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The Unhappy World of IT Professionals
npistentis writes "According to an article on ZDNet.com, only 1 in 7 IT professionals rate themselves as "very happy" with their chosen profession- which stands in stark contrast to one in three hairdressers, plumbers and chefs, and one in four florists. But then again, very few plumbers have to deal with users who consistently download BonziBuddy, blindly click on suspicious email attachments and use their cd trays as cupholders." Of course, it should be noted that by and large IT professionals earn more money then most other jobs - which I suppose is once again a warning of money != happiness.
Fortunately I'm part of that "1 in 7" and I think this comment has a lot to do with it: A "pure IT job" of sitting in front of a screen all day would drive me bonkers. I like having to physically get into our big SGI machines, re-routing fiber & Cat-5, mounting new things in racks, etc. If I had a "screwdriver boy" to do all that while I sat at a console and worked on the equipment through the network my job satisfaction would go down 50% at least.
That all said, I'll wager that when the "DotCom Boom" was happening, many of the "other 6 of the 7" got into IT for the money. If you don't love what you do then get out of it.
Trolling is a art,
I had a user bothering me during my lunch break, wanting me to come and restore her Office Assistant because she "Missed the little kitty". It took a great effort of will to keep my language pg-13.
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
Fully 7 out of 7 Bastard Operators From Hell were "just peachy keen" with making users' lives miserable.
"It was a summer's tale: Just a boy, his Linux, and a head full of dreams..."
...making $19,700 a year and living in luxury in Bangalaore
But then again, very few plumbers have to deal with users who consistently download BonziBuddy, blindly click on suspicious email attachments and use their cd trays as cupholders.
But then again, no IT guys have to work in feces in a sweaty, humid, tiny room. STFU you little baby.
Get paid to code OSS
1. users
:(
2. job security
thankfully, I have job security because i work for state government (state government don't lay off employees) but I still have to deal with users that should know the basics of how to use a computer since they probably have a computer at home or use their computer at work enough
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
Y'know, it's kinda chic to be disgruntled if you're in IT. Think about it--if you're amongst your computer-saavy peers, is it cool to say that you're very happy working your IT job, or is it cool to bitch and moan about the lusers you need to herd on a daily basis?
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
But then again, very few plumbers have to deal with users who consistently download BonziBuddy, blindly click on suspicious email attachments and use their cd trays as cupholders."
Pretty sad that there's a higher percentage of people that are happy fixing toilets clogged with shit then the perecentage of people supporting computer users....
...if this survey had been conducted just 5 or 6 years ago.
He claimed to make a lot of money, and was actually quite happy... I personally think he was running dope on the side, though, so what the hell do I know?
A lot of people moved to IT in the 90s because it was the *biggest* thing. They didn't have to like the job as the pay package was usually better than a lot of other jobs out there and it was easier to pick up a couple of books, get HTML training and boom. You were in.
If plumbing, hairdressing or whatever becomes the next *big* thing, I am sure a lot of people would join the bandwagon without having to necessarily like it. And consequently, the percentage of people disliking this job would go up.
The cliche' goes again. Do what you like or you will forced to like what you do.
Free XBox, PS2
Since they reported the percentage of respondents who said they were "very happy", I'm assuming they used categories such as "very happy", "somewhat happy", etc. I'd like to see the whole breakdown. Suppose that hypothetically, workers in Job X were 5% "very happy" but 50% "somewhat happy", 20% "somewhat unhappy", and 25% "very unhappy", while those in Job Y were 10% / 20% / 30% / 40% on the same scale -- it would be hard to argue at that point that Y's are happier than X's, but that's how the survey results would be interpreted if you only "skim the cream" and report the top category.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Here's the stats per the website.
/
Position Profession Vocational/Academic % Very Happy
1 Care Assistants Vocational 40%
2 Hairdressers Vocational 32%
3 Plumbers Vocational 32%
4 Chefs Vocational 30%
5 Florists Vocational 20%
6 Chartered
Engineers Professional 18%
7 Lawyers Professional 16%
8 Mechanics Vocational 14%
9 IT Specialists Professional 14%
10 Scientists/R&D Professional 14%
11 Secretaries
receptionists Vocational 13%
12 Butchers Vocational 12%
13 Builders Vocational 10%
14 Teachers Professional 8%
15 Architects Professional 8%
16 Electricians Vocational 6%
17 Accountants Professional 4%
18 Pharmacists Professional 4%
19 Media Professional 4%
20 Estate agents Professional 4%
Clinton made me a Republican. Bush made me a Libertarian. Trump is making me question reality.
