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

Worse Job

[SkiddyRowe]

Theme designer for the IT section of /.

Ugh...horrible...

Re:Worse Job

[swillden]

Register to vote and vote against the Skull & Bones man

You mispelled "men".

Re:Worse Job

[sharkey]

Gravy job. Requires no talent or sense of asthetic decency.

Re:Worse Job

[Anonymous Coward]

You misspelled "misspell".

What was number 4?

[aardwolf64]

I suppose the guy that wipes fecal matter off the walls in insane asylums ranks in at number 4...

Re:What was number 4?

[InsaneCreator]

Would that make him a shIT manager?

Huh?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

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

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Depends upon the criteria, of course, but overall, I'd agree that IT is indeed worse than those jobs. My background has been in IT and telecom for over 15 years; I'm now finishing a finance MBA and will be going into law school.

At the same time, two of my friends meet the above category - one is part of a rural three-person trash collection/disposal business, and the other handles public utility maintenance in my town (and has to maintain the septic plant, as well as water and snow removal).

They love their jobs. Yes they stink at times, but they have plenty of time with their families and get home at a decent hour. Me? Telecom and IT management has been one non-stop death march project. After working for four different companies in 15 years, every single one (regardless of size) sees IT the same: users wish for absurd miracles, users have no money, and users demand it done yesterday.

I read Ed Yourdon's Death March Projects book and laughed till I was crying. A death march project is defined as one whose "project parameters" exceed the norm by at least 50 percent. ONLY ONE? Haha!

And what's worse than having nonstop death march projects? When you happen to keep pulling off miracles, they complain about it! (Course, if you don't, they fire you) This is because, once again, the users don't have a freaking clue about "details" and other technical things. Truly a Rodney Dangerfield "no respect" occupation. What opened my eyes and led to the finance and pending law degree was that several companies I had left had reverted from a highly secure, well-engineered open source shop to completely insecure Microsoft shop (stumble from the parking lot, see that they've got server shares wide open, no wifi encryption, and don't even apply service patches). They hired cheap managers and only care if the report gets out. Security, scale and reliability don't matter.

Was I being a perfectionist? Is security unnecessary? Is accuracy in IT at all important, or can we (like one national cell company that is being investigated for serious billing fraud) just cut corners and hope we don't get caught on sloppy billing?

I don't know and don't care. In IT, when a user screws up, I paid. As counsel, when my client screws up, they pay. Want me after hours and on weekends? Add a few zeros to the check please or don't call me. Oh, and now I get to hang out with my sewer and trash collecting friends...

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.

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.

Re:Whine, whine, whine

[TiggertheMad]

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.

*sigh* You lucky bastard. They make me work in a normal office. Just because you get to work in Heaven, you don't need to taunt the rest of us...

Re:Whine, whine, whine

[jrumney]

I've heard of some mythical thing called the "Sun", but I haven't seen it in years.

Perhaps its time you cleaned up your server room. I found six Suns the other week in a rack I'd forgotted existed behind piles of cardboard Dell boxes. Of course, now that I've thrown the boxes away, I remember why I piled them up in the first place. They made good sound insulation for all the noisy fans in those Suns.

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...

[LostCluster]

I've found that workers treat their IT staff according to how well they're treated by them. If you want to hide behind a nameless "tech support" system, then they'll blame you for everything that doesn't work. If you show them that you're working as hard as you can on the things you can control, they'll understand why you can't control the things you can't.

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.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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. ;)

Worst job?

[joke-boy]

Reminds me of the Norm MacDonald SNL news piece:

Finally, according to the U.S. News & World Report 1997 Career Guide, the bet job in the United States, for the second year in a row, is Interactive Business System Analyst. However, last year's worst job, Assistant Crack Whore, has been replaced by a new worst job: Crack Whore Trainee.

Sucks in the US as well

[Karzz1]

I don't know about the UK, but I am an IT Manager here in the states, and I couldn't agree more. I don't make much more than your typical blue-collar worker (please, no offense meant to anyone - I was blue collar up until about 6 years ago), yet I have to deal with phone calls at night, on the weekends, and when I am on vacation. I cannot get away from my job. Not to mention, there are plenty of people that work for me that can solve 99% of the problems that come across my desk, yet *I* am the one on everyone's speed dial. And if I find the mother-f***er that gave the entire company my cell phone #, they are dead!!

Re:Sucks in the US as well

[fiddlesticks]

> And if I find the mother-f***er that gave the entire company my cell phone #, they are dead!!

what happens if you don't answer?

i mean. honestly, say you're out of range, or battery, or decide not to answer?

what happens after the night-in-question/w/e

my boss has my mobile number, but sometimes i can't get to the 'phone.

surely the same happens to you?

weddings, holidays, etc ?

There's worse than that

[joggle]

I heard a guy on the radio once who's job was to clean the cages of monkeys used in virus research. Get all the shit-flinging benefits of the insane asylum plus the chance of getting some rare, highly lethal disease. All this can be yours for $9.70/hr.

