find you were sharper.
Also.. how old are you? age is a factor.
As a doctor- who loves what he does, and is convinced that it matters- I only wish that what you say were true.
Being convinced that your work is meaningless can be a great stressor, but being immersed in meaningful work is not necessarly stress-free!
so true.
People stress themselves out. If you worry, of course you will be stressed. Duh. Just relax and be happy that you're not a hooker in sub-saharan Africa with AIDS and various other parasites, with Moslem zealots looking to behead you in public.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I think it's a company cultural thing myself.
I once worked with a company where you could just feel the stress when you walked in the door. Every project carried with it a discussion about what would happen if it failed. This lead to an atmosphere of recrimination (even when there weren't major problems) in an attempt to protect departments and individuals from possible punishment.
After quitting I also worked with a company where things were just the opposite. Nobody ever mentioned the personal ramifications of failure. We all worked together and when we had problems they rarely involved blaming anyone for it. We might have known who all could have caused the problem, but unless it was occurring repeatedly or it was intentional we did not dwell on it. After my previous experience it took a while for me to get used to it.
At my new job we also had a large amount of control over our environment. Scheduling (very important) was done by a peer of ours and thus working with them was much easier. Once we had a member of upper management decide that rearranging the cubes would somehow increase productivity. When it was proposed at a meeting we decided it was not a good use of $ and it never occurred. The little things like that were really important to us. They maybe didn't make the job easier, but it felt like it.
In college we once sealed the space between some poor guys door and door jam and filled it with balled up newspaper, but this is WAY better.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
in the IT world get stressed out because they *don't recognize that they get stressed out, or what makes them stressed out until it's too late*.
The first time I was really stressed out (I was 22 years old, working at some ISP) I went to the doctor complaining that I was having trouble sleeping, got frequent headaches, and noticed that I was generally getting irritable. I thought it was my diet or I had a tumor or something. After talking to him, describing work... he said 'You are simply stressed out'.
And it was *MY FAULT* for getting that way.
So.. here are my simple guidelines for not getting stressed out.
1) When someone gives you tasks/objectives at work, and a deadline, TALK TO THEM. If it can't be done during reasonable working hours, TELL THEM SO, IMMEDIATELY. Don't just assume they won't budge.
2) You aren't doing your job right if you can't do it in about 8 hours a day. You are either a crapppy programmer, or WAY overextending what you should be doing.
3) Eat Good Food!
4) Drink lots of water.
5) Don't drink too much booze.
6) Don't do recreational drugs during the workweek. The odd beer is okay. Stay off the weed, it makes you stupid. Save it for the weekend.
7) Take your holidays.
8) Communicate!
You retire as Grand Champion. Your plaque will be in the mail in 4-6 weeks.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
I get what your're saying. I don't have a good answer for that. I try to raise my child to be independent and question authority, like I do, but it's tough. All I'm saying is, it's easy to be altrustic when it's not your kid. It's easy to say "we should all support public schools", but when the public schools in your area suck and your kid needs a decent education, you're gonna suck it up, ditch your beliefs, and pony up the dough for St. Mary's Academy, or whatever. Are you gonna sacrifice your child's education for philosophical principles? In my mind, that would make you a less-than great parent. Your child hasn't decided on those beliefs, you have, and they will suffer.
.
The basic thrust of my argument is that being content has nothing to do with what you do for a living or where you live. There are some very happy and at peace PHBs who are great for their community . .
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DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
Hit the nail on the head, with this one. Talk and no action, this is very true of most people. It is hard to survive on the salary of a saintly life. The salary of a saint doesn't have to be meagre. We can all do something of value with excellent salaries. homepage.ntlworld.com/neil.dudman
I don't wonder about that, I know. Every time I encounter a kidlet or a baybee, my reaction is "AUGH! Where's the off switch! Somebody shut that thing down I can code!" (I'm firmly in the "kids are a venereal disease" camp :)
This is why I've decided not to have kids.
Playing devil's advocate - your question (alumshubby's, not The Queen's) seems to imply that "it's different once it's your own".
Given my viscerally-negative reaction whenever I encounter babies or kids, how on earth could I, in good conscience, "have one to see if my reaction was different when it was mine"?
The folks I pity the most aren't the ones who have kids. It's the ones who don't want kids but who have them to appease a kid-hungry spouse or relatives. The kid suffers as much as the coerced parent.
As for sacrifices, there's no point getting into a dicksize war about who's suffered the most.
Consider: Parents sacrifice their free time, but are rewarded with the experience of "creating a new life, nurturing it for 18 years, and charishing it forever". That's not a sacrifice, that's a long-term investment.
Speaking for myself, I've sacrificed a 5-year relationship (she wanted 'em, I didn't, we both realized we were gonna be happier without each other over the long term), and (assuming 90% of the female population wants kids) 9 out of every 10 potential relationships going forward. I'll probably remain single and celibate the rest of my life. I'm rewarded with never having to deal with poopy diapers, and being able to hack hardware, software, or just slack off and enjoy my weekends whenever I like. And I get to retire 10 years earlier than folks with kids. My decision is also not a sacrifice, but an investment.
Different value systems. Different priorities. Different payoffs.
Blah blah blah, this book rules.
Yeah right. Might be more convincing if you weren't only linking to it to get you a whole heap of cash in referral payments.
I can always tell when people are just trying to make themselves money, coz they post B & N instead of Amazon.
Free Anne Tomlinson!!
I would think its a bit higher than that. All the employees where I work are always stressed out and depressed ;] Guess we should all quit...
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
I hate cubes as much as the next guy, but I'll warrant you look at any group, and 1 in 10 will be depressed, anxiety ridden, or burnt out, cubes or no.
Well, people who aren't parents (or bad ones) tend to not understand what's so &*$(@#~! hard. Think about it: In today's society, if you manage to raise a decent, moral person who is moderately contented and happy, you should get a medal! It's NOT easy. It means spending about 90% of your day not worrying much about what you want or your needs at all. Sure, if I had no kids, maybe I would get into open source, or do (more) charity work. But sorry, I don't have the time.
BTW, My wife has a "meaningful" job working in the child welfare system. For that, she makes no money and, frankly, makes little difference.
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DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
Our cube is our home. Every time we reenter our cube we are filled with the voices of the others. They give our life meaning, fill the void, expand our knowledge.
From our cube we search far and wide for technology and species that will add to our perfection. Away from our cube we are incomplete, but in our cube we are whole. Stress is irrelevant.
I want the fire back.
Compared to "Real work", which is normally mind-numming repetitive physical work, the life in a cubicle is not that bad.
Just out of curiosity, how old are you?
Most people that I've run into with that opinion are just a couple years out of college, not quite enough time to hit the burn-out point.
Back when I did manual labor, at the end of the day I'd be physically tired, but still itching to get out of the house and go have a good time.
After 10 years of working in IT, now at the end of the day about all I want to do is find a couch and a remote control and shut off my brain.
The type of exhaustion you experience from mental work is different that the physical sort, but it's still quite real. It's also trickier to recover from. If you're physically tired, the solution is simple: sit down, lie down, get some rest.
With mental exhaustion, the solution isn't quite so cut and dried. Just resting isn't always enough, you need to force your mind to stop thinking about the job, not always an easy task. And many times, there simply isn't enough time in the evening to totally refresh yourself from the day's work (especially when that day didn't end until midnight). So each day you go back to work just slightly more drained than the day before. After 10 or so years, the cumalitive effect of this can be rather severe.
Make no mistake about it, mental work is "real work." Often times having worse effects on the quality of your "off-time" than the physical variety.
Compared to "Read work", which is normally mind-numming repetitive physical work, the life in a cubicle is not that bad.
Do not underestimate the power of the Dark side
Seems to me we should value humans as much as we try to avoid cruelty to animals. Or does this free-choice shit override all? Anybody ever work in a company town?
Also Overcomming (sic) Programmer's Block? (BTW - I submitted the article as "how to overcome programming stuckness?").
While I may have more to be concerned about since I have a mental illness, I find that dealing with moods and emotional concerns to be of profound importance in my work.
On the other hand, as I say in the Metro San Jose article that's linked to from above, one of the reasons I chose to be a programmer (or rather, continued to be a programmer after I'd been doing it for a while) is that I find that being symptomatic is rarely an impediment to working as a programmer - it is sometimes, but not all the time.
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
I get anxiety sitting down all day. I wish during the day I had to go move some funiture or something. Divide it up a bit so I can get some manual labor mixed in as well. Oh that would be oh so NIce!
I have been working @ the same company for about 5 years now. Over the years management has been changing slowly but surely from a great place to work to a shitty place to work. I used to enjoy my work (PC's & Networking in a Windows/AS400/AIX enviorment) however as managment changed and they benifits, It has been harder and harder to come to work.
Lately most of my stress has been comeing from management. Our department recently moved from Finance to HR. The main difference is that Finance VP knew nothing about computers and or networking, and trusted us, the HR VP, dosn't know anything, thinks he does, and will not listen to us when we say that he is wrong.
As an example, we recently had a exchange server crash. The main problem of the crash was file size, with corrupt data in the file. We went from an 18 gig database to a 8 gig database. (we were lucky to get that). However our HR VP, who had and lost most of 700 MB of E-mail, would not beklive that there is no way to recover the data.
He still belives that it is some sort of Bizzare conspiracy agenst him.
My point is this. It is not the cubicale that is causing my stress, although I experiance all my stress here. My stress is caused by an overbearing just plain fucked managment.
Yes I can not spell...Wait....for a second there I almost cared.
Today is my last day as the sys admin for an achitecture firm. I've seen some of our work, it is nice, and makes the world a somewhat more tasteful (if not actually better) place. I am going to start as a sys admin for a university. They do a great deal of good and produce others who do even more. I do not claim that the world would be signifigantly darkened by my absence, but what I do is enjoyable, brings some small good into the world, and pays pretty well. These jobs are out there, you just have to find them.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
I think 1 in 10 is a gross understatement. Not just for the IT environment but for the dilbert zone overall. It's a shame to see the drone-like atmospheres that new erganomic environments have created. And with the high costs of everything most average cube workers are spending way more time in these shitty environments instead of being out enjoying life. Scary to think what the attituded and culture will be like in 20 more years.
.
Take all good things in moderation, including moderation.
Maybe you're right about the whining thing, I know my 'conditions' are great. But I'm not an IT professional, i'm only a cs student. I can tell you that I'm feeling new stresses that I never had before and I can only imagine what they would amount to if I was a professional in this field already. I could see how the phrase 'burnt out' could take some meaning for me quite quickly.
"One time I thought I had mono for an entire year, but it turns out I was just really bored." -Wayne Campbell (Wayne's W
Are you for real? You actually *want to be one of those 12 yr old children working*? Have you any idea about the conditions they work in, what kind of life they have??
It saddens me to see that people can be so ignorant of the rest of the world.
I look forward to going to my cube. I think it's the fact that after lunch everyday there seems to be some sort of cube war.
Cube War:
Throwing an object into the other person's cube in order to hit them or keyboard.
Rules of Cube War:
1. Object thrown must be of the stuffed or "stress ball" variety. Computer expos commonly give away free balls and cup koozies.
2. Object must be lobbed from a sitting position into the other person's Cube.
3. hitting a person in the head is perfect. Hitting a person's keyboard in order to make a mistake is bonus.
Where was Dilbert in the related Links.
Who better to explain how management demotivates you and burns you out ?
Seriously though if companies tried to get rid of the Macho culture where it is deemed necessary to work long hours maybe their would be less stressed employees.
Companies thought that by downsizing in the last decade they could have it both ways.
Cut your staff,remove a layer of management, make the survivors work longer hours and you will have a lean efficient company.
Especially in IT, overworking is counter productive, people can really only manage about 5 hours of productive work a day and if you consistently work longer than about 40 hours a week your productivity falls.
The major reason for all this is unsympathetic management and poor project management.
I can't see why for a normal working week any IT staff should be required to work more than 40 hours. If they regularly exceed this its due to poor management.
