Slashdot Mirror
Appreciating Your Stressful IT Job?
in the trenches asks: "I'm a married, 24-year-old male, and like many posters here on Slashdot I work in the IT industry. I currently work as a website developer (mostly design-related work), but I also do some Perl and PHP programming. As most of you probably have, I've often wondered if I wouldn't enjoy working in a less stressful environment. I've even gone as far as to wonder if I'd prefer some sort of factory job or similar over my current field of work. The problem is this, I LOVE developing websites, but I HATE the stress and responsability that comes with a the job. How do you all cope with the stress and responsability that seems to come hand-in-hand with an IT career?"
200 milligram caffeine pills. I pop 'em like candy
Have a baby. You'll leave work each day with a song in your heart, knowing that there will be a minimum of bodily fluids to contend with.
I don't always care for my IT job, but sometimes there are *amazing* blessings/perks that go along with the job- although given certain current circumstances (see journal) I guess I could consider a career in health care- that too will have levels of stress.
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams."
Simple. Be unemployed... Also seems to go hand in hand with an IT career.
IT doesn't automatically mean less stress. There're stressfull jobs in other areas as well, just as there are relaxing IT jobs.
So just change your job but stay in the IT industry, specially if you like it. There's nothing better than a job in an area you like!
Stress and responisility come with any skilled job. You'll certainly feel less stress working on a production line, but you'll constantly feel undervalued, as you won't be getting used to anywhere near your full potential.
Saying that, my friend's father has a PhD from Oxford, and now drives a bus. He's far happier than he used to be. Maybe you should eventually give up the hard work, but not until far later in life.
Stress is what we feel when our current abilities are being challenged. It's also at these times that we grow as individuals - we learn to deal with situations which once caused stress, and hence become more capable. This applies whatever the cause of stress, even if it's a stupid boss that's doing your head in, you have to learn to deal with stupid bosses.
I think you're much to young to stop growing, much to young to run from stressful situations. I also think you're too young to be married, but your early marriage is associated with your personal needs to grow as individual. Maybe you've already grown all you want.
So obviously it's a personal choice how much stress you want to endure, taking into account how much you have already grown, how much you want to grow further, and your capability to do so.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
personally, my IT job is for the state of new york, so it's stressful, but not overly so. let me give an example... the other day, I dropped a server. now, I know intel commodity hardware is cheap and all, but still, this bothered me. =D it luckily fell on the corner that has the least amount of useful hardware in it, and thus, I only broke the power plug plugs. my friend and I glued it back together, and it even works, so all is well. I have to think that if I'd done that at a corporation, I'd have been fired within minutes, whereas at the state, I could commit felonies and still work there! but none before you get hired... save the crime spree until after you're hired =D
When I find myself in this situation I usually quit my job and make room for the unemployed... Hope this helps!
In my early 20s, I like everybody worked 14 hour days 5 days a week. Then at some point (marriage, probably) I realized that the *better* people get their shit done in 8 hours, and go home. If you find yourself working superlong, you're probably not operating correctly. You should just go home and do better tomorrow.
It's all about planning. Now I no longer look on 70-hour week people as heros; actually the opposite, why can't they get their work done more efficiently.
I also enjoy the work I do but it can also be a very stressful environment at times... I find it best to try to keep work at work, and unwind on the off hours with entertainment, the company of friends & family etc. Or, if it's really TOO stressful, look for another job. The frustration of the job search might just help you appreciate your current gig.
"We are the first generation to influence the climate and the last generation to escape the consequences." - John McCain
Get a new job. A less stressful one. Chances are if your stressed out over what you are doing, you dont actually like what you are doing. If the stress bothers you that much, its time to look for something else.
I've noticed in IT jobs, the more you talk and interact with your coworkers in a positive and joking way, the less stressful the job is. When you sit there and stew over what your boss might say next, it gets stressful.
You might actually enjoy working as a web developer, but perhaps not at the company you are at now. Having fun with your coworkers can make the day go by a lot faster and be more enjoyable. Look elsewhere!
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
Develop your life in a way that suits your personality, whether through social interaction outside work or reflection. I personally do Tai Chi. The way I deal with stress at work is to make everything into a joke -- my boss, for example, is insanely negative and insulting. All of us in the department used to get very upset about it. But with enough talking amongst ourselves and building of a mutual solidarity, we now pretty much laugh in his face: we take control of our environment and refuse to let him dictate stress onto us. He doesn't like it that much obviously, but we do. Something that REALLY helps is to think: what is the worst that can happen to me? As the Tao Te Ching says: Do your work, then step back.
musides
BEER
I work as a journalist. I'm 26, and starting to learn how to cope with stress and the fact that a single small slip of the keys could land my employer in a multi-million lawsuit.
The answer is; with the years, you get more confident in yourself. You know that the abaility to do it is in you, and is neing used, so it's nothing to worry about. Focus on teh task instead.
But occasionaly, I do get a bit worried. Like five minnutes ago, where the competing newspaper said (indriectly) that my story about the returing caskets with soldiers from Iraq was dead wrong (Among the pictures from thememoryhole.org were some pictures of caskets frome the columbia accident). I paniced a bit, yes, but though calmly about it, investigated my case, and discovered that the pictures I had discarded (since they wer taken during the day, while the pictures I used were in the night) from columbia had not been included in my article. And therefore it was 100% correct.
In other words: Trust your instincts.
Take up a martial art as a hobby. I recommend Judo for maximum stress relief. I would link to the article about how to be a hacker but I can't remember who wrote it (maybe RMS?). In the article, whoever wrote it said being involved in a martial art is very important to becoming a successful hacker (not cracker). Many days I can't wait to get to judo so I can imagine the idiot who is causing me stress at work as I beat on someone else (who then thanks me for beating up on them). I sleep great at night, have good blood preasure, and only accumulate a days worth of stress each day before working it off at the dojo.
Find out what's really bothering you. Is it really the stress and responsibility, or is it the money, the lack of advancement, or something else? This is very important, because if it's really the stress then it means that (e.g.) no matter how much they pay you, you would feel the same.
Once you know what really bothers you start thinking what you can do about it. Maybe a lack of advancement is because maybe you didn't finish college (I don't know you - I just know several people that work in IT in that exact situation). Maybe the stress is because you have several bosses that ask stuff for yesterday and you just need to come up with a way to prioritize everything effectively. And so on and so forth.
Changing job fields like that is risky because you don't know what awaits you. And if you don't address the core problem and make sure that changing job is the best solution, then it's going to come up again in any job that you do.
The ENIAC Demo Competition
Now everything is my fault, your problem. :)
You want some chees with that whine?
GETPKG - Package Management for Slackware
I dont even have a girlfriend you insensitive clod!
(but I do have a hot date tonight; wish me luck)
You left out the Ben Franklin quote. :-)
Mod -6, Can't follow directions
I was going to do an Ask Slashdot about this, but this topic is somewhat related. So I have a question for those of you with degrees and such that moved into careers: I may have the opportunity to take a Web Development job in another state doing PHP/MySQL work and Mac OS X support. The job description falls squarely into my interests. The problem is, I'm only 19 and finishing my frosh year in college. Would it be worth it to a take a full-time job like this and go to night classes to get an associate's degree? Does anyone here have specific experiences with the difference between earning an associate's and a bachelor's degree in the high tech field?
Remember that your occupation is not your identity, and be sure to keep your social networks in good shape outside of the office. Also, try to keep your personal debt to a minimum. If you balance your personal and professional life, you can avoid most of the stress typically associated with most IT jobs.
Unfortunately, this is never as simple as it sounds, but if you keep the simple goal of balance in mind, you can look forward to a good career.
-- lk t lv ll th vwls t f wrds. T svs lts f tm t wrt bt ts pn n th ss t rd nd mks m lk lk cmplt dpsht.
The problem is this, I LOVE developing websites, but I HATE the stress and responsability that comes with a the job. How do you all cope with the stress and responsability that seems to come hand-in-hand with an IT career?"
Hey man. Just take it for what it is, enjoy it, make sure things are done right, and then be done with it. I work 100-110 hours a week and when I'm on call spend around 34-36 hours at the hospital straight. The hours *sork hard*, but I love the work.
But that's what you have to do - enjoy the job and then leave it behind and get on with your life. Time is precious.
Think about your situation, and quit whining.
You like what you do -- great. If you don't like the conditions you're working in, work for someone else, or go to work for yourself. Stuffing your talent into an assembly line isn't going to make you happy in the long run, most likely. It also is going to waste the ability you've got.
Whenever I get stressed out about my job, I consider a few things.... 1. There are people doing much more stressful things than I am (soldiers, EMT's, police officers, etc. etc.). 2. I realize how boring things can be, and how slowly time passes when I don't have things that challenge me.
YMMV.
I was in the same position as you were about three years ago. I love developing web sites with PHP and MySQL, etc., but I absolutely hated working in a corporate environment with the associated stresses. My advice is to stick it out for a few more years, while simultaneously hoarding as much money as possible and planning your next move - to a job that you enjoy that is a variation on your current one. For example, I now work in the adult industry developing porn web sites. There is still some stress, but I love my job, and I still get to use my primary skill set.
I swear I had wrote this in my sleep or something... Same age, recently married, web developer...creepy.
Everyone feels stress. Workers are expected to produce more in less time, or else there's always someone waiting to take your job.
There's a club for people in your situation- it's called The Rest of the World. We meet in the bar on Fridays. Get over it.
"Never pet a burning dog."
Being in IT is no more cause for stress than any other role. It is no harder, no more elite and no better than many other roles.
Why do you think the guy in the factory has it so easy?
How the hell did this little whinge session make it as an article?
Take some advice from Dr Dennis Leary and shut the fuck up.
Just my perspective, but:
Consider yourself lucky that you are employed and that you are in a creative position, which many people could only dream about.
Just about any IT job is going to have some stress; contractors worry about finding the next contract, project managers worry about meeting deadlines and retaining their staff, Software engineers worry about the company staying afloat, keep their skills up to date and whether or not they're going to be bumped out of the way to make for one of the directors friends.
Work from home occassionally. I find this to be a great stress reliever.
Hire a second person to help you.
Ask for a raise, or find a better paying job doing the same kind of work.
Find a way for your wife to work during times when you get laid off.
What exactly are you stressful about it? money? mortage? fear of loosing your job?
I work as a web developer, and have had a lot of stress the last 2 years from fear of loosing my job. I recently found a job, and then after 5 months was laid off. Stressing about it will only make it worse. I've come to accept that I work in a field where job security is non-existent. The best you can do is keep that resume polished (put an html version online so google picks it up), and post your resume on lots of sites once you do get laid off.
dice.com
hotjobs.com
monster.com
craigslist.org
careerbuilder.com
jobs.perl.org
These are all the places I maintain my resume, on their web sites, as well as search for jobs, as I'm currently looking for work. I have been getting about 2-3 calls a day, and I live in Silicon Valley, where it was dead for about 3 years for IT jobs. I'd say 50% of the calls I get are from people finding my resume in google. I've been doing search engine optimization for 2 years, and it has definitely helped me to get my resume up to the first page in google for my targeted keywords.
I haven't landed anything yet, hopefully will get an offer next week. I've been on several interviews at least, so things are picking up.
For more info, checkout my site: Search Engine Optimization Information
It's All Politics
So I ended up giving 110% to companies that didn't give it back and I found myself up at 3:00am on many nights, trying to save the dumbest crap on the Internet like I was trying to save the International Space Station or something. The dedicated server for Joe's Discount MP3 Warehouse would reboot, and there I'd be investigating like there was life at stake. It's pretty similar with coding, the people that give you the orders want it done -now- and with -no bugs-. Which, of course, is unrealistic.
It's an attitude that's not discouraged by management, a lot of times. Remember if they can "push you harder" they get better results. You get an ulcer.
So:
I think the most important one is the first. Remember that life is not at stake (unless it is at stake, then panic).
-- The unsig...
Ah, you lucky guy.
I'd love to be developing websites or something. I love the challenge of trying to do that kind of stuff, but I also know the stress it can cause as well (just from my hobby website stuff)
Thing is, having done a lot of less-stressful things I don't love so much, I can tell you now, you're lucky being in the more stressful job you DO enjoy. You go home with a wonderful feeling of achievement when you're doing something challenging that you enjoy. You won't get that with a factory job.
Best advice I can give you is to find ways to manage the stress a little.
When I was younger I was the same, stressed about everything and everyone. Every little thing that was not going right was a major catastrophe.
You're going to have to learn to treat your work as just that, work. It is not your life. Do not take it home. When you leave work, forget it. You're not responsible for other peoples' work and mistakes. You can only do your best and if that's not enough for others, then that's THEIR problem, not yours. Also don't be afraid to ask for help, if you're completely overwhelmed.
I had to learn this the hard way after all that made my life miserable when I was working at my first professional job. I made a conscious effort to chance my attitude from the "worry about everything" to "don't sweat the small stuff". I haven't been miserable at work ever since even though there always is some level of stress involved.
But it's not the stress that you should be worried about, it's how you react to it.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
just smoke a bowl every day before work
flaming someone on /. always seems to work well for a rage dump. Or take up a relaxing hobby, like making fun of michael.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
The only difference between the homeless and the rest of us is that they like to party a bit more than we do. They also like to avoid workplace stress.
Amazing magic tricks
"How do you all cope with the stress and responsability that seems to come hand-in-hand with an IT career?" Well, in MS Word, I use F7. =-= The Tree of Learning bears the noblest fruit, but noble fruit tastes bad.
While I understand the stress in IT positions, it is nothing compared to the medical field! I have been a nurse for 20 years and the double stress of having someones life in your hands and malpractice is the worst.
But for one, working in a factory, worrying over machine malfunctions that could eat your arm while worrying about not making enough to provide for you and yours could prove to be pretty damn stressful. I get pretty stressed when driving... my friend who drives a truck for a living is at his most relaxed when driving. Its all a matter of figuring out what stresses you out. I'm relaxed even when the servers explode and management start throwing knives... its my job to be around when these things happen, and fix them... and I'm pretty good at it - so why should it stress me out?
If you find web design and php stressful, its probably not for you - find something you really enjoy, and put your soul in to it... it will turn out to be its own reward, and stress will be an empty word.
To negate the side-effects of stress in my IT related job I parallel it with reading books.
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
I've found that if I dress badly, act angry, yell at my computer, and do really weird stuff that people tend to leave me alone. Granted I can get away with this because I get the job done in record time and I've never missed a deadline. Also - listen to music in headphones (it increases your personal space theres an article around here but it's too early and I've only had a sip of coffee). It's entirely up to you to defend your personal space and to repel the cube invaders. I don't officially take a lunch ( it's in my desk drawer), so my work mates never see me take lunch. Use the phrases "Under the gun", "there's no time for that" a lot. Really create the image that you're too damn busy for their petty shit. Read slashdot between your sandwiches ;) Sit with your back to the cube door but have a reflective surface where you can see in back of you so you can detect cube invaders.
You really only have two options.. deal with them on your terms, or on their terms.
I've found that reducing the petty bullshit makes life easier.
-B
I would LOVE to be doing that, heres the reality check, I am in the Army, just got back from the War in Iraq in July 03 and have to go back for another whole year in Jan of 05, so, always remember, what may seem stressful can always, always get much worse, and most of what we sweat in life is really not that big of a deal, I used to think my IT job was stressful, but not even close to having things explode around you and having bullets whizz past (A sound I will never forget) Please don't take this as a flame or insult, just as a reality check.
-- Phillip Davis phil at daviszone dot org
Quite frankly I have been lucky enough to have a job as an Embedded Firmware Engineer for 25 years. Remember the catch phrase"Intel first from the begining" I was there. Beta'd the 8051, 8086, 80186, 29000, 29020 and the list goes on.
This led to marrige breakdown of two marriges something that happened to a lot of my co-workers.
My advise is simple. Try and make your family first and advise work your family / life / health comes first.
When picking a mate try and find someone who would partner with you at work and shows a genuine interest. This might be an artist that does books as well for web sites and the graphic artist can rise in them. Anyway you get the picture.
And finally try and work towards a end that you can live where you want run your own business and the work comes to you. All you need is that high speed connect. Work when you want. Go fishing or ? when you want.
That's what 25 years tells me. And no I didn't, I wish someone had told me.
Regards John
Vista, the single biggest argument for Desktop Linux! It doesn't "Just Work"(TM).
The opposite of job stress is not boredom, it is job satisfaction. You will not find satisfaction in a low-skill factory job or other similar employment if you are used to exercising your brain.
There are many jobs in manufacturing, however, which are quite challenging and interesting. Get into precision machining, tool-making, maintenance, automation, etc., and you'll find the work is challenging, well-paid, and rewarding.
Send lawyers, guns, and money. Dad, get me out of this.
I was fortunate - since I was nearer to the start of my career - I was able to change jobs to a much lower stress job, that was right by the subway, and paid more then the job that was trying to kill me
You could marry someone you hate. Having a wife that sucks makes your job stress seem much less important. Which reminds me, I heard a good joke the other day in a movie I was watching: "Yesterday, over breakfast, I made a Freudian slip. I meant to ask my wife to pass the butter, but instead I said, 'You bitch! You've ruined my life!'"
Work on smaller, less critical sites.
Oh right, but it's less money. Can't buy as many Ipods per year.
... not having a fairly well paid job with interesting work.
:
It's like the old joke
Growing old sucks, but it's worse than the alternative.
I've got a nice cushy IT job now, working as a security engineer for a nonprofit. About half the staff at the organization are developers or system/network engineers. It's not very stressful.
:)
Last year and the year before, I was working as an engineer for an IT consulting company. It's great experience, but it's a lot more stressful than working in one department for one set of people on one small set of projects.
I don't know if I'm weird, greedy, or just a masochist, but I'm giving up my cushy IT job to go finish a degree (any degree!) and become a market maker (that's a term some stock/options exchanges use for a floor trader that provides liquidity). Talk about a stressful job. The nice thing is the money and the skill you gain in doing it - if I wanted to retire after 5-10 years with a mil or two and just trade a few hours a day/week for the rest of my life, I could. Plus, I hear they have LOTS of vacation time!
I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
I used to love computers. Seriously.
I used to have a passion for everything. I used to love learning every minute detail I could about whatever it was I was interested in.
And one day, it all just stopped. I think it was when my interests became intertwined with my job. When what I was "interested in" was dictacted to me by whoever was paying me.
I have often times thought about pulling and "office space", and just ditching the whole thing, and doing something physically rewarding, but somehow, I end up stuck in that part of the movie where you're getting paid more and more for doing less and less. And like with crack cocaine, it's just hard to say no.
There's no more stress and responsibility in IT than any other job.
/. to believe they're not only the smartest, but work the hardest.
Trust
I am 23, married, have a baby due in July, and director of IT at a fairly small business (130 employees), and I LOVE the amount of stress I get, and it is substantial. I think it's all in how you approach it and the corporate culture that surrounds you. I honestly do like coming in Monday morning ready to take-on the day.
However, I used to work for a HUGE company in IT (5000+ employees), and I HATED it, because I was paid like an illegal immigrant but had more direct impact on the company than the CIO. But, I had to pay the bills, and there really wasn't any alternative without a college degree (the "need" for which is another argument altogether). Ultimately, you need to either change the way you look at the job, or try to find another. And, yes, even in post-.COM there are quite a few jobs out there for programmers of your nature.
Strangely I don't feel stressed that often. In fact, at the moment it's the manager getting stressed trying to resolve a load of design issues. I get more of a free reign than most people I guess. That helps a lot.
Any profession has a basic problem that, at some point, it becomes a job. The bigger question is how to keep it in balance. I'd encourage you to develop hobbies that are not related to computers; I took up woodworking and woodturning. You're married (and presumably not all that long), so it's worth thinking of cultivating your marriage and spending time with your children (once you have any, if you don't have any yet). Working for charitable causes is helpful also, especially in that it helps you see the value of your own career. (There's always someone worse off than you are.)
That having been said, some jobs simply are not conducive to this. Bad hours, bad boss, tedious work, etc. I stand by my oft-stated assertion that working with a good team of people (defined as coworkers you enjoy working with) is worth a LOT of money. In that case, look around for a position that's better for your soul. But even then, it'll become work some day.
In any case, there is a bigger picture to be kept in mind. I cannot speak for other faiths, but from my vantage point as a Christian, there is a lot to be said for developing an understanding of vocation. Your abilities are not purely of your own doing. What you have been given (money, ability, etc.) should be used for a greater purpose, as the parable of the ten talents (Matthew 25:14-29) shows. When viewed with this attitude, it's easy to see the "job" as the grunt work that provides for the real, but unpaid, task of giving time, money, or ability elsewhere. Speaking from experience, the stress becomes bearable as you realize that you tolerate it for a reason.
If you love design websites, then changing what you know that you "love" is probably not the answer. Perhaps you have a bad boss? hostile work environment? poor working conditions? problems from home brought to the office? unprofessional colleagues? etc. . . . Make sure that you have an understanding of the root cause of yor unhappiness before making a change. Change for the sake of change may not solve anything and if you change the aspect of the job that you "love" you may make things worse.
In the place I work currently as a developer I don't have enough to do, and I have to chase up my boss every now and then to find something to do. Not having a constant line of "things to do" is even more stressful in my opinion than having lots and lots to do! Personally, I am terrified that someone will see thru my work and realize how little I actually do and think I am a lazy sod. Its not lack of will to work that is causing this, it is plain and simple a lack of things to do, and I hate it. Although, I have tended my resignation, so I will be leaving at the end of the summer because I dont like the lack of action. But I wouldnt want to be "found out" before so they give me bad references.