Re:IT MJ Again?

[s4m7]

Is something going on?

If something were going on, /. wouldn't be mining the sister sites for "news" like this.

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.

trained to lie

[Anonymous Coward]

As a former manager in IT, I found that I was being trained to lie. Just like Scotty - Never tell them the truth!

Budget::
Them - cut your budget as much as possible.
New Manager - cuts as required.
Seasoned Manager - cuts Half or Less than what is required.

Them - cut your budget more.
New Manager - cant do that I already did.
Seasoned Manager - cuts Half of Less of what remaines that can be cut.

Them - cut your budget again.
Former new manager - I need a job, My position was cut.
Seasoned Manager - cuts Half or less of what still remains to be cut.

Lesson Learned? Dont cut it all at once.

Time Management::
Them - How much time is required?
New Manager - 2 weeks. (2xactual required)
Seasoned Manager - 2 months. (8x actual required

Them - We need it in half that time.
New Manager - Ends up working nights and weekends but demands cut in requirements.
Seasoned Manager - Resigns to half time but demands cut in requirements.

Them - We need these new requirements but it can be done with an additional 1/4 original time.
New Manager - What are you nuts?
Seasoned Manager - We can do it but it will be a miracle.

Them - Congratulations project is complete on schedule.
New Manager - standard pay check. Was done in 75% time estimate. (1.5wk)
Seasoned Manager - BONUS. completed in record time. (75% time estimate =6wk)

Lesson - lie about time to complete.

my worst job

[museumpeace]

was my first job: cleaning out the incinerator at an animal disease laboratory...sometimes they shut off the gas before the rabid dog carcasses were completely burnt. After that, even my job as an operator at the student services counter for my university's computer center seemed like a real move up in the world. How many days a week can you constantly deal with the software problems of people who should never have been given anything more complicated than a bottle of beer and still think you have a great job?

I can think of a few worse jobs

[digitalgimpus]

• Slave
• Enron Paper Recycling Coordinator
• Human Proctologist
• Animal Proctologist (human beats it because you might get a nice one every so often)
• Medical Lab Urine Analysis Expert
• Medical Lab Fecal Analysis Expert
• Police Investigator looking into a male prostitution ring
• Goat Fertility Clinic Employee
• Bull Nipple Piercing
• Phone Support for Durex Condoms (imagine the calls they get)
• Toll Booth Operator for NJ Turnpike (yea, I'm from Jersey... so F*** you)
• Hospital Janitor
• Abortion Clinic Janitor
• Any job at the Dept. of Justice
• Sperm Collector/Cataloger for firtility clinic... waiting for dudes to hand you jars of mangoo all day.... mmm great job
• AIDS Clinic... perhaps see a hot chick every so often, but you know you can't/don't want to bang her
• Herpies Researcher... document peoples gential growths
• Sausage Factory Worker... if you know how it's made, you wouldn't eat it
• Sex Toy Tester for Consumer Advocacy Group
• Janitor for prostitution ranch
• Microsoft Engineer

Oh there's tons of others, but I'm lazy, perhaps if I'm bored I'll come back later and document them all.

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:Many have little basis for comparison

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

If you've never shovelled dirt, cleaned a toilet, flipped burgers or moved boxes

I don't know about IT Management, specifically, but each of those would make good metaphors for most of IT work...

At least in those more normal jobs, you don't normally get:

• Upper management interrupting you regularly to complain that the dirt you're shoveling isn't the preferred brand of dirt [and it then turns out the that "preferred brand" is "used kitty-litter" because someone read about how wonderful "used kitty-litter" is in some magazine]
• A bathroom patron showing up and pitching a fit because you cleaned a spot that they wanted left in there.
• Someone complaining that you're making the burgers too hot, until upper management makes you cook at a lower temperature, at which point the complaining switches to "this is taking too long, hurry up", so upper management makes you take less time to cook it but still at the lower temperature, and then the complaint is "hey, how did I get this foodborne virus, don't you people cook this stuff enough?...", nor put up with snide comments from Certified Burger Technicians about chicken being a "niche player" or being derided as a "zealot" ...
• After moving the boxes, having to tape them together in various ways, and then having people complain about all the tape being visible, so you end up having to tie up the tape between the boxes into bundles and arrange them neatly, at which point someone decides they liked the boxes over THERE better after all, so you have to cut all the tape loose and start over...

Not to mention not having to keep up with 3 or 4 different dirt-shovelling, toilet-cleaning, burger-flipping, or box-moving magazines, pay someone to "certify" you in dirt-shovelling, toilet-cleaning, burger-flipping, or box-moving. Nor having someone deny you a job because you don't have a Master's degree in "Dirt-shovelling Science" or a B.S. in "Toiletry Studies" or 5 years of experience with Burger technology that's only been around for two years...

If/when you can get into IT jobs, the pay is usually okay, but just because it doesn't seem as demeaning or dehumanizing as boring old honest labor doesn't mean it's easy...