I think you're being very defensive here, I never implied that socialism or even communism was a flawed concept in some way. Although for the record, I do believe every system of government currently available is a flawed concept in some way, capitalism included. I actually thought the content of my comment reflected that view.
A non-socialist individual is a very obvious term, I don't think you really need me to explain what that means, but in case I'm wrong, it means an individual who does not believe socialism is the best form of government available.
I'm a perfectionist and an individualist who has set personal goals actually higher than what a more conservative person might consider realistic. To my mind taking risks and trying to exceed my own expectations is the only way to really achieve something. That's my choice.
Yeah, it is your choice, and if it's working for you, that's a good thing. What I was pointing out however is that for a lot of people, they're either unhappy with their choice, or they see no choice worth making
You've got an old fashioned idea of what socialism is if you think it somehow limits your freedom to work hard, earn money and achieve high level of success in your own field.
That statement doesn't quite make sense, I mean, everything limits your freedom to work hard earn money and achieve a high level of success in your own field aside from the total absence of any regulations on the fruits of your labour at all. And as far as I'm aware, aside from a few small places such as Andorra and Vanuatu, there aren't any places which are totally absent of income tax. Even then you could argue sales tax or any other given tax "limits" you.
That shouldn't really be the question though, the question should be what's the balance between acceptable limits for the greater good and unacceptable burden on the people who achieve the most in order to assist the people who don't achieve at all. If your opinion is that socialism is that acceptable limit, and that works for you, that's good, you've got answers for yourself
But it's flawed to imply that socialism is *less* limiting to the complete absence of any intervention in order to distribute the fruits of your labour as you see fit, that doesn't make sense.
There's a wonderful book about mental illnesses wich explain that most times they have a purely physiological basis (not a psychological one, as Freudian Dr's think). You'll find that what we eat is often VERY related to how we feel. Worth a read.s bnInquiry.asp?userid=221R0WHUEC&mscs sid= ADBJ4RQUSKCV8GREHS2F39V9K0KMASC3&salesurl=Rwww.bn. com/&isbn=0658003984">
<A HREF="http://shop.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/i
"Brain allergies: The Psychonutrient and Magnetic Connections", Dr. William H. Philpott</A>
IMHO nobody would be stressed if they were doing truly important work. At least something that was important to themselves?
-Nikolai Bezroukov, "Portraits of Open Source Pioneers"Feeling that your work is worthless certainly adds to stress, but I don't think it's the main factor. The main problem is pushing your brain too hard for too long every day.
People aren't made to worry all day over ten-thousand details. You have to know your limits and simply insist on living within them.
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Is that a Jeebus-ghoti?
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Management making completely uninformed decisions is what causes a lot of stress. And once a project rolls out, clueless clients make up most of the rest of the stress. And both the clients and the management do not know how to express their problems or requests well enough so that everyone will actually know what is going on, and what is required.
People should plan for problems as well, which is another major lacking. Plan for that project to blow out, plan for the service to fail, plan for disaster. Doesn't have to be by much, but a few days here and there make a HUGE difference to the stress on the people working on it when there are those last niggling things to rectify that just won't dissapear!
This is what happens when people get into areas they have no understanding of. Up and beyond their level of competence. Wether it is because of lack of training or because they just don't know is no excuse. It exerts pressure on the people that the problems fall onto, and that is usually the technical staff. It is more prevalent in the IT Industry, but it happens everywhere.
It is amazing just how many managers really do act like the PHB's in Dilbert.
Can you tell I had a really bad day today?
Some of us don't have the option to quit as simply as you put it, though. You have to understand that. We all don't have options. By the way, if you're going to be calling people idiots, you might want to start to spell "you're" correctly.
I think we are talking about different things here, i.e. genetic vs. enviromental effect on human behavior.
:)
It is known that more affluent/educated people have less kids. Richer countries (Western Europeans) has lower population growth rate than 3rd world countries. So obviously the mean of production not only affects the relationship of production, but also reproduction
Furthermore, genetics is always used as probability, not as determistic factor on an individual. Genetics and environmental effects working together to determine a person's behavioir, are like yin and yang, or two sides of a coin, none of them can be singled out as the ONLY factor.
--- You make things foolproof, and they'll find you a damn fool.
I hate to be a thread killer, but how about we extend this question a little? You've just come to the realization that your job has no far-reaching purpose. Great, so you quit it and join a non-profit helping the poor or disabled or supporting equal rights. Then everyone on earth dies because 5 asteroids hit the earth. Back to square one, eh? What's the purpose of you LIVING? What is it he purpoes of your LIFE? To make money? To support a family? To 'be happy' for a short time? Why are we here? How can we think at one time, and then be dead the next?
These are much more important questions.
Perhaps it's the idea of creation and instruction that is appealing. The idea that you can make another human being that will, based on your guidance, be able to navigate the world in a (hopefully) autonomous manner is an idea that can be very fascinating. To me, such a concept is personally fulfilling.
Additionally, just because someone works in a "worker drone" capacity, doesn't mean he or she is worthless. I really think that what job you have in life is totally meaningless. It's just something you do. The relationships, people you meet, and conversations you have are the important thing.
I guess as well ask what's the purpose of living as much as what's the purpose of having kids.
- Jonathan
I once came back to a yellow cubicle. And I mean yellow. My co-workers had covered EVERY surface with yellow Post-It notes. Then they arranged the keys on my keyboard (the QWERTY LINE) to read: FEAR US!
Have YOU ever unstuck about 10^4 Post-It notes? It's a Zen-like experience!
EMUSE.NET
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
Unfortunately there are still some people out there, like my mother, that care whether the work gets done. Her job is stressing her to the limit because they put too much work on her and upper management will never do what they are supposed to. She does stuff related to grocery distribution in the southeast. She talks about walking out all the time, but when it comes down to it, she simply can't do it because she doesn't want to leave the rest of the company in a huge mess. It's simply having a conscience, because you know you have a responsibility and you don't want to bail on the other people that will have to pick up the pieces once you're gone. Remember, if you leave it will only make the problem worse for everyone else, at least for a little while.
I think my work matters.
My previous job was working on IR and RF sensor and data processing systems. My present job is in 3rd generation wireless communications.
I like my work, and I think it matters. However burnout is a significant problem, as the stress can get pretty bad.
You can work for a living, or live for your work.
I prefer doing the latter. I'm a coder. I won't breed.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
If I had kids, I would actually imagine them standing in the way of doing great meaningful things. I know everyone likes to praise parents as if plopping out a miniature of themselves and raising it is some miraculous feat. If they really wanted to accomplish something of redeeming value, you'd think they'd adopt some poor kid who doesn't have any parents outside of state-run foster care or an orphanage. But the only time people find it in their heart to do that is when they can't manage to plop out their own clone.
I don't mean to bad-mouth people who choose to have kids, but people need to be realistic and stop treating every guy or girl who infest the world with their little spawn like they're national heros.
Sometimes, I wonder if people who have kids and raise them while believing that they're doing humanity a wonderful service are actually people who didn't manage to accomplish anything else of great affect or importance and decided to cop-out, have a kid and live in the delusion that it's some noble pursuit.
I dunno. Just thinking out loud.
---
seumas.com
Be it a dog, cat, fish, or even a bird, pets can help melt the stress away. When they're not being funny as hell, they're relaxing when you pet them (well, not the fish, but it's fun to watch them swim around). My cockatiel does some funny things, and sometimes he sits on my head while I play Counter-Strike. I'm surprised that he isn't making machine-gun sounds yet.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
This is a damn fine comment. And this whole subject is one I've been struggling with for quite some time now... as I put it to myself: "What's the point?"
/. rails and rants against -- they're all derided as evil. And they are. But those evil causes are winning. Not every battle, no, but the war.
:)
For a long time, I wondered why the hell I bothered to even get out of bed in the morning, when I knew that I'd do nothing of any worth to anyone at any point during the day. Finally I think I've found an answer.
Evil.
Face it, evil wins. Look around at all the things in the world that are going on for no apparent good reason. Well, they're happening for an *evil* reason. Look at all the causes
When the embittered and burned out programmers look out from their small pens, they see who's benefiting from all their hard work. The Evil Ones. The selfish bastards.
Well, become one of them. BE a selfish bastard. Work only for your own concerns, and to hell with anyone else. Do what you wish, and don't bother justifying it to anyone else -- your own desire, or mere whim, to do so is all the justification that you need.
Rather than tiredly dragging yourself out of bed to drive through insane traffic to work yourself brain-dead on projects you care nothing for... instead, wake up with an insane grin on your face, thinking of all the suckers you're going to use for whatever you fancy that day. Sure, you might actually be going through the same motions as you went through before... but it's amazing what a mere attitude change will do for you. And once you change your attitude, new doors will open up for you that you never could have imagined.
To quote a famous fictional person, "You don't know the POWER of the dark side."
You see that smiling, whistling person on his/her way to work? They seem like an evil wicked son of a bitch, don't they? Well they ARE! And you can be one, too. This society is built around and for the evil and wicked. Simply get with the program, exploit everything and everyone in the world around you for you own personal gain and pleasure, never look back and have fun all the while. Hey, it's something to do while you wait to die.
Am I being serious, or writing dry witty parody? I don't know either.
I have a pretty decent job. There are ups and downs, but overall I can't complain. Of course I'd like more money, etc, wouldn't we all? But essentially I get to play in silicon fantasy land, and get paid for it.
As for making a mark on the world, maybe my patents aren't much, but my father made it so I could do at least that much, and it's better than he was able to do. I hope to pass better opportunities on to my kids.
Besides, kids are something of a dream, the most open-ended potential most of us get to participate in. Most dreams are rather mundane, anyway.
What if your parents had decided to follow their dreams instead of having you?
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I could have told you this by observation. IT is the worst place to work if you have IT knowledge. I am personally completely burned out and as stressed as I can get, I leave work and get home many days in a dysfunctional haze...I literally can't even think, doing everything on autopiolt basically...I frequently have memory gaps where I don't even remember streches of Highway driving, or at work I can't even remember what I was doing 5 minutes earlier! The worst part is I have to be so regimented and in control at work to say sane, that its ruined my social life, I meet a great new girl and I get fustrated right away because, my mind immediately tries to classify everything as a project, after 10 years+ in IT my mind is having trouble doing anything in a relaxed manner because nothing is allowed to be relaxed...just go go go! Don't even get me started on salary, unpopular opinion I know but all those extra Visas bad idea I need my company to get lean and hungry so they recognize my worth, they don't pay me(or anyone else) nearly what we are worth for waht we do or the abuse we take doing it...
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Even in prison they have forced exercise yard time and a free cafeteria. This beats the hell out of the occasional walk around the block and eating fast food at your desk.
I do not have a signature
IT work requires solving a lot of complex problems and this can really take its toll on you. Here's my story: I develop web based database systems. My boss is a total ASSHOLE. One example.. I develop a library to make everyone's life easier. The bastard gets jealous because developers and management like it. So he decides that the new financial system will be based on it. I say it's not ready and of course, he knows, but says it's gonna happen whether I like it or not. Perhaps I should have refused back then. But anyways, the months that followed were a total hell. If he was writing a part of the system and got lazy... then it should be in the friggin library. The damn thing was so bloated to trying to do everything that it was a nightmare to handle all his requests of additions and changes. Oh and there were crazy deadlines, so I couldn't exactly take my time with nice design... The son-of-a-bitch basically put all the stress of multiple projects on me. Oh and it doesn't end there. This asshole just loves personal insults and the like. He also brags a lot. About everything he can find. Of course, management above him is a screw up, so there's nobody I can complain to. They basically let him do his thing. Oh and he loves telling everyone that he's such a brilliant leader... bleh... Of course I couldn't leave... contract. But things are changing soon. Thank goodness. Also he recently got a boss that demands things of HIM sometimes.. and he's such a crybaby about it, he's pathetic. What goes around comes around. I hope he gets his soon...
There's something you can do, but it's up to you to figure out how. I think the only reason I realize this is because of my own depression/suicidal tendencies before I ever got into the industry.
Don't let anything bother you.