It should also be noted that not being happy in your job doesn't mean you're not happy with your life, either. For example, last year I left a terrible but very well paid job. Thought the job was appalling, but the money I was making from it allowed me to get on with my life in other areas, so overall I was having a good time.
Be wary of describing people as just "IT Professionals" or "Hairdressers". They're not 2D stereotypes, they're full-blown people with all the complexity that implies.
Cheers,
Ian
it's even in the short blurb here on /.
"which stands in stark contrast to one in three hairdressers, plumbers and chefs, and one in four florists"
Wait a sec, that sounds dangerously like a haiku. Okay, let's give it a try:
Sitting here, watching
Uni department go mad
Mangled by the worm
"It's a very tangled subsystem." --Windows kernel guru
pay was good but the hours were crap, so was the constant bs. So I traded my computer geek coat. Now I go around the world as a consultant fixing problems. Kind of like Macgyver. Meet interesting people, see beautiful places, do interesting things, but still use my greek knowledge to solve problems. Nobody gives you your dream job, you have to make your own dream job and make it happen. It's hard work but well worth it. We are creatures of a social network. Enlighten yourself, and you will be a lot happier.
Us IT people would be alot happier if we had more attractive women working in our companies. I work with 50 software engineers, 47 males and 3 women.
Yes, we are that shallow. Nothing wrong with having some hot women in the office.
100% Insightful
Nurses are an example of a profession even less "happy" than IT. While nurses aren't worried about their jobs being outsourced, interestingly enough they tend to be overworked (usually 10-12 hour rotating shifts throughout the week) and underpaid, especially compared to their colleagues. But, according to the articles, they should be happy, as they are very hands on. Guess that hypothesis just got shot down.
New studies have indicated that working people as far as you can stretch them *makes them unhappy*!
I could never figure out why the employment situation in the US is so screwed up.
We have this kind of go-go-GO-OR-YOU-FAIL-DAMMIT-GO! mentality that keeps being pushed. I was talking to some folks about the kind of hours that people starting off in financial services or the legal world can expect to work -- the hours are *stupid*. Sure, the jobs pay well, but what do you do with the money? Buy a bigger TV or a more expensive car, neither of which you get to use because you're at work most of the time?
Furthermore, I claim that you can't be productive at the number of hours that people work. People cannot work 80 productive hours a week. They can push themselves to be *at* work 80 hours a week, but there's no way that they're getting that much done.
France and Germany both seem to have much more liberal hours-of-work and vacation policies. So what if you make a bit less money if you aren't beating yourself to death trying to claw your way ahead?
We currently have unemployment problems in the US. Lots of people out of work. We also have lots of people that are well-paid but overworked. It just seems like there should be, you know, an obvious solution to this. Hire more people and pay a lower pay rate.
May we never see th
until the last layoff. His troubleshooting skills:
1 reboot the machine
2 re-image the machine
3 replace the machine
4 blame it on a virus or a microsoft bug
5 ignore it
then the users call me, and I fix it - usually something simple like a checkbox not checked or a DNS entry not typed in...
And this guy was MCSE "certified". Yeah Right.
I rode him so much I am sure he was not happy with his job, but like other posters have said - he got into the field for the money but didn't have a clue about computers.
Lord I am glad he's gone!
Is the juice worth the sqeeze?
All IT people at some point shutdown. They one day wake up and say "I have learned enough, I don't want to learn anything new". And these people simply work with what they have learned.
Now it may take 40 years for this to happen but it happens to all (alright most for those mathematicians) IT workers; People hate change and IT is all about change everyday (every hour?). It is stressful fighting for your job everyday when new college people are released ever year with fresh training and new ideas without any legacy burden. I'm not in anyway bashing College Hires but the younger you are the more resilient you are. The more resilient you are the better you perform. So as you're moving in the IT field you need to look at moving on or up to prevent yourself from being exterminated.
Grab something to move into when you start heading into retirement age. God knows I don't want to be in IT at age 70 fending off those young whipper snappers.