Some people go into business and become obnoxious jerks. They think they have to be tough to make it in business. (who knows, maybe you do, but I know enough small-business guys who are moderately successul and aren't 100% asshole). Some bosses hire people just so they can abuse them and take their stress out on them.
You have to look at your situation and figure out what the deal is. Is is short term stress because of a change in the office? A new client? Or is someone in the office a major rod, and they're nopt going to change, ever? If that's the case, leave, but don't leave until you get
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
DRUGS!
:) A little m.j.(pot) and a brewski and all the stress of the day just melts away. Of course, then if your wife doesn't approve you have the stress of dealing with her when you're all toasted.
Surprised this one hasn't already popped up.
go get a factory job. IT is not for you. You'll be much happier at Tyson Chicken or General Motors.
I had this problem before I got into IT. I was working in retail management, then office management and was always stressed out. I couldn't figure out how to relieve the stress. Then it occurred to me that I wasn't doing what I wanted to do for a living. I dropped everything and started work on a path that would eventually lead me to my IT job. Yes, this was a conscious choice for me. This was the best thing that I could have done.
Then when the stress of my IT job was getting to me, I sat down and tried figuring out why. The reason was because while I was doing what I wanted to do for a living, I wasn't doing what I wanted to do in the off hours. I thought to myself "What do I really want to do that I've never done before?" The answer was SCUBA diving so I took classes and have gone on a couple of dive trips so far.
In my opinion, this is the secret. If you are stressed all the time, it means you are not doing what you really want to do. Figure out what it is you want to do and just do it. Simple, but many people don't understand it.
But why is the rum gone?
Growing up is all about taking responsibility... if you can't handle that, then I have no idea how you expect to get anywhere in life.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Most jobs have a certain degree of stress. In most cases, it's not nearly as bad as people like to think it is. Modern day people think that they have stress, but realistically, their lives are pretty easy. They just always think that they need to be in a hurry to get things done. Pressure makes some people work better.
If you think that you have it tough, think about how someone felt working in a factory 100 years ago, or perhaps a farmer that had to break his back every day to feed his family. These are people that really worked hard... Modern day "stress" is only based on a person's desire to have things. Think about it... Are you really stressed because you need to make that deadline to get the work done, with risk of being fired, for fear that you won't be able to make your SUV payment? Or, could you deal with a different, but satisfying and more stable, job that might pay a little less even though you might have to make some sacrifices in terms of the things that you buy. Only you can be the judge of that.
In reality, web development can only take you so far, and the pay isn't really *that* great unless you become some uber freelance developer that is well-known. Just do the thing that you enjoy the most, regardless of what it is. If that is web development, then maybe you're in the right place. If you can't handle the deadlines, then maybe something else would be better for you.
My solution was to build a potter's wheel and kiln, and throw pots. It was demanding enough a task that I couldn't think about stuff at work, but took little enough that it wasn't stressful in it's own right. Between that, and playing DOOM (Take That, BOFH! BLAM!) I managed.
Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.
If you know where you're going and how it's going to help you get there, the stress becomes almost irrelevant. Last year, I was promoted to a supervision of a significant hardware and software upgrade to 1000 odd sites, each one taking between 1 and 3 hours.
I never wanted to be in any kind of management role - I'm aiming to become a networking specialist. The connection between the two isn't obvious at first. However, managing a team of 7 temps (who turned over far too often for my liking) performing an ungodly number of upgrades yeilded a huge number of problems - especially when the upgrade exposed a significant bug in the firmware of the firewall appliance in use. That resulted in working 10-12 hours a day, often 6 days a week cleaning up the resulting mess and dealing with sites screaming abuse at you regularly because they could no longer trade until a replacement unit was sent out. (due to the scale of the deployment, having replacement equipment available to all 45 field techs wasn't financially feasible)
Because I knew in my heart that trying to find the cause of the problems would be brilliant experience for the future, the dreadful hours were almost a non issue. (the fact that I live 90 minutes away from the office didn't help) In fact, I was almost enjoying work. Had I not known exactly where I wanted to go and how my current job would help me get there, the stress would probably have killed me.
Any job will have stress involved. Any worthwhile job will have proportionally more stress involved. Learn to deal with it, and most importantly, keep on top of it! Feeling out of control makes things considerably worse. Learn how to relax. Don't get in to the trap of your life becoming work/sleep/work/sleep/work/sleep. You absolutely need to find something to keep yourself occupied during "off" hours. (This is a trap I fell into)
I think you probably get where I'm going with this. Goal setting makes many people roll their eyes, but without it, you'll just feel lost.
Quit your current job. Get a stress-free job somewhere, that earns a decent buck. Then do "budget" website development on your free time, with your own terms and conditions (ie. long deadlines, communication only over email). In the end: 1) You still do what you love. 2) You are less stressed. 3) You earn a decent living. 4) You have 2 totally different revenue streams, "just in case".
First off dont work a lot of overtime, do your workload and go home dont worry about the rest until the next day. DONT EVERT TAKE WORK HOME, not under any circumstances. As a boss I would rather for my team to be a little behind and catch up than have a nervous breakdown and beat up their workstation with a mouse, (it has happened)
Second, buy an Xbox with a lot of violent games and when you feel like you need to let steam off, play.
it might seem like a far reach, but there are definitely jobs out there that are less stressful..
but there will most likely be atleast one point in time when your job becomes stressful.. but never forget that the stress will come to a slow-down when you find ways to make things more efficient.. suck it up! you can get through it..
- Hi I'm Linus Torvalds and I pronounce Linux, Lih-nix..
use cases
I want to be alone with the sandwich
It's as easy as programming in Ruby.
Learn to use the word "no".
Computer professionals are too quick to adopt a culture of "yes", and it leads to overpromised, understaffed, late, stressful projects. Simply saying "no" to a project that would put you over the top in terms of work load or stress is the single biggest favor you can do for yourself. And if saying "no" to your boss doesn't seem appropriate, then telling them you need help or you cannot get the job done is the next best answer. Saying "yes" all the time just turns the screw another turn, letting your boss assume the current work load is fine and allowing them to pile on more.
Nancy Reagan had it right -- just say "No!"
Shut up and eat your vegetables!!!
I think this is directly related to the question at hand. You have to ask yourself what you're going to be doing long term. Just ask how many people on slashdot quit their degree back in the mid-late 90's and are regretting it now. Do you ever plan to get married? Do you ever plan to have kids? Do you think getting a Bachelors or even an advanced degree will be easier at that time in the future, or now? Just because the economy is slow currently doesn't mean it will remain so, AND, the more capable you are OVERALL, not just in a specific technology, the better the chances that you'll get a good long term career going.
Another way to look at it is this: When you're applying for the good jobs, what types of things will potential employers use to statistically eliminate the majority of applicants?
In my experience, experience doesn't always count enough. If my resume is on a 100 deep pile, and I have more experience than someone with a degree, it doesn't end up mattering. They say "Ok, show me the pile with degrees." Then they may say, "Ok, show me the pile with degrees AND experience." They'll do this just to lower the number of applicants they have to look over.
You can still get hired, but only in situations where your skillset matches what they want, AND none of the degreed applicants comes close. Degrees do matter, and at 19, you have it SO SO SO easy. Go enjoy the irresponsible life in a dorm and don't skip class! Develop the skill of working hard at things you don't like doing. Everyone knows there's plenty of stuff you don't like doing in every job.
On one level, your 24 and prone to these feelings. I've been there, done that.
On another level. Shut up. Suck it up and be a man. Do you have any idea how many people would kill to be in your shoes right now? I lost my job in IT and now work at a damn grocery store. My bills are killing me when 2 of my old pay checks would put me back in the red. I have to listen to people like you whine all day long "waaaaah my feet hurt, my back hurts, my but hurts, so and so said this and that about me". If you can't hack it then work at McDonalds making waaah burgers and french cries.
I work with a guy that's missing an eye because a bungie cord hit him while undoing it. He's got 2 damaged disks in his back and walks with a limp. Yet everyday, he wakes up, gets to work and lifts boxes, stocks shelves and never once complains about somethng as petty as stress. He has responsibilities and comes from a generation that did what they had to do to survive, they didn't grow up like a bunch of pampered prima donas with cell phones and lattes.
Get over it. The first part to getting over it, is to quite your whinning.
Stress is mostly in your head, or due to lack of people management skills.. I know most of my workplace stress is from the latter.
Why is your IT job stressful? Deadlines? Any other job where you are required to skillfully produce something has those.
Fear of being outsourced? Fair enough.. nobody likes wondering if they will have a job next christmas, no matter how hard they work.. but that exists in most industries today.
A lot of people find themselves developing web pages in addition to performing other duties. You sound like you have it rather easy. Try being a desktop technician/network admin/HP-UX sys admin while being paid for only one, and then talk to me about stress, sissy.
When it comes down to it the only person who can give you stress is yourself. Yes there may be loads to do but that is not where the pressure comes from. If your having trouble cramming the work into a (which is probably where the stress comes from) you maybe need to a) tell them reasonable timescales for work b) start looking for another job. If doing a makes you fear for you job get some savings before hand, if you skills are good it should take no longer than 3 months to get another job (make sure your savings can cover that). Perhaps it's time to move on anyway?
"Do a good job, take your check home, and buy yourself something nice."
He used to say it to Jon Nathan-Turner quite a lot during the making of Five Doctors, and at convention appearances.
Basically that about sums it up. Go shopping. Watch (good) movies. Drink. Bitch about the job (usually boneheaded customers or pointy-haired managers) in semi-private posts on a LiveJournal. Build up social relationships where "no geeking out" (no mention of computers, the www, or jobs) is required.
Its called life. Just keep living.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
Sooner or later, one way or another, you'll get OK with saying no to your boss. The best way to do this is to educate him/her. I had a boss who managed by crisis, and managed each crisis by dumping it in my lap. I was stressed, to put it mildly. My stress almost completely disappeared when I learned to be honest and up-front. So when my boss would say "I need you to add feature Y right away", I would respond "So I should drop my work on adding feature X, which you also asked me to add right away?". He learned that only *one* thing could have the highest priority, and that setting priorities was his job, not mine. And I learned that my stress was caused by trying to do his job, for which I had no authority, and that I had to speak up to push that responsibility back to him.
From then on, work was a much less stressful process of just working on the highest priority, doing my best but not worrying about what would happen if my best wasn't good enough. That's my boss's problem.
I also learned to honor my comittments outside of work. I learned to say "I've gotta go, see you tomorrow." And when I hit the door, I forgot about work and focused on my kids, my health, my love, my life. I work to live, I don't live to work. If my boss doesn't like that, he can get a sicker employee and I'll look for a healthier company.
its that simple.
If you think your job is stressful, I think you need to talk more with people in other fields. Before I started working in IT, I worked in the automotive manufacturing sector. There was no comparison. For me IT is less stressful.
If you have troubles in automotive, your can stop thousands of people from working. "Sorry, little Jane, you can't have that dolly for Christmas. Mommy's line was shutdown to many times this year." Then your customer, the car manufacturer, will charge your company tens of thousands of dollars for each hour its assembly line is down. Don't think you should pay that charge? No problem, your customer will just deduct it off of your invoice to them.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
A nice dose of herion always soothes the nerves, especially on a Monday morning. Or maybe just a stroll through the park, whatever works for the individual. But, all joking aside, a very good sense of humor really helps you through even the most stressful of days.
OOOOH, the internet.
Sure the money isn't as good, but look for a tech job in Higher Ed. That's what I did. For me, it's the perfect balance. I'm working in the field I love along with the added benefit of a decidedly more relaxed environment.
I firmly believe that there are different people for a reason, if you want to be a drone then go take a less stressful job likeclearing checks, working in the finance department or something else. IT is always a stressful job, for example I lead the mobility group of a one of the big 5 airlines.
I am stressed everyday from the financing of our company to working on bleeding edge technology that we think will actually change the way people travel, entertain themsleves in-flight track baggage etc. I am constantly fighting politics, old world management styles and trying to convince a board of directors to spend hundreds of milliuons of dollars on new sat com equipment or wifi for our fleet. Not to mention having to deal with all the vendors that want to work with you, lie to you and rip you off.
To me this is what makes my job in IT wonderful it is a challenege to balance all the stresses and then see the fruits of my labors come to fruition. It has taken me 2 years to get the respect and recognition this group needs to function in the company and now the stresses are changing as we now have to actually perform, deliver and make what we have spent the past tweo years preaching about. Like I said earlier if you cannot handle the stress of your job then may not be passionately in love with it. If you do not love your job then do something elas that makes you happy.
I think you should find a better "work environment", not particularly a better job. Being a bus driver is going a little far(unless you like that sort of work). I work in an IT job for a Fortune 500 company, and my work environement is wonderful. My bosses are great, they aren't all over my back, and I have the freedom to chose between most of my assignments. I go to work every day doing what *I* want to do. If youve got a boss breathing down your neck, you need to change something.
I worked as a computer tech when I was in college. The job paid well but was very stressful. The boss would get mad at people and wrestle with them. A wrong guess would have this 250 lbs man lying on top of you in front of other employees. He made fun of every person he could, constantly. Eventually you just stopped doing whatever he made fun of. He would yell at one employee for doing A when they should have done B and then yell at another employee for doing B in a similar situation. He'd leave the rules vague so he could change his mind, not explain his opinion, and yell at employees for not doing their job right.
Some people say that putting up with horrible bosses is something you have to do. There is nothing you HAVE to do, and some bosses just aren't worth the stress. My fiancee at the time also worked for this guy. We're no longer engaged but the psychological issues she has to this day she blames on working for him. He would literally torture her when he was upset at something. I finally quit the day he slapped me in the face when I forgot to pick up something from one of his stores off the clock.
Now I have a much better job. I rarely see my boss, I have to hunt him down. The job is quite stress free, lots of benefits, incredible freedom, flexible hours, never on call, lots of travel, good pay, good benefits, and I have a bunch of employees working under me.
Jobs are different. If I would have stayed with my old job I would have jumped eventually. I gave up that job for something that paid quite a bit less but it eventually led to something wonderful. If you don't like your job there are plenty others.
You'd be amazed how much you could enjoy a significant pay cut for much less stress.
A Simple rule to follow when managing
Push your workers until they snap. Then, back-up one step. Now you know what their limits are and how to use them more efficiently. Yes, it's immoral BTW. But it works!
Life is not for the lazy.
If you think you might be happier working in a factory, get a weekend part-time job with one and see how good it is.
I worked in 100+ degree greenhouses during the summer. I also worked in a shipping building were we moved around boxes containing the most boring crap imaginable (financial brochures). I was in school at the time, and both jobs were a constant reminder that I should work my ass off so I could get a real job. I'll take a little stress over ungodly heat, back pain, standing for 8 hours, and dealing with ghetto boys any day.
All jobs have stress. Just be happy your job has some creativity in it, too.
Relieve stress? Switch to a Mac IT department.
(Seriously, I'm not trying to be a smart-azz)
If I didn't have absolutely NOTHING to do, I wouldn't be here.
With the first four, I constanty was inventing games , building algorithims in my head, calculating the average number of carryouts per hour or some other activity to keep my brain moving. The jobs were dead boring, so I created my own mental overhead. The telemarketing job was
the most stressful job I had, because I was required to have 12-15 converstations per hour with people that did not want to talk to me, were pissed off and the company that I was selling for, and did not want the product I was pitching. It drained me in ways that 8 hours on a production line never did, and I celebrated when the call center laid me off.
I've now been working in IT for 16 years. I carry a pager. I'm the guy them call in the middle of the night. Most of the time, it's great. I want the responsibility and I enjoy the fact that there is always something new to learn. I've found that most of my stress comes from situations when the deadlines are unrealistic, the people are jerks, or I don't have the skills to fix the problem. To combat that I work very hard at negotiating realistic deadlines. I try to avoid working with/for jerks, but I've come to realize that the people who are the biggest assholes are usually the most insecure. Being polite and businesslike usually calms them down. As for the skills, I learn as much as I can. I've got 5 kids and time for self-learning is precious, but I still work on some new skill a couple of times a week. I think it helps me feel more in control.
Analyze your work and home life for the things that are causing you stress. Then figure out which of those things you can change and work at changing them. Find some monotonous physical task to do off hours, strangely enough it's a stress reliever. Before you ditch something you love, take the time to figure out where the negatives are coming from.
My wife is like Unix. Lots of commands. Lots of arguments.
VODKA!
Buzzing the information Superhighway at Warp speed
If you are only 24 and have stress problems already I think you should switch career. You need to have some buffers for stress, but it sounds like you've hit the buffer waaaaaaaaaay too early.
I'm an Engineer in the Aerospace industry. I started out as an Aircraft Mechanic working a flight line. there are many days i'd love to be out on a flight line putting the aircraft back into service. i miss it(except durring the winter), but i've been in Engineering long enough that it would be a terrible pay cut to go back.
in the end i turn to the creative parts that made me enjoy both jobs as hobbies. find an outlet with no deadlines. it will make the work with deadlines go a little easier.
in the imortal words of Douglas Adams, "I love deadlines, especially that whoooshing sound they make as they fly past"
good luck.
I'm a computer tech and I turned bus driver mainly because of this ( www.stupid.cpz.ru )
As a bus driver I make about 3/4 of the money that I did as a computer tech on a mine site, but I come home at the end of every day with out a worry. In fact the biggest worry in my working life is if the floor of the bus i'm about to drive has been mopped (a 5 min job).
While I'm also studing to become a teacher, I feel that even if I wasn't studing, the difference in pay vs the difference in stress is worth it.
You make some very good points.
I definitely feel it is important to get a degree, but what I'm facing here is that it's still possible to do so while I'm working in exactly what I love. And the university I am looking at has a 2+2 program which would allow me to accredit my associate's degree hours towards earning a bachelor's degree in the future. That makes it seem much less out of reach. I'm still researching these things, so I'm speaking in theory here, but if it were possible for me to transfer my part of my 36 earned hours of credit already towards an associate's degree than I may very well be able to finish it in less than 2 years. And from there it may be possible to pursue the bachelor's while I work or maybe even take a year off work to get a full 2 semesters of classes in. Again, this is all theoretical until I can gather some more information.
Believe me it's a hell of alot more stressfull being in a job that doesn't recogize your tallents because your doing a meanial job. I'm 40 years old and just started my C/s degree. Why! because I went for the easy money and party lifestyle when I was young. I could still make very good money doing other work, but If your not happy at your job and just doing it for the money life sucks. I wish I was your age again C/S degree and my whole life ahead of me. You'll work it out, but most of all be happy, that's all that matters.
i do the exact same thing you do, and have my own fair load of stress
;-)
the best way to deal with stress at work is to goof, especially at the meta-news and discussion sites like these:
http://www.slashdot.org/
http://www.kuro5hin.org/
http://www.fark.com/
rinse, repeat
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The stress in that job will make you switch back to you cozy IT job and not regret it. Seriously, a cook usually dies before s/he's 55. The time constraints are ridiculous, and if you screw up, you'll have to do the same thing again even faster. Become a chef, and love your old job's stress.
No, I'm not a cook, but I've worked as one (not at McDonald's -- that doesn't count!). The really bad thing was that I learned how to cope with stress, and that really freaked out my co-workers.
I am trying to convince my boss to let me work from home. Then I am going to move my home far far away from the office. hack the matrix www.asdreams.org
It's all about planning. Now I no longer look on 70-hour week people as heros; actually the opposite, why can't they get their work done more efficiently.
Lucky you.
In reality, the poor planning is often the boss's or customer's fault, and the ONLY answer to it is overtime. Salespeople will also commit to things which are above & beyond your company's normal business practice.
If YOU don't do the overtime, sombody else will definitely have to, or the customer's deadline will be missed. It doesn't matter if you already worked 40 productive hours this week and finished your minimum obligation. Due to actions of others, the overall work is still only half done! So the question now is, are you a selfish and lazy shirker, or a team player willing to share the load?
In a team environment, everybody finishes the work at the same time. Yes that means the better employees get a hell of a lot more done in the same 60+ hour week. If you stop work significantly before others do without a damned good excuse, then you're not a team player.
Sorry but you have driven me to post here for the first time. Building websites is NOT a stressfull job. I agree with the other poster that there is something else causeing your stress. No one has ever beeen killed by bad HTML! Im in the military and my standard for having a good day is being alive. Two months driving around Baghdad give you a lot of prespective. As long as my day doesnt end in being burned, draged and strung up, it pretty good. I spent 18 months commanding 140 people. I had to put some out of the military. I had to punish some taking money and freedom. I had to tell some that a loved one had died. We all laugh about managers but try being the guy who tells someone that they have been laid off. Try explaining why someone got passed over for promotion. Your 24. If you are stressed now you will die from it. Live, enjoy. Quit taking things so seriously. Work out, run, have wild sex in strange places, whatever.
Kayaking
Hiking
Mountainbiking
Geocaching
These things do wonders for getting me ready to work again.
You may be good at what you do (i.e. have the SKILLS) but unless you ENJOY it and it's MEANINGFUL then there will always be discord. My best advice is to read the book: The Money is the Gravy (ISBN: 0446529184). I used to work for a software company where I ended up taking stress leave. I've since started my own company (with a buddy) and probably work at least 80 hours a week , but it's energizing instead of life-force-sucking.