If you say 'no', and they say 'yes', they're trying to control you. Don't let them.
Don't care. Forget about the money you make, about your deadlines, and about everything else in your life that you could waste your life away thinking about.
Find something that you truly, genuinely enjoy. When stress starts, reference the first three points, and think about that very enjoyable thing.
Now, I'm not about to tell you 'snap out of it', but that's really the only way it can be described. At some point after feeling the way you do, something will click and you'll be happy. What's important is that you realize it when it happens, so that you can take action.
The thing is, it has to be an internal mechanism. You have to be the one who subconsciously causes that mechanism to start. When this happens, you'll realize that everything happening around you is pointless. Everything that people insist on you doing is pointless. No deadline or any other stress mean anything.
Now, at that point, you may think that you'll be left suicidal. I'm here to tell you, that's not true. This is what happens afterward. Once you realize everything around you is pointless, you'll start searching for things that do matter. Maybe it's your wife. Maybe it's your child. Maybe it's spending time with your family. Maybe it's religion. Whatever it is, don't let it go at that point. You have to hold on to the feeling until it's a natural part of your personality. (Yes, that means quite a while)
But then, you can walk around in your haze, intensely aware of pointlessness swarming around you, and not let it touch you. You can make your money, though it won't matter anymore. It will give you new ways to spend that money though... ways that aren't so pointless.
Anyway, to sum everything up, it's all in your hands. 'You are the master of your destiny', to quote a too-often used cliche. You are the one who will ultimately decide what your life is worth. Relying on others to decide for you will only make you feel worse.
_______________
you may quote me
Could be this one of the reasons behind the free software movement? I believe many (not all) developers are after it because they believe it's for the sake of a better world (please note I said "they believe", even if it probably is real), which is a respectable goal after all, isn't it?
Personally I believe it's more motivating than a goal like "making yourself and the company you work for gain some more bucks", which isn't bad at all, but clearly is somewhat less actractive (at least in some cultures).
People seem to think that every stress in our lives is psychological. There are psychological stresses, but probably these are not the most important. In our world there are a lot of recent stressors: diet (frankly, I think most of us eat real crap - most products have a long shelf life because not even microbes would eat them), chemicals (there are a lot more chemicals everywhere now than 100 years ago), electromagnetical (what can I say? ;-) ), ...
In the 20th century, stresses have probably multiplied by hundreds. I don't find surprising a lot of people is suffering depressions, anxiety et al.
We're so close to the cliff's edge that even a gentle breeze can make us fall.
(I took the liberty of cleaning up the spelling, and other nits ... :).
I guess that would be amusing, wearing computers with "touch" connectivity, then forming a human chain around an inner circle of cubicles around Christmas, singing, "O! Holy Quake, Nailgun Blight" while the wireless components shake Aibo robots about the office flashing their eyes red and green. (Can they do that? Would these folks have any input on this question?)
If anyone does this, please do make an MPEG2/4 of that and post an URL to it on Slashdot! I'd like to see that! 8^]
A truly excellent pizza parlor is a delight unto the heavens. Treasure the sauce and the toppings!
This reminds me of something from my intro psych class. One study showed that non-depressed people are overly optimistic, mildly depressed people view the world accurately, and severely depressed people are overly pessimistic. So the mildly depressed cubicle workers are the ones who recognize the true meaninglessness of their existence.
There is a practice of Companies placing wicker effigies of the mangement in their rest rooms.
:)
The idea is that when the staff are having a bad day they pick up a baseball bat, beat their boss up and go back to work feeling happier.
I guess some effigies are replaced quicker than others, but its not a bad idea
Do you suffer from
* Depression
* Anxiety
* Stress
* Burn-out
* None of above
* All of above
* I don't suffer, I enjoy them
In Murphy We Turst
Eric Idle: Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing 'Hallelujah.'
Michael Palin: But you try and tell the young people today that... and they won't believe ya'.
"Before the wreck, I never knew how to type with my face."
Meaning isn't something that happens to you at work, and it doesn't only occur when you accomplish Some Great Thing. It happens when somebody you love smiles at you, or cries, or is born, or passes away.
Work is irrelevant. Life is what it's all about.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Marxism is primarily responsible for the existence of the forty-hour work week; this quote is out of Engels's 1890 preface to the Manifesto:
If only Marx were still by my side to see this with his own eyes!
as well as government pensions for retirees, and a large number of other things which working citizens of modern developed economies, like yourself, presently take entirely for granted. Would you personally care to work seventy hours a week for subsistence wages? The seventy-hour-a-week worker of 1844 ;, and I should emphasize to you that in all the industrial countries of the world that was the worker of median income, had virtually no opportunities to "go out and double (his) productivity, gain new skills, etc, (so he) can get a raise or a better paying job and make drastic improvements in (his) family's standard of living." He lacked that opportunity because he was too exhausted and undernourished.
Unless you happen to have been born a millionaire's heir, you owe Marxism. It was Marxists all over the world who, during whole generations of political struggle, got their heads busted in in order to get you a legally-mandated limited work week, and job conditions so you don't run a three-to-one chance of being maimed on the job before you reach your grey hairs, and free public schools for all, and the rest of the program of the International. Instead of merely parroting trashy third-hand anti-red propaganda, why don't you go learn a little bit of the history of labor? There is an ocean of difference between the historical facts and all that weightless moral-theoretical ahistoric nonsense that union-busting capitalists and their captive schools and news media have crammed into your head.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
However . . .
When I go to work, and then I come home, I find it exceptionally hard to write, which, at least the way I do it, requires a lot of thought. That's what I like to do best. My mind wants to shut down, and I have to force it to stay active. I get frustrated when I play my guitar, too, but it's like I can't even think anymore.
Dan
Dan
No nerve struck, and no apology necessary; I took no offence at your comment - but I spend many a family gathering hearing others explicitly say that I'll change my mind someday. Often coupled with "as soon as you find someone to fall in love with", as though I'm too immature to know what I want. I'm not saying you said that - but us childfrees hear it a lot from people who are saying it.
Only my good upbringing (thanks, Mom and Dad!) prevents me from ripping into them with "Actually, I've been there, done that, and broken up over it. Ain't no oxytocin rush (love) or other pleasure (orgasm) that's worth 18 years of poopy diapers (p=1.00), screaming in restaurants (p=0.90), and picking up the pieces after car accidents, unwanted pregnancies, arrest records, and/or drug overdoses (OK, p=0.10). I can get the sex with my right hand in 30 seconds. I can get the love for $500/session and a lot of self-delusion. Either one's cheaper than $500K of capital and the best years of my life spent doing things I have no interest in doing.
Sadly, my folks brung me up good, and I refrain. *g*
Likewise, it sounds like you've thought it through and decided to have kids. More power to ya, and good luck to you and yours. (Hey, someone's gotta raise 'em, as long as it's not me, I'm happy! ;)
ReidMaynard: re: your comment on "being alone is lonely". If that's the case for you, then maybe you should consider having kids or doing volunteer work that puts you in contact with 'em. I'm someone for whom alone != lonely, for whom Sartre's "Hell is other people" rings true, and who figures that not having a family doesn't mean "nobody will be crying at my wake". The EFF will be crying tears of joy, assuming I outlive my capital after retiring early ;-)
I'm not saying raising a child isn't hard, I KNOW it is...I watch my friends and co-workers fumble through it every day. What I was asking is whether breeding a race of "moderately contented" worker bees is worth giving up your life for.
Maybe if I was a parent myself I'd have a different perspective, but I'm not (nor would I like to be).
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
Or in other words, "my goal in life is to do more or less the same thing as the common fruitfly, yet I consider this somehow a worthy effort". Are you a sentient being or a cancer cell? Living your life for no purpose than to produce yet more of your kind is a pretty shallow sort of meaning. On the contrary it seems one of the least meaningful things you could do. You work hard in school and at work so that you can raise a little mini-me or three, so that they can work hard in school and at work and raise a mini-me or three, so that THEY can work hard... etc, etc, ad nauseum. This is meaning? Stop the cycle, I want to get off.
And you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?
Quit.
Sometimes, it IS the only answer.
I had a job where, for 2 years, whiel i was working franticly to digt he company out of messes, the president was making new ones at the same time.
After two years that incldued a 2 week mandetory rest on order from my doctor (I staretd talkign seriously abt putting a bullet in my head and my wife, bless her, dragged me to the Dr), I realized it was never goign to egt better and I left.
I obecjt though to how your post might make people feel bad though for having a sense of duty and obligation to their work and a strong work ethic. Those are all GOOD things. The key is, the comapny has a duty and responsability to YOU too to treat you reasonably.
If they can't do that, you need to work for someone else.
I like my job, but there are heavy pressures to do everything perfectly. While mgmt generally wants everything to get better and better, they are also highly adverse to making any significant changes that might actually make things better. The exciting part of my job is when I am allowed to tweak the system, but I have to sign my name in blood, twenty different ways, to assure mgmt that there will be only benefits and no negative impacts.
So, I am often reduced to long stretches of extreme boredom with interspersed periods of highly intense activity (e.g., replacing three existing database servers with five larger ones). The boredom is actually more stressful, but the heavy activity periods can be stressful in their own ways.
This report is basically saying IT is normal.
--
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
When in college, I thought that. I took a job at a large company that makes pacemakers and other electronic medical equipment. I thought that by doing so, I could make something that would make a difference in people's lives.
What I found depressed me more than any other job I've ever had. I had an internship with a certain big blue company, and this experience in the pacemaker industry was even more beauraucratic. The people were there for a paycheck and nothing more. When the annual came around that celebrated what they do, where they bring in people whose lives have been saved by pacemakers and defribulators, people skipped.
Just to rebut the inevitable, they FDA did not make the mess I saw. They were way beyond what the government requires in paperwork and mismanagement. I was working on a Master's in computer science at a fairly reputable university, and I was doing ASP development and PowerBuilder in a crap job.
Saving people's lives was meaningless. Giving the time of day to an intern was meaningless.
I could not be happy in an environment like that. I found the hard way that you have to find a job that you can be happy doing, which pretty much means having fun. Think twice before you go and join some organization where your computer work will help others. It may drive you crazy. It may not, but be very careful before you do so. My experience teaches me my contribution to this planet can't be done in a job setting. I have to have a fun job, and return what I've been given in other ways.
Just personal experience. It's a shame that most people in a position to help others are in it for the money. Granted I can't speak for a non-profit environment. You'll go nuts in a corporate one, though.
yeah, plus all the sex
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I would say that internal air quality may be the number one reason for office work malaise. It is in the best interest of the company by saving money to not allow too much fresh air into a building because it cost too much to condition it. Think of the all the evil that is in the air you are breathing right now, carpet glue chemicals, copier chemicals, dust, mold, co-worker out-gassing. It is disgusting. Also inactivity will waste the muscles and ruin your digestion. My solution is that I go for a half hour walk after lunch time. It really helps a lot.
> Marx ignored human nature. We are a competitive
> species.
I don't see the comment that brought up marx...I don't see what he has to do with this discussion. Anyway, I disagree somewhat. Marx DID miss some parts of human nature though.
> Life itself is competitive (predator, prey,
> limited resources and all that).
Whats your point? Competition for limited resources is definitly a fact of life. However, when resources are plentiful, there is nothing to compete for. In our case, they are most certainly plentiful.
> Communism/socialism/whatever ignores this and
> places people in situations where their
> productivity is totally irrelevant.
In some instances correct. That depends though, there are many different types of socialism and communism. You are ignoring other types of competition.
> . I could go out and double my productivity and
> it would make exactly zero material difference
> in my family's lifestyle.
And material difference is the only difference that you recognize? I assure you that this is a culturally influenced veiwpoint. It is also not true for all types of socialism/communism.
As I see it, all "communist" and "socialist" systems have failed more due to corrupt leadership and mis-management than anything else. A true socialist system is about the people, to focus all of its energy on building up the power of a state - building a huge military and entering a futile arms race - thats a sure way to make it fail.
