One Terrible Job: IT Manager

editingwhiz writes "I suppose we've always suspected this to be true, but IT Manager's Journal reports that a recent email survey by the authors of a new book called 'Crap Jobs' says that IT managers have the U.K's third-worst job -- ranking just below phone sex operator (No. 1) and ferry cabin cleaner (No. 2). Hmmm. Do you agree?" (ITMJ, like Slashdot, is part of OSTG.) Maybe it's better in the U.S.?

Comments

Whine, whine, whine

[DogDude]

One reason that I'm not in IT is beause of the people. People who whine over an IT management job. Are you kidding me?
1. They get paid a LOT more than minimum wage.
2. They usually get to work in a climate controlled office.
3. They usually get to sit down.
4. They generally don't have to punch a time clock.

These few things here make ANY IT job better than about 90% of the jobs on the planet. Quit whining and repeat after me, "I am not entitled to any particular kind of job."

Re:Whine, whine, whine

[Anonymous Coward]

4. They generally don't have to punch a time clock.

In principle I agree with the rest of your points, but this is not an "advantage" to an IT Job... in fact, more often than not it means that you get paid the same for the week where the lusers shitstorm the network by clicking on their viagra emails or what have you, and you spend 75 hours fixing it, versus the weeks where everything's running smoothly and you "only" have to put in 50.

Re:Whine, whine, whine

[ShawnDoc]

>>2. They usually get to work in a climate controlled office.

>That normally means cold as hell...

I wish Slashdot had a -1 Whiny Bitch moderation....Also why to prove the original poster's point about most IT admins being a big bunch of complainers.

Re:Whine, whine, whine

[haruchai]

The 75 hours are usually put in by the IT admin NOT the manager. Trust me, I'm speaking from personal experience here. It's true that the managers had to be kept informed but, sometimes, that meant calling them at the golf course (I'm not joking) to give a status report.

Re:Whine, whine, whine

[Dr_Marvin_Monroe]

yeah, I suppose that you are right about the "I am not entitled to any particular kind of job" thing, but it's all in the eye of the beholder which jobs are the best...

1) I suppose getting "a LOT" more than minimum wage makes up for all the crappy things you get called when you institute some stupid policy that the CEO thought up, or helps you forget the way they think up extra secure ways of "letting you go" when your attitude starts to get bad...

2) I suppose that working in a climate controlled environment (chilled server room with fans/noise all the time) is good if you live in the tropics. Most IT guys end up shoved into a corner of the server room with a bundle of CAT5 running right overhead and a shelf of backup tapes right behind the pile of old PC carcases on the floor.

3) I suppose that sitting down helps you build that trophy gut faster, especially when all you eat is McDonalds because you can't leave the building without alerting "EVERYONE" about who's the backup man. Makes lunch an "event" that everyone can enjoy.

4) And the #4 reason to whine..... No reason to worry about a timeclock when you get paged at 2:36AM about the transaction server to Taiwan that crashed. Yeah, no need for a timeclock when they have you on an electronic leash alright....

All in all, putting work behind you at 5:00 is prob. the most important thing to me. If I'm married to a job, I expect to be a partner in the operation, or at least calling some MAJOR shots about how things are handled. Seems like IT guys don't get that.

Seems to me, IT guys only get to pick the color of the PC's after the budget has been set and the purchasing dept. has negotiated the best deal with the vendor that the operations mgr. decided on. Picking Linux or any other interesting stuff could help with your "exit strategy" while keeping with what the bosses want makes you a tool to the rest of the company.

And last, but not least.... Remember to smile while you are dealing with all the stupid users who __pick___(a: forgot their passwords, b: broke their machines, c: need you to come "right now", d: introduced a trojan).....yeah, always smile...people like that.... NOBODY trusts an unhappy IT guy.

Re:Whine, whine, whine

[Hank Reardon]

1. They get paid a LOT more than minimum wage.

Not so. See the response to number 4 for the reason.

This is also a bad thing, due to an unexpected interaction with reason number four on the list. Being "paid a LOT more than minimum wage" is a liability. The liability usually presents itself when deadlines are short... Who am I kidding; it's ever-present. The "We pay you x-dollars a year to work, not see your family" stick comes out continuously.

2. They usually get to work in a climate controlled office.

Yes, surrounded by flickering flourescent lights that are in perfect sync with the 1994 60-Hz monitor that won't be replaced because of budgetary concerns.

Not to mention the lack of windows looking out to that place you go between work and home. I've heard of some mythical thing called the "Sun", but I haven't seen it in years.

3. They usually get to sit down.

And my back is just as jacked up as if I got to stand all day. Sitting for 15 hours straight is just as bad for you as standing for the same time. Especially with the $9.00 chairs bought from the OSHA repossesion sale.