If you hate the responsibility that comes with a job, I shudder to think how you're dealing with the responsibility that comes with a marriage.
Responsibility goes hand in hand with almost anything worthwhile in life. Maybe you're letting it stress you too much, but you shouldn't be taking the attitude that it's something you have to cope with - that means you're starting with a negative opinion of it. In truth, responsibility isn't a bad thing. It means you control your destiny for better or for worse. This is something intelligent people tend to relish, not dread.
Do something that makes you happy and helps make other people's lives easier/happier. If you're not happy and you're not making the world a better place, whats the use of waking up in the morning. Find something that makes you happy, and adjust your lifestyle to meet your new (likely lower) income level. Be happy, and you'll enjoy your short life that much more. Note, your *wife* may not agree with the idea... so ya might want to talk with her, it is after all a marraige - she might have her own goals she's working for.
meh
I started my job a year ago doing webapp development (perl, javascript). I took over the maintenance of some apps from a guy who left and worked there for 10 years, plus I got another interesting project to work on in addition, of course with strict deadlines.
My hobby is programming as well so I coded 14+ hours a day. I felt that I really enjoy my job, and I like challenges, even if it's stressfull.
But after a few months I fell over the other side of the horse. I was thinking to much about my job, had lines of perl code scrolling in my head even if I was trying to go to sleep.
I got a tooth infection that wouldn't heal after I got the root canal done and one morning I had a severe vertigo attack with the whole room spinning around.
I had al kinds of examinations done but nothing found. The final diagnosis was that I have deepression and developed a panic disorder. I talked to many doctors and most of them were saying that this is caused by stress, I must have worked too hard.
This was last december and I still have most of the symptoms persisting that include tinnitus, dizziness, headaches, facial muscle cramps and twiching of various muscles.
You are married and if you have a good wife and can manage to get enough relaxation and keep the balance that will help a lot.
I just wanted to say that long term stress is bad for your health. You should try to keep the balance: learn to say NO to your boss, get enough rest and vacations. If it's not possible you might end up with cancer, diabetes, heart disesease, get divorced, etc.
You should evaluate the situation BEFORE such things happen, otherwise you might end up in the hospital like I did.
Start your own company do it how you want to do it. Tell your boss to take a hike.
Would a person who likes to work in a shop ever work for Wallmart? Heck no! They would have their own store selling the stuff that they like.
Talk to an accountant get a tax number and make websites for your own clients in your own way. You may be good at it or bad it. Atleast you won't be in an office masterbating to the theme song of the week of your pointy haired boss.
-R
try { println( SigString ); } catch( Exception e ) { println( 'Who cares?' ); }
Find a little project that you can work a bit on during work hours (clandestinely, of course) and when ever you feel the stress and deadlines building up, stop doing all the "productive" work and do your project for a while. That will remind you what's really important (your sanity and ability to cope).
When people come bitching about how you didn't get their stuff done yet, tell them you are way behind and that project X (somebody elses) is consuming most of your time, but you think you can get it finished from home later tonight. They'll think you are their best friend!
Tell them all this, work on your special project and go home on time (so you can do all that stuff you promised from home).
Then when you get home, forget all about that work stuff and the next day, make up a family crisis that kept you from the work.
Rinse and repeat!
(posting AC because I don't want credit for my brilliance -- no really)
Developing tons of web sites for a web design company under customer deadlines while trying to produce a profit is stressful.
Developing and maintaining a single large web site for a large non-profit or non-IT organization is markedly less stressful.
No matter what you're doing, the stress goes up when you're dealing with external customer deadlines, pointy-headed-bosses that constantly change project scope, and the urgency to sell stuff fast or perish. Conversely, if you have the luxury of being an internal developer for a stable company whose main focus isn't actually IT, things get more predictable and stable. I'm not saying there's no stress at non-IT companies, I'm just saying it's a lot worse when you're the guy whose work pays the checks for the rest of the staff.
If you're working for an IT company, consider your next job at a non-IT company, like non-profit organizations, city government, services companies, etc. The money's usually lower, but the pace is slower, the demands are more lax, and you don't have the stress of trying to put bread on other people's plates by the merits of your own coding.
What's your damage, Heather?
Make sure it is for a courier company that doesn't use electronics to guide you through your route and make sure you are doing pickups. Make sure it is in a city that you have never been to before (move temporarily) and change routes on a regular basis.
Eons ago, I used to work for DHL in the Boston office (I was born and raised in Minnesota and have since moved back) doing pickups on several routes (I think I still could easily find my way around there easily). This was before the cool electronic devices that organize the routes for the driver. I consider that to have been the most stressful job I have ever held. There is nothing like the stress of picking up packages on a time-schedule, when you have to find your way with a paper map (I was sent out cold to areas I had never been to before) and also getting calls for pickups (over a radio). Unlike some of the other couriers, I managed to stay away from heavy drugs and alcoholism (although the occasional drink after work could be quite relaxing).
Yes, my current position (I manage 150 Windows machines, including the domain controllers and samba services [plus help people who run a hundred or so self-managed Windows machines] - co-manage several hundred sun, sgi, linux and FreeBSD machines - run the DHCP and DNS Servers, and co-manage the network switches and router where I work) can be stressfull at times.
Perhaps working a truly stressful job will give you a better perspective of what real stress is. A simple job has the stress of boredom. Even a bus driver has the stress of possible people with knives and guns and stupid riders who stand right next to the curb when the bus pulls up (think what the stress level of injuring a passenger by running them over would be). Every job has stress. If it isn't the type of stress you can handle, then you are in the wrong line of work.
I've been professionally coding for 20 years, and I took a 5 month break to help my old man work in the sun, carting limestone blocks on some real estate property he was working on. Very hard, grimey, dirty, exhausting work in the harsh Aussie sunshine. A far cry from the cushy coffee/edit/compile lifestyle I'd plugged myself into in California for far too long
Best 5 months worth of work I've ever done. Sunshine, fresh air, daily exercise regimen disguised as 'work', and a decent wad of cash from the ol' man at the end of it.
Made me appreciate the beauty of code even more, when I finally got back to my laptop
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Having worked as both a coder and having done phone
support, working phone support is FAR more stressful
than mere coding. Coding deadlines tend to be days, weeks or months where in phone support you provide all answers in thirty minutes or less while honing the people skills to learn to persuade foul mouthed drooling morons to stop cussing and threatening to sue you, and to actually try the fix that you know
will help them. BTW, phone support is only a semi-stressful job.
The REAL high stress job? A contract in IRAQ....
1) Just deal with it. Do a good job, but stop caring. Apathy does great things for your stress level
2) Leave. Find a new job. Things are picking up here in Michigan. The last time I went looking for an I.T. job, I ended up with 3 offers. That was last month. Things are getting better, so start looking around
3) Change your jobsite. If your manager is a prick, file a complaint against him with your H.R. person. If he continues to be a prick, ask for a transfer.
exactly what I was thinking
Oliver's army is here to stay Oliver's army are on their way And I would rather be anywhere else But here today
I've found the the people that get the most done get the most additional assignments. A Navy chief once told me "if you want something done, find the busiest person and give it to them". The point being that most everyone else is a slacker. I found myself doing most of my division's work on the submariness I was on. It shouldn't be any wonder that I wasn't very happy and had a lot of stress.
Perhaps it's ironic and perhaps not that the people that slack off seem to be the happiest. So now that I've been out of the Navy for nearly 12 years (6 in), and working 80 hour weeks on average during that time, I can tell you my current recipe for coping: twice the normal daily prescribed dosage of Prilosec (doctor says to) in an attempt to heal an esophagus damaged by stress induced esophagitis. And antacid at least once every day or two on top of it and about 20 hours less per week. In large doses, this kind of work related stress is terribly unhealthy. Other people I know that are about 40 as well in IT have developed stress related problems dealing with their stomachs and colons. I'm sure it doesn't help that I come from a largely unemotional waspy family and live with an emotional woman of Italian decent.
It's not worth it. Frequently, the fuck ups when they do something right get rewarded because it's so unexpected. The people that crank out huge volumes of work go unrecognized because it's normal.
The paradox isn't unlike what used to happen when smoking in the work place was much more common. Smokers got their hourly or every couple of hours smoke break while the non-smokers toiled away. If a non-smoker stopped for the same break, they were ordered back to work because they were slacking off. The smoker continued to be rewarded for what essential was behavior that took time away from work and (and caused health problems).
I HATE the
Why am I not surprised?
Dude, how can you hate the responsibility of a job?!?!? You're acting like a 12-year-old. Be glad you have a job in this economy, especially as a web designer. If I hear from any more wankers like you, I'm going to start thinking that offshore outsourcing isn't such a bad idea.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
In some ways I was more stressed before I got my programming job then I am now. Yes there is stress meeting deadlines and such, but I think it's all in how you look at it.
;)
I find that by working the standard 40 and then going home I look forward to both going home and going to work. I guess I hit a good balance, which is nice. Overtime is always nice to, but in moderation. Constant overtime can be more harmful then helpful I think.
Either way, it's all in how satisfied you are at the end of the day I guess, atleast for me. I'd say if your thinking of factory work get in with a good union. After 3 and 1/2 years at a boiler factory before getting a job in my field I realize unions are the way to go for that kind of work.
Finally if you just want to blow off some steam, fire up Quake, UT, or something and go Noob hunting. Nothing takes care of stress like a few easy frags.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Work your long hours. If you're young and healthy enough to handle some serious stress, then take it on while you still can.
Tolerate the stress and make a PILE of money in the first two decades of your career. Get a professional investment advisor early on, and grow very wealthy during this time.
Then retire, at age ~40 when all your friends still have 25 years of work ahead of them.
At ~40 you'll still be young enough to enjoy life, and you'll have the financial means to do it.
This is what I did. I retired last year, a millionaire at 39 with the means to sustain my lifestyle indefintely. Depending on what's important to you, the ONLY problem with this strategy may be children. I neither desire nor have any. My wife of 17 years is all I need.
40 really is a very young age today, I still get "carded" sometimes when buying alcohol!
Developing websites with Perl/PHP is what I do to unwind from my engineering job. I guess anything you do for money becomes unfun and stressful.
Having to do more work every day in the same amount of time is inherently stressful. It's kind of like a Tetris game where the pieces keep falling faster and faster. The stress is probably in realizing your desire to comply with this speedup is ultimately going to lead to a situation where things are coming so fast that you'll be unable to handle them and at that point things will collapse. And by then you will be totally frazzled mentally and emotionally. It's the same in white collar programming/adminning or on a blue collar assembly line. Centuries ago in Europe, the workers used to wear wooden shoes called sabots. When the factory boss would speed things up too much, they'd throw their sabots into the gears of the machines. That's where the word sabotage comes from.
I find that most form os stress come from being a control freak on everything. There are times when stress is the result of outside forces as in request for work that can not be met.
In the end you can't control everything so why try to? It is better to pick the spots that matter and focus on those. You can't win every fight , just fight the wons you know you can win.
I have seen time that I could have done something, and avoided some problems, but not doing it ended up being better as others notice when things went wrong they had only themselves to blame.
Life is marked by pain.
I find that this not only relieves a lot of stress from my day, but it also keeps the ole sysadmin gut in check :)
-L
Don't Panic.
I left full-time IT work about 18 years ago, when it was still "DP work". I understand your love/hate relationship perfectly.
I love troubleshooting (my spouse still sometimes staggers out at 3:00am to find me, crick-necked and eye-glazed, trying to kludge up the bugs in some little screensaver I'm writing to entertain the kids), but I hated deadlines, and loathed the feeling that everything I wrote was obsolete before the first user miskeyed an entry. If anything, that's worse today, when new and incompatible versions of OS's seem to emerge on a weekly basis.
There's just not much feeling of reality in pushing electrons around. One thing I noticed in those days: We had a variety of field engineers come in for maintenance on our mainframes; in those days even the IS people didn't touch the hardware. (How many programmers does it take to change a light bulb?) Whenever one of the FE's took a break, he always started talking about cars, usually about the classic junker in his garage that he'd been rebuilding from the ground up. I'm sure the FE's needed the feel of something tangible in their hands after spying on flying bits all day long.
These days I hold a mixed job, the sort you can only get into by taking a single position and then doing whatever nobody else knows how to do. My title is Senior Draftsman, but I'm also a designer, network administrator, and general computer guru, because nobody else in the company knows how. I still work heavily with computers (and solemnly curse MS and BG almost daily), but I also get the satisfaction of seeing some of my designs turned into solid objects that will presumably still be hanging around a few years after the release of Longhorn, or even Blackcomb.
Yes, the pay is less (much less), but in the end I'll have more to show from my present job than I ever had from programming work. All I can show my kids from those days is a Xerox mainframe nameplate, a few pages of incomprehensible code in a dead language, and a reel tape (yes, one of the big old SF-movie reels). Not much to show for a degree and years of work.
I figure by 2030 or so my 6-digit UID will be something to brag about.
...if you can't handle that, then I have no idea how you expect to get anywhere in life.
The question is, do you wnat to go anywhere, or is there someplace specific you're aiming for? What do you want from your life, and is a stressful IT job how to get it? Is your job what you want to do, or does your job pay for what you want to do?
I figure by 2030 or so my 6-digit UID will be something to brag about.
Wouldn't exactly make me want to go to work....
-ted
This means not only are we competing with our fellow employees but it seems we are competing with every other developer out there. This was actually worse in the old days, when every fricken new .Com out there had a better way to do your work. Instead we have the added stress of being "Outsourced" tomorrow.
Don't sweat it
I see so many computer jockies trying every darn new trick in the book, every new technology that comes around. Not that a good developer shouldn't stay current with what is happening, but what is far more important is to understand what you can do. What are you capable of? Stay true to that. Identify those times when you are doing something just because it can be done. Instead work on trying to make sure that what you do will fullfil the needs of your audience. The stress cannot be eliminated completely, but make sure you are stressing over the right things. Like having fun and doing the right kind of work for your company.
Don't try and do more than what you are capable of doing. If a project is going to take 6 months then tell them it is going to take 6 months. Be as honest with yourself as you can be and be as honest with your company as you can be. Eventually everyone reaches an equilibrium and then the stress just melts away.
I am a 26 year old engaged engineer, so I am not that dissimilar from the sumbitter.
I recently left a job in the aerospace industry for a research engineer position at a major university. I have never been happier. I took a little pay cut, but the cost of living in most college towns is a lot lower than it is in most cities, and I get more benifits (for example I get very cheap access to the athletic facilities instead of having to pay $30/mo for a mediocer health club...).
The work environment is lower pressure, and is more open, more self guided... I work fewer hours on the average day, because I don't feel the pressure to be there like I used to, but I work from home a lot now on the weekends and in the evenings, because I enjoy my job. I enjoyed the work at my old job, but I resented the environment of forced productivity so much that I did not enjoy working on my own time...
I have always been an exersize nut, spending hours at the gym and running each week, since the switch, without really changing my workout routine I have gotten stronger and faster, and I set my new personal record in the half marathon a few weeks ago.
Overall, I definatly recommend academia!
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
FWIW :-) I've just left a low-stress job as a developer and returned to the high-stress job of sales engineer. Developing web sites is stressful? To me it's a nine-to-five job in one city, nothing to complain about there...
Anyway, I was much happier doing the development job, but the pay was not consistent with our lifestyle. We scaled back as far as possible, reducing expenses by 40%, but we still ended up putting groceries on credit by the end of each month. After about six months, I realized that the time to do the high-stress job is now, while you still can. I'll "retire" to a development job when I've saved up a big nut and gotten the kids out of the house.
"Nothing was broken, and it's been fixed." -- Jon Carroll
Hi The reason for your stress is not your job. How can you love soing something and get stressed by it? The reason for your stress is your proclivity to get stressed. Its your mental habit, so You break out of it.. get it? Chances are you will end up being stressed on the factory job too.. and make another post about it .. ;)"I switched jobs to live a stress free life.. but now I'm back to my original job ..."
or so..
PS: You can try reading up on Buddhist philosophy. I think its the best way to understand one's mind than well ... you find out
It doesn't matter what job you're in. They're all the same. Either you love what you do and hate the stress or you hate what you do and hate the stress.
"I've got 5 kids" ... "Find some monotonous physical task to do off hours"
'nuff said.
Try being a medical doctor or a financial day-trader or an undertrained soldier stuck in some war-ridden hole.
Then I got laid off, and couldn't get a job for a year. At first I worked at it, then realized that every company I talked to wanted the equivalent of "20 years Java experience", yet didn't want to pay for anyone who had even 2 years experience.
This job sector used to be pretty good, but as far as I can tell it has leveled with most other blue collar jobs. I'm going to open a dog kennel myself.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Better yet, get canned.
One of two things will happen.
1) You will find its pretty hard to do, so long as you give it minimum effort.
2) You will get fired, and then know what real stress is.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Stress? What with the scandals in journalism lately, if you just spell your name right these days you're ahead of the game.
OK, I just have to get this out of my system first: web design is stressful? Try real programming some time. There, I feel better now. ;-)
Whenever I start hating my job, I think about how the non-techie population lives - and how I lived, once.
Sure, my job can be frustrating. The technical challenges are the least of it; sometimes I think Sarte ("hell is other people") was right. When I start getting annoyed, though, I try to think of what it would really be like to have another kind of job - working on an assembly line, delivering packages for FedEx, picking up trash, ... no, thanks. Even the cushy-seeming jobs (doctor, lawyer, stockbroker) and the "fun" jobs (ski instructor, river guide) have their own trials and tribulations. They call it work for a reason. If you really think about it, working in high tech is about as close to a perfect job as you can reasonably expect.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
Fortunately I'm lucky enough to work for a Co. that rewards almost everything I do without (AND within) company time. I'm heavily incentivised and all incentives are paid on the dot every time. As a result I know the stress I take is gonna be rewarded. Anyone else lucky enough to have a decent staff-make-profits-so-lets-look-after-them employer might like to pipe up so others know that their shit job might have a light at the end of the tunnel when they move to something else :o)
I do perl/database server application programming and web frontend stuff for the clients who use the system, working within the mobile entertainment industry for those of you wondering which IT sector I was in.
PS anyone reading this from work.. it's not me just someone you might think is me which it isn't...honest.
I wonder if those who believe Might Is Right ever wonder if they Might Be Wrong...
Xanax
Exercise every day. Outdoors in the sunshine is the best, but indoors is a good alternative.
I have been working in IT for over 7 years, developing web apps. Finally I had became so stressed that I decided to leave the US and try something new. Now I am working on my degree in Far North Queensland Australia. It is very tropical and beautiful up here. I am working in hospitality and loving it. I will never go back to IT, and I will never go back the the US either... After I get my degree I will probably travel somewhere new and work as an English teacher for a while... who knows... Good luck.
oh, come on, what would be the fun in not having some clueless manager breathing down your neck all the time, nagging you constantly for a 50-page requirements analysis, convinced that Word is a programming language and treating you like you belong in a sweatshop. no wait, you probably get treated better in a sweatshop. ----------------- A woman is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes she is lost. She lowers her altitude, spots someone down below, and asks, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised to return this balloon to its owner, but I don't know where I am." The person below says: "You are in a hot air balloon, hovering approximately 350 feet above mean sea level and 30 feet above this field. You are between 40 and 42 degrees north latitude, and between 72 and 74 degrees west longitude." "You must be some sort of programmer," says the balloonist. "I am," replies the man below. "How did you know?" "Well," says the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I am still lost." The person below says: "You must be a manager." "I am," replies the balloonist, "but how did you know?" "Well," says the software engineer, "you don't know where you are, or where you are going. You have made a promise which you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. The fact is you are in the exact same position you were in before we met, but now it is somehow my fault."
And that's just during lunch.
Go get a factory job. After 6 months of that, then you can -try- to get your old job back again.
Excercise 1
1. Assume a comfortable posture lying on your back or sitting. If your are sitting, keep the spine straight, and let your shoulders drop.
2. Close your eyes if it feels comfortable.
3. Bring your attention to your belly, feeling it rise or expand gently on the inbreath and fall or reced on the outbreath.
4. Keep the focus on your breathing, Being with each inbreath for its full duration and with each outbreath for its full duration, as if you were riding the waves of your own breathing
5. Every time you notice that you mind has wandered off the breath, notice what is was that took you away, and then gently bring your attention back to your belly and the feeling of the breath coming in and out.
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
I can definately empathize with the poster. I have a high-stress IT job in the Dallas area. I think what makes work the most stressful, is the roller-coaster ride of elation over what we can achieve technically and what we have to put up with from management and the customers we so dearly need. If there was a way to segment technical people from political people in IT, I think all the technical people would be much happier, but it's just not possible...
There's a pizzaria around the corner from my house called Nizza Pizza (Its in Arlington on Park Row and Cooper, if anyone wants to hop a plane and try a pie.) Anyway, on the busyest Friday night, I can see the cast and crew behind the counter making pizzas and salads like true artisans. The place is run by a family of Sicilian guys who stop and look up and say, "Hey Buddy, how ya doin'?" everytime I walk in. They make great pizzas, so they all must have the feeling of a job well-done. They have an obvious professionalism, and seem to enjoy their jobs. Watching them work makes me want to be the pizza guy, no matter what it pays. But then I remember my mortgage, and I turn around and head out the door with my pizza, because I have responsibilities...
> How do you all cope with the stress and responsability that seems to come hand-in-hand with an IT career?
By being over 40.
Web development isn't IT in the first place. Congrats on leaving your high-stress IT job.