(of course - killing millions of your own people doesn't help either)
Believe it or not, there are lots of reasons to work besides money. Have you ever seen a person who has retired...has no need for more money than they have - and is bored to death? They want to go back to work! I have 2 grand parents who would kill to be able to go back to work.
Being produductive feels good! It is a reward in and of itself. I can come to work and do nothing all day if I want - or I can work and get something done. I will tell you - I feel great when I feel like I got something accomplished (the worst are days when I work all day long and feel like I got nothing accomplished - such a downer)
And yes, there are plenty of incentives to work in a good socialist system. If you don't work - you don't get the benefits. You get to feel productive. You get to know that what you are doing is helping others (another good feeling).
Of course, I work for half the money that I could make for no other reason that I love my job and the people that I work with are just great. Low pressure and great atmosphere. I make enough to live very comfortably - even with a few excesses.
Frankly - I have interests outside of my job and how I make money. As much as I enjoy my job - its not the center of my life.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Think about it, if a manager gets a sudden problem/request:
- Who will her/she turn to? - the ones under him/her
- When should it be solved? - yesterday
If the ones under the manager are also managers, they will just pass the problem downwards (sometimes sidewards) until it gets to the bottom of the food chain.Now, good managers are the ones that try to check things out before sending them to the next link in the chain. They will also use prevention to try to minimize the number of problems (think testing), and reserve time for emeregencies (which always happen, no matter how much prevention you do).
When somebody gets a whole lot of problems falling down in their lap
- Suddenly "time for emergencies" disapears
- Next "prevention" goes down the drain, including (for us coders) proper design.
- The more you skip on problem prevention and contention, the more problems you get tomorrow (and yes, tomorrow does indeed come).
- This in turn will lead you to cut even further in preevention
- ...
This happens not only to managers, but to everybody. How many times do you skip proper design - or even basic design - because the project time is too short? How many of those projects finish up in time? How many times do you end up redesigning the data model (or should i say adjusting the data model) in the middle of a project?All this goes down to the ability to keep calm and think rationaly under fire. The more higher up in the hierarchy you are, the more important this is. Unfortunatly, this does not seem to be taken in account when assigning a person to his or her position ...
I'm sure you have a point there. Basically all thats needed to solve this "problem" is that the employers start to do some serious surveillance on the job performance of their employees, get the unions tied down and start ditching the losers (if they aren't already doing it).
Doesn't "the land of the free" start to have a shrill ring to it? And on a more practical note: At some point (soon) you'll have disqualified so big a percentage of the potential workforce that there's not enough solvent buyers for your high-tech mass market products and the economic growth will stall and then plunge...
In this context it is evident that the rising of stress problems among the white collar workforce and we cannot satisfy the demand for qualified employees is a telltale sign that we are stretching the productivity to the limit.
Marx was basically right and the fact that we have used the collapse of the Soviet Union to justify thinking otherwise will be coming round to bite our asses, if we don't start to do some radically different economic thinking real soon.
Brace for impact!
***
***
Let's take the the Cap out of Capitalism - and then figure out what Italism means....
And to boot, the fact that what you are doing is meaningful can itself be a source of stress. If you work a meaningless "punch the clock" job where you walk away at night and stop thinking about it completely, that can be a lot less stressful than leaving a meaningful job when you feel you need to be doing more.
I find that figure surprisingly low ... especially given that 1 in 4 women and 1 in 5 men across the entire population suffer from depression in their lives ... then considering a select group of that population where conditions are particular stressful and demands of employers are often high, surely the prevalence of depression would be higher and not lower than the population statistics state.
My $0.02
Rob
There are many examples where IT problems lead to stress in the workplace. /. is filling up with anecdotes of them. Blame the bosses and clueless management is a common theme, and I'll agree.
I've seen IT workers completely depressed because management stupidly imposed quotas and thresholds to measure their productivity. This leads to further complaints from the people they are supposed to be supporting, because the race is to close trouble tickets fast, not fix the problem, or tackle the core of the problem. This leads to a worsening situation spiraling out of control. Management was happy because the statistics showed an ever increasing level of complaints, with a shorter and shorter response time to close out the cases. Average time to open and close a major network failure was 7 minutes, which was completely fictitious.
I didn't last very long there, before I became too depressed by my poor performance. Even though I was the highest level of network support, only taking the cases nobody else could solve, I was still expected to close each case in under 7 minutes. These were cases like building wide outages, dead trunks, replacing burned out equipment. Management had its head up its ass the whole time, and turnover was close to 100% every 6 months. They accounted for the high turnover rate as poaching by other high tech companies.
Slashdotters will agree, 1 in 10 depressed workers would be a low count. Perhaps they are only looking at the workers who have been diagnosed by a professional therapist as severely clinically depressed. A link to a summary of the original study leaves a few too many questions.
Been there, still recovering,
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
I alot of times the Marketing/Sales/Management make promises They can not keep. Which puts additional stress on the techies. I found this a cause of many stress related issue at my job.
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"One in ten office workers in Britain, the United States, Germany, Finland and Poland suffers from depression, anxiety, stress or burnout"
Might it be the case that one in ten *people* suffers from those conditions, whether they are office workers or not?
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
Marx wasn't wrong. There were a number of mistakes especailly the lack of human responsibility in stage 3 of his plan.
However, it would be wrong to decide that nothing he said was right based on a single flawed experiment that showed only that not everything he said was right.
I've been a contract developer for over 10 years now. I've worked in a cubicle for about 7 years. As far as hours worked go, I'm a contracter - I get paid for every hour I work, period. If you're working 80 hours a week on salary, then, well, your an idiot. If you're depressed because your in a cube, well, your an idiot. If your staying in a job you are unhappy with, then, well, your an idiot.
If you are depressed, you need to either a) GET OVER IT or b) get happy drugs from the doctor. Sorry, but this article seems like yet another way for people to shift responsibility for their attitude and actions to others. YOU are responsible for your happiness. Period. YOU are responsible for you attitutde. Period. IT is to blame for black moods? Whatever. You are to blame for staying in the situation if you can't handle it.
The Game Guy
Thankyou for the statistical analysis. I don't doubt what you're saying is true, however I live in a country with a specially bad reputation for abusing the welfare system. It's certainly not the case here. I personally knew a few people who ended up on the street. I used to go to school with a fair amount of people who are now deeply entrenched welfare recipients, or homeless altogether and living on the street.
These people that I know, in this country, are certainly capable of rational thought. They have no mental disabilities which would impair them from acquiring the skills necessary to get a job which would pay well.
They're simply extremely lazy people and don't want to work, so I have to pay for them. That annoys me just a little
This entire thread though is getting to be quite off topic due to the fact that it's coming down to a discussion between the pros and cons of available systems of government in modern society.
All it started out as was a discussion on the fact that a bunch of people are discontent, I don't think that has a whole lot to do with government.
I'm not so sure it's the cubicles. I've worked in open environments, private offices, shared offices and cubes.
My take is the work is difficult, and the personality/talent mix crucial, regardless of work environment.
Read the last paragraph a few times if you just skimmed over it. You need a few clowns, a few dummies, a few gurus, a few mid-level, a few morose vampires.
It's the mix -- if it gets skewed (where I work we are down to two gurus, a bunch of dummies and a couple mid-level (I'm a "mid-level").
No one really knows how to have fun and let go, everyone is morose right now. To have any fun, I have to go it alone with a few select others in cubicle rendevous.
When we try to have fun in meetings, it just doesn't work. People are trying too hard, whether management or dummy, and it gets weird. So the place seems morose.
The reality is, some of us are pretty happy on an individual level -- because of the cubicle rendevous. We tell little jokes to each other, have some chuckles, go back to work.
So, to sum up, as a group we have low morale and don't trust each other.
At the individual level, some of us are having fun and working hard. I think it's just that way sometimes.
The last place I worked, and at this place (before some key players left) most of us hung out after hours, etc. It just doesn't work that way right now.
Of course, the whole Microsoft thing, along with the H1B debacle, has cast a pall on careers in computing. That doesn't help, either.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
It's important to have a good work ethic, to love your job, etc...
It's MORE important to recognize how you are treating yourself and how your wonderful job that you are dedicated to fits into your life as a whole.
A lot of stress in our life is caused by our inability to stop the loop where we are stuck and change our job/life to the less profitable but less stressful one. This is caused by what I call the Subj.
...
Isn't it interesting, that most of us cubicle dwellers belong to this level of income/society.
And the tragedy is in our choices.
Poor don't have the choice. They spend all of their money just to pay the bills for the food, gas and apartment without an ability to save anything.
Rich don't need to choose. They can pretty much afford anything they want/need.
It's middle class that is haunted. To buy a new car or put more into retirement fund; to remodel a kitchen or to spend a vacation in Europe; to pay for kid's college in full or buy a better house - the choices abound and loom, making us work, work, work just to satisfy the beast of consumerism inside us
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
Evil isn't winning, it just isn't loosing. The balence is being maintained just as it always has. Bad things happen, good things happen, bad things just make better news stories. Taken on whole life is not a whole lot better or worse than it was one, two, or five hundred years ago. Some things are better: We don't die of black plague anymore, a lot fewer people starve to death (Yes, it does still happen, but it happens less). Soem things are worse: lIfe is more complicated, we have information overload. A hundred years ago people were fighting against evil robber barons who used their great wealth to trample on the rights of their employees and customers. five hundred years ago it was the powerful lords and nobles, today it is multinational corps. At least Microsoft doesn't burn down the headquarter of companies they take over, kill all the men and take all the women and children as slave. That was the tradition in early middle eastern civilzation was a city was conqurered. Quite frankly I am rather glad that there is Evil out there, I like to have something to fight against and bitch about.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
RSI is just psychological? Thank goodness. I can tell my mother that the surgery she had on her right hand back in the 70's for RSI was just the result of the trendiness of the IT industry 25 years later.
If you are brave.
If it's really how you say it is, and you're prepared to piss someone off, go over the project managers head and figure out the process by which these dates are set.
You might find that the higher-ups are *REALLY* surprised that there is some kind of problem, and will get VERY concerned as to why they hadn't been informed that the work couldn't be completed on time.
It's usually those in the middle that mess things up (not that they aren't necessary, good middle-management is a serious assett).
It's management's JOB to *MANAGE* what they have.
Oh. It helps if you make it clear that you are not trying to 'screw' anyone, but that you are just trying to solve a problem in the company.
When you have NO kids, you work for a living, live for your passion, work for fulfilment or for money. In the case of the latest, you work to buy toys, really; beyond obtaining the barest of essencials, I work to have play-money.
Now, if you DO have kids, why do you work? Assuming you are not dysfunctional (and who isn't these days?) you work not for YOUR quality of life but for theirs. You tear your guts out so that they would be raised in relative comfort as compared to your experience of the place which you once occupied and they occupy at present. You work (not 'go to work', but 'put in effort', so perhaps 'strive' is a better word) to provide them with a childhood and opportunities better than the ones you had in their position.
Now, I KNOW that you see where I'm going.. "What's WORK got to do with it"? Plenty. If you grew up poor, raising your kids with material possessions aplenty is your way of giving them more than you had as a child. If you grew up rich, but lacked affection (and are not dysfunctional, I say it again) then are your priorities still on the money? What if you grew up as a latch-key kid and you know the feeling of coming home to an empty house? Or you come from a broken home? Where are your priorities then?
As a hope-to-be future parent (I'm actually more looking forward to being a grand-father, but that's besides the point) I intend to raise my kids in a way which I consider to be better than my own up-bringing. This involves physical comfort, sure, I would die before I had them go hungry... But I will make damn sure that they grow up in emotional comfort as well; and if that means that their college degrees will not be paid for in advance, so be it.
Hard work builds character, no? Or is that just a myth that the rich tell the poor to keep them that way?