4. They generally don't have to punch a time clock.

This is the worst part of things. We tend to look at the time clock as an evil object meant to shackle us to work; in reality it's the label of "salaried employee" that really binds. How I long for the "I'm on overtime in 10 minutes" stick to parry the "you can't leave until it's done" thrust from management.

Standard work-weeks are based on a 5-day, 8-hour schedule. 40 hours per week, in other words. When punching a time clock, at least here in the US, more than 40 hours per pay period will yield this mythical thing called "time-and-a-half." As a salaried employee, I have no idea what this actually is.

Minimum wage is $5.15 per hour (Federal standard, slightly higher in some States), yielding an annual salary of $10,712 for 2080 hours of work per year. This yields 6556 hours of "time off" for an individual punching the clock.

In my area of the country, the average IT salary is $41,000 per year, or roughly $19.71 per hour based on a 40-hour work week. With the tech market as down as it is right now, I know very few people who work less than a 50 hour week; make the work week 2600 hours and move the hourly wage down to $15.77. Construction pays $18 per hour and has a standard 40-hour work week because of the clock punching.

Now, work for a company who's in perpetual "crunch mode" because of shoddy management, or malicious managers who take the attitude of "I own your ass", and a 100-hour work week is not uncommon. This brings the hour total to 5200 per year, leaving just 1356 hours of personal "time off" and an hourly wage of $7.88. Granted, the $41,000 is still paid, but I use up $20,000 of that (at least) to pay somebody else to do things like clean the house, mow the lawn or whatever else has to be done because "I'll lose my job if this doesn't get done." Funny, those people I pay punch a clock...

6 months of this, and I'm pining for two minimum wage jobs; I'd have a lot more "free time" and actually be paid by the clock.

Before you press the "flame button", keep in mind that, no matter where you work, it sucks. The only person happy with a job is the one who just left. And the job that he's happy with is the one that was less shitty than the current one.

It's a no win situation and until you get to the point of making "immaginary" salaries (think 7 digits), you expenditures always equal your income plus $40.

Re:Whine, whine, whine

[discord5]

One reason that I'm not in IT is beause of the people

Why thank you, I try hard. I'm not in management, although I've had to "manage" a lot of situations (read: take the blame if something goes wrong, even if it isn't directly your fault). Considder this reply from the point of view of a geek/techie who takes a lot of crap from day to day.

1. They get paid a LOT more than minimum wage.

Not true in my case. I make little over minimum, and the people that run behind garbage trucks for 3 years make more than I do, and get healthcare and insurance benefits that I don't.

2. They usually get to work in a climate controlled office.

If by climate controlled you mean freezing in the winter and tropical in the summer, you've got this one right. Our heating is either broken during winter, or during the summer we get to sweat it out because airco is something invented to keep employees nagging.

3. They usually get to sit down.

Or scale a roof to adjust a wavelan antenna that should've been obsoleted years ago, or lie on your back in a basement about a two feet high pulling cables in the near dark. Oh, I get to sit most of the time, but some days I get to do stuff I'm pretty sure I'm not covered by insurance to do.

4. They generally don't have to punch a time clock.

True, but we have more than enough overtime every week to make people realize that the installation of a time clock would cost them more because they'd actually have to pay us or give us extra days off.

I'm not dissatisfied by my job, although I do emphasize the negative aspects from time to time. From time to time you end up talking to friends about their salaries, and you come to the conclusion that they make about 1.5 times of what you earn, and they don't get to do some of the crazy stuff you get to do like scaling a roof, or wiring a building from a basement just high enough to hide a human body.

A friend of mine earns 1.5 times what I earn just for clicking on F*CKING CHECKBOXES, and she's got a bloody manual to cover in what order she needs to click them and what possible errors can happen if she clicks the wrong one. She has trouble installing windows (which is quite easy), but she sure knows how to click checkboxes. She gets to wear the title "consultant", but has no redeeming skills and has the same college degree as I do.

Yeah, we IT'ers are all a bunch of complaining bastards and spoiled brats because we all believed that we could be good in something and got suckered into doing all that for much less than most people earn.

Mod this flamebait, I don't care. There are others who share these kind of experiences and will gladly tell you their own horrors.

Depends on where you work...

[corvair2k1]

The respect of your coworkers is a big factor in how good your IT job is. I'm sure all IT workers (or former IT workers like me) would agree that the actual types of hardware or difficulty of the work isn't the biggest issue. As an integral part of the organization, sometimes IT workers don't get treated as well as they should.

(I had it pretty good... Only one or two people I didn't enjoy.)