Like any good IT worker, I deal with the same issues. And I know a number of very smart software people who often find themselves in the same high pressured situation. Sometimes it is easier to blame someone else, but the reality is, it's just the American way (pardon me if other countries experience the same problem, but I only have work experience here). We believe in fighting our way to the top; if you let up, someone else out there would be happy to take your place. The system is the system, and accepting that to some degree helps.
But what really works for me is Meditation. I've done it on and off for years, and without a doubt in my mind, life just clicks along much more smoothly when I do it regularly. As long as I keep it up 4 or 5 days a week (even 20min at a time is enough), I'm able to approach most situations with a "how can I make this better" attitude as opposed to a "why me?!" attitude. I recommend Autogenic Training as an honest non-religious way to chill out. After following the steps for a few months, I found myself able to plop down and completely relax in less than a minute. I'm sure there is a very good scientific explanation for whats happening, but I'm not going to offer one. If you believe in working your way to the top, and it does take some work, then you should be willing to try it out for awhile to see if it works for you.
I have have found in my situation that the stress is not caused by the job, but by the lusers demanding *everything* tomorrow. If given unrealistic deadlines use the old "you can have it quick, good or full featured, choose any two". As a professional, you are ethiclly bound to give realistic estimates. Developing realistic expectations and demanding good requirements are one way to improve a stressful situation. If the company is not interested in quality, leave.
For a new career, I agree with another poster that non-IT industry jobs are better. If you want the satisifaction of making a difference work for a non-profit. Look for small to mid-sized companies, as you will be less likely to be outsourced.
otherwise, if you just can't somach it any more, find a course catalog for a local school or university and see what interests you. The trades, esp. plumbing and electrical work, can pay well and you will not be a commodity laborer. Nor can you be off shored, and dammit, we need better trades people.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
yep.
|plastic....or gasoline?|
If there's one thing I learned during my time in IT it's that everyone thinks their job needs to be done immediately and they constantly change their minds about what the job should entail. Learning to perceive what people may really want or to be able to ask questions to ascertain this is important, and learning to perceive which jobs are truly important is critical. Being able to accurately estimate how long a task will take you is also very important.
I had one job in R&D where we billed the rest of the company for hours worked. It helped stifle the stupid requests that occur whenever some Tom, Dick, or Harry gets an idea. This obviously isn't feasible in most situations, but the underlying idea generally is. As in any business job, people skills are indispensible for avoiding wasted work.
I did web work for 7 years. When my coworker-friends left the company, I realized that A) my employer sucked and B) I would more enjoy doing what I was originally trained for with my college degree. I cut my income in half, but I'm happy with no regrets.
RANT: modern living is not stressful. stressful is having to walk a mile to get a bucketful of greasy water, in a homeless territory rife with war, disease, and hatred. it never ceases to remind me of the highlights of western decadence when i hear of people in the modern world complaining of 'stress' at their 'jobs'. of the worlds population, those even able to 'stress out' about their jobs are in the upper 15%... everyone else is struggling to survive. sometimes, we forget our privilege. this is always fatal. END RANT
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I used to work in a corporate soul sucking environment that would make "Office Space's" Initech pale by comparison...
I left to do tech work for a smallish (but tech forward thinking) non-profit. The change in atmosphere/attitude/stress levels is trememendous.
granted a server goes belly up, you still have that same sense of urgency... but in normal day to day situations the expectations are a little different, and positive feedback you get is much more honest and appreciative than i've seen in the corporate world (i.e.... "as thanks for working 80 hour weeks for the next few weeks IT staff are allowed to wear jeans... every other day" --- yippeee)
Not everything is rosey about non-profit work though. They are behind a lot of the times in tech (i'm pretty lucky at my office though), that same attitude I was extoling can be fustrating at times if you come from a coprorate world (it's different), also the pay is less.
But I'm much happier with a modest pay cut and less overt stress/issues, than when I was making more money and was unhappy/stresscase...
*shrug* ymmv,
E.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
Unlike a salaried position, the harder you work the more money you make. Is it still stressful? Yes, but the stress is different. In the end you don't have to worry about pleasing a boss, just focusing on the customer.
www.lonseidman.com
Try being an RN if you think your tech job is too stressful. Phuque up and someone dies. Now, that is stress. Why do you think that the average male RN lasts only 3 years and the average female RN lasts 4.5 years before leaving that profession for good?
Suck it up and drive on.
Enjoy the stress while you can. When you finally crack under the strain, they'll drop you like a charred koala.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
work on your own, you'll make more money and won't depend on some one else.
Knowledge of meridian based therapies & techniques such as EmoTrance and EFT would be my first suggestion for anyone who's being bothered by stress.
EmoTrance in particular kind of gets to the roots of what actually is a stress-buildup.
Best of luck, Alex.
did not threaten. hehe.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Here is my suggestion: Quit your current job as soon as possible and find a job in a factory. Then, after you loose a finger or two you might start to realize that your previous webmonkey job was not even nearly as stressful as you naïvely imagined before. At that point the problem will have been solved: you will come back to your beloved web job in no time and, what seems to be much more important, you will stop insulting hard working factory workers by implying that their job is somehow less stressful than sitting all day in front of the God damned keyboard. Don't fool yourself, kid. Most of people working in factories would literally kill for a sissy job like yours or mine. We get six digits for sitting on our fat arses so please let us not talk about supposedly less stressful job of people who get seriously injured or even killed in the factories while making in a year what we make in a week. I believe those people deserve at least some of our respect because it is thanks to those very people why we can have our "stressful IT jobs." Please let us not forget about it and show minimum humility, for God's sake. We owe it to people who have died in factories manufacturing our computers, cars and clothes, and to their families, if not to our own humanism. Please think about it next time.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
... but getting the opportunity to take the chance you did is pretty close to a lottery win for a lot of us.
Doing the same job, with or without being challenged, for 6 years and "doing good" is already better than I've been able to manage since 1990 at least. My current company is struggling, & I'm bracing for another 6 months trying to find any kind of job outside of food service.
I'm an Army Reservist who just spent six months in Baghdad as a combat photographer. I found that to be less stressful than my civilian software engineer job. (I wish that was a joke but I'm not kidding.)
Stress is like cholesterol. One kind is good, the other bad, and we do ourselves no favours lumping the two together.
1: Good stress: You're crossing a road and a car screeches around the corner and hurtles towards you. Instant stress. Your adrenaline levels soar and your heart thumps. Result? You take control of the situation and leap out of the oncoming vehicle's way (or die).
2: Bad Stress: You're up to your ears patching hundreds of boxes against the MS04-011 vulnerability and some idiot comes along and tells you to drop that and concentrate on rolling out a shortcut to things unspecified to everybody's desktops. Your boss left suddenly a few weeks previously and your team leader is off on paternity leave. (This scenario is horribly close to what happened to me this week.) Yo have responsibility, but no authority. It's a killer.
This was my way of handling stress in IT industry... I resigned the job, went back to university for a few years, and became a nurse. And I feel much better.
:-).
It's funny to be a nurse with a huge IT background anyway
Drink Lots 'O Beer. :)
Silly Rabbit: tricks are for kids.
There are no real problems in life, no reason to be stressed at all.
Whenever you feel there is a problem:
1. If there is a solution, then no reason to stress about the problem. In time, you will apply the solution.
2. If there is no solution, then you can't do anything about it, so stop stressing about it.
It's all a question of what attitude you have towards life in general. You can see it as a fight, or you can just glide through it. Remember you can only try your best. The outcome of your actions will always be totally out of your control.
I spent over ten years working on the factory floor before I moved into process automation at my company.
There are downsides to both jobs in terms of stress. In my new job, if I make a mistake, I can bring an entire insulin plant to a screeching halt (downtime costs about $300,000 an hour and we can't make enough medicine even at full capacity.) Also, I get frustrated with some of the office politics bullshit that all office jobs seem to have.
I have no plans to return to the factory floor. Crushing boredom, endless repetition, and being treated like an idiot (or least a mildly retarded robot) was much more stressful for me.
I can't tell you how to deal with your stress. For me, I just happy to have a good job so that I can provide for my family. I'd rather be a little stressed about my job than stressed about not being able to feed my kids.
I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords
I'm 26, I was laid off from the bust. When that happened, I realized that the next POP I would have the expertise and experience to find a job in any downturn of the market. In my current position, I'm underpaid and I overwork. Only because I'm gaining the knowledge and experience to build my self confidence and ability to know I can be valuable in any market. The grunt years. . . .
i also work developing websites and the databases behind them, and it does have its moments. before that (in a prior life) i worked as a directory assistance operator giving out phone numbers. as often as not the final response from the customer was "fuck you", simply because they could. since i'm not a "turn your cheek" person i would often go home and punch out the walls to relieve stress.
i ultimately realized the stress was there only because i allowed it to be - the morons could only piss me off if i allowed them to, gave them more value than they actually had. once i took control of my emotions, the stress went WAYYYYYYYY down.
i've remembered that ever since. now, i work at my speed and don't allow anyone to rush me into doing a bad job and making (more) careless mistakes than i manage on my own *g*.
bottom line... "it's" only important and worth stressing over if YOU allow it to be.
haha :).
.
Seriously though it's typical for people get more stressed when they're unemployed - esp if they're not in a socialist/nanny state which looks after you.
1) He loves developing websites, but hates the stress and responsibilities that comes with the job.
2) He wonders if he would enjoy working in a less stressful environment.
Solution: Find another job that has sane hours, an acceptable stress level, and a tolerable salary (doubt you'd make big bucks but hey web devs aren't paid that much either)
AND, do the website development stuff as a hobby/for fun. Or even a bit of money on the side - esp if there's no conflict of interest with your day job.
I mean if you have a job with sane hours you'd have most weekends free, and most evenings free.
Even if the job isn't as fun , hey it's a job which allows you time to do the fun stuff AFTER the job, and without linking the fun stuff to stress.
I graduated from college in 91 and worked the same stressful IT job til 95. Then I said: screw this -- and decided to get out of the whole business (I was an application programmer).
I sold what I had and decided to travel for a while -- a while which ended up to be 2 years and 3 continents later.
I learned a lot during that time, and came back full circle to the IT industry with a healthier attitude. My philosophy now is: mental health, emotional health, physical health. In that order. If you get mentally broken down, the other two soon follow. And it doesn't work the other way around. You can't exercise your way to better mental health.
Also: bad stress is normally caused by stuff that is out of your control. Next time you feel stressed out, check to see why. Unreasonable deadline? Sys Admin can't get his sh*t together for your app to run? Bug in your IDE? Project Leader is a Dick?
Out-of-control stress is usually an environment thing. If it doesn't change (or you can't change it), it's often a sign to start looking for a different company.
I'm a consultant now and can honestly say that the company culture makes MUCH more difference to your daily routine than "being in the IT industry".
By running, I do not mean run from your employer, but running as a sport.:-)
I have an IT job with 8 hour work days and three hours travel time, so I have long days. Running is a good way to relieve you of all the stress. Furthermore, youl be able to sleep better. Many fellow runners will claim that during a 10 mile run, they have all the time to rearrange their thoughts on a lot of subjects, including work.
der Joachim
Geek runner, motorcyclist and professional know-it-all
but it's not a joke.
I took a job with the Govt. (state, not federal)
Until just over 2 months ago I had a very stressful IT job. I won't go in to the details, let's just say it was getting worse and I didn't see it getting any better. I liked the job, I liked the people, I liked my boss and coworkers, but it was just getting ridiculous.
I went to work for my State Govt. In my case I was lucky enough that I have friends who work in IT there and a guy who used to be my boss went to work there so I had a foot in the door.
Old Job: 65+ hours per week salaried (overtime? yeah right), having to let vacation disappear because I don't have time to take it and it doesn't roll over year to year, travelling all over the place and being responsible for Everything IT. Constantly worried about the next reorg.
New Job: 37.5 hours per week (with comp time for more hours worked) vacation that accumulates year over year, just being responsible for my little corner of the world with people who can cover for me. Job security is pretty solid if you don't commit any of the Big Sins (get caught with porn, do something to embarrass the higher ups, etc..) I come in, I give good value for my time and I go home. I don't get an upset stomach on Sunday afternoon thinking about Mondays anymore.
Downsides? The bureaucracy is mind-numbing.
Conversations like this:
"Why can't we just fix this?"
"Politics. You'll step on the toes of the guy who's supposed to do this."
"You mean he wouldn't be grateful we did it for him?"
"Uh, no."
Meetings. Good God they love their meetings. We needed to relocate a bunch of servers from one of the state agencies to the server room right outside my door. So we have a meeting with the affected people. Fine. Then two days before the Big Move they call another meeting "just to make sure everybody's clear." Ooookay. Things that I would have handled in the past with a flurry of emails and a phone call now take 3 face-to-face meetings with 6-8 people.
Boredom. Seriously. My old job was much more challenging and interesting. There's plenty of work for me to do, but I think I actually miss the stress to some degree.
Coworkers. Don't get me wrong here. There are a lot of hardworking intelligent people here. One of the smartest bitheads I've ever had the pleasure to know is the main guy who helped me get this job. The guy who is my boss now is very good at his job. OTOH there are people who will reinforce every bad stereotype of a Govt. employee you ever heard. And it's almost impossible to get rid of them. You just work around them. On a brighter note, I can work at what I consider to be a leisurely pace and still out-perform a lot of people.
Raises have little or nothing to do with your job performance. You won't get rich working for the govt. Fortunately the only outstanding debt I have is my mortgage and my wife's student loans when she went back to school to get her RN, so while I don't make big money I make enough to pay the bills and buy a few toys.
I'll leave you with a quote from the guy who used to be my boss to make you understand why I'm here.
"There are people here who think they're stressed out. They've got no idea what the fuck they're talking about. The only stress I have is what I put on myself. Y'know, I recently got an offer from [company we both worked for] to come back. They offered me a substantial raise over what I'm making here. I turned them down. They asked me why and I told them - I don't travel, I don't work nights, I don't work weekends, I get to see my family and the difference in the stress is indescribable. It's just not worth the money."
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
Work with people you like. It makes all the difference.
-Rich
Really, that doesn't sound like a stressfull environment to me. Now, people who manage critical IT infrastructure where downtime means $$$ each minute then yeah, that would be stressfull.
IMHO, if your stressed out about your job its time to change environments. I know people that have had to take stress leave (no idea why) only to come back to the same job! Hello McFly! If the job stressed you out that much before start looking for a new one, things aren't going to change.
I'm a DBA, I maintain critical databases, where downtime means millions per day. Screwing up while working on that system I think is a tad more stressfull than if your going to meet your development deadline. But hey, I may be out to lunch here. Maybe i'm different but I don't find these situations stressfull either, I find them challenging and interesting. My favorite part of being a DBA is when things go wrong.....
IMHO, the only truely stressfull job out there would be one where your life or the lives of others is on the line. Doctors, Police, firefighters, military, etc.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
There's a lot of meditation techniques, books, teachers and blah-blah out there. All you need is 15-20 minutes in the morning and evening. Your working life will transform (so will all the other parts of your life!!)
What I practise is called Sahaja Yoga . I've been enjoying it for over 10 years now and it just gets better all the time. Simple, very effective technique... try it... and let us know in a few weeks if it made a difference.
WEED
Yo're absolutely right dude... I just recommended meditation below... but if I reflect... it's 3 months since I left the ISP industry (was working for what's left of PSINet in Europe) and wow... I'm now working in manufacturing looking after HP boxes.. it's *so* much less stressed and there's hardly any call-out too!
The non-IT industries also *need* more good techies (IMHO)....
I've been taking MA off and on for years but returned just over a year ago after a 6 year hiatus. Our school used to be run by an employee of our company (he retired last year). Its actually quicker to walk to our school than it is to get to my car. Our classes are twice a week, right after work so its very easy to get to class. A month or so ago we managed to convince the instructor to give us keys so now we go over twice a week (mon, wed) for lunch workouts. Just a tip, but find a school close to work, with class times that you can go to during lunch or right after work. If you have a family like me then once you get home its almost impossible to get out. For instance this morning I could have gone to a class but its less stressfull (couldn't resists), alright less hassle to stay home and not have to worry about the wife being crooked when I get home.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
We call it graduate school. If I don't work six/seven days a week on my project for 10-15 hours a day, then my competitor will. When my competitor publishes what I was working on, my work becomes completely useless.
And, before you say something about a graduate degree being pointless, I'll point out that I'm in the biosciences, and the degree is necessary in my field.
There is no doubt that stress is part of every job... However, if you truly love what you are doing, stress wouldn't bother you as much... it would be good stress. I am not saying you don't love being a web developer, but maybe you don't love where you are doing it? I have been working in the same industry for a while now and some jobs were definitely more stressful than others... And I have found that the places I didn't like as much gave me a lot more "perceived" stress... Maybe you need to re-examine where you are... You will never escape stress, but in a more enjoyable place, it may not be as big a deal... or the stress itself may be enjoyable...
seriously!
I'd never of thought a simple change of scene, a slight change in job etc. could have such a profound effect. I'm far more productive than I ever was and never have to take work home with me. I look at pictures of myself from about a year ago and I it frightens me.
I guess what I'm really saying is do something about it. I feel a fool for having "lost" the best part of my 20s to that situation. It was damn frighening but the decision to leave was the best thing I ever did.
I just smoke some Cannabis during the weekend to relax, that and some good tequilla and beer during the week makes me feel more relaxed.
With that said, I developed applications since I gradudated from high school, and got my degree after 10 years of night school. In many ways, I think I was better off, because I had the experience during the day to make the courses a breeze. In fact, I felt bad that most of the classmates had no idea what it was like to try to apply the course to the real world. To try to describe, in purely acedemic terms, how you make certain decisions, is nearly impossible.
The acedemic world doesn't consider, for instance, the impact that a limitted dollar and time pool has on project decisions, including overall design. Nor does it address quality decisions, and the things you do to increase quality in less time, because those are the real-world constraints you are under.
Going to school at night while working during the day gives you the benefit of being able to apply real world experience to your education, in addition to being able to immediately apply your education to your real world experiences.
Open Standards Portal
I currently work as a website developer (mostly design-related work)
You have got to be kidding me.
1. reading Dilbert
2. bitching about my pointy haired boss with my coworkers
3. activities that help me relax and give me positive feedback after work
HTH
Steve
Along with several other techniques from agile processes I have cut down my stress level by clearly communicating that I will manage to finish exactly those tasks that I finish, no more, nothing less.
Therefor I welcome external priorities for the work I'll have to do (as the tasks are also defined by our customers, this is not too much to ask for).
Baseline: For any 25 Tasks, do not accept less than 25 levels of priority. Demand that your customer/boss/whoever sets these priorities for you. After all, you will work through them in an order, and if you happen to have too many tasks for a given time, you'd better have the important ones done when time is over.
Another tip is to use strict timeboxing. It helps a lot to know that you are currently sprinting towards your goal. It does not help, if the goal moves shortly before you reach it. Accept new tasks only for the next timebox/sprint, but never allow stretching a timebox (which may be a week, a month or anything in between).
It sounds to me not like you love your profesion, you love the addiction... I am not a shrink, just my 2 cents
I test my code.
Saying that, my friend's father has a PhD from Oxford, and now drives a bus.
There is no way this is true.
Ask yourself - do you live to work, or work to live? I love my job designing FPGAs, but my job is just that - a jobby-job. It enables me to do things I enjoy more like grabbing Corona after a long day and enjoying the San Diego sunsets, buying a widescreen HDTV to play Vice City on, or vacations out of the country.
Center yourself; if what you do for a living (and the company you do it for) take that much out of you, do you really have a good quality of life?
IT, IS, and MIS people suck. They're overblown tech school dropouts who are finally realizing their worth in this econo
First, let's figure out what type of stress you are under. There are two types: eustress and distress.
Eustress results from exhilarating experiences. It can be euphoric and powerfully energizing. It is the type of stress you are likely to experience when you win the lottery, get that promotion or receive really good news. It is the orgasmic experience of sex. It is the stress of elation, winning, achieving and produces positive and powerful emotions.
Distress is the forces and pressures of modern life and our responses to them. Most of us think of stress in negative terms. It is the stress of losing, failing, overworking and not coping. It affects us in a negative and often harmful manner. It is unhealthy stress.
It sounds like you are experiencing distress in your current job. Are you unable to cope with the distress? Have you noticed that your distress on the job is bleeding over into your relationship with your wife? Do you find that minor issues become major ones?
If you answered "Yes" to any of these questions, you might want to look for a new position. Take a look at working for a non-profit organization where the "time is money" mentality is considerably lower than working for a corporation. Or you might want to consider starting your own website development business.
Just remember that this is YOUR life and YOU are the one who chooses to put up with the negative stress for a paycheck. Is what you get paid worth the distress you experience?
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
you live more than once. But if you kill yourself in this life, there's no guarantee that your next life will be better. In fact, it will most likely be much much worse.
I'm an Iraqi and I have to stay here ALL YEAR ROUND, 365/24/7 with you sons of bitches trying to kill us.
If you're working for an unstable non-IT company, or even a non-IT company that just wants to cut costs, geeks are the first people to go, because we're (a) expensive and (b) easier to blame for bad times than people in the core business (because then people in high places would start sweating).
Been there, doing that. It sucks.
You are right, I have also noticed that. It is much less stressful that way, as well as equally less productive, unfortunately (or fortunately--depandind on whether you are an employer or an employee).
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
I cant condone a life of sex,drugs & craziness,but,they've always worked for me.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
420 all the way. Really helps with stress at the end of the day.