I used to be a big "geek". Was always interested in the latest processor, RAM technology, etc. Now, I couldnt give a shit.
I am a software engineer. My job is boring. I spend 8-10 hours/day staring at a computer screen. A friend asked me to help him buy a computer a while back. He asked me since I was a software guy, and was supposed to know about these things. I couldnt help him. I knew NOTHING about current computers, printers, monitors etc on the market.
So now I sit here coding in C++ and making pretty UML diagrams all day, but have absolutly no interest in it anymore. I do it because it pays well and I am reasonably good at it. I dont do it because I enjoy it. I would love to quit and do something I enjoy, but then I realize that I wouldnt have as much disposable cash for other things. So I am resigning myself to wasting 40+ hours/week of my life so I can enjoy the remaining 80 or so hours (sleep is important).
When I was in school I went to a research oriented university. There was some cutting edge stuff being developed that never ceased to hold my attention. Now I am designing software for systems that are nowhere near the level of sophistication as what I was used to at school. Its just all so bland now.
Power disparity in the workplace is a big factor. Here we are, we know what is going to work best, what is going to save money, what is going to make people's lives easier, what should be automated and what it a waste of time, and we have PHB's telling us they know best, decisions based on superficials or unneccesary complications, spending based on budget cycles not needs, systems too powerful or too weak. And we shut up and do it, since there are plenty out of work who want your job. Then we have to tiptoe around [L]user egos, baby boomers who fancy themselves technologists but forget how to make a printer the default.
There was a study of "determinants of health" conducted in the early 90's in 5 different industrialized nations, which discovered that power disparity was at least as big a factor on well-being (heart disease, depression etc.) as wealth/poverty or difficulty of job--upper middle managers who felt stifled were worse off than low-income workers with relative independence and greater unfettered responsibilty. Poverty=poor health studies may be weighted wrongly due to these findings: it's not just about money, power on the interpersonal scale counts strongly.
Damn those pesky terrorists
I find it even more disturbing that only 8% of the people responsible for education are happy with their jobs. Maybe if they were happier, more people would be learning in school & wouldn't be such morons to us I.T. people at work. OR, perhaps the stigma behind being able to learn & answer questions as "stupid" should finally die, so that people can actually learn at school and not feel "dorky" because they are learning, thus again allowing them to gain some sense & not be morons later in life. I explained one of my work-related problems to a 6th grader who is nearly failing out, and even he was able to see how easy the probs would be to fix for those in charge. Something is wrong if the failing gradeschooler has more common sense than a college grad PHB.
stuff |
How many of us in IT want to do a *good* job? How many of us would like to show what we can do and the quality by which we can do it? Alas, how often is the time there? Instead you do your second best, if you are lucky, to meet insane deadline.
Contrast this with a hairdresser or any of those other positions. Those people are hired to attract customers. Take for example a plumber. When something breaks most people will trade time for a proper fix so this doesn't happen again. Those people can take pride in their jobs and are generally expected to exhibit their creativity.
Very few in IT are in a position to take their time to adhere to best practices when managers are screaming as a group to have *something* now and not later. When their desire to rush doesn't work out, who is to blame? Not them! At the end of the day it is hard to feel good about whatever you've done especially when you know if you had a bit more time you could have done a better job.
That all said, I'll wager that when the "DotCom Boom" was happening, many of the "other 6 of the 7" got into IT for the money. If you don't love what you do then get out of it.
There's definitely some of that -- don't even ask me how many art or business majors I knew back in the day who were "retrained" for IT -- but I think a lot of those people have been shaken out of it by now, either by leaving the industry entirely or, more frighteningly, by scurrying up to management.
But there are other stories, too. The simple fact is, most college educations will not in the least prepare you for the realities of working as a programmer. (I'll speak to that specifically, since it's what I know -- other IT jobs may vary.)
Some of this is relatively trivial. I was forced to take a lot of comp sci theory classes that have never and will never be useful on the job. Some of that was interesting, some of it was there simply because the university had professors that knew it and did research on it and they didn't know what else to do with them. Instead of, say, 10% of my course load being required to be physics, they could have had me take even a single class involving databases, something many professional programmers will touch on nearly every day of their working lives. That part of it though, is water under the bridge as far as I'm concerned. People who like the field and want to be in it can learn and adapt to overcome those kinds of gaps.