Re:Depends on where you work...

[Darth_Burrito]

I've worked at companies where the game was structured in such a manner that it was impossible to give quality service. There was simply too much to do and we were already working 60 hour weeks without extra pay.

Some of the people outside the IT department understood the problem very well. They treated us with sympathy and did a reasonably good job of structuring and prioritizing their requests.

Others simply did not get it. We would get requests to create reports which might sit in the queue for a week or two. When we finally got around to it, we would see the text of the request and it would say something like "create monthly sales report". You could go talk to the person to try to figure out what this meant. They would give you some details. You'd work on it a little and come back the next day with a few questions. They'd refer you to someone else, and then the other person (who should have been the primary contact anyway) would say, "oh no, that's not what we wanted, and we solved that problem two weeks ago anyway."

Still others would not get it and take an extremely hostile view towards us. The color printer is jammed and you're all going to hell!!! Where's my report?!?

As you might imagine, we had a lot of turnover. Anyways, what I'm saying is that with an IT department that can't provide quality service, you're going to have a certain number of people that don't appreciate the work and another large group of people that think you are a bunch of lazy incompetent jerks conspiring against them.

I'll admit that some of these problems can be solved through better commication, but that can be problematic. For example, we had so much work to do that we were only supposed to go through department managers. This decreased the amount of commication between end users and us. It also sometimes forced us to deal directly with some exceptionally daft or selfish individuals.

Worse jobs...

[anocelot]

My first job was a janitor at a pre-school. I had to clean the restrooms for the potty training kids. Believe it or not, the little girls weren't all THAT much better than they boys. Needless to say, I don't mind being in IT, really...

There ARE worse jobs out there. IT people just have more time to bitch about it. ;)

Perils of IT Managers

[Eberlin]

IT managers get very little sympathy in terms of the basic creature comforts that they get. There's usually a lot of bling involved, and some aura of "respect" that comes with the title.

But the bad side...first and foremost, you're expected to be a miracle worker. Something borks, it's your fault. Nevermind any rhyme or reason why you couldn't have foreseen it coming. It's your fault. Worse yet, they want it fixed yesterday, if not sooner. Forget the impossibility of getting the parts until tomorrow -- it needs to be up and running NOW.

Some of the techs you manage will second-guess you. The rest of the company will second-guess everything you do. If things work, you're not doing your job (after all, there aren't any fires to put out). If things don't work, you're not doing your job because it was your job to keep things running and all that time, you were just sitting there doing nothing.

Some higher-up can't use e-mail? It's your neck on the line. Someone forgot to save their document and some tech you manage says it can't be recovered...so they report this to their superior and next thing you know, some VP wants to know why you're even there.

And those are only if you're a clueful manager. If you're clueless...well, you end up being promoted.

Many have little basis for comparison

[Ars-Fartsica]

Unbelievably I run into a huge number of IT staff whose first real wage job was in fact in IT after college. If you've never shovelled dirt, cleaned a toilet, flipped burgers or moved boxes, then yes, I am sure you would find IT jobs demoralizing.

My advice - go out into the world of hourly wage/no benefits/first time you are late you are fired...and then come back and tell me if IT is so bad.

Re:Worse Job

[swillden]

Register to vote and vote against the Skull & Bones man

You mispelled "men".

Re:Huh?

[searleb]

So, careers involving handling sewage, manure or garbage are actually BETTER than being an IT manager?

I don't know about where you live, but in my city careers involving handling sewage or garbage pay significantly better than low to middle level IT people. At least they have unions to stick up for them. We basically have nothing to protect us from, for example, forced/unpaid overtime. Furthermore, there is basically no risk of outsourcing garbagemen to India.

Re:I don't agree

[ibirman]

I have to disagree with you. I worked in a pub kitchen flipping burgers as a kid and loved the job. You come in, you feed people, and you leave knowing that your job is done. I liked the people I worked with and felt like I could do a good job every day.

Now that I am in IT, I toil away at projects that can drag on for years only to be cancelled and called failures. I will be happy to flip burgers any day compared to that.

Of course, in the long term a career job is more rewarding, but short term there is nothing wrong with labor.

Opaque to upper management

[ewg]

In the case of my organization, the worst part of my boss' job is that IT is one of the few parts of the business upper management doesn't understand.

Our president is qualified to perform maybe 80% of all the jobs in the company, but none of the jobs in IT. He can micromanage most other departments, but with IT he just has to (1) trust and (2) pay.

Re:Worst job? hah!

[pla]

Try working a job like construction, back breaking physical labor, dangerous work enviroment, and you can wake up one day and find out the company went bust and you don't get paid, or the construction industry is slowing down, and theres no work period.