More of my time = more on my bill. At some point those things balance, especially when you use seasonal tariff adjustments to help that balance along.
The only problem is, you have to be good enough to make them keep you, and standards are definitely on the way down.
Having said that, I don't have to worry about a family yet so my view is likely to change...
Beer.
Other people have alternative answers.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
You stroke a chord there...
:), or maybe a carpenter.
I'm a Software Architect running from meeting to meeting everyday. How often have I thought about dropping it all (including salary and lifestyle). Move to Hawaii and become a gardener (called landscape architect now
I like to create things (which is in part why I like software, you can make things without needing a big infrastructure). I need a lower stress job.
You also have to change your lifestyle, though, to live on less money.
This is the age of technology. We are not supposed to be stressed out. Our jobs are supposed to bring us the gratitude of our employers and untold wealth.
So what is the problem? Overpopulation? Energy crisis? Political and bureaucratic evil? Loss of jobs to automation? Lack of ambition?
If your job isn't getting you what you want, use your own time to achieve something. Some people have a lot of obstacles. Stephen Hawking has the will to keep working - there's an example. Don't let up.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
After three layoffs as a system admin and ops manager, I decided to call it quits in tech, at least for now. What now? GO BACK TO SCHOOL and get a useful degree that isn't going to get OUTSOURCED TO INDIA. Not to mention the jobs I used to do pay 10-20K less EVEN if you get the job.
My stress level is way down, work a crap job that gives me %50 tuition back, and only 20 hours a week. Kickass student loans around 8k/semester. Low interest rates.
So, I'm going to finish my psych degree, so I can deal with all those suicidle leftover dotcomers. Great.
cold beer
Before getting a 'stressy' IT job I worked as an electrician. At the time there were too many applicants and too few jobs and I wasn't planning on sitting on my ass waiting for an IT job so I took the electrician job figuring the skill I would learn would come handy some day.
Good thing is I used to come home not thinking about work at all. Good thing is the (small) company I worked for just did about anything beside electricity that would bring in money. Besides electricity I learned how to lay concrete, build a wall with bricks and cement, place doors and windows, work a crane,...
Bad thing is I got majorly bored. While being on a job where I had to install 240 tl light armatures in a storage room (taking several weeks to complete). After about 3 years I had learned more or less anything that could be learned and I decided if I had to do something for 5 days/week 8 hours/day it should be more rewarding that that. It was my luck that right around this time (97-98) the shortage of IT workers was growing and I was able to land an IT job.
You get more stress and because it's something you like doing it's not always possible to just let it rest when you go home, but the pay is better, it is more rewarding and you get more respect if you tell people you're a programmer compared to being an electrician.
But I guess some people just can't deal with stress and are better off working in a factory or something.
If you were really a web site developer, you'd know how to spell "web site".
I have wondered the same thing myself. There is so much Stress involved in IT jobs that one must wonder why we do it, in fact the pay isn't even any better any more than other less stressful jobs. I am a RHCE working as a PC/Network analyst. My job is to walk into a panic stricten company and make their broken system work... Talk about stress. I must admit there is much reward as well as stress.
use cases
Naw, individual bottles will do just fine.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
and lots of it. Preferably kinds mixed with caffeinated beverages(jack and coke being my favorite). You don't want to be falling asleep at the keyboard. Hell no you a code warrior bust it out with style.
I was in a similar position as you at one time, but now I freelance as a consultant, and my company is slowly growing. The stress I get now is nothing compared to working under someone in the field. When things get tough, I am rest assured knowing that I am making, on average, 80 bucks an hour. Which is usually more than even the owners of the companies I work for.
Just a thought.
I'm glad I finished my degree, even though the consulting firm I was part-timing with tried to lure me away. See, in my experience, small business owners are optimists: they think they'll have a $5 million business in 3 years and you'll all get rich. In reality, you get $60K a year for a year, then $45K because half the work dries up, and then you're out of a job. (This is what happened in my first job after college.)
School is a lot of work. If you're already partway into it, you might as well get it done now, because it will never be as easy, nor, if your parents are paying for it, will it ever be as cheap. PHP, MySQL, and Mac OS X will still be around in 3 years. And if they aren't, you didn't really want to put all your chips on that number anyway, did you?
Stuff that helps:
- Track your tasks Nothing's more distressing than having a whole bunch of things overwhelm you. If you always feel like you have things you need to get done, but can't really remember what they all are, it's much worse that having 4-5 things you know you have to do. Write things down... putting it on paper will help offload your worries. You can do it on a PDA, but I prefer just writing it down in a small notebook that I carry around. Things I have to do, I put a small box in the margin. When I finish it, I put a check through it. That gives you positive feedback that you're actually getting stuff done. Other times, I find I tend to put checkboxes by things I'll probably never be able to finish (like "improve website"), which you learn to recognize and cross out completely. This keeps you from worrying about things you shouldn't be worrying about, and only taking on things that can actually be completed.
- Take extra time to enjoy your work Throw in humor wherever you can
... in comments, in easter eggs, whatever. Because if you don't enjoy what you're doing for a living, well, that's pretty bad. If you're a perfectionist, put in the little extra to tweak things as you like. Your manager probably won't like it, since it's their job to pinch pennies and not to understand or appreciate your skill or craft or talent. If that's the case, do it on your own time. Otherwise, you'll have no pride in your work, and you won't want to talk about it when you inevitably interview for a better job :P
- Get along with your co-workers... no matter what! Nothing can stress you out more like a sour workplace. Try to make people happy, and don't feel bad about taking a hit yourself sometimes.
Good luck! It's kinda your job to make sure you're happy with your work, no matter where you're working.I was in the rat race yourself, and quit when our youngest son was born. I'm currently a stay-at-home dad.
It's rewarding, but I was looking for something to do with my 'other' time. I started restoring classic arcade machines. I've actually turned it into a mildly profitable business.
Not saying for you to do that, but...do something you like. You'll always have a day off that way, because you'll always do something you like.
Step One: Attain Gun and Ammo. Step Two: Shoot anyone who gets in your way. Step Three: Make sure that your playing a FPS. Hmmm maybe three needs to be the first one....nah.
You start your first real job, writing software. Your manager stops by and says "I'm really sorry, but can you please stay until 8pm tonight? (and similiar manager blabber)"
You stare wide eyed at him. He starts to look nervious. Then you say "You mean I _get_ to go home at 8? I don't have to stay until 1am?" "Errr . . . yeah, you get _get_ to go home at 8. Right." "Super!"
I don't think we'd be as willing to put ourselves through the long hours, late nights, and stress if we weren't already kinda used to it from being in college for 4 years doing just that.
Oh! So Close! (:
:/ And mentioning Gates was good, but not quite negative enough...and doing it in the same line as Linus could have counted against you heavily. Plus you need an account to collect that karma! B for effort tho, I say.
/. for the +5 Funny's and the Trolls (; Beats work!
But you forgot to mention MIT and BSD
Heh, I guess I've hit that point where I read
Yuma, AZ...You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.
Two words for you, dude: Call Center.
I work at a call center for a bank, providing customer service for home equity customers. Each and every day, I am berated, belittled, and dehumanized by people who seem to think that because I work as a representative for a company, I deserve to be their personal punching bag.
My breaks are scheduled to a specific time and I cannot deviate from them. If I come in 1 minute late, everyone notices. If I need to go to the bathroom, I can't just get up and go, I have to ask someone or wait until I have a break. The list goes on. I spend my day as a slave, and come home bitter and resentful most nights. Unfortunately, it's virtually thing only thing I can do that pays enough to take care of the bills and still have "fun money" left over.
Appreciate what you've got, man. You could be doing a LOT worse.
I deal with stress by administering a very delicate balance of caffeine, cigarettes, alchohol, and little blue pills. I don't think my heart rate has been above 70 bpm in over 6 years.
"Stress" is definitely an excuse used way too much. Anything other than living on a beach and being served by naked beautiful women is considered stressful. Then you get ridiculous anecdotal comments like "I loved working in the fields picking fruit because there was no stress." Another non-stressful situation is being dead or in a coma. "Stressed out" people are, in most cases, just whiny bitches.
Oh my life is so hard! Oh my pussy hurts!
That said I'm extremely happy to not longer have that job. I miss the pay and I miss a lot of the folks that worked in that dept and elsewhere on the campus. I certainly don't miss the politics though. Good riddance to that. The only time I ned Maalox nowadays is when I make tex-mex the way I like it. I'm now self-employed. I've been working for a telco/isp in the area, one I've done contract work with for years. If I make as much money each month this year as I did last month I'll take home 3 times what my former job paid me, literally. I now work from home on hardware I'm confortable with in an environment where I'm at ease. I can cook a healthy lunch with ease while working. I'm doing things I enjoy doing and my opinions and sugestions aren't dismissed out of hand because the wrong person, me, thought of them. They pay me for my opinion and suggestions, not as the office whipping boy. It's a much better situation. Much more healthy.
I highly recommend you try to find something similar. Since you have kids you need to have a separate office space where you can work relatively undisturbed. You can still break after lunch to play catch or change a diaper. You do need your own working environment though. I highly recommend it. Best of luck.
These replies are all a mixmash of my experience. I used to work for Veritas Software as a consultant, back in the glory days. I made a sinful amount of money, and was promised I'd retire a millionaire in four years or so. Late in year two the bubble burst, they booted me out (a week after giving me a raise and a performance bonus) and I was saddled with a big tax bill I still haven't been able to pay off, and a car payment I can almost afford on good months.
:)
I've since gone back to college to pursue my true love, which is art. I am a fine arts major with a commercial arts minor. I work as a sysadmin for the commercial art mac lab, and do contract network consulting for the network/pc hardware folks.
So while I have certainly given up "IT", I have not given up my skillset or the technology I so love to tweak and twiddle. I am no less sharp, and I put up with one hell of a lot less crap. I no longer have nightmares of falling to my death from the sky, or wake up in hotel rooms wondering what city I'm in or fear having a heart attack while explaining to a fotune five hundred IT director why it is he can't write data in a random access fashion to a sequential tape device.
Oh, and I have a pinche little web hosting company with one co-loc customer
If you really want my advice, find a way to leave that job you are in. Prepare beforehand: put a decent pile of cash away somewhere to pad you for hard times. Find a way to work that doesn't involve licking the heels of someone who probably doesn't deserve to lick YOUR heels. You'll feel a lot better about yourself, and about life in general.
Also try to deversify your source of income to many different smaller sources. That way it gets hard for one asshole to ruin your day.
Oh and do yourself a favor: dont let yourself get addicted to a six figure income. Its a hard narcotic, and it will damage and enslave you.
Peace and Be Well.
twitch
This guy is a 24 year old website developer writing PHP scripts, and he's worried about "stress and responsibility"? Get real. It's not like he's responsible for a big network 24/7, or doing real-time programming for powerful, dangerous machinery, or writing code that will be replicated millions of times and will cause a product recall if it breaks. Or doing a really stressful job, like cop or firefighter or soldier. Or trying to manage a bunch of people who really have to work together well or the whole project fails.
Everyone who works in IT knows this story: You or your boss make a promise for a deliverable two months out. Turns out, 5 unexpected complications come in, and 1 and a 1/2 months in, you find yourself pulling 80 hour weeks to meet deadline. Point is that it feels bad to work long weeks, only to miss a deadline anyway. My whole posting here goes at the idea that the more you feel in control, the less you feel stressed. Two problems in getting IT estimates under control:
1) It is infamously difficult to make good cost and time estimates in IT.
2) IT jobs typically are salaried, not hourly. There hasn't been a huge cost pressure on management to avoid overtime.
Well, I can't fix problem 2 - but problem 1 can be addressed. Attack the problem by developing a better and more realistic approach to deadlines. If I talk to a house contractor, he'll tell me with good accuracy that I can expect x dollars per square foot, x dollars per electrical fixture. You can even find standard estimating tables. I've never seen such handy rules of thumb for the IT business. In fields like web design - which use known design patterns and tools, it's probably achievable - except that they tools keep changing. Some of my friends who do contracts make and meet bids, but just as frequently over or under bid. Many work day jobs at big companies to hedge against these mis-calculations in their contracting.
Here are some handy suggestions to start relieving deadline pressure:
- Even if you aren't a manager, read about software management. If you don't like to spend money, go to your favorite big bookstore on a Saturday morning once a month, get a cup of coffee, and skim the various books to get a idea of the approaches.
- Keep a very open dialog with your boss and/or direct reports about process. Talk about what's good and bad. Keep looking for creative solutions.
- You need to gather empirical data on how long it took to finish various projects. Empirical data on past projects, rather than guesses, should form the basis of future estimates. Do you have some project tracking tool? Sometimes, I imagine that I finished my last project in 40 hours of work. If I actually look at the time in our project management tool , is usually 2-3 times what I thought. Time flies when you're having fun!
- Deliver something every week. In my team, we insist that something tangible is turned over to someone every week. Sometimes, a project gets behind schedule, and the embarrased programmer tries to hide it, rather than deal with it. Forcing something visible to show every week makes hiding problems very difficult, and allows us to redistribute team resources to deal with the problem. If something is going behind schedule - you know well in advance, and can communicate with the customer well in advance rather than working 80 hours weeks as the deadline approaches.
- Insist that a project has a solid requirements document, and a solid analysis of how to solve the problem, before promises are made. I had a string of plumbers in to give estimates. All of them spent an hour looking at our plumbing, went home, thought about it, and sent an estimate a week later.
- Don't code extra stuff. I'm way too creative, and like to write really fun programs and neat features. Creativity is good, but at work this can be a liability. Noone wants to pay for something that they didn't ask for - and I get behind schedule writing features noone really wants. Thus - I've started personal projects to release my creative energies - like building an enterprise scale security system from scratch for my personal home page to keep the wrong people from looking at family baby pictures.
That said, after 5 years in the business, and a few more years in related industries, I just barely have enough experience to avoid getting myself into trouble with sloppy project management and optimistic estimates. At 24, I probably should have leveraged my experienced col
My motto: "A cat is no trade for integrity."
Go postal --get yourself some friends together and have a LAN party. Unreal Tournament, Halo, et. al. death matches should help you burn off the violent male testosterone.
Also, excercise is very good for managing stress. I find that when I don't exercise, I'm more prone to anxiety. Weight lifting is good, cardio-vascular is a must.
If you're spiritually minded, seeking that out through disciplines such as fasting, prayer, meditation, etc. usually is good for figuring out what's really important in life (and it's not your career).
Maybe you should sneak out to the Take Back Your Time conference?
20 hours days for several weeks. Hot lights, makeup, dealing with obnoxious celebrities, picky directors, arrogant producers. millions of dollard worth of equipment that could be broken at any time. Driving trucks and vans all over the place to pick up people and supplies, being constantly over budget and short on time, just to make a movie that might not even get released in theaters, or wont turn out anything like you planned.
Sound stressful? its not, i love every minute of it.
There's no reason any job should be stressful. If it is, its not the job for you.
"Eagles may soar, but weasels dont get sucked into jet engines."
Mostly weed, caffeine and nicotine. :) MDMA may also prove useful at times.
so that's why the university's systems suck so much!
seriously though, balance out your life and your work, never forget which is more important. I work in software dev, and 8 months ago I was asked if I wanted to go to client sites to do install/implementations, I told em no. I have a family, and make that the priority. other coworkers said yes, and they're getting stuck 1000 miles away from their families for a weeks straight. F that, what's it worth? one of them only did it to look like a 'team player', but they pay me better and give me new opportunities in response to my skills, not how much of my time I'll forfeight.
again, balance, and deciede what your priorities are. a hobby, not tech related, is also recommended. "Don't take life too seriously, you'll never get out of it alive!" - Bugs Bunny
P
free ipod and free gmail!
Are part of EVERY JOB EVER. My advice would be grow up and deal with it already. Geesh, you're the same age as me and you sound like a 16 year old girl shocked that Daddy might make her work for her money.
If you want Stress try working the ER at a local hospital after a 5 car pile up on the interstate with broke limbs, head and back injuries. When 2 ppl. are dropped off by the police who are psychotic demanding Xanex to calm them down or they are going to kill themselves. (Last nights shift.)
can't tell ya how to struggle by with 50 grand a year and sit in an office for long hours. I CAN tell you how to put it into perspective. quit your job. Now go get a job like a mason's tender, or in a chicken processing plant, or working landscaping, or an a black topping road crew, something like that.
Now work for a month.
Every friday, STARE at that check, notice the slightly differerent number sequences that what you are used to. Now notice your backache, your dangerous sunburn, the cough you are getting from road dust, the sight of a thousand chickenbns hanging on hooks in front of you in a never ending stream that never quits. Now explain to wifey why you will be needing to a smaller home, and maybe the ride is kinda steep, go looking for a one grand junker with 200 thou on it. Now go to the grocery store and notice that everything but the cheap stuff is off the menu if you like eating 7 days a week. Now notice what a movie or DVD costs in termsof hours of labor. Now notice that you will still have bosses who are jerks, who will get on your case, tell you it needs to be done by yada yada, and you know it should take 4 yadas to do that. Notice now that even though it's 90 degrees out today, and tomorrow it will be thunderstorming, you'll still be "at work" and the climate control seems to be broken perpetually, it s a bit more random than what you might be used to. Now notice that full coverage insurance you are thinking about more because of that guy they hauled off yesterday with the crushed foot, and which you will have to buy yourself will cost you 1/2 to 2/3rds your check if you actually expect it to do more than the bare minimum band aids, and forget any income replacement or anything like that. Now notice all the people who are very hard to understand who are working next to you, and are living a dozen to an apartment, and all come to work in one old ratty van. Now sit back and watch the nooze at night and realise the two big choices you are being offered next november when you vote are both multi millionaires, people open doors for them and do their yard work and cooking and whatnot, they always have their choice of champagnes or lobster, and that they ain't sweating the note on nuthin,and notice how2 sincere sounding they are and they "are sympathetic and *just like you*, really, and they will help you, really and truly, not like those past dozens of times when we said it and it didn't happen, but this time it'll be different!"
REALLY think about that for awhile.
Think about that for awhile as you go to bed two hours earlier than normal because you can't hardly move anymore, and somehow finding time to go "workout at the gym" doesn't seem to be all that important or worth the cash they charge for it.
and etc, etc..
There's stress, then there's stress, besides that employment exercise, can't help you much. Good luckski!
I have a relevant 'story'.
I am now 24 years old, I was given my first computer at the age of 11, learned to start repairing it around the age of 12. by 14 I had my first dedicated BBS running 24/7 (for 5 years too). By 16 I was working in a local 'mom-n-pop' shop. at 17 I picked up a rough understanding of networking...at 18 I was an onsite network tech for a fortune 500. At 19 I was their 'Junior Engineer' (they called me an engineer, I'm a little to modest to go along with that).
At 20 years old I quit that (very) high paying job and spend the next 3 years doing consulting on and off, but I quit that too.
I love computers. It's an excellent hobby, and it it's an amazing tool. I have realize that I hate working in IT.
Funny thing was, though, that even with a good 10+ years of computer experience and an excellent exmployment history I couldn't land a job at the local stop-n-shop, mcdonalds, or...well...anywhere.
I finally got a job at FedEx making shit money, building massive amounts of muscle rapidly (between 11k and 17k lbs an hour of lifting, roughly...I could empty a full-length trailed of boxes by myself in 45 minutes or so) and also destroying my joints. I loved it. Years earlier I said "man, I bet it'd be cool to have a job where they point me to a pile of boxes and tell me to move them 'over there'." But didn't get enough hours there, so I got another job.
I quit that and have been learning a new trade working in a large screen-printing shop. I am making worse money than fedex payed, my schedule is absolutely horrible, not to mention the abundance of hazardous chemicals processes.
I love it. I haven't been this happy in years. Even though a massive amount of other things 'could be better' in my life, and quite a few hardships have acosted me in the past year.....I have never been this happy with my job. It's still a job, and I hate it based on that....but, there is just something soul-sucking about working in IT.
I don't really care to go back to 'computers' ever again. Perhaps this is just a hiatus, but I doubt it.
I didn't know you posted on Slashdot.
IT is not stressful. I've been working in software development/IT since 1995. Never once felt stress. Sure, there's responsibility, sometimes there's a deadline and extra hours, but stress? Not in the slightest.
I've noticed people who suffer from stress are the kind who generally don't "compartmentalize". As soon as I leave work, with very few exceptions, I immediately quit thinking about work and don't think about it again until I arrive the next day.
I'm also fortunate that I've always been working mainly for the clueful, and those who I've worked for who aren't clueful have at least respected my advice and decisions. I'm well aware that not everyone's this lucky.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Always glad to hear about folks wriggling free of the IT grind. I just could care less anymore about the latest way to write Hello World or put data from an Oracle DB into a web page. It bores me to death...
Good job and maybe I'll pull it off myself some day.
I felt burnt out as well from the stress, so i started investing alot of my weekend time into intensive manual projects. involving carpentry and construction. the physical activities along with a complete lack of anything electronic for a few days really get's my stress out.
Begin by taking up a few habits. Start off easy with a few shots of whisky each day after work. Next, make it a personal goal to smoke a carton of cigarettes each week. Later on, you can move into the realm of snorting coke and shooting heroin.
You can do it, I know you can!
Stress? How many jobs have you had?
All jobs have "stress". That is why they pay you.
Stress is actually fear, what are you afraid of?
Afriad of not having money to pay your bills?
Afraid of the expectation to be a wizard?