The more troubling thing is that working as a programmer is a whole lot different than doing programming in college.
I've known people who loved programming and did great with it in school and for their own projects, but who were utterly broken by the realities of dealing with clients. Some couldn't handle the (gasp) social skills tasks of having to deal with clients or non-technical people at their own companies. Others were slowly ground down towards insanity by having to continually retrofit their work to comply with the seemingly insane demands of the clients or end users. When you do programming projects in school or for yourself, the spec rarely changes fifty times partway through for (as far as you can tell) no reason. In the real world, it happens all the time.
To take another example, I work with a guy who will probably be shaken out of the IT industry sooner or later. It's obvious to everyone, including him, that he isn't happy. It's not that he doesn't like programming in general. The problem, in his case, are the realities of enterprise level programming. He can't stand that he can write some code, test it and find it working just fine, and come in to work the next day to discover that someone else on the far side of the office working on a seemingly unrelated one of the few thousand files that make up the project has effectively broken his work. He can't take looking at something that works one day and not the next and not even (without doing a fair amount of investigation) know how or why. That's another reality of working in IT that doesn't really come up in school.
Myself, I'm happy, but sometimes it's true what they say: If you love something, the last thing you want to try to do is do it for a living.
I said it to my girlfriend and she didn't get it, Maybe you people around here will understand.
I LOVE my CAREER, I HATE my JOB
by that I mean I love doing what I have chosen to do for my life, I just hate working at the current place of employment. That has all changed now that I was laid off, spent 10 months goofing off, traveling, testing the waters elsewhere(photography), and I am now back with a better place and love both my career and my job
moo.
IT Professionals are really a wide range of jobs in my opinion. One guy replies saying he likes doing all the cabling work that he does. Another responds that he doesn't like programmer. Those are very different jobs in my opinion and the research in the article seems to lump them together. But anyway, I have a pretty good idea of why programmers are unhappy. For one thing, businesses treat programmers like crap. I got into programming about 4 years ago. I'm in a small office where I mostly work on projects myself. I like my job because it is kind of an artistic release at times. I get to put my own quality standards into the project and when I'm done I can look at my work and be very happy with it. Thats a "Craft" view of programming. But businesses hate that. I even find myself fighting with my employers on an ongoing basis because they want speed and effeciency, not quality. They also want things to be predictable. They don't like that I often spend a good portion of time at the beginning of all my projects researching "Whats new" and trying to implement new things into my work. They want reliable time constraints for my work. I'm also finishing up my degree in IT, and I'm taking a senior level course right now called Software Engineering. This course has 100% confirmed by belief that the industry wants nothing to do with craft programming. They want what they call "ego-less" programmers that don't care about their own work as much as the group as a whole's work. They want guys that follow the same processes every time and do reliable, predictable work every time. They want (and have probably succeeded in the corporate world) to turn programmers and software developers into factory workers. They want us sitting on the assembly line, pushing out code as if we are machines. What they don't realize is the human aspect of programming. People don't WANT to work that way. It is boring. Look at open source projects as an example. We use a lot of open source applications at our office, and my bosses are completely dumbfounded as to why anyone would put out work for free. I try to tell them that it is because they actually enjoy doing what they do. They enjoy getting credit for their efforts. Business people just don't understand this. If you treat programming like a craft, you'll get better results, and your employees will be more happy. That is what I'm going to live and die by in this industry, because I refuse to ever become a cubicle code monkey. I'll become a hair dresser before I let myself become a code monkey.
A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost. He reduces height and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts:
"Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?"
The man below says, "Yes, you're in a hot air balloon, hovering 30 feet above this field."
"You must work in information technology" says the balloonist.
"I do," replies the man. "How did you know?"
"Well," says the balloonist, "everything you have told me is technically correct, but it's no use to anyone."
The man below says, "You must be a corporate manager."
"I am," replies the balloonist, "but how did you know?"
"Well", says the man, "you don't know where you are, or where you're going, but you expect me to be able to help. You're in the same position you were before we met, but now it's my fault."
One of the things that boggled me when I first got into Systems Administration was how a lot of admins were roped into just a couple of different tasks and knew absolutely nothing outside of that realm. Sure, they have college degrees and no doubt are intelligent people, but I couldn't fathom how they didn't have the desire and tenacity to learn it all.