Nice troll, but during two of the last four years of national economic prosperity, I did work construction to pay the bills between sweet IT contracting jobs (short and paid well, but you can't get by with $5k/6mos).

"Backbreaking" work gets far easier after two weeks of it, and you look about a million times better than you ever have in your life (except for the ragged bleeding hands and forearms).

Job security? The entire duration of my "prolonged sebatical", I saw a few dozen newspaper ads per week for skilled carpenters, tileworkers, and just about every construction related job you could think of (not even counting the ones that require guild membership like plumbers and electricians). At the same time, I responded to all (up-to-)three IT jobs posted per week, each of which had several hundred applicant against whom this 10-year firmware engineer got to compete for the honor of maintaining a cheesy corporate webpage.

Pay? Okay, I get paid a little more per hour than I did doing construction, assuming a 40-hour work week. And any IT guy knows how often we put in 40 hour weeks.


Shit. Why the hell did I get back into IT?

People should quit bitching...

[cr0sh]

...and just be glad they have a job!

Last Wednesday (October 6th), after faithfully serving the company I worked at doing software development (on an internally used software package that helped to run the business, no less) for 8 years, I got canned - out of the blue, no warning, no nothing. One minute, I was helping a co-worker with a problem in the software (bugs, gotta love 'em!), when I get a page to go to my supervisors office. I finish up what I am doing...

In my supervisor's office is my supe, and the manager of programming (long to explain, but I *wasn't* on the programming team). This guy is known for wanting new things in the package I was working on, generally difficult (but not impossible) to implement enhancements to make your skin crawl - so my first thought was "now what?". I didn't mind doing these additions; job security, ya know. Little did I know what was coming next...

"cr0sh - we've decided to cancel development on your project, and we won't be needing your services any longer"

GULP

My head was swimming, I was thinking "what am I going to tell my wife?", "how am I going to pay my mortgage", and "WTF - doesn't the past 8 years count for ANYTHING?"...

Apparently not - especially not in a "right-to-work" state. The thing that really galled me is that my supervisor didn't even know, and he is a VP in the company: they went behind and above him to fire me. He had no chance to make a case for me and my project, nor alert me to allow me to make a case for myself and the project. One minute I was working, next minute I am being shown the door (well, actually they were kind and let me pack up my desk - they were also kind enough to cut me a check for the three days I was there along with vacation pay, and some severance pay).

In the end, I am getting the last laugh: By Friday I had another job, and it is looking like by November or so I will be making what I was making there, possibly more. Plus, it is at a smaller company run by an entrepreneur who works hard to succeed in her niche, which involves the methodology of six sigma. Its a good thing to have friends and be able to network!

I quickly landed back on my feet thanks to several friends, my skillset, my resume, and the faith of another small company to take a chance on me. I plan to put everything I have into this new oppourtunity.

To my former employer:

You threw away a very valuable employee. Yeah, on the bottom line the software I developed may have looked like an expense, but I bet it saved you more money over the years than you spent on it. Good luck with whatever you do to the software, but I can guarantee that if you try to move to another system, it won't be half of what you had, and will probably cost twice as much or more to implement!

So, to all of you out there in a similar IT situation bitching about your job: be thankful you have a job - one day, it may not be there, and dinner will be dollar store macaroni and cheese meals.

The grass is always greener...

[syousef]

Manual labourers send their children to school and push them so they can become highly paid respected professionals. Their children feel bound to their highly paid jobs and yearn for a less sedentary lifestyle. Both types of job have their advantages and disadvantages.

Highly paid is only better than low paid if you don't end up spending half your wealth traveling across the city to get to work, and on expensive suites, computer equipment etc., don't end up having a heart attack because you work stupid hours and can't find time to get proper excercise etc. etc.

What you can and can't live with when it comes to work is a very personal thing and looking at someone else's life and wishing it was yours is a stupid morose waste of time.

Life is a tradeoff. People don't pay you for work because it is fulfilling or good for you. You're trading your time and effort for that pay check. If you're in the process of making a choice as to where you're headed spend some time thinking about what you're going to do with 40 years of your life and make sure you can live with it. If you've already made those decisions and aren't happy find a way to change if you can - no one else is going to do it for you. But always realize that no matter what job you have, sometimes it will be WORK.

Whatever you're doing if you truely think its the worst job in the world, go out and find another one (preferably before dumping your current one). Nothing is worth the depression - life's too short, and will only get shorter if you're constantly stressed.

Finally if you can't change what you're doing - either due to circumstance or because you don't have the heart to (because you're making good money or whatever else) find a way to come to terms with that part of your life, and find fulfilment elsewhere.

Oh yeah...and go watch Office Space.