You are not a wizard, it is just a job, get a life.
http://tinyurl.com/globalwarmingisascam
1) It gives you something to look forward to and work towards.
2) It requires and promotes responsible financial planning.
3) It gives you a feeling of control.
4) It restricts your "suffering" to finite periods of time.
5) It recharges your creative batteries.
6) It opens new possibilities.
7) It gives you quality time to spend with your family and friends.
8) It gives you a chance to catch up on technologies YOU are interested in instead of what your job requires.
9) It gives you a chance to do positive things you will be able to reflect on when you end up in a nursing home or are disabled at a relatively early age.
It can be done even with a mortgage, a family and a slow economy. You might have to make sacrifices in your long term goals but in the long run you will probably benefit from a richer life experience.
I don't think it has hurt me in many interviews. Most people express admiration for taking such a bold step and admit they would like to do it themselves. If it has hurt a job prospect I probably wouldn't do well working for such a person.
perhaps much of what is frustrating about IT right now is that many of us feel we can't look elsewhere, cause there's nowhere to look! surrounded by unemployed techie friends and fellow undervalued IT people, it's difficult to keep confident that there's something better out there to be found. rather, we cling to the job we do have and hope fervently that it doesn't go away on short notice - hating the place despite needing it.
when i was 15 and workin at pizza hut, low responsibility contributed to low stress, but even more so the knowledge that * i didn't need them * as much as they needed me, that i could turn around and have a job at safeway just as easily should i tire of pepperoni and garlic bread.
now in my late 20's, feeling lucky to have a job even remotely IT-related, could i relocate if i wanted to? perhaps... perhaps not. i may spend another year working out of the industry before something else came along. therein lies the stress... not just that the job doesn't make you happy, but that creeping feeling that you can't leave and will be trapped there forever - that's what brings you down.
Nothing like a change in perspective to reduce your stress level. I was called up after 9/11 and spent a year on Active Duty including a deployment in Afghanistan. Getting mortered, rocketed, shot at and seeing people who are happy with much much less that I, changed my attitude about what is important. Makes my bosses unhappy some times, but if a problem is not going to kill someone, it is not that big of a problem.
...hmm, according to super string theory, I have already consumed this milk sometime in the future, but because my current quantum state suggests the light is merely a refracted quotient of the co-linear absorbtion rate of decaying muons and... ohh, man, what now...SHIT, I came to work without my pants on again!
I can't say that either of these have ever done me wrong.
--edfardos
The government doesn't want you to see this!
Then why was it THE GOVERNMENT that released those photos?
STFU.
skin me a zoot ;)
Computer programming is anything but stressful in my experience. What creates stress are the folks who are bored with their lives and feel the need to make everything an "emergency". It's all a matter of what style of work environment you want. If you can't retrain your managment to stop with the constant crisis thing, find a new job.
If you think a factory job is going to be less stressful than a website job, you've got something else coming.
... about whiny bitches. There sure are a lot of them, a fact I personally attribute to a preponderance of rude diktats ...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Why your fabulous job sucks...m
http://3feetunder.com/krick/jobsucks.ht
Stress is what you make of it.
Let your boss or your boss' boss have the stress. They don't pay you enough to have stress. Do your job, give 'em 40 hours. Take your vacation; check the law about it disappearing if you don't take it; some states prohibit that.
My last job was stressful, because I let it be stressful. When I learned to let go of the stress, to transfer it to my boss, I felt much better. Frankly, so did the boss.
Probably one of the best ways to relieve stress.
In any case, you will gain productivity if you exercise more, and you will feel better to boot.
Stress is your body's reaction to something outside of your body. You may not be able to control what is going on outside of your body, but you can, and should, at least _believe_ that you can control your body's reaction to it.
Make a commitment, even 30 minutes a day, every day, in the morning when you wake up, or something along those lines. I find that when a project hits, and I have to get it done ASAP, that it's easy to forget to exercise.
Here's the thing. If you forget the exercise commitment, even if it's just 30 minutes a day, you are actually being less efficient. I have known managers (including myself) that tend towards the fallacious theory that as long as an employee (or manager) is stressed out, the job is getting done as well as it can be. After all, if you are so carefree, and everything is behind schedule, isn't there something wrong with that? But guess what? If you are stressed out, the project will be just as behind schedule as if you aren't. There is a "fad", if you will, where we are essentially being paid for being stressed out. This is wrong, and unnecessary. It is easier to be busy, for instance, if you eat a proper diet, exercise, and get enough sleep. A proper diet and exercise can also reduce the amount of time that you need to sleep.
So while being stressed out may be inevitable and ubiquitous, one thing it won't do is get the job done faster and better. Stress, in my experience, has just been used as a coping mechanism, as an excuse for poor management. Just look around and you will see that it is. Managers trying to do stuff they shouldn't be doing to try to save money is one symptom of this.
Bring your level of skill (including social engineering skills), your level of input into the workplace to a point where you don't have time to be stressed out. [ busy != stressed out ]. Problem is, if your manager is stressed out, and insists on being busier than you, you may have a problem on your hands. There is no work, no job that needs, in any way, to "inherently" be stress-causing. I just don't believe that. On the other hand, unnecessary stress that destroys lives can be found in almost any sector, in any job, anywhere in the world.
Exercise, exercise, exercise is that answer to so many problems that it's not even funny. Speaking of exercise....
As many others have commented, it sounds like you need to wise up and grow up. Your question sounds like "how can I play and have my needs taken care of for me" -- appropriate, perhaps, for a 4 year old. You grossly overestimate the stress and responsibility of your position. Maybe a stint in the military would teach you about stress. Maybe becoming a surgeon would teach you about responsibility. If your sample of writing here is any indication of how you perform at work, you obviously aren't even held responsible for correct spelling. (Pointing out that there's no spell checker on these posts would amount to just more whining.)
Thank you for helping prove that our society now is completely incompatible with personal liberty as a result of the wholesale junking of personal responsibility. I hope you never protest the violation of any Constitutional rights, since the hypocrisy of it would make me vomit.
No Laughing Allowed!
I HATE the stress and responsability that comes with a the job.
To say nothing of being expected as an educated adult to know how to spell "responsibility" and being able to choose "a job" or "the job".
Thirdly, FUCK YOU.
')
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I am a software developer and I, like several of my colleagues grind in my sleep.
I thoroughly recommend this as a form of stress relief. It was working brilliantly and I've been really chilled out - didn't even realise I was stressed.
It was all going well until the dentist told me what I'd been doing and that I've already flatten my teeth on one side. Now I need a 60 teeth guard to wear in my sleep.
Now I'm stressed again.
Matt.
There are a few things I do... I play with my daughter (and soon to be son), play with my wife... play on my computers... watch a good movie, video games, or one of my favorites (I do this every day at lunch) Read a non-tech novel for fun.
I seriously laugh at you for your way of thinking.
I am a programmer, and I have been doing it for almost 13 years. The worst location I coded in was a chilled computer room with two tractor feed line printers churning constantly, and 9-track tape drive whirring in the back. It was freezing cold in there, even in the summer (though a relief at times).
I currently have a cubicle - but it is only "part time" - most of the time, I am working from home, even though my work is only a 30 min drive away. When I am at work, I can eat and drink at my desk. I have a good relation with my boss. Actually, I have good relations with just about everyone at my work - as far as I know, no one "has it in for me".
Wanna hear the best part?
I hardly work. Most of the time, I code and code some more, finish the project changes (of which I am the only developer of) - and wait for QA results to come back. Sometimes I might have other tasks, most of the time I don't. I have asked my boss for more, and he has told me to wait. So I surf the net, read /., study some new coding thing or tech here and there, whatnot - waiting for the word to come back.
There have been times where I spec'ed time out for a change, got approved, then found a way to code the change in half or better time. I use the other half of time to "play", but only half or so of it - then turn the project in. Comes in early, they are happy, I am happy.
Don't chime in and say "but you are stealing your employer's time" - because they think nothing of asking you to come in on weekends and whatnot (which I gladly do when required - but most of the time I am able to get my work done in time, under budget - and still have "play" time), which is MY TIME. Its all a game anyhow - you just have to know how to play it.
I have had my boss "walk-in" on me while I am "playing" - no problems, no words. I have walked in on him as he was editing a home video on his work PC - no problems, no words. Same with numerous other people in the place. Don't ask, don't tell - and all the work gets done.
Yeah - this is stressful - please, can my life get any more stressed...?
What the hell's eating you?
...you swear a lot.
Out of curiosity, what makes playing golf a more decadent waste of time than other sports?
Is the only way to deal with stress.
Try and exercise hard for an hour each day and the endorphins produced will suppress the production of stress hormones.
I cycle. It's a geek thing to do as you can get into the engineering side of cycle componentry whilst at the same time getting to learn something about physiology and how to train yourself.... VO2 Max, heart rate monitoring etc.
I find that the exercise is the only thing that keeps me sane in a modern Western environment. I think that lack of exercise amongst modern Westerners results in the increased depression and other psychoses we're prone to.
The Machine stops.
I'm a 22 year old sysadmin at a university and part time student. I've been working at the university since May 2000 and got a full-time, permant appointment in December 2003.
Working at the university has it's benefits, but at the moment I'm considering quiting so that I can just get on with my life. You see, I'm still trying to get a degree. I can assure you that I'll be out of there as soon as I get it!
You see, at a university, you will not get the level of recognition, monetary or academic, that you deserve, unless you're part of the teaching staff and have a high academic qualification.
The stress from the bussines world doesn't scare me at all. In my current job, it happens all too often that I have to sit for hours and fix some cock-up so that students can hand in their assignments, when I really need to work on that exact same assignment. And then everyone wants to know why my grades are shit and when I'm going to finish the degree!?
One coworker said if he'd known engineering (you can substitute programming) was going to be like this, he would have studied proctology.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Most of the comments are pretty much what I expected to see when I saw the question. :)
:), in a sawmill, as an apprentice chef (3 years), as a telemarketer, database administrator, financial and mutual fund portfolio analyst (i.e. slave number cruncher) for a financial management firm (for 8 years), a pc technician, tech manager, and now (for 5 years) as lead developer and senior network engineer.
I have worked (roughly in order) in the woods cutting cedar, landscaper's slave
I've owned two (failed) businesses - both in pc sales and consulting.
My current job is very high stress and long hours. One person said, "Compartmentalize." Well that doesn't always work. Another said, "You have no stress, only responsibility." I've heard people say that myself to me, but they don't know that our NOC handles PSAP - E911 traffie, PUD substation ethernet monitoring, etc. But I love my current job.
To all these people who are essentially calling him a whiner, you don't know what he's dealing with unless your in his shoes, so shut up unless you have some useful advice. =)
** ADVICE ** Every job I've had has had fairly high stress levels except for the cedar cutting. And eventually they all boil down to about the same level. If you don't want to leave your current job you need to find some activity outside of work that has NOTHING to do with work and uses preferably both physical and mental faculties. Take up a form of martial arts, or a musical instrument. Get involved in your home landscaping. Donate community service physical labor to the elderly in your community taking care or repairing their homes or yards. Get involved in a church that is *involved in your community*.
These things will help your stress level tremendously, lower your blood pressure, and you will find your job becomes much more pleasureable as well. And physical activity will help you retrain your thought patterns so that you aren't thinking about work all the time.
waiting for 20 seconds... waiting waiting waiting waiting Miller Lite
[sig] 10 + 10 = 100 [/sig]
To cope with the stressful job, I used to smoke a lot of pot and hash. After working for 16 hours knowing that in 6 hours you have to get up again, hash could take you down quick enough to actually get some sleep. Only problem, it took what I had left of spare time, and more or less was the most important part of my life for 7 or 8 years. So I quit smoking pot cold turkey.
;)
Now I'm training Kung-Fu instead. It gives me focus, an excuse to get out of work early several times a week, and it has fixed my bad back. It also helps me sleep better, and now I know I can kick ass
Still smoke pot though, but only once a month or less, at parties.
Out of these two options I'd recommend Kung-Fu.
Well, my release is blowing shit up in games and spending time with my wife. Find a significant other and you will be amazed how much they can help~!
I am BLaRG!
The time constraints are ridiculous, and if you screw up, you'll have to do the same thing again even faster. (...) The really bad thing was that I learned how to cope with stress, and that really freaked out my co-workers.
...in IT? While I'm not working directly in IT, I see how much stress you get by the boss wanting to change things in a way the underlying structure doesn't support. So you'll have to it again, only faster to meet project deadlines. And no, they can't be extended because of the changed requirements, no sir.
I'd much rather wish to hear how you cope with stress rather than shock-treatment (this'll be so much worse) or abandoning it (get a cushy job). People have different limits to how much stress they can take, becoming a chef might make an already stressed person completely burn out.
Most anything need to deal with some level of stress. Stressed before exams? Stressed situation as guard? Overworked? Missed timetable? Equipment malfunction? Rushhour? And so most everyone need a way to cope, even if it's not the most stressful job in the world...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
A few advantages of contracting:
1) you get paid for every hour you work. It sucks working 70 hours, but it hurts much less when you get paid for those extra 30. I'm of the 'having a life' mentality, so I still prefer a 40 hr/wk as much as possible even when contracting.
2) Mobility. If you get a good gig and do well - usually you will get extended. If it's a bad gig, you can politely decline the extension and move on to something else. Look for contract-to-hire jobs, if it's a good fit, you can often get a perm gig, if not - it's not a big deal to leave.
3) Variety. Meet different people, get exposed to different projects and technologies. As above, if it's good try to stay on, if not - move on, but don't burn bridges doing it.
4) Free time. Depending on you financial needs - I deliberately live a low key / reasonable lifestyle - you can take time off in between contracts, esp if one was particularly stressful or tiring.
The downsides vary depending on your personality; not always stable/consistent work, sometimes contractors are treated like 2nd class citizens (Ive been lucky there), you often need to secure your own health insurance etc.
All in all I still think IT is a great field, that pays pretty well for what we do, keeps the mind active and general speaking you work with a fairly bright people who can hold a conversation.
My 2 cents anyway,
Good luck
Morp
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
i used to do web and print design for a major software company, even working on creating presentations for the ceo and sr. vice presidents under tight timeframe. it got stressful, to be sure.
now i work in politics. i can only say this -- enjoy the 'stress' of doing web design.
go get it
I am a software engineer on paper (BS), however instead of development/programming
.... so at one place (ISP) I ended up dealing with foreign customers, registering domains, giving phone support while in the background I was writing system maintenacne scripts .... (not a good idea)
... when you are 22-25 it's fun to do cabling in a 60x60cm vent hole covered with birdshit ... or installing microwave antennas in -20C on a rooftop ... ... or receiving a page that you MUST go to work immediately because someone kicked the plug on a server and now it does not stand up ......
.. ...
... built a little bubble, where no boss, no marketing crew, no-one is bugging me ... ....
..... ... I can develop my lagging marketing skills... and the best of all: I have no cellphone or pager .. (well I have one for emergencies - too much *jungle-enduro-dirtbike-riding* ...
...
... but since I do not feel like it (because it's saturday, and because I am sleepy) probably within an hour I will be covered in mud and pulling the gas on my dirtbike"
... it just started to rain... gotta get wet :)
I did network/system administration (linux/*NIX/cisco) since the late 90s for ISPs, for development firms, and lately for online casinos...
ENOUGH!
Partly because at many places I ended up doing stuff I would not wish for my enemies. System administrators end up doing the *all around crap* as soon as they discovered to be able to do more than it's in the contract
At the other place I ended up receiving phonecalls at 5am to get to an other city to fix a crashed windows network (*nix sysadmin remember?)....
Not crying
ENOUGH... I said again when I started to do networking/firewalls for an online casino... and ended up fixing customer support windows machines, because after fixing everything there were no more crashes/problems on the cisco/linux department...
Crap machines, 0 ergonomics, crowded workplace cubicles, overcooled machine environment
Enough... so I rented a tiny office with a 128k line
and I am running my own circus
for 6 months now I'm living from affiliate programs and occasionally I do stuff for people I know
I can run my own servers however I want them
The dark side: when you do your own business, you easily end up working for a month without weekends... and that sucks, but when you build your own little empire, it makes a difference
ps: actually since I am "on my own" I sometimes make less money than before, sometimes I make more, but at the end I have the uplifting freedom of being able to choose between: "spending the time at the office even if you do not have anything to do" or "going home early just because not feeling so productive today"
anyway it's saturday and I came in to work
when you are working for someone else the only thing you are missing is *choice*: to do anything without permission/guideance/supervision/orders - on your own
Use your project manager or manager.
I cope by:
1. don't give a crap about stuff that is beyond your control. Inform manager, forget. Flag email for followup so your manager doesn't bitch at you for not reminding them to do their job.
2. Don't be your co-worker's buddy. They will try to pawn stuff off on you. If they are slacking, and it impacts your work, tell them. If nothing happens, refer to #1. Don't let their stress become yours. If they are slacking and it impacts your work, they aren't being a very good friend and team mate, now are they?
3. when dealing with vendors, on first contact, find out their manager's email. If you need something, and your contact doesn't respond within 24 hrs, email their manager. If it is a support issue, give them 30 minutes. If it's critical, give it 5 minutes. Know your escalation paths, and use them.
4. Don't try to be a nice guy. If you do, people will walk all over you. I used to be a nice guy, I got an ulcer. I turned into a sonofabitch, and the stress disappeared, along with the ulcer. It's you or them, never forget that.
5. Read Sun Tzu's art of war.
6. Read The book of 5 rings by Miyamoto Musashi.
7. put what you have learned from 5 & 6 into practice.
8. When the whacked corporate types tell you "There is no I in team" respond with, "true, but there is a me, and me sick of you pretending to be a team player and not playing your position.". Every team has a set of positions, and when someone doesn't carry their weight, the team suffers. Some think being a team player means doing other people's job. It really means every player doing their best and cooperating. If you have to regularly do someone elses job, that person is not being a team player or cooperating, or simply needs training. Refer to #1.
9. Work out and run.
10. try to join a sports team.
l8,
AC
Ok I'm 20 years old I've been working for a company making web sites, databases, the usual stuff. At first I loved my job. It was a creative company that didn't care if you were 5 minutes late and let you take a lunch time when you needed to or keep working to get the job done. Now its all political. Kiss the bosses arse while working a billion hours of overtime and you might get that raise you have been hoping for.
Whats worse is I have to work with a few know-it-alls! Its funny to me how 40 year old people can still act like their 10.
As for stress I say deal with it or find another job enviroment. I will say that if I had a choice to choose money or working less hours I would work less hours. My time is much more valuable to me than any money is.
... a relaxing home life is for. Enjoyable things in the offtime can do wonders for the everyday stress of the job.
Although you also have to wonder if the stress you gain at work is partially because you're not in a field you enjoy. In which case maybe a career change is a good idea.
Your rant fails to take in account that human stress can be psychologically originated. Thus, people who have very stressful jobs can experience much more stress than people in seemingly worse situations. However, this does not mean that, materially speaking, these people don't have much easier lives.
Check out this book by Robert Sapolsky for more information. I attended an amazing lecture by Sapolsky that really opened my eyes to this sort of thing.
great flick
Get a hobby....Boxing, scuba diving, weight lifting, walk your dog named Linuz.....works for me at least ;)
-- Isak Ben.
I do work in a highly active blue color job. When I'm done my shirts are drenched in sweat even on the cold days. Everyday I do this...everyday I'm reminded of why I'm doing this. Everyday I come home wiped out from my day. My father did this and all he had the energy to do afterwards is sit on the couch...my grandfather did this and he raised 4 great smart women. You want less stress? There is stress in every job....mine might be mundane and pointless but it doesn't give you the fealing of accomplishing something you could be proud of. People on assembly lines work their asses off so they can put their kids through college and give you what you have today...and you want to throw that away and go back?
You want less stress? go jogging.
Take a step back and put it in perspective. Urgency is an illusion. The consequences of failure are minor. No one will die. You won't get fired. You won't lose the contract. And even if you do; so what.
Use the snowball as a visualization aid. The snowball is what the earth will be in ten billion years, when we're all dead, life on earth is long gone, and the human race is a lost footnote in the unwritten encyclopedia of galactic history. In the mind numbingly vast halls of space and the inconceivable depths of time none of this daily crap matters at all, not the tiniest bit.
So relax and enjoy your life. In the end, no one will be around to remember, or to care. Do your best because you enjoy the challenge, because you want to live, and learn, and explore. Do it because you feel like it. Or don't.
this is not a sig
You deal with it as it comes, funny as it type this my pager is going off for our cabinets where I work. A lot of people rely on that bottom line in IT and what we do more often than not without any pat on the back. I do what I have to do and have a good time. I enjoy troubleshooting and doing IT stuff now more than some idiot marketing person bitching about their content or site budget hours going over because they don't realize the complications of CMT's and the like.
Depends on the roll of the dice. There's no guaratee of anything at all. :-)
I guess what I'm trying to say is: keep open mind, don't cling to any belief to much, because human minds are limited.
I've found that most web / sysadmin stuff (other than graphical design... i stay clear of that) can be automated if you take just a little bit more time during your initial planning. I've saved countless hours automating tasks (or modularizing pieces of code) that I thought I would only have been done (used) once or twice, that ended up having to be done (used) 10-30 times. You always have to take the task at hand and prepare for the worst outcome. I've found that even if you don't net any time savings writing a script or a program, it is much more enjoyable than doing it manually.