The REAL jabber has the /. user id: 13196
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
Yes I totally agree. I have a pet theory that as communications technology advances at an increasingly feverish pace, that while our communication *connections* and channels of data will go up, their *meaning* will go down in proportion. Since phones and email, each individual probably comes into contact with, say, 10 or 20 times the number of people he/she would otherwise...but count on your fingers those you really have rich meaningful *relationships* with. Technology is great, but humans were just not designed for this. We were designed for a clan-sized population (ever wonder why everybody has to be so damn proud about something? Geek Pride...eh?). I think that as the industrial age commodified our bodies, the "information" age is commodifying our minds and hearts and souls (if you allow me to get mushy). I mean, it almost seems noble to work physically all day and come back to a humble abode with a plain meal, while it seems hollow to drive out in your nice car, pick up a latte, browse through the latest fluffy tech mag, and spend 8-12 hours of your day in front of a screen shooting electrons at your face.
So sure, on the surface, I think this technology is some hot shit. I can download data on a remote server and have it update my palm pilot so I can track my stock quotes while I'm on the john. *Who the hell cares!*
I think in the "post-modern" (yes overly abused) world, programming must be one of the most nihilistic occupations. You are paid to sit and push bits around.
Yeah I'm probably burnt out. So where's my disability check?
Well, everybody has to create "meaning" in their life (you can think this is rubbish but your body is very stubborn about this). I guess my "meaning" was getting interested and active in politics. To perhaps help fix a world full of injustices. To do something meaningful. Hell, maybe I won't make a difference to the world...but at least it will make a difference to me. So you can pretty much figure out my sig.
Go find a meaning.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Point taken, but you missed what I was trying to say:
Look, seriously, do you think a person's work is all that determines "meaningful" or "making a difference?
I then cited my example of what is meaningful to me, not that that would (or should) be meaningful to everyone. I think the ambiguity stems from what exactly is the definition of "meaningful"? Success? Wealth? Happiness? How many people are remembered after they're gone by people outside of relatives and friends? Not many of us have operating systems named after us that will keep our legends alive posthumously for years and years. So just because your job is shite, doesn't mean that you can't still find meaning and success and happiness in your life. That is what I was trying to say.
In a society based on power, and a culture based on money, what did you expect? Happiness? *laugh*
People in technology are a lot dumber than they realize sometimes.
I've been a Systems Analyst in the IT department of a pretty large company for a couple of years now.
Things have been getting hectic for the past 6 months nows (deadlines, new projects, less staff more work and so on).
It got to the point where I was working 18 hour days, not sleeping, using recreational drugs and alcohol as a means of escape and forgetting about the pressures of work. Don't get me wrong where I work is a cool place, i make good money, the work is interesting, the fridge is well stocked with Coke = ) I found myself becoming more and more surly towards my coworkers, accomplishing less and less, my brain reached 'frying' point. But a couple of weeks ago I made a decision to leave, and its such a huge weight off my shoulders, i'm going to Thailand for a few months to hang out and chill on an island somewhere.
People are saying to me 'what about your career?' or 'what are you going to do for money?' to be honest i don't think its worth worrying about, what use is a career/money if you don't have a mind?
At the end of the day, there's more important stuff than work, so if its making you unhappy, get the hell out, don't hang around and get stuck in a vicious cycle, i guarantee you'l feel better for it
the SH_MN
Oh, please. Don't be so arrogant as to assume that everyone shares your attitude. Having children is its own punishment, as far as I'm concerned. Every time I hear "...that tiny cry" from someone's brat I feel grateful that it's not mine, and I pity the poor sap that has to deal with it.
If you like kids, fine. It's your life. But drop this obnoxious holier-than-thou attitude. The fact that you like something does not make it a universal good.
And you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?
Then I would not be here. End of story.
Did you have some sort of point you were trying to make here?
And you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?
Or other Tape-Man fun you can have:
When a co-worker is not in, tape the bottom of their mouse (over the ball) so it doesn't work. You have to do this to a hardware guy, really. Watch them going mad checking that the thing is connected to their PC (extra points if their mouse port is hard to get to). Bonus points if they call up office support and order a new mouse. Extra bonus points if they pull out a multimeter to check the mouse before they think to turn the mouse over and check the ball ;-)
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Since I have never wanted kids, I probably speak out of ignorance, but...
The reason for wanting kids is in the genetic firmware. There is no rational reason to have kids (unless you intend to use them for labor on your farm). The reason people want kids is that genes that cause people to want them, are the ones that move on to the next generation.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Man am I sick of seeing this kind of garbage propogated.
I used to work on a dairy farm. Up at 4:30am to milk the cows, work all day, start night milking at 4:30pm, work half the evening and go in at 10:00pm. And that was WORK! We're talking heavy lifting, bale toting, feed carrying, grunt laboring work. You sound like the type that sits on his ass all the time complaining about the fact that nobody ever wants to work anymore.
I would probably still be doing that job if it wasn't for a personal problem (it was a family farm and something very, very bad happened between me and my uncle). So don't tell us that none of us IT workers know what it's like to work. I can still bust ass when I need to, and I usually do. I guess that explains why I work about fifty hours a week at my primary job and about twenty-five to thirty at little odd jobs I set up for myself.
If you want to make a living, you have to work. Get over yourself.
Bite my yammer.
My dad gave me one sage piece of advice that I've taken with me throughout my career... "Work to live," he said, "don't live to work."
I could earn more in London, it's true. Where I am now, though, I work an 8-hour day and have to travel twenty minutes each way to get there. Weekends are mine, holidays are mine. They've got me forty hours a week and at 5pm I'm out of the door... and I don't even think about work until I come back in. I've got a good enough job to afford a house, a car a wife and Diablo II.
No career is worth sacrificing my lifestyle for, because my lifestyle is the only reason I do the job.
erroneous: look me up in a dictionary
No-one else in my team was really capable of handling the serious calls. I was often left to these calls on my own, and would frequently have to work extra hours.
No thanks off the customers for resolving problems, just under intense pressure from them whenever things did go wrong.
The supplier of the software I dealt with lost a lot of staff, and were often unable to handle problems. The local office was hopeless, and the main office would take days to resolve issues, if at all. I often knew more about the software than those at the manufacturers.
Some customers couldn't think for themselves, and required my company to fix everything. I once had to make an 8-hour journey and then work all night to perform a simple, but time consuming, OS re-install, just because the customer couldn't be bothered to read a manual.
Management changed, mainly due to a merger. The new Boss didn't understand what I did, and assumed that major fixes could be implemented in seconds. He also wanted to dump the technology I was dealing with, feeling that we were a hindranced to his department, yet we earnt a vast amount of revenue. He also tried to change the department into first line support.
The environment was all wrong. There were up to 6 of us in a fairly small room, with no partitions, headsets or other comforts. There wasn't much space, particularly if running test equipment. I needed some peace when dealing with major problems, but it never happened. We were due to move to a much larger office, but it never materialised.
Salesmen selling products to customers that clearly wern't suitable for the task they were sold.
We also had to deal with the problems of other departments, such as one which sold firewalls but wasn't able to configure them.
Human nature, though, tends to lead us to accomplish more and live and work in a better environment. The rich boss of your Fortune 500 company didn't say "I make six figures now, so I'm going to just calm down and cool off, because I have it better than most people". No -- of course not! He said "I want more. I want better. This is good, but I deserve more". And now he's probably making eight or nine figures -- and still plowing along, from his big office, company limo and private jet.
No matter how good anyone has it, they usually strive for something better. It's just human nature. When I was stuck in a tech-farm making $11/hr, I thought I'd be happy finding a permenant gig making at least $50k. I figured that I'd feel like I finally "made it" once I hit that point.
Here I am a year later, making closer to six figures doing something I enjoy (but wouldn't want to do forever) and it isn't enough. I still want something more.
Luckily, I not only work for one of the top three giants of this industry, but I get to telecommute from out of my house, 600 miles away.
In an age when most of our jobs could be done from home, it seems like a petty issue of control by run-of-the-mill upper-management to leverage their power by making sure their employees are working right under their eyeballs in a little cube in a building that nobody wants to be confined in.
Management should grow up and remember that employees have lives. If they can do the job from home and consistantly perform well under those circumstances, by all means -- get off your high horse and send them home. You'll save them and yourself stress and money and probably increase productivity and loyalty. Since I've been telecommuting, other companies have offered me substantially more but I've turned them down. I like where I am. But if I were doing this same job from a cube in a big stuffy building like a drone, I'd have taken the other offer already.
Hell yeah, we have life much better than a lot of people. We could be digging ditches or flipping burgers. Not that those jobs are insignificant, but I for one have tried the back-breaking labor thing. I'll pass, thank you. I've done the burger-flipping thing in highschool, too -- talk about a brain-drain. I have to be somewhere that I'm more than a turning mechanism for a spatula.
What written law says that if you do a job for someone, it must be done in a specific place between certain hours under a million other constraints that have nothing to do with the direct job? When was the last time Double-Day or Viking told Stephen King that they'd like to publish his book, but only if he came to their business between 8am and 5pm every weekday and typed away at his laptop in a little cube down the hall from the editor's office?
It just seems rediculous. Sure, you have to be on-site to pour a foundation for a house or cut someone's brain open and poke around, but you can write code or documentation or QA a product from anywhere. Some things can't be done remotely, but life is short and as long as the job is accomplished to the employer's satisfaction, they should clue in and be a little more flexible. If you're a billionaire businessman, your company problem means everything to you. But most of your employees couldn't give less of a fuck. It's just a paycheck. And no matter how many stock options you give them or how much ass-kissing you do, you may not be able to buy their loyalty -- and certainly not their lives. You may find that a competitor is going to woo your top performers away from you not because of a bigger paycheck or a pinball machine down the hall from their office, but by simply letting them do their job in the most productive and comfortble manner possible.
Okay. I'm done ranting. I have it pretty good, too and don't want to fuck with my karma too much (real life karma, not Slashdot karma!).
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seumas.com
When I get pissed, frustrated, or bored, I just traipse out to my car and spark up a bowl of california's finest.
While truly medicine, I'm not sure if I should feel good that I have to medicate myself to keep myself at a desk writing c++, or just happy that I can be stoned and still make 85 an hour.
Also, when making a 3 or 4 day deadline run, crystal meth is without peer when it comes to having a focused, hi-revving mind that can maintain a high concentration level for 12-16 hour stretches without letdown.
Oh, yeah, and I like my coffee in the morning too.
JDaemon
"RSI, and other psychological conditions come and go."
RSI isn't a psychological condition, it is having very painfull wrists or hands. I hope you never get it.
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
Actually i quit and went to work for another company that essentially does the same thing but pays more, and doesn't screw the employees as much as the last one did. So basically I did nothing and moved nowhere, but things still improved a bit.
Another poster mentioned something about being in control of ones life and so on. Maybe the exercise of being in control (e.g. i quit for another company) is the thing that really matters.
So.
When you are at work, none of the society's normal rules, save tree, apply. You are not free to do what you want when you want, say what you want to whom you want, go where you want or in some places even dress how you want or have an opinion on something. The only three rights you have are the right to quit, right to get compensated and right not to suffer physical harm.
This has become somewhat accepted, because one has to eat and so on, but if you are exposed to this 12-13 hours a day week in, week out, year in year out, it might leave a scar.
From what I understood of the report, they're not talking about IT, programming or geeks, they're talking about "office workers".
Of course most of the replies here will be "I'm not depressed", "I'm happy with my job", "Computers are cool" and so on. But it's not about you. I think that computer induced stress is a reality for non-IT people working on computers. But it's not about computers, it's about the way they are used in the corporate world. Let me explain.
Computers have been a tool for corporate management to "industrialize" (is that a word?) white collar work. Before widespread availability of computers, white collar work was made by people who had a knowledge of their job, who were highly trained compared to industry workers. Now, the knowledge, the workflow are in the IT infrastructure and white collar workers are a commodity. You can fire one a day and "train" another one in a few day. You can pay them low salaries (IT professionals are well paid because they are highly trained, but the overall salaries of white collar workers are lower now they were 30 years ago).
And some time, we are guilty too when we teach to people we train to use computers that "the computer cannot make mistakes", that they are the one guilty of misusing these well designed applications, they are the "lusers".
I think that's an important factor in the evolution of OS's and software in general. A lot of people are talking about "computer illiteracy", but that's what management want, thay don't want computer litterate office workers, they want low-paid, expandable ones.