See, I was new and hungry. Everything around me I wanted to learn and did to the best of my ability. I got great enjoyment from my job. I got to travel, I was paid well, and things were good.
As time passed on and the years seemed to blend together, something changed. I started noticing little things about my career... One thing was job growth..career growth.. Where was I going ? Did I want to be a manager? Was there really anything beyond Systems Administration? I looked at some of the veterans in the company, guys that have been here for 20+ years. They are still SA's.. some of them lead projects..some are stuck in their old ways, refusing to learn new technology..refusing to implement anything new. Scared to touch certain things because they are scared it will come crumbling down. Some letting their pride get in the way of good worksmanship. Some of the less technical ones have gone the way of management.
Do I want to be an SA in 20 years from now? I dunno... I used to read man pages for fun..I don't really find that fun anymore. Can't really pinpoint why. RFC's before bed... Tech manuals like novels. Perhaps I'm burned out... but from what? I'm doing what I've always wanted to do.. Perhaps it is my current company. Maybe I'm not suited for stagnant environments. Maybe it's 8 years of sitting in a 8x8 cubicle , which is in fact smaller than a jail cell.. I've even considered a career change, hell, I'm still young enough.
-L
Don't Panic.
I somewhat disagree with your analogy. Although I do see some IT shops that view programming talent with the 'factory' mindset, I think a majority of large software products want you to apply what you're studying: Software Engineering.
I know, I know, there are 10k /. readers out there who just rolled their eyes ("Software development is not like bridge design!" "Programmers are not engineers!") but there are engineering practices that are applicable to software development: proper QA/QC, documenting everything, spending 70% of the SDLC in requirements and design, carefully designing dependencies before implementation, etc. These are not by themselves fun or 'crafty' activities, but in the bigger picture of developing a large and mature software project, can be very fulfilling.
That is not to say you can ROM the time for a software project like a bridge; there are things unique to each and every large project that cannot be accounted for. But, if care is given during the software lifecycle, a project team can deliver a mature, maintainable, usable project, still allow the company to make money, and still allow the developers to practice some 'craft'. I do believe that the difference between the best packages and the average ones lie in the company's investment in that last activity.
*BUT*, craft by itself, in anything but small to medium-small IT projects, is asking for disaster in terms of budget and schedule. The SEI level 1 nickname isn't 'folklore' for nothing. In fact, I would postulate that that's why so many jobs are going away from the Western companies: Western developers' insistence that software development is some kind of magic that cannot even be remotely predicted or estimated. Nonsense!
You call us lusers. I can see the smile on your faces when you think about that word.
Self-importance has gotten you lot into the shit you are in at the moment. You all thought you were far too good to be laid off. The amount of $ you commanded made you even more expendable.
Here's the deal. Don't call me a luser and I'll stop phoning up with phantom problems.
1. Pull network cable out
2. Phone service desk. Tell them my internet is down.
3. Try and sound confused when I'm asked "Intranet or internet?"
4. Tell phone monkey "I have checked the network cable. It is plugged in" until he/she gives up.
5. Book 4 hours to computer problems. Use those 4 hours to drink coffee.
Troll? I resent that too.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
You, my friend, have hit the nail squarely on the head.
When I started my current position, it was "a little bit of everything." I did scripting, server builds, maintenance, desktop support, planning, EVERYTHING. I was quite happy. Then slowly, we started "corporatizing" our environment to conform to the rest of our company...Our happy little well-run shop didn't match up, so we had to change. Now we've assigned the more interesting things (the server builds, the planning, and whatnot) to engineers at corporate headquarters, and I'm stuck... Pigeon-holed to desktop support (I installed Bonzi Buddy again!) password monkey (I can't remember the 8-character password I made up myself!) and backup tape duties (I erased my presentation from the server again!)
While I grant you, all the things I have to do are neccessary for continued operation of our business, my job was about 100 times more interesting when there was a little variety involved. I used to love my job and wanted to stay and make a career here. Now that we've been merged into a corporate behemoth and I'm prevented by rule from solving 85% of our problems, it just isn't interesting or exciting any more. I'm looking elsewhere, and will go when I find the right position.
Who did what now?