I've also noticed that the time it takes me to write these scripts and programs decreases relative to the number I have already finished. This isn't just because of experience, but because I usually already have a snippit of code that does what i'm trying to do.
Finally, don't do work that has already been done. I'm amazed on a daily basis at the number of freely available tools (perl modules being the best example). If you can't find a free tool, make a free tool (others will thank you)!
I'm only 21 and have risen to senior programmer in my organization using these and other techniques.
This being said, I totally sympathize with the stresses you are experiencing. Infact right now I am holding my screaming son while also trying to finish some homework for one of my college classes =) No matter how good you are and how fast you complete work, there is always an employer out there that will work you into the ground. Talk with friends working at other companies, if you suspect your company is shafting you, look for a new job in your spare time.
Grrrrr... don't bother me, I'm thinking.
I'm exactly in the same situation, working as a xhtml/php developper and sysadmin.
It used to be fun but I now fed up with the job because it never ends.
When I leave off the bed, I read my emails and discover already mails from the job. For important stuff I immediately start working from home.
Then I go to the office. Because there are tons of small but "very urgent" stuff to complete, I often have to eat in front of my computer instead of going out.
I leave the office at a random time. I can't tell my girlfriend and my daughter "I'd be back at 6:30pm", I don't know, it depend on the work.
Then, at home, I turn on the computer, review slashdot, read my professional email, complete some tasks that I couldn't complete before leaving the office, etc. Then I Google for hints on things I will have to do at work the next day. Then I keep an eye on servers, watch Cacti graphs to be sure that everything is ok on the network.
Finally I go to the bed. And no, I can't sleep quietly. If a server goes down I receive a SMS and I have to immediately bring it back up. And maybe go to the office, regardless of the day and the hour. In this very last case, I get some extra salary, but I'd prefer to not have that salary and be totally free of my job.
This is fun for some time. But now I really dream of a work with fixed working hours. And a work that _really_ ends when I'm back home.
I've been thinking about opening a shop to sell shirts. Yes, the salary would be minimal, but at least, when I'm back home, the job is finished. I can do anything else. If I would turn my computer on, it would be to have fun with it or to work on my own projects.
I'm almost sure with such a life style I'd feel better, stressless and I'd better enjoy the life despite the minimal salary and the fact that my IT studies would be pointless.
{{.sig}}
I kind of like the stres. I worked at a movie theatre once when I was younger. (Something about using the cash register as a form of computing. :-)) Basically, in between start times, my job was to stand around and do absofuckinglutely nothing for an hour or two. Literally. (By the way, NEVER, EVER, EVER EAT THE HOT DOGS. And don't get popcorn unless the popper is full. That stuff on the bottom has been there all day.)
:-)
Getting wasted every few days helps, too.
Nowadays, I'm living as someone who has been forced out of a well-paying job, following a work permit extension refusal, but who cannot leave the country either. Whatever I could be doing to keep myself busy and paying taxes, I'm not allowed to do (horrible story, but that's not the point).
Looking back, maybe this situation is not as bad as it looks: nowadays, I have plenty of time to actually enjoy whatever I'm doing with computers (music, Debian packages, creative writing, etc.) and absolutely none of the presure usually related to holding jobs and of the sense of burn-out we all too easily experience when whatever was our hobby becomes our dayjob; we no longer enjoy it.
Here, using Linux and touching a computer is not a burden or a liability, because it's not related to any job. In a sense, it's like I'm back in my dad's basement when I was a teenager typing short programs in BASIC on my CoCo 3, taking my time and really digging it. Isn't life precious enough that it should always be enjoyed this way?
Software is not supposed to be about how to work around a useability issue. - Ken Barber
I would say you should go into self employment. You set the timeframes and people will pay what you ask because they don't know any better.
...but University IT jobs only used to be the greatest, in my neck of the woods anyway. The pay wasn't exactly amazing, but you had a latitude you'd never find in the corporate world, and you were almost expected to go out and try interesting new stuff.
Unfortunately now it's all about the almighty dollar. My employers no longer hire skilled, experienced people; they hire useless pricks for peanuts in the vain hope that they can train them on the job.
My department is now almost overwhelmingly Indian. They are mostly a nice bunch of guys, who mean really well, but have no background beyond partial M$ cert, and no love of the job.
But the worst thing is that the University was suckered into hiring a bunch of white South Africans. Quite apart from the fact that deep down inside (and not so deep) they are still a bunch of arrogant, Nazi scum, they are utterly useless when it come to computers. But they work cheap, so I guess that's all that matter these days.
Yours etc,
An EX University IT worker.
So I get to sleep at a somewhat reasonable time, but I have almost no free time. But my C. S. capstone's almost over.
It's cheaper to rent than own !
I know where the stress of my job comes from.
It is not from the difficulty of the work. I enjoy challenges. (I get stressed if I get bored.)
The stress comes from a job where I am expected to perform above and beyond everyone else, yet I get paid 2/3rds of what I am have made on average for the last 6+ years. (I refer to it as "job lite". All the responsibilities of a regular job, but with a third less paycheck.) I have over 20 years of experience in the IT industry and I am barely scraping by.
My current job covers my bills and food and *nothing* else.
What bothers me is that my employers know this and are just taking advantage of the economic situation.
What is even more bizzare is that they expect some sort of loyalty out of me.
My boss is buying a new house and I can barely afford my rent.
As soon as something better comes along, I am outahere!
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
IT's not as stressful as you think. Run a couple of keys of coke, then see what risk / reward is all about.
All kidding aside :
Women who want to control the marriage have faulty programming, and they are trying to assume the man's role.
All you miserable pussywhipped bastards are free to disagree,
just don't call yourselves men.
It wasn't supposed to be a "poor me" post btw, I was just thinking I wish someone had said something to me like that instead of having to spend a while figuring it out for myself.
But for you "grow up" means "give in" and "give up". Just because you are unhappy or disappointed with how your life is turning out - regrets - doesn't give you any reason to react negativevly against those who still have hope.
You are simply trying to justify your lost opportunities and poor decisions by convincing yourself that neither you, nor anyone else, could have done any better.
Well let me tell you what. I am doing better. I am happy. I have an excellent balance between work which I enjoy and personal time which I enjoy.
I am not married and do not intend to be. I have no children and do not intend to.
I can help others still. I don't have to live for myself and a wife and kids. I also have a very strong relationship with my family.
Whatever floats your boat, but don't come down on someone else just because they haven't bought into the wife/responsibility guilt trip.
I seem to have married a woman that's perfect in every way! :)
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
The best thing we ever did at my office was set up a table tennis table. If some bug is stressing you out, there is nothing like defeating some trash talking co-worker in an epic ping-pong battle. You come back to your desk with a clear head, and a mild sweat. Unfortunately if your trash talking co-worker happened to beat you for the fourth time straight, things can get ugly....
The tap is on full, but the water dribbles out
True enough (unfortunately).
It just had to be said.
I think you should take a short leave of absence and get that factory job. By the middle of your first day, you'll be crying for the comforts of a day spent with computers and an internet connection.
Imagine how much MORE stressful your life will be when you suddenly get replaced by an Indian working at 1/3 your salary.
I tend to yell at people a lot. Business partners, vendors, pretty much whoever is around, except I stop just short of yelling at my customers directly. Venting helps. A lot. You get rid of the frustration and then you can focus better on what needs to be done. Pretty much everyone in the industry understands this concept, and most of them tend to do the same. If you're on the receiving side, just let it roll off.
YOU THINK YOU HAVE STRESS?
Try working side by side with The E.R. at your local hospital (6 story or better else it doesn't count)
Not only is your stress Intense, it often goes away just long enough to tripple in size instantly.
The people who take care of patients in the E.R. They know stress.
Yeah, that's great. I've been working in a factory and trying to get through school, while maintaining all the other responsibilities (rent, car payment, etc.). They pay tuition, but the job is repetitive and some of the people are just pains in the ass. Of course, I'm in a leadership role, which makes it all the more stressful, but I remember being just a regular worker, and the constant pressure of "keep it moving - this needs to be shipped today!!". Being someone who "hates the responsibility", perhaps you would be better served in a job with no responsibilities...like, um, something political, I'm thinking.
I'd rather sit on my butt in an air conditioned office typing up HTML (oh, the stress I had to cut and paste today, phew!) than trying to get someone who doesn't speak English to do their job in 110?+ Summer heat!
Office people sometimes don't know how good they have it, and they are dumber for it. Even where I work, the office people are scared to come out to the production floor, because "it's hot", "it's smelly", "that guy is scary looking", THEN they don't understand why some of us don't like them. You really should just go back to your hole.
Or, welcome to my world.
the first thing i am going to say is to start sticking up for yourself. don't be afraid to tell your manager that you are experiencing too much stress. stop complaining and do something about it.
now, having said that, i am going to make an assumption about your situation. i imagine that you are the guy who deals with the website. you have a small group of people who are constantly bringing new things for you to deal with. the problem being that people are dumping a lot of various things on you and you have to react quickly. if this is an accurate description of your situation, then i have a pretty good solution. that is, you need to create a process for your co-workers to use when giving you materials and work. you need to ween them out of the habit of just dumping stuff on you.
the problem is that, without a system, your co-workers have no choice other than to drop by your desk and load more crap onto your plate. you'd be surprised at how most people are receptive to following your instructions if you come up with a good, clear process. a few people may be resistant to having some kind of "system" when it has been so easy for them to just come to your desk and give you work in whatever format, with whatever deadline they choose. for that reason, you need to give them something in return. your process needs to give them something back. provide turnaround times. stick with them. send a notification when the work was done.
a couple of important things about designing a process like this - set the times to a reasonable level so that you can accomplish everything without stressing.
if there is simply too much work - no matter how you organize it, then you should look for ways to get work off of your plate. is there one repetitive task? put some serious time into automating it. pull one weekend and automate a task if it can save you 1 hour every week. would it save you 5 minutes if your co-workers would do some simple thing before submitting work to you? build that into your process. those things will add up very quickly.
there's so many other things you can do as well. just put some thought into it. the key is, nobody is going to make your work situation better for you except yourself.
TODO: come up with a clever sig
try going to the bathroom in a factory... when you have someone telling you to hurry (that's after you begged to be let off the line) then they just kinda half do things until you get back so now you are backed up even farther, and you spend the time until your next bathroom or regular break trying to get caught up. then theres the fact that you will go insane from the mind-numbing insert part, hit button, take part out, repeat, try typing that out 1000 times and you will get bored, now imagine actually doing it for 8 hours straight (if you are lucky enough to be albe to go home then) and then theres the stress of making do on $8/hour instead of web developer pay... you will learn real stress... your stress stops at least when you leave the office... for alot of people it starts as soon as you leave (refer back to making $8/hour oh, by the way benefits are $70/week)
Even if you live more than once (an option I don't argue against).. you should live as if you only live once, and live as best you can (working to make the world a better place)...
meh
Want some real world feedback? Envision yourself in your current position, college guy in his first year. You are considering who to take as a roommate and one guy tries to impress you with his report card from the 8th grade. Not only are you not going to be impressed, you are going to bitchslap him for bringing his 8th grade report card when everybody else is telling you about the killer stuff they did their last year of college or during the summer after they graduated.
Anybody in college not only went to 8th grade but completely dismisses as a potential candidate anybody that brings up how glorious they were in the 8th grade.
Fast forward a few years to the working world, bosses hiring people to do whatever you do with a stack of resumes and you proudly present your associates degree. All the other guys hammering out a bachelor's could have also applied for and got their AA in whatever along the path but didn't even bother filling out the paperwork because in the big scope of things not only does an AA really matter, anybody proud of their AA isn't catching the clue. Refer back to the top of this for a good example.
If you honestly want to work as a Web Developer and want to add value to yourself to a prospective employer, forget anything you did in the 8th grade and forget an AA. Look into a Cisco Certification program that will teach you from the ground up how to design high availability, scalable, high performance networks as a value add to your job as WebMaster - it will be faster, more productive, have a better return on investment (dollars and hours) and will make you stand out when it is time to hire and promote (or even retain during layoffs.)
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
1) Exercise is crucial. Run, do karate, play the drums, whatever it takes, but do it at least every other day or your head will explode.
2) Check Monster.com or your local want ads once a month. 15 minutes of looking for a job reminds you what an awful pain in the ass job switching is, and your existing job suddenly doesn't look so bad.
3) I pay all our bills (mortgage, etc..) by hand at the kitchen table with the checkbook. Seeing all that money going the opposite direction every month does wonders for your work ethic.
I work as the sole sysadmin for a small ISP, which means that I have a pager that can go off any time, any day. Stupid little mistakes like blown semicolons can result in thousands of customers not getting service. And then there's dealing with bonehead customers.
But I'm not stressed out.
My boss admittedly helps a lot as he doesn't ask for deadlines, just to get things done as soon as possible, and when it's done it's done. I cooperate by doing my best to make sure things happen. I naturally desire a finished product, and as such they get done in a reasonable amount of time. I also don't treat the job as if the responsibility for the operation of the universe rests solely on my shoulders. Sure, the pager might go off at 3am, and I might have to get my butt to the server room in 15 minutes flat (this is doable for me), but I don't have to act as if every second counts, and that I should shoot everyone that gets in my way. I still manage 99.9% uptime, which is mostly defined by the design of the system and leaving things be anyway.
My wife works at a Visa call center as a customer service rep. It's a place with high turnover, irritating idiots that ream you out over $5 that they rightfully owe, and high expectations on the part of management. It's also a place where management works hard to make sure they can keep employees longer than two weeks, by offering great benefits, allowing the CSRs to vent about boneheads, bonuses for hard work, and free food. They also have a very clearly defined reward structure for their top performers.
But what she does for her stress is her gym membership. It's good for her health, it's helping her lose weight, but most importantly, she can beat the crap out of the machines instead of the customers, and exercise generally helps a lot with stress anyway.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
I relax by strangling cute little duckies at the pond in front of children. By their cheerful screams, I know they love it, and their mothers do too!
Vote in November. You won't regret it.
makes work more interesting, anyway
...BITE ME.
I'd kill for a decent tech job. Even a web design gig would be preferable to working in a factory. You can take my word for it.
Though, while I'm on the subject, want to trade? I'm sure I could deal with sitting in a nice, clean, air-conditioned cubicle while you sweat your ass off with your choice of 'white-trash junkie' and 'illegal immigrant' next to you on the assembly line.
Piss off.
Try being an aircraft mechanic. When an RN fucks up, individuals die. When a mechanic fucks up, a whole plane can go down. Now THAT"S stress.
I'd just like to say thanks to everyone who has responded to this post. Not to mention the question in the first place. Mod this one up, appretiation for the players in this game is the reason a lot of us are here.
There are only three sure-fire ways to accomplish relaxation: First Person Shooters Drinking Sex
Being that I am in my Fourties and lived through 4 years of the Army and 37 years of Sunnnyvale/SF/Silicon Valley I have come to the conclusion that its best to wake up with a Rockstar( Bawls too) and smoke a joint in the evening. .
Now I know this will be a very unpopular thing to say but in my life time I have seen so many changes in technology that sometimes its best to look after your own mental heath and not be chasing the next best thing
Doesnt anbody remember that Sun's Agnew campus was once a mental hospital ,
CONSTANTLY
The dingo ate my sig.
Bang on! Definition of Slashdot in 100 words or less!
Give, and ye shall receive...
As long as I can dream about smacking around the assholes who bother me, I'm happy.
you see, that's part of me in the above. Not all of it, but it's accurate. I've never had an IT job, never made more than lower middle class pay at best. With the exception of two short term sales jobs, I've always labored, some skilled, some very skilled, some just plain human forklift action, and I am a small human as dudes go. Many of the jobs I developed skills at evaporated, had to learn new ones, accumulate more tools, more expertise, re start over at the bottom, then-wham, something happens, start over. 5 years ago it was getting a paralysed arm, knocked me out of my two concurrent jobs, lost my home, actually moved out into the street for some months eventually as I just went broke over 6 months. Arm got better enough to the point I can work at MY pace, but not on a CLOCKS pace, just can't do it. Finally got a job I could do that came with housing, same as I have now. I am LUCKY now I found a job with a guy who will still hire born-here legal americans, because he could be like most of the other turncoat profiteering scumbags and hire the illegals, who are all over the county I am in. He's honest, pays fair for what I do, but it's lowest rung stuff, but I can still exist. If I have to drop down any lower, or drop to NO job, I will be forced to beg or go outlaw, neither an attractive proposition, and I am lots closer to what would be retirement age than what would be considered "entering the workforce" age.
Frankly, I just can't relate to some of the other hard luck stories I read here. I can sympathise somewhat, but it's theoretical to me, I simply cannot fathom having that kind of money and being broke or stressed out. I know it's possible of course, but still, no frame of reference, best I can do is show other levels of stress that are quite possible, and mine is by no means the worst.
the blue collar guys, for 20 years+ now, begged their brothers the white collars to just please take serious as the jobs were being destroyed. We got ignored, laughed at, told to STFU and etc. We moved, learned new skills, tried it again, over and over. We were going to be "trickled down" on, which consisted of getting pissed on our backs and told it was raining. Now I can see it's happening to people with absolutely no comprehension of how abysmally bad it can get to, or how stressful it can get to have nothing. I wish them well,and good luck, because if they can't see what's coming to this nation,and to THEM, even with all that college training and white collar experience and IT smarts and high IQs and whatnot, then there's nothing anyone can tell them, they just won't be able to see it coming until it really bites them, and hard, and they will have less frame of reference to deal with it than a person like me would have dealing with all that plenty and calling it stressful..
If you've read most of the posts thus far, you'll notice several posts along the lines of:
"Stop whining. I work X hours a week doing Y work."
And this points towards a very important factor which plays very much into stress: perception.
You see, by having a severely stressful job, the "quit whining" posters are able to step down to a moderately sressful job and percieve it as relatively non-stressful. They are able to percieve your job as rather easy.
So maybe you could just go for the most brutally hellish job you can find, work that for a while, quit and go elsewhere... that should change your perception!
Much like fear, stress requires your consent. It only exists because you cause it to exist.
Where do you live, and what section of IT are you in?
"The problem is this, I LOVE developing websites, but I HATE the stress and responsability that comes with a the job." Simple. Every time some pointy haired boss comes up and asks: "is it done yet?" You say: "No, that's your job! I solve technical problems, you solve resourcing and scheduling problems."
If there was no stress or responsibility they wouldn't pay you to do the job. Chances are you are not so amazingly creative that they will pay you to spew your wonderful ideas all day long.
I once thought that if I was just an amazing developer, and was able to solve any programming problem, that it would be a sure fire means to success. WRONG.
Try to put yourself in the shoes of the investors in your company (or the owner or whatever) - what would ever drive them to pay you to just sit around and do whatever you want - you have to PRODUCE, and that involves stress and most importantly it involves responsibility.
Don't ever complain about not wanting to accept responsibility, it looks very bad, and makes you stick out as a welfare case.
M@
Krispy Cream is people
I am in a similar situation... I am 24, and going to be married in a little over a month. I currently work on a moderately large customer specific extension to an already large IT application. Lots of things don't work as they should. There is not a truly satisfactory workaround every time. I am extremely fortunate that the client is savvy and reasonable, and my manager is likewise. If that were not the case, I would not just indefinitely and silently tough it out, hoping to be rewarded. Employees that do valuable work need to be kept. What most companies take for granted is that these employees need their current jobs even more. Their insensitivity to employees' lives is a result of that assumption. Corporations are not looking out for you, that's your responsibility. Always keep current anonymous resumes up on monster, dice, etc... If you have current, marketable skills, a good resume, and a record of success, you will get contacted from time to time, if you're lucky, frequently. Find out more about the positions that look good and interview. If you get an offer (or I suppose if you're REALLY sure you will, but I'd want to have two other employers REALLY interested before I'd feel safe), you're in a wonderful position. You'll probably notice your stress level going way down, even if things don't slow down at work... feeling trapped affects stress level in a big way. Now once you're in this position, never try and use quitting as a bluff (threaten to leave if the other job isn't as good or slightly better for you). I wouldn't even play the card if I could avoid it (remember that you want to see whether you want to keep working here, not just whether you're needed). However, once you do have this card in hand, you can feel much more free go to exactly the appropriate people within your company, and explain what you like about your situation and what could be improved, and as best as you can, suggest ways to improve matters without complaining. If you get positive feedback AND some action, great, stay. If not, it's up to you how to handle things... if there was no understanding that came of those conversations, you may wish to simply move on to that next job. If the understanding was there, things were not changing yet, but you thought the chance was pretty good that they could, you might want to let them know that it's very important for you to see these changes starting soon and see if there's any movement then. If so, great, but if not I'd wait till I had an offer in hand (if I didn't at the beginning of this process!), inform them that you have found another position that you believe is a better match for you (don't say it's a better position, even if it is), but hold off accepting the other offer for a couple days. You may find out at this point that they're truly desperate to keep you. If they sweeten the deal a whole lot, it ~may~ be worth staying (I'd definitely keep the resumes out there, though... things can turn sour quickly). If they just promise to try and sweeten the deal, or only sweeten it so much, and it's a hard decision at the end of the day, I'd suggest moving on... you only want to stay on if you can be enthusiastic about it (if you're anything less and they fear that, they may look for someone with their sights set lower to replace you). I definitely prefer informing them that you've found another position that may be better to ultimatums because if they do decide to keep you by sweetening the deal, they don't feel like they're buckling to demands... everything has a much more positive feel to it. Ah, career decisions and corporate politics! The things they don't teach you in school.
frankly I don't think that is IT. Thats far more a creative position than a technical position. IT is best defined as the technical maintenance of a network/system. I will admit programming is technical, but beying on both ends of it my current E-Commerce development job doesn't even begin to compare to my last position as a network engineer.