I'm currently really learning regular expressions and I think that's a tool most user should (and can) learn, that's one of the tools you need for everyday computer work, but you don't have them in MS Office, nor in most mainstream software.
People who use computers (well, everybody now) in their work need to learn the basic of programming and how the internal work. We need to realize this just like a century ago we realized that it was better for society that everybody learned to read and write.
People need to win over the computer sometimes.
How about this analogy... In the morning at 9am, shove a large, jagged wood splinter into the soft flesh under one of your fingernails. At 5pm, remove it.
It hurts a little, sure, but tell that to someone who was but into a bodycast by falling rubble and they'll laugh at you, right?
Okay, now repeat this ritual with the splinter every weekday (and the occasional weekend or extra hours) and see if you can keep it up for years.
The point of my rambling? The small stuff doesn't look like much, but it adds up damned fast.
---
Where can the word be found, where can the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence.
"Where shall the word be found, where will the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence." -T.S. Eliot
Hmmm... as a hardworking geek, I must say: F*CK U... I feel very sorry, for those poor bastards aged 12 and working their age in hours every day... but since I can't do much more than donate some of my pay-check (which I do), I must be just a bit narrow-minded and look at my own problems... I have a perfect job, IMO... I show up at the office when I want, and I go home when I want, the stuff i program really helps a lot of people (very important for me :o), and my paycheck I can't complain about.
:o)
:o)
But as many other ppl has written, physical work is MUCH easier... At a point I got sick and tired of computers, and started working in a kinder-garden... wow, the best time of my life, if I should look at my physical health, and the meaning of my life... And I had great fun too
Still I started missing the computers again... and here I am... stressed out, eating junk-food when I am supposed to eat some good healthy food, drinking anything with caffein, instead of water... and working at night sometimes, and day other times... And you know what... All of a sudden I almost wish to be one of them 12 years old lads working with their muscles!!!
Never underestimate the stress factor of a geeks work!
And just for the record...
I'm not trying to say that geeks are the only ppl in the world with a high stress factor at work, I'm just trying to point out, that the IT-industry are one of them sick-o-industrys with a lot of burned out ppl... and I don't believe for a sec. that they are all just feeling bad for themselves!
Wake up and smell the coffee... we are trying to keep up with stuff that changes, not just everyday, but pretty close to every nano-sec.! That can be pretty mind-tripping!
So if you don't f*cking get it!.. try it and get ready to go down... cause I don't believe you have it in you, to handle that kinda pressure...
That felt good (not usually that hostile
you have to be joking me! I reckon there are more than 1 in 10 people in the world who are whingers, dejected, unhappy etc. What better thing to blame it on than stress? Stress is just a front for having an unhappy life. I know people that work ridiculous hours, work their proverbials off - and they're not stressed. Oh yeah, notice how it's always public servants (ie government employees) who are stressed? Yet most of these people don't do half the work of people in the private sector. ::End of rant::
Well, I think that by posting this, they have given us all the message that if we're unhappy with our jobs and lives, perhaps we should find something that does make us happy, and lets us change the world. I need a push to leave my job, really badly, and seeing things like this help to give me a bit more courage to do so.
Since you asked.
After reading your comment, I gave it some thought, and by golly, your right.
common sense on slashdot. who would of known
PHP is the solution of choice for relaying mysql errors to web users.
ask yourself where the copper in your CAT 5 came from...
We now return you to your normal service
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
Oh, so state-funded childcare limits your freedom to work? An efficient public transport system limits your freedom to work? An education limits your freedom to work?
No, more like it limits your ability to earn money from this work. I didn't specify whether this was a good or bad thing, merely that it was a fact.
Not having to step over hundreds of beggars limits your freedom to work?
There are hundreds of beggars already. I have never been to the U.K. and I am unfamiliar with the state of that particular issue in that country, but I assure you in mine there are plenty of beggars around. And there were plenty in Germany and the rest of Europe when I visited as well.
And to be perfectly frank with you I don't have a huge amount of sympathy for those people, I had to live on an extremely low amount of my entire life until I started pulling money for myself. I don't believe this is simply because I am different to them, it comes down to effort. I am currently a little uncertain about this though, I don't know if all men really were created equal anymore, I am beginning to lose faith in that.
Maybe if you're a monk or a mercenary the government wouldn't be much help. Otherwise, get serious and think before you troll.
It amuses me greatly when people jump to conclusions purely because they want to be combative and then accuse others of trolling.
Film at 11.
--
Peter
Whether or not all men were created equal is moot.
All men must be treated equally.
Browser? I barely know her!
Maybe the other 9 are Management who *cause* the stress
"The hardest to learn is the least complicated" (Emily Saliers, Indigo Girls)
As much as I hate to admit it, having spent the past five years doing "meaningful" work in live theatre, designing lights, sets, sound engineering, acting and directing a bit, and generally being on of the City's few altruistic small theatre techs, I have come to the firm conclusion that one show is indeed pretty much like the last. After hundreds of shows they've started dissolving into one another, I am actually typing this during a performance of a Paula Vogel play (she's a Pulitzer winner, BTW), because I am just so bleedin' bored-and it's only night number two! ! The ultimate irony is that I find myself with the exact same problems as cubicle workers: brain sludge, moodieness, lack of perspective about what's important, etc... Oh, here comes the cat fight, I gotta go... maggot@monkeybrains.net
Well, yeah........ Anytime you work in an environment so adverse to basic human functioning, i.e. an excessively artificial setting where you sit on yer ass all day, stressing out over abstracts, yeah, you're gonna freak out. Sooner, if not later. You're not really designed for this sort of life. Unless it's balanced out by more active activities carried out during the rest of the day. Even if have intellectually challenging work this will be the case, and how many cubists really can say they have that?
My .02,
My .02,
zencode
iactivist.org/jason
Yes, but equal to what degree? For example I'd be perfectly happy if the government totally withdrew any future support for me and didn't tax me anything and I had to pay for whatever services I used and nothing else. This would be very fair to me and I'd be perfectly happy if everyone else were treated in entirely the same way. But I can guaruntee you there would be a great many people who would not be particularily happy about this.
As it stands, I don't think all men are treated equally at all. You only need look at the liberal trend to favour the minorities and left-leaning special interest groups, or the right-conservative trend to favour the socioeconomic upper class and right-leaning special interest groups, for evidence of this.
But really this is very off topic now, as I've already pointed out this isn't a political debate. I don't care to discuss politics as they're very boring, and in my humble opinion I will never have a large impact on anything political.
This was just about contentment, your typical member of the proletariat of the IT labour market's general dissatisfaction with life.
On the flip side lets say yes I am doing something that matters.
/. of course!
Then say yeah I'm stressed out too. What are you doing about it??
Don't sit around and complain about it take action. We can change our lifestyle and if being unstressed is your idea of a perfect lifestyle then hey go for it. Find a job with low stress like mopping floors or cashiering at a 7 eleven.
Me personally I like a little stress in my life to keep me motivated and the money aint half bad either.
To counter that stress what do I do? Why post on
Are you lonely? Hate having to make decisons? Meetings, the practical alternitive to work.
Without diversions like slashdot, I don't know how I'd handle being "cubed" every weekday for that last 10+ years.
True, I've experienced the it's-different-when-it's-your-own epiphany despite not believing in it up till that moment. But if you choose it, raising your own little worker bee certainly is worth giving up your life for (as she puts it). You get an awful lot back.
Given my viscerally-negative reaction whenever I encounter babies or kids, how on earth could I, in good conscience, "have one to see if my reaction was different when it was mine"? I couldn't do that either. No responsible adult could. I don't know whom you're quoting, but I''m glad it's not me. It's one thing to date somebody a few times to see if you're going to like her, but it's entirely another to test-drive parenthood.My point, really, is that raising a kid can be an impediment to choosing other callings, or it can be a calling you choose in itself -- potentially every bit as satisfying as kernel hacking, in its way. The different choices you and I we made certainly prove that point. But Queen V seems to regard people as procreating rather mindlessly, and I suggest that it's not always that way. Some of us take our happy accidents and our deliberate choices very seriously.(By the way -- it seems to me investments are sacrifices. You choose to do without something now to get something else later. Sacrifices are different from waste, though.)"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
George, I seriously doubt you'd be 'perfectly happy' if your local/county/state govt. stopped fixing potholes & enforcing common-sense (Hammurabi) laws.
While I tend toward Libertarian ideals, I am realistic enough to see that we need some laws to be enforced. If you say I'm wrong, you're either lying, kidding yourself, or stupid.
Browser? I barely know her!
The fact is that the IT industry is nothing special when it comes to white-collar work - you'll find stressed and harried individuals in any office. But it's still a hell of a lot nicer environment than working in some factory or sweatshop is like a large proportion of people do.
The fact is that sure, working in an office under battery farm conditions isn't exactly going to be good for your stress levels and comfort, but it's still an improvement on what you could have expected even twenty years ago. People back then would have been amazed at some of the things that people are complaining about today, and they'd have a point.
Whilst we may bitch and moan about where we work, remember that a) most of the world works in conditions we wouldn't keep a dog in, and b) most of the rest of our country's work in conditions we wouldn't work in. Really, despite all the whining, we've got it good.
Lions kill Gazelles in order to survive. The gazelles may not find the lions occupation to be very worthwhile, but I'm sure the lions cubs do.
Maybe you have no spouse, kids, mortgage, car payments, etc... Those of us who do, understand better that our hard work makes a difference to our families.
I'm sure I can find a less stressful job, but less stress usually equates to less money. With less money, I would stress about how I'm going to pay for my kids college education.
I'm an adult, and I understand that my employer doesn't pay me to meditate in my cubicle for 15 minutes every hour. To the contrary, I beleive that if I work harder and better than anyone in my office, I have a better chance for making even more money. (at a cost of even more stress)
Everyday I sacrifice a piece of myself for the benefit of my family. That to me, is a good enough reason to get out of bed each day.
I did read it, but it hardly makes a difference. I've seen so much of this type of complaint, that I could pretty much guess what it said without reading it. RSI, and other psychological conditions come and go. People suffer from whatever happens to be trendy right now.
These days its specific forms of stress (rather than the general kind from about 10 years ago) Stress isn't like a broken arm. It can't be measured objectively. You can test for it crudely, but to calibrate those tests, you have to ask people whether they feel stressed or not.
Tell a minor who was stuck in a mineshaft for a week after the ceiling collapsed about the "stress" you suffer, and they'll laugh at you.
A number of years ago a psychologist (I can't remember his name or the school he was at) placed a chimp in a box without any stimuli or outside contact for over a month, they called it the Well of Dispair experiement. They observed that the chimp became depressed and sickly. Animal rights activists called it cruel......and yet we do the same to most of our workers in almost every industry.
I don't think it has anything to do with IT as a phenomenon in itself. I think it has more to do with the common drive present in nearly all non-communist non-socialist individuals to achieve a high level of success in whatever their chosen field happens to be. Often though, when people climb to the top of their respective ladders they realise that the view isn't so good after all, and they wondered why they bothered to expend the effort to climb up there in the first place.
Thoughts such as this often lead to depression, and when on top of this you're expected to every single day except for perhaps four weeks of the year, go to work and do as your boss tells you, even if a lot of the time whatever your boss happens to be telling you to do is just plain stupid, this also leads to stress.
I think it's very shortsighted to blame this entire phenomenon on the IT industry. As far as I can see it isn't a problem that occured because of the IT industry, it's a problem that has been exposed because of the nature of the world today.
Fifty years ago , the amount of information available to your average person was not nearly as high as what is available to your average person today. I think this amount of information and the fact that so many people out there are absorbing it is perhaps leading to a critical mass of people wondering what the hell it's all about.
Another reason IT might be getting blamed for this is because people in this industry have an even higher amount of information than your average person who perhaps only researches subjects that they've specifically seen on their local news program via a search engine.