:) frankly the real world of IT is not really experiencing a down fall any more. there are plenty of technical jobs out there. I lived in south florida, land of all that are unemployed (or so it seems). well anyways in 1 year there were greater than 100,000 jobs layed off, mostly tech support and call center positions. but even still, 1 year later the market is still livable. I personally wasn't out of work for much more than 2 months at a stretch since sept 11th. but I am a technician/engineer and I know alot of platforms.
beyond my rant about programming isn't IT, dealing with stress? a good drum n bass mix and alot of very good pot. oh and cappuccino's, lots of those
focusing your skills on only one small part of the IT industry is kind of a waste, with the ever changing technology one day you could be a guru at what you do and 3 months later you could be soo outdated it's useless to even attempt to keep up.
frankly my personal beliefs are that software developers should not bitch about lack of IT jobs, because the shear truth of the matter is "THERE ARE IT JOBS OUT THERE!!!". programming jobs, slim very slim. but since programming is erroneously included with IT the stats fall, people complain, but if the individual whom is unemployed with all this theoretical knowledge would just apply the skills tought in CompSci/Engineering they could easily do more than *just* write code or *just* design printed circuits.
I guess the wisdom here is you need to adapt to the changing industry as your skills increase and the market changes. I never thought 7 years ago when I was building pc's that today I'd be developing CRM/ERP database apps, E-Commerce sites and managing a multihomed BGP/OSPF network. I always tried to see the booms before they happened and I got lucky a couple of times. But I had developed my skills enough that jobs that seemed over my head weren't soo far over my head. I'd just buy a book on whatever I needed to learn and I made it through. I guess we all in this field just need to make our selves adaptable to the demands and trends in the industry. atleast if we want a steady pay cheque.
BOOZE.
Our greatest enemy is neither a single man, nor is it a nation, it is, as it has always been, our own greed.
I live now in a very small town, transfered from our sister company but the thing is, theres no other techs in this WHOLE TOWN. So im the only on call tech for the whole town and 4 majour client corporations. all carrying about 200+ employees with computers and issues. Granted at first this was a dream job . I mean the ammount of things I've seen and learnt are astounding, but working 8 - 15 hours + then comming home to 'sleep' for UP to 6 hours kinda sucks.Some days you wonder how do I put up with the stress. When you have a store manager who for some reason either hates you or you just naturally piss her off (totally not intentional but hell if i tried i could make her have an anurism or something...... I will end up quitting this job if i dont find a stress break. How DO you deal with huge ammounts of stress. I get 2 weeks of vacation a year but i mean if I take it now i have 6 months of no vacation ill go inSANE. The boss is afraid of spiders but terrifying her with spiders may be a great way to get rid of some stress it may in turn CAUSE stress.
I too am 24, married, and had a successful career. Until I was downsized two weeks ago. I am interviewing to stay in IT, but the job market is flooded right now. :)
If you don't like what you've got, look for something better, but don't leave until the something better is guaranteed in writing, and as everyone has said, don't expect it to be any less stressful.
This is an article i had saved from years ago (before Internet hit us)... I could not cut it shorter and still retain the humor.... Here it goes.
...and either beat yourself up, or feel guilty, depressed, discouraged, and/or inadequate when you don't meet them."
How to Stay Stressed
Although the De Anza Health Office long been an advocate of stress
management, stress, tension, and burnout are still common complaints
of students, faculty, and staff alike. On account of this, we have
come to the following conclusion: YOU ALL WANT TO STAY STRESSED!
The following provides you with a few reasons why.
STRESS HELPS YOU SEEM IMPORTANT.
Anyone as stressed as you must be working very hard and, therefore, is probably doing something very crucial.
IT HELPS YOU TO MAINTAIN PERSONAL DISTANCE AND AVOID INTIMACY.
Anyone as busy as you are certainly can't be expected to form
emotional attachments to anyone. And let's face it, you're not much fun to be around anyway.
IT HELPS YOU AVOID RESPONSIBILITIES.
Obviously you're too stressed to be given any more work. This gets you off the hook for all the mundane chores; let someone else take care of them.
IT GIVES YOU A CHEMICAL RUSH.
Stress might be considered a cheap thrill, and you can give yourself a "hit" anytime you choose. But be careful, you might get addicted to your own adrenaline.
IT HELPS YOU AVOID SUCCESS.
Why risk being "successful" when by simply staying stressed you can avoid all of that? Stress can keep your performance level low enough that success won't ever be a threat.
STRESS ALSO LETS YOU KEEP YOUR AUTHORITARIAN MANAGEMENT STYLE.
The authoritarian style of "Just do what I say!" is generally permissible under crisis conditions. If you maintain a permanently stressed crisis atmosphere, you can justify an authoritarian style all the time.
Are you worried now about how to stay stressed? You'll have no trouble if you practice the following clinically proven methods:
NEVER EXERCISE. - Exercise wastes a lot of time that could be spent worrying.
EAT ANYTHING YOU WANT. - Hey, if cigarette smoke can't cleanse your system, a balanced diet isn't likely to.
GAIN WEIGHT. - Work hard at staying at least 25 pounds over your recommended weight.
TAKE PLENTY OF STIMULANTS. - The old standards of caffeine, nicotine, sugar, and cola will continue to do the job just fine.
AVOID "WOO-WOO" PRACTICES. - Ignore the evidence suggesting that
meditation, yoga, deep breathing, and/or mental imaging help to reduce stress. The Protestant work ethic is good for everyone, Protestant or not.
GET RID OF YOUR SOCIAL SUPPORT SYSTEM.- Let the few friends who are willing to tolerate you know that concern yourself with friendships only if you have time, and you never have time. If a few people persist in trying to be your friend, avoid them.
PERSONALIZE ALL CRITICISM.- Anyone who criticizes any aspect of your work, family, dog, house, or car is mounting a personal attack. Don't take time to listen, be offended, then return the attack!
THROW OUT YOUR SENSE OF HUMOR. - Staying stressed is no laughing matter, and it shouldn't be treated as one.
MALES AND FEMALES ALIKE - BE MACHO. - Never ever ask for help, and if you want it done right, do it yourself!
BECOME A WORKAHOLIC.- Put work before everything else, and be sure to take work home evenings and weekends. Keep reminding yourself that vacations are for sissies.
DISCARD GOOD TIME MANAGEMENT SKILLS. - Schedule in more activities every day than you can possibly get done and then worry about it all whenever you get a chance.
PROCRASTINATE. - Putting things off to the last second always produces a marvelous amount of stress.
WORRY ABOUT THINGS YOU CAN'T CONTROL - Worry about the stock market, earthquakes, the approching Ice Age, you know, all the big issues.
BECOME NOT ONLY A PERFECTIONIST BUT SET IMPOSSIBLY HIGH STANDARDS...
"stop playing with your fucking water glass and get back to work!"
Lump lingered last in line for brains, and the ones she got were sorta rotten and insane.
mmmmm opiate, though an OC does in a pinch
stop working for PHBs and Classical Managers who do not care about your own well being and stress levels.
You job will soon be outsourced anyway. Some day in the near future even burger flipping jobs will be L1 or H1B Visa workers instead of US Citizens.
Do what I did, join the Dark Side, I am taking business management in college. I will either work as a manager or start up my own business. Either way I should be able to earn more money and have less stress than when I was a lowley, overstressed, and abused IT worker.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
I wish I had mod points today - this is the best advice. I'm an IT Director with a staff of 13 and do have a pretty stressful job. A couple of years ago, I got married and my wife is probably one of the most supportive people I've ever met. I'm probably less stressed these days than I was a few years ago when I had LESS responsibility.
I hate to sound like an asshole, but after working at netscape for 3 years, then getting laid off, and my next job being as a cable TV/Phone installer in phoenix arizona, I'd kill for a job in the IT industry again.
Fuck the deadlines, after digging 200ft trenches through rocks, sand, and wet grass, in 115 degree heat day in and day out, playing in attics that reach 160 degrees in the mid-day sun, I'd kill a job in a nice air conditioned cubicle.
Seriously, if your job sucks so much, give it up for someone who will appreciate it more, and don't bitch about it. I've been searching for a job in the tech industry out here in phoenix since january of 2003. I'm still unemployed, and have been looking for a UNIX Sysadmin/Release engineering job.
How about this: give me your job, and you can be an unemployed single father who's wife left you after you lost your job, because you're not raking in 93,000 dollars a year anymore. Try raising a kid off of food stamps, unemployment, and public healthcare, and be happy you've got a fucking job, unlike millions all over the country.
I had to quit working full-time IT because of stress-related health issues.
Now I go home at noon most days, have a quick nap to recharge, and go off and do something artistic.
Usually involving computers, ironically... Rolling my own MP3s and teaching myself how to use The Gimp. So my net computer use is actually *up* but I'm not as tired and my mind is a lot clearer.
But I should have changed the job parameters a few months earlier, when the first warning signs appeared. Stoicism, combined with a badly misplaced sense of duty, led me to wage-slavedrive myself to that breaking point.
Take care of your health at all costs, folks. Once it's gone, it is soooo gone.
Stressed is Desserts spelt backwards...
I dont know why but that always seems to help me:)
I grew up on a farm. No I didn't get up with the chickens, but I did have many 12 hour days of physical labor in some god-awful heat. So when I get stressed, I remember I'm making 6 figures, SITTING all day in an air conditioned office typing a bunch of stuff into a computer. Even better, I don't have my old man around to yell at me. Next time you take a vacation in the summer, come visit my dad's farm. You'll be thankful for your job and boss after a week.
Ok, let me resolve this issue once and for all.
I am in an ACADEMIC setting in the UNITED STATES that's filled with people from THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES.
Guess what? These third world people are just as stressed out by projects, homework, and tests as their white American counterparts.
If the "Sally Struthers" theory was true, then these people would not feel stress because life in their home countries is so horrible compared to "blissful" life in America. They would laugh at the white Americans scornfully, calling them ninnies and wimp-asses. But they do no such thing. In fact, the students commiserate together.
The foreigners are stressed. And the Struthers theory is wrong.
I'm replying now, with 777 ahead of me, so you've probably seen quite a few tales of how bad your job isn't.
:) The last memorable crash I had was me kinda replacing /lib/ with something that shouldn't have been there. :)
:)
:)
Programming can be stressful, especially when the customer doesn't exactly know what they want, and you want to make the project perfect. There isn't much worse than getting the specs from a customer (i.e. boss), and putting together something beautiful, just for them to come back and say it doesn't do what they wanted. Of course it does do exactly what they wanted, that's why you spent a good bit of time with them before you started, asking lots of questions.
As senior sysadmin where I work, where the majority of my job should be really high-end technical stuff, plenty of web programming comes to me. "Can you do this?" Of course I can. Does it put priority over problem X? Of course it does, whatever the bosses thing of now takes priority over anything they told you to do previously, until they realize that the last thing isn't done yet, and even if you tell them the last thing isn't done because they said the new thing is priority, it doesn't matter.
This isn't a problem being a programmer or sysadmin, it's a problem with working. Bosses always want everything from you, and don't understand creativity or time constraints. Like right now, I should probably be working on a half dozen other things, but I'm anything but inspired (and it's the middle of the weekend), so even if I sat down and forced myself to write something, it would suck. Inspiration is everything for creative work.
No matter how much stress you're under, it will never be as much as someone else. I'm on call 24/7, and answer directly two 3 people. Anything and everything comes across my desk eventually, even stuff I don't want any part of.
Friday, one of our developers had a computer problem. He was using Windows XP, and it crashed. Hard.. That was it, he didn't want Windows any more, he wanted Linux. So I gave it to him. I felt this was a reasonable use of my time, if it would mean that he wouldn't be dealing with system crashes any more. He did ask me, how often does Linux crash? I had to be honest. The only times I've "crashed" linux machines, is when I'm doing things I really shouldn't have been doing.
Your responsibility is less than someone elses. For example, your boss either is depending on you to do your work, and possibly answering to other people (investors, partners, shareholders). If your job doesn't get done, he's going to be in shit over it.
Just imagine if you were a programmer for Microsoft. Not only would you have the stress of making sure your program works well (ha!), but all of your friends will be calling you every time their computers crash. "Hey Bob, you work at Microsoft, right? Can you fix my computer?" That's stress.
Just find a way to relax and unwind after work. When you're not working, don't worry about work, or at least try. Have you hit the point where you start dreaming about programming, debugging a large project all night, just to wake up in the morning to find that you were sleeping, and not a single line was written, and you don't remember any of it, but you know it was perfect in your dream? Aparently that's a common one. I used to have them all the time, but then I started drinking more. Alcohol fixes everything.
The only programmers with no-stress jobs were programmers during the dot-bomb days, who got hired with huge salaries, that didn't actually do anything. Those days are gone.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I didn't either, but there were three things that happened in my life that changed that.
;)
1. I became a manager and had to worry how I was going to explain to employees like yourself that they're fired... or laid-off... or whatever. I don't like hearing that news myself, but let me tell you giving it isn't a picnic either. You want to avoid it, you want to train, help, negotiate... but the fact is the job has to get done or the cutbacks have to happen.
2. Get married. Now it's not just you. And that little voice in your head that you used to tell to shut-up? Well, it's got company that won't shut-up. And more importantly it acts unpredictably, you might not be worried about some issue (pick: income, housing, health, children, future, news, etc.), but your spouse will be.
3. Children. Now it's really not just you. No divorce lawyer in the world can make your children disappear. They're fantastic, you'll love them... but imagine getting laid off or just worrying about your employment future when you have all those mouths to feed.
So you had better figure out how to deal with the stress you think you are facing because it only gets worse from here.
Personally, I don't let it get to me. Fake it until you make it. That's my motto.
These opinions guaranteed or your money back.
Thanx dudes, I have been thinking for long time about leaving my job for stress it causes. And now I'll do it. I just have had a hard time deciding to stay or go.
Dang! You lost me right there.
Excellent points. I manage software projects at a University and I make it my goal to keep developers as happy as possible. We aim for release dates and whatnot, but I would rather adjust the release date than make people work 12 hour shifts and resent the experience. I've found that being flexible and understanding on my part has made for a more professional environment.
Regarding exercise, I couldn't agree more. Although I can't make it every day, my cycling routine keeps me ticking.
-- Solaris Central - http://w
I work as a technician at a school with around 1500 machines and 4 techs. I work hard and long hours. I deal with students, plenty of whom are idiots. I deal with staff, plenty of whom are clueless. Is it stressful?
...and they reckon are leaving the security industry in Australia because they are all trying to avoid background checks. I left because many of the jobs basically suck, and for $14.50/hour, they are simply not worth it.
Well, to put it in context, I worked in security for just over two years. I worked as a casual employee at pubs and clubs at least 6 nights every week. I would get assaulted (and by assault, I don't mean they pushed me, or they were trying to punch someone else and I got involved as a part of my job, I mean they were having a go at me) around 20 times every week. Imagine that for stress. Imagine turning up at your 5-day a week job and four times a day, every day, having someone come up to you and try to beat the bejesus out of you. Imagine having people come up and threaten you with everything under the sun hundreds of times every week. Imagine having people regularly attack you with broken glass, knives, tyre-irons, etc. Imagine getting spat on several times a week. Imagine having balloons full of urine thrown at you.
More than that, we were nearly always understaffed, and I can recall working at a nightclub for a while which regularly had in excess of 1500 patrons with just 5 security. One guy at the door, one guy at the paying point, one guy in each of the main rooms and one guy roaming. There were times when I was the only security person in a room of 700-800 people. Then there was my regular jaunt, a five room pub, which I often worked solo at, and never had more than three security on at any one time. You do the math.
Of course, as a casual employee, if I got sick or was injured, my boss was happy for me to take time off. He would just give the hours to someone else, and I wouldn't get paid. If my injuries were as a result of my job, I would get work cover to the tune of about 75% of my usual wage (plus whatever my medical expenses were).
Towards the end, there were groups of people who knew me by name and would actively come out just to have a go at me, simply because I was the main cause behind their mates or colleagues being arrested.
Give me IT any day of the week.
After 28 years in retail store management, the last 3 in IT have been like heaven!!!!!!!
(why am I bothering, no one ever reads AC posts)
But Zsau's definitely right on this one... working at a desk job for most of your adulthood is terrible on your health. I've read that the longest living people, almost without exception, worked outdoors or had jobs w/ some moderate physical activity.
I am an on call sysadmin with all that entails. Yes, I get called at 3:00 AM on occasion. Yes, I work more then 8 hours a day on occasion. How is this stressful?
Want real stress? Try waiting tables for a living. Imagine rushing between all your customers tables for hours on end, making sure that each of them has their needs met, in the hopes that some of these rude people will leave you enough in tips so you will be able to keep a roof over your head this month. All day long you worry about whether or not this customer is going to give you a good tip and then worry about the next customer and the next customer.
I think that you haven't had a rough life if you find IT work stressful.
Go to work each day shaverd and clean, keep a positive (if not upbeat) attitude, and be reponsive to your boss. Give a good effort to get the job done on time and to deliver a quality product... ...always keeping in mind that nothing that happens at work matters - at all.
Then when you go home, forget about it.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
My Mum always says to me whenI tell her my Job/Life/Whatever is stressing me out.
"Stress.... you dont know stress, try having bombs dropping on you day and night" She was in London during the Blitz.
She has a good point !
I add that to, when I was your age, Eat your dinner the kids in Ethiopia would be glad etc etc.
Stress is what you make of it. The Dalai Lama has had a stressfull life in comparison to mine, he seems happy enough.
take a chill pill
In the business world, while you might (or might not) get monetary "recognition", you still won't get the respect you might deserve, unless you're part of management and/or have a degree in Business Administration. If it's the business world's money you want, go for it, but don't mistake that for respect.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
i drink... heavily
I just wanted to say that you got to a very good point and as someone who worked VERY hard (not a factory, but building/construction sites) to pay for my school and now I'm working in IT (support desk, but it's just for start) I can only TOTALLY AGREE with you... This stress I get today is nothing compared to what I got in the past. Too bad your post was moderated only as score 2. Should be score 5 insightful, IMHO. Looks like moderators had never worked physically. Good for them, I guess... Thanks.
Remember that the alternative is being poor and working at Barnes & Noble until another IT job comes round...
Don't knock the stress...If the pay is worth it...keep it...
"Helping to keep you two steps ahead of the Thought Police!"
couldn't resist...
I live in the US; in New Jersey
or-
In NJ, Passaic Co.
or-
In a three bedroom house, in the basement.
The light at the end of the tunnel is a train.
when you're not at work...
Don't get married so young.
If possible, listen to Tom Leykis on the radio, or at least learn about Leykis 101.
Plus, Kramer tried it on an episode of Seinfeld:
The Friars Club
gs: Rob Schneider (Bob) Pat Cooper (Himself) Rob Schneider (Bob) Samantha Smith (II) (Hallie) Lisa Kushell (Connie) Robert Martin Robinson (Maitre 'd) Norman Large (Detective) Peggy Lane (Waitress) The Flying Karamazov Brothers (The Flying Sandos Brothers) Heidi Swedberg (Susan) John O'Hurley (Peterman) Phil Morris (Jackie Chiles)
George is happy because he has a three-month reprieve. The wedding is delayed until June (just in time for the end of the May sweeps and a cliffhanger!). Meanwhile he is also excited because Jerry is going to go out with Susan's best friend. He envisions their friendship in the future as being "Gatsby"-like. Jerry is trying to get into the Friars Club, but loses a jacket he "borrowed" for dinner there, at a performance of comedic jugglers that was "worked on" by Susan's friend. Kramer tries to duplicate the sleeping patterns of Da Vinci and falls asleep at some inopportune moments; one of which puts him put in the Hudson River. Peterman hires a deaf employee and Elaine suffers the consequences, when she gets loaded with some of his work. Trying to see how deaf he really is, Elaine comes on to him, which Peterman overhears and tries to help out their budding relationship.
The glass *was* full... I drink from it until it's halfway down: half empty
The glass *was* empty... I fill it until it is halfway up: half full
Think of it this way... if you are *filling* the glass and you make it halfway, you have half-filled the glass so it is half-full. If you are *emptying* the glass and you get halfway through, you are half-empty.
Half-full or half-empty is not dependant on the individual, but on what transition the level of fluid in the glass is taking.
My experience working for The George Washington University was rather similar to what you describe -- you work hard, and are criticised for it. In the end, I was fired for not going through the extra hoops that management kept trying to get me to jump through, while others in my department weren't producing work.
I found my health significantly improved after being fired, and I'm now working in a government job that's much less stressful, although there was a drop in pay involved.
And as for the above advice -- teammates mean nothing if most of them are slacking off.
Here's part of the intro to the letter that I sent to HR and the CIO after I was fired:
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Hi, I'm a second year student majoring in comp sci and economics at a major canadian university. All this recent talk about the tech downturn, offshoring etc is a bit scary. stress in a job is the last of my fears right now. So, are there any jobs for a person with a double major BS in comp sci and economics besides maybe a few in banks? is there any area in either comp sci or econ that i could focus on to improve marketablity? ive heard networking is hot and am considering getting CCNA and taking up some upper year courses in networking, metwork security and web programming. any suggestions on how to bag one of these "stressful jobs"?