Nearly everyone who I've ever worked with in this industry, if not keeping their brains occupied with the intricacies of their chosen profession, seem to me to be primarily dissatisfied with their lot in life. Yeah, sure, you've got your moments where the whole thing just sounds like an excerpt from a User Friendly comic strip, but when all that's over, nothing really makes any sense anymore.
But hey, I don't have any answers.
I wake up every morning with the knowledge that I'm making good money but for all the stress and overload, I'm not making one damned person's life significantly better in any tangible way.
So someone's email server is back up because of me. Or their HA deployment is smooth and successful. Good for them. And good for my company's reputation.
But honestly, who gives a damn? What kind of karma does life dish out for those who keep machines running so other big companies can keep the flow of information(money) moving steadily?
Even more annoying is that I have to deal with a lot of companies that completely contradict my political/ethical opinions. I'm only compelled to help WeFilterStuffSoYouDon'tHaveToBeAParent has a smooth transition between one version of a product and another because I don't want to get grief from my management. Or how about some media magnate who is known for taking over the world? Do I really have a personal interest in seeing them successful? Damn, I doubt if the person I'm working with at any given time (from whatever company I'm assisting) cares any more about it than I do either!
But for all the ranting and whining, it comes down to the personal question that almost everyone asks themselves at some point in their lives:
Am I making a difference?
Too often, the answer is no. Unfortunately, it's hard to survive on the salary of a saintly life. And if you live in the Silicon Valley or the Silicon Forrest, the desire to live with a roof over your head (even a leaking one) precludes any ambition to be generous and kind with your time and actions.
Helping big business is rewarded. Truly meaningful endeavors are not.
I bet a lot of people tell themselves the same thing I do -- Someday I'll have enough money and time to help someone.
But how many of us actually will? Perhaps we have the best of intentions, but we'll probably never be financially secure enough that we can dedicate more of our time and energy to something worthy. Some of us will do worthwhile things outside of work, but others of us have no outside of work. We're always working or resting so that we can work more.
If we can't offer anything meaningful in terms of the human condition, perhaps we can at least do something that interests us and be in charge of our own lives? A lot of us have the dream of owning our own company, pursuing whatever interest fancies us -- be it video games or some weird new peripheral device or a better snowboard or our cookie's based on an old family recipe. Even that is a far cry for most of us. Yet, it would be very fulfilling and we wouldn't have that dreaded concern that we're not really going anywhere important. It's unsettling to have the quality of your life depending on someone else's choices and decisions. Not only the quality of your life, but the individual characteristics of each day. Someone deciding when you can take a break, how long your lunch can be, what your title will be, how loud your music can be or what kind of shirt you can wear into the office... Taking control of yourself and your career can be very satisfying.
I wonder if it comforts anyone to know that their place in the world may not be to do anything truly important or meaningful. Knowing that, instead, their purpose is to waste their life away in a stressing unimportant job so that the president of their company can afford to spend more time on his yacht or founding his sixth billion-dollar corporation or buying his seventh house on a fourth continant?
Oh well. Most of us are all talk and no action anyway. I'm pretty sure I am.
---
seumas.com
Hmmm. Sure, some people will find any excuse for not dealing with their difficulties, but to dismiss anyone suffering from stress as a "whiner" is going too far in the other direction.
In my experience (and, believe me, I've had *plenty* of experience in this area, first-hand and otherwise), many people who have reached the burnout stage are not even aware themselves of the state that they have got into. Far from being an excuse, many people go a long time denying to themselves that they are struggling to cope. By the time they realise, it's often too late, and they are self-medicating with alcohol or drugs.
Depression is *not* just a universal excuse: it's a serious and life-threatening illness. More people than you know will be suffering from depression, and a significant number of those (some statistics quote over 16%) will make a successful attempt on their own lives.
Will you be as quick to dismiss mental illness when the guy in the next cube over has gassed himself in his car?
I used to work in a warehouse doing shelf stacking and order reception and stuff. I lost loads of weight and then put it back on in muscle. I was tired at the end of each day and worked hard. I got stressed due to 'stupid people' and problems at work.
I am now a programmer, and I sit in front of a desk all day thinking about 'stuff'. I write programs to solve problems, and still get stress from 'stupid people' and problems at work.
however i now have to think quite intensely all day, compared to before in the warehouse, where it wasn;t very intense mentally, but was physically. The sort of stress you get in the two different types of work may be caused by the same type of problems, the always present 'stupid people' and other problems, but due to the different mental focus it is very different.
I now get headaches and a seriously frayed temper, where in the warehouse I used to get physically tired and any temper etc. stemmed form this.
basically what i am trying to say through all this random rambling, is that you get stressed whatever you do.
== Perl generally does the right thing, unless you want it to do something else ==
The same thing that gives employees an opportunity to keep in touch with their friends and family while they are at work, do their shopping while they are at work and read the news while they are at work, now is blamed for depression.
Here's a question, what do you do when after having lived in a suburban house for some time, you have to move to a downtown appartment opening onto a major interstate artery? How do you cope with the noise? Do you suffer every minute of it, or do you learn to cope with its new level?
Yes, definitely some people won't be able to adjust to the new level of noise, but I don't think the percentage here would be any different than that reported in the article. Which is to say, it would be a similarly low percentage.
Also, it would be nice to have some figures for similar statistics for the pre-internet years for comparison. Without the comparison the numbers are pretty meaningless.
I'm currently in a job where this has happened repeatedly over the last 4 months. Invariably, my project manager (yutz with an MBA) tells the team that they're fighting for us to shift those dates. The dates never move and I and my colleagues end up working 80 hour weeks for the 2 weeks before the date. After the deadline is reached (with varying degrees of success) we are once again told by the project manager that she will work hard to sell management on more realistic dates. And then we start again...
Those studies were pure BS.
They set up a can't win situation and found the depressives recognized it and the normals didn't. In other words, depressives' world view is more realistic if the world is stacked against them.
If you've ever lived with a person with major depression, or have ever been one you know that depression makes you twist everything that happens to you or is said to you into something bad. It's the psychic equivalent of thrashing -- a process that feeds upon itself until it is unstoppable.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I will need:1.good speakers w/sub
2.high bandwidth w/no censorware
3.herb
4.bong
5.lighter
6.a door w/sign "go away"
Then leave me the f*** alone.Youl'll get those TPS reports when you get them.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Why do people have such a hard time with this?
Computers do not "cause information overload." NEVER has anyone been innocently sitting in a cubicle and a computer started forcing information into them.
People are stressed out and feel information overload due to the WAY THEY WORK. Now, the way they work is largely driven by the way they are
managed.
So, bad management leads to bad work habits, lead to stress.
I am a father of two, and take that job very seriously. My day job lets me provide for them, and give them a start in the world. It also allowed my wife to stay home with them when they were young, and still allows her to be in an employment situation where she's home when they come home from school.
On the work side, it's great to see one of my (memory) chip designs actually working in a computer. Of course there are other competing chips, but this was one I worked on.
While patents are a questionable thing in many respects, my employer expects them of me. In another perspective, they are a piece of posterity. It's even better when you see one of your patents get referenced. That's when you know your work went on, at least a little.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
If 9 out of 10 IT workers are not depressed, I'd say that makes it one of the most contented groups of employees I've ever seen. It's all in how you look at it. I'd say the article sees the glass as 1/10th closer to being completely empty.
----------------------
Heh, scarry but I'm a good match to the "stressed out fried" syndrome.. I guess that happens when you spend 4 weeks straight doing nothing but coding...
But really what do you do?? I prefer a game of starcraft or two, but lately when I go home I'm to tired to even do that. It's like a never ending cycle.. *sigh* Get a new project, code to near death, barely make the deadline, repeat. And why do we do this again??
</end rant>
So you're saying that only 1 in 10 have no kids? Is this the same 1 in 10 that are overly stressed at the office?
I know it's a stretch, but does your goal of retiring 10 years before me sustain you through those tough days? Or do you think that management should provide a vehicle for you to vent your stress?
I'm not trying to say that I'm better because I have kids, but as it relates to stress in the workplace, it is likely that the 1 in 10 that is overly stressed is so because of pressure to provide for their family. People who don't have kids, likely don't understand the excessive drive towards advancement and more stress.
If you're single and successful, and retiring 10 years before me, then you can't possibly understand what the stress is really about. Therefore, you really aren't part of the problem. Therefore, you don't have much reason to post on this topic. (except maybe to add more stress to the struggling parents)
Can you picture the headline? "Single man loses job along with BMW and stock options. Forced to work until 65. Goes ballistic and shoots 10."
Religious fundamentalists die for their God. I would die for my family. What would you die for?
I have noticed that at my new job, the lights above the cubes are off. This makes me much happier, and I don't mind being trapped in my box nearly as bad. Perhaps its the glaring hallogen baring down on our heads that makes it so depressing, or at least pushes the matter futher. Just a thought
If we don't make light of everything, we are just stumbling in the dark - Blank
I used to work in a web production company, doing mostly sites for brands (chewing gum, lousy crap pop bands and the like). I came to the conclusion that none of what I was doing really mattered. The world did not turn into a better place because of this clever site for a fsking chewing gum brand. It didn't turn into a worse place either.
Nothing I did really changed anything. Not even the sales figures of the brands, since the competitors were making equally clever sites. The product of all my work and all the worries about deadlines and stuff was - essentially - zero. Money was just transfered from one person to another. Thats it
So apart from fighting the good fight against riaa and their hired thugs, what matters? Can you all honestly say that your job is meaningful?
Besides letting out this cynical gas, I think my point is that IMHO nobody would be stressed if they were doing truly important work. At least something that was important to themselves?
There are rewarding tech jobs out there. I'm an engineer. I write software that helps blind people read. I get to be a geek AND do something I find personally rewarding. I DO feel like I'm able to change people's lives with the software I write, especially when I get letters from customers telling me so. It can happen!
I'm really not too surprised by this at all, and I'd venture to guess the number is in the 3 out of 10 area and that's being conservative. And people wonder why I left college and grew to hate programming.
cheese logs keep my wang warm at night.
"A cynic sees the cost of everything and the value of nothing." -- anonymous
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
There are too many sites out there like www.dice.com, www.monster.com, www.careerbuilder.com, etc where one can shop around and find a more suitable job. One mans stress is another mans security.
IF YOU DON'T LIKE YOUR JOB, YOUR BOSS, ETC. GET OFF YOUR BUTT AND DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
I suppose that you are waiting for the perfect job to find you? Your dream boss is going to hunt you down? WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE!
There are 168 hours a week. If you are like most IT folks you work at least 50 of those. That's 29.7% of your life every week - MINIMUM. None of us lives for ever and to spend that much of your adult life doing something you hate will kill you in the end. So quit whining and do something about it.
If you need help, there are all kinds of headhunters out there who would LOVE to help you out.
"People are having an increasingly difficult time dealing with their email, their instant messages and voicemail, their faxes and FedEx's, and the constant demands to understand technology that seemingly changes every day at the same time that they are expected to produce better things faster," Abel said.
This is very much in essence a subtle exhibition of the cruelty seen in the famous "Pavlov's Dog" experiment. The build-up (in the real-life phenomenon on which is reported in the above article) is slow, the pressure indirect, but the (perception of the) impossibility of going forward or retreating is still inescapable.
Rooted deeply in any living being is the urgent need to feel as if its own life is within its own control. People have enough intelligence that they can suffer greatly from subtleties of loss of control that would be beyond the perceptual horizon of a box turtle, say, or a dog. It's psychological torture, no less real for being "low-grade", and it can go on and on for years, eventually causing odd mental breakdowns that may be very difficult to accurately trace to this perceived lack of fundamental control over one's own life. This phenomenon will grow even worse as even more apparently relevant information pours over us all, demanding immediate attention and ever-more complex responses with often subtle penalties for fuzzily defined multiple partial failures.
This is a major concern, and a greatly underrated one, I think. It's in my opinion solvable by the same technologies that cause the problem with which to begin, but it will take time to develop and deploy alternative methodologies of channeling and automating the handling of much of this relevant information so it becomes a very controllable, if loud, background roar.
A truly excellent pizza parlor is a delight unto the heavens. Treasure the sauce and the toppings!
As far as I can tell, human beings that are not in extreme circumstances have about the same amount of ups and downs no matter what they do. It seems a certain amount of stress and discontent is inherent to the human condition.
Well, I'm a musician.
I earn a living as a programmer because coding -- yea, even coding under pressure -- is fun. I'm doing web production stuff myself, and I am well aware is it meaningless fluff. But it's fun to do, intellectually satisfying, and pays me enough money to indulge in my obscure musical instruments habit.
I don't work >40hrs a week. My evenings and weekends are for being a musician, and my clients understand that unless by very special arrangement they cannot impinge on my Real Work.
I see a lot of people in this thread talking about "getting meaningful work", but when they specify, they are talking about swapping *careers* into fields which are basically human services. I have trouble seeing any geek enjoying such work.
The problem is that you guys have internalized the idea that "meaningful" == "noble, self-sacrificing, human services jobs". Actually, there's lots of other options.
I recommend Art (it works for me). Even if you're not interested in making Art yourself, there's often very satisfying and important support roles geeks can play in Art: sound engineering for live musical acts, lighting for theater and performance dance, etc. Anyone who helps bring Shakespeare to the masses needs no further justification for their life: they have earns all the oxygen they will ever breathe.
It may not seem like a big, grand, noble self-sacrificing gesture to, say, do the lighting for your local ballet school's Nutcracker (you'd be wrong, actually :), but it does the trick: howsoever humble it may seem, you do feel the "meaningfulness" of helping Art, when you do it. It makes a difference.
-*- Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced -*-
I think the problem of all these stressed people is that they bring their stress to home after work. Stress at work causes stress situations at home, but anyway: If you're married, or single, living alone or apart ... just make distinction between working time and time to free your mind. If you have your stress in head all the time, YOU NEVER GONNA KEEP IT UP.
I think Eoropean people have less trouble with this distinction than Americans do.
O Queen (I think that's the proper form of address for female royalty of first rank): I answer your question with a question of my own: Worth what? Remember how Stalin once said, "A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic"? Well, "breeding a race of 'moderately contented' worker bees" -- like so many livestock -- is something no rational parent would aspire to. But I'm sure I speak for lots of us mommies and daddies when I say that creating a new life, nurturing it for eighteen or so years, and cherishing it forever is a highly prized lifetime goal in its own right. Certainly that's why Mrs. alumshubby and I adopted Joshua.Of course, there are those 'parents' out there for whom children are, at best, pets, and at worst, a venereal disease: For them, children will be at best an impediment to their aspirations. As for yourself, I wonder how you will answer for yourself the question you've raised here when you first hear that tiny cry.
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
I think one of the major stress differences is exercise. In a physical "mind numbing" job you may have stress, but you have lifting, moving, or doing something to help your body burn off the chemicals produced when you stress to use some of the fight of flight. Sitting at a cube and stressing allows those same chemicals to build up and then start producing side effects(upset stomach, rapid heart beat ...)
I find the best thing when I am down and or stressed is to get out of the office and walk 2 or 3 miles during lunch. It helps.
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
I haven't been particularly able to take my line of work (IT security & infrastructure consulting) very seriously ever since I've started. Like many people, I'm in it because I enjoy the technology, and to be honest, a bit of the prestige and money and job security that go with it (admit it, deep down you do too.)
The whole thing is pretty well symbolized by the fact that I am a reasonably organized person who tries to keep track of his emails and correspondence. However, I appear to be somehow cursed to regularly have my mailspool and paper files blown away/deleted/thrown out beyond recovery.
Know what? Who cares. If anyone wants something from you, they'll get back to you! As a fairly intelligent person, I trust myself to remember and prioritize the really important tasks, and to do these professionally and on time. Plus, as an IT guy you can generally get away with it, since most of the "fuzzies" still perceive "us" as brilliant, introverted, chaotic weirdos, whose occasional lapses in organization can be excused as long as stuff works.
For all those of you who're stressed, I highly recommend this sort of "accidental" catharsis from time to time--it really lets you giggle a little bit about the suits throwing buzzwords around and trying to whip you into a frothing stress.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
I'm going to burn down the building.
yup!
"...[treat] every man after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping?"
"When I die, I want to be buried, not cremated, so I can leave one lasting impression on the world."
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Whoa, there! Take the revolver away from your head and put it back in the desk drawer...
Look, seriously, do you think a person's work is all that determines "meaningful" or "making a difference?" I plan on having kids and raising them, and teaching them right from wrong. I don't know of anything more meaningful than that. Am I making a difference? Hell yeah...
So while you may be working the tedious, unchallenging job of Greeter at the local Wal-Mart, which is inherently inconsequential in the Grand Scheme of Things... When you come home at the end of the day, and hold your children in your arms, that's when you know that what you do is meaningful and damn well makes a difference. There's other things in life that you can judge yourself on besides work.
I just have to ask: after generations of worker drones saying, "I work a shit job to feed my kids" do you ever stop to think that your kids won't be doing anything that matters, either? Maybe yours will be the lucky one in a million that strikes it rich or discovers a cure for cancer, but statistically you are working your fingers to the bone so that your offspring can grow up and do the EXACT SAME THING.
With that in mind, would you try harder to follow your dreams if you never had kids? Or would you still be working 9 to 5? Why?
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
Only 8 hours??? I think that it is likely more than that for the "typical" IT person these days... if you think 8 hours enough of a sentance in the cell (er uh... cube) look at the longer setances - that's doing hard time. Then if you are really unlucky you go home at the end of the day on probation - you carry a pager and sometimes have random checks by your parole officer!!!
So, does this mean those who go out on their own and start their own dot com are self imprisoning?
Gotta run, the warden wants me in his office...
Wheeeee
What would a minor be doing working in a mineshaft? Don't they have labor laws against that sort of thing?
The International Labor Organization neglected to mention a number of IT-related issues; Let's not forget the horrific impact IT has wrought on American workers, such as:
- Exponentially expanding and diverse employment opportunity
- Skyrocketing salaries for certified and/or proven IT professionals
- Yearly creation of tens of thousands of quality job opportunities including some level of medical benefits and 401k (unlike the "Whopper Flopper" jobs typically included in Presidential campaign figures)
- Work environment that doesn't include high risk of physical injury, sweating profusely, physical exhaustion, working in the environment year-round, blisters and callouses, or dress code including flannel
Please, ILO. Pointing out the job stress felt by Volvo-driving gourmet coffee guzzling Docker-clad cell phone wielding IT professionals who's worries usually boil down to plotting their next salary-increasing job change, and sweating the mortgage on their $220,000 home must have been tough.
We live in an era in which half the worlds' population has still not placed a phone call and twelve year old children are working twelve hour days hacking sugar cane with a dull machete'. Reading about the plight of the United States' IT professionals is absurd.
If you can't take the heat..
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.
NO I am NOT stressed. These claims are totally unfounded and I don't know ANYONE who is IN THE SLIGHTEST BIT STRESSED AT ALL. Just because I don't get paid enough, work 12 hours a day and get up at the crack of dawn, it doesn't mean that I AM STRESSED! OK? Now leave me alone!
--
Everything I know in life I learnt from
There's certainly a large element of truth to that, but I'd like to add a couple of comments. I've worked both as a telecommuter and as a manager of remotely located teams, so I have some firsthand experience in this area.
Certain types of jobs, and certain tasks, are much more amenable to modularization than others. And those tend, in my experience, to be the jobs and tasks that can be handled most effectively in a distributed/telecommuting environment. For example, "write this report" or "here's a spec, write this subroutine" are relatively self-contained tasks that require fairly minimal external, real-time input. In fact, I've often found it more effective to have things like this done off-site because it minimizes distractions and lets people concentrate on the task at hand.
However, there are some tasks that I've found extraordinarily difficult to accomplish unless the entire team involved is physically co-located. One is almost anything involving visual design or interface. Another is anything involving fundamental and potentially controversial directional questions about a project: things like defining the objectives and audience for a new product or designing the product architecture. A third is activity that requires rapid response from a cross-disciplinary group. (I used to work in the Web-content business, so some of our tasks/projects had durations measured in hours or even minutes -- if you need to get something written, edited, illustrated, and posted at a moment's notice, it is necessary to have people with those abilities on hand at all times and in an environment where they can collaborate without barriers.)
Mundane as it may seem, there are often administrative, legal, and personnel challenges to having a distributed team as well. If you're a Silicon Alley company, do your HR people know about employment laws in Wyoming? How about payroll issues? Health care? What happens if a remote employee turns out to be incompetent? Trust me, I speak from painful experience when I say that discipling and firing a disruptive remote employee is not straightforward.
Finally, there's one big intangible downside to having a distributed team, which is that in the absence of superb management (which we all know is hard to find), you risk a situation where the individuals feel like lone wolves instead of part of a cohesive team whose members know, trust, and can depend on each other. People form bonds in large part through casual interaction in the office, going out to lunch or for drinks together, observing and responding to each others' body language in face-to-face environments. Also, it's very easy for people in one or another of the physical locations to feel left out of the loop and/or unappreciated, because they may perceive that they're missing out on informal collaboration in the office, or that people don't realize how hard they're working because they don't see them in the next cubicle 14 hours a day, or even that they're not valued as much because of simple things like time differences (if a team leader calls a meeting at 9am Eastern, west coasters can be really put off by the expectation they'll be ready to roll at 6am their time).
None of this is to say that long-distance working relationships are impossible, any more than long-distance personal or romantic relationships are impossible. They just require careful thought, commitment, and often a lot of work -- plus a sizeable travel budget, because sometimes there's just no substitute for face-to-face exposure. Nevertheless, I understand why most companies are conservative when it comes to things like telecommuting: They're aware of all the downsides, they're woefully short of capable managers, and therefore unless they are really hard up for qualified candidates, it's much easier to just follow the default behavior and pack everyone into cubicles.
That said, I do encourage flexibile work arrangements, and I really believe that more and more smart companies are recognizing that their employees really are everything. With the talent shortage in this industry only getting worse, companies must find ways to accommodate people's individual lifestyles more effectively. I'm confident it will happen: Just look at how quickly other mostly-useless artifacts like corporate dress codes have vanished (and not just in the tech industry). The hurdles, both from a psychological and from a business standpoint, to letting people telecommute are just a bit higher than they are to letting people jeans and t-shirts instead of a suit.
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
10 months ago a large part of the big people on my project quit. Orginially I thought I would have to work harder (or quit) to pick up the slack, but now I see that I only have to work harder to clean up the mess they left orginialy.
To be fair to those who left the mess, they were sheilding me from upper management that was incompitent. When several of them turned in their resignation in the same week it got the CEOs attention, the management who was causing the problem was forced to resign, and things have been looking up since, though until a couple months ago it SEEMed they were worse.
In other words if you leave you can force them to see the problems they should fix. So as a junior technical person I beg of you quit for my sake. The rest of us are better off in the long run when you leave. Not always of course, but if you can't fix the problem at least expose it.
If there were no cubicicles it wold be preety darn hard to hide when agents are coming after you. What could Morpheus tell you on the phone if there were no walls ? ... now pose as a plant ... now run with your head down hoping that nobody will see you in that open room ..."
"hide behind that fat lady
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1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
Having run the cycle of burnout, bounceback, stress, repeat many many times and watched my coworkers do the same, I said to hell with it and started working for myself doing remote admin and programming. Now I still burn out, but the cycle usually takes longer, doesn't hit as hard, and I can do it in the luxury of my own environment with all the time-wasting enjoyable minutiae nearby to play with when I do.
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rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
Queen V seems to regard people as procreating rather mindlessly
;-)
Ack! No, I don't think that's what I said (or meant). I simply wonder, based on what the previous previous previous etc. poster said about raising kids being the reason he worked a job he may or may not love, whether raising kids IS a good enough reason to labor and toil and sacrifice, when your kids may only ever grow up to throw their lives away for kids of their own, ad infinitum. Don't get me wrong, you guys, I'm glad my parents wanted me, okay?
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series