Better whiners

[slam smith]

Nah they're just better whiners. :-)

Re:I don't agree

[Dr. Dew]

or smelling people's armpits as deordorant testers

Why on earth would anyone take a job as a deodorant taster? What possible good could tasting deodorant do? And why would it be tasted in the armpit? Why not from the dispenser? That's just an appalling career, and it sickens me. That's even worse than my career as an IT Manager.

Hmmm?

Oh.

Never mind!

trained to be a deflector

[elrick_the_brave]

Yeah.. as a server jockey it ain't fun.. but then I look at my manager.. making decent money.. having to put up with demanding executives with unrealistic time frames and demands... I can understand why he is disinterested in my career.. my needs.. he's resigned to just doing his job.. getting the freaking work done any way possible.
I understand this now after 3 or 4 years of wondering why no one listens... it's cause and effect.. someone somewhere is here for a little time and wants their piece of the world to shine.. enter the shining monkey (the manager) and his shining monkey team (the IT folks).

Don't delude yourself that another job would be any different. What it comes down to is that jobs in North America suck when it comes to considering quality of life. Other countries have it better in personal respects.. but wealth is less of a concern there. Which makes you wonder why more billionaires than ever are coming out of North America... someone has it right!

BOFH

[techsoldaten]

The results are a BOFH trick. You see, it is in the interests of U.K. IT managers to make everyone believe no one is interested in their jobs.

By keeping up this illusion, their vast network of power and influence can be maintained and competition can be eliminated.

M

Screaming customers

[HangingChad]

Not many jobs where you have to deal with screaming customers, but IT is one of them. It's like people think they can vent all their frustrations about computers on the IT staff because their computer, which they're generally abusing like a rented sheep at a lumberjack camp, happens to take that moment to decline to take further abuse.

The last place I worked the president of the company came steaming down the hall and started screaming...I mean red-faced screaming...at the poor lady at the IT desk. In an exhibition of pure gonads, she calmly took his laptop and dumped it in her trash can. I was fully prepared to quit before I would fire her but he never said another word about it.

Re:Screaming customers

[caller9]

The number one problem with IT support is that without users you have no problems...you also don't have a job. So minimize the user threat to the machines.

If you want to keep all of your users in line, be a network Nazi. Use a web proxy and email the usage summaries to department heads. Mail a full summary to the top dog. The top dog will barely glance at it, but if the department heads know it's getting to him they'll definately look...no... stare at it. The result: nobody does anything because they think they're being watched. And trust me, their mind is very limited to cavorting about the internet...and that really is the source of 50% of your problems.

Don't worry proxy settings can be pushed via Group Policy before you close port 80 and 443...etc

Our users' whimsical flights of fancy with various spyware/you name it sites has gone down 99%. And I have the logs to prove it. :)

As an added bonus, block every outbound port(you should be doing this anyway) except for long-fought battles over services they really need. Even then, limit it to an IP range and put DHCP reservations in to make sure only certain consoles can do anything. Log everything, email to managers as described above.

Don't limit yourself to PCs. Many phone systems have a serial interface that dumps extension used, number dialed, duration of call, number of rings before answer... the list goes on. Use your imagination!

If you've learned anything from M$ or the Bush administration FUD controls people. Issue emails with dire consequences for the most simple idiot user habit. Tie in a $ amount and you're a golden boy.

Congratulations, now you can sit back and tidy up that resume, you may not need it but who the hell wants to be an IT janitor/paramedic/scientist/philosopher/guerilla warrior forever?

That was a joke, but seriously try the reports. I did and I'm so much happier. "software push of spyware removal tools? why? they're too scared to click accept! muwhahhah"

Re:Screaming customers

[YrWrstNtmr]

Not many jobs where you have to deal with screaming customers, but IT is one of them

Pretty much anything in the service industry. Having customers scream at you when you get paid $6/hr is way worse than having customers scream at you when you get paid $80k/year.

My experience

[bogaboga]

Well, I was working at this cargo handling company. We then needed to get prepared for the competition as all the airport operations were gonna be privatised. Management was interested in spending the least possible amount in dollar terms on this. I needed training that had to be got in Europe, and this does not come cheap for a company in the "third world".

None of the turn-key solution providers were local. To make matters worse, one management team member had heard that a potential competitor had a solution in place that was almost one-third of what I was suggesting. It was an impossible job to convince these people that the cash I was suggesting to be spent would be worthwhile.

I resisted what they were offering, but coded a report generator for them in access after which I resigned the job, telling my manager that my office environment had deteriorated so much to the point that it had become a "pioson" to ambitions of a young man like me.

Whenever viruses were lurking arround the web, I could hardly sleep - fearing that I would find chaos at the office. I could have got a heart attack!

In my expereince, clueleass managers, often owners or representatives of the owners are a very big pain. All they are interested in is the bottom line. The IT manager's job is not easy depending on the environment.

I do not believe that it is the third worst job as the report seems to suggest. There are nurses who MUST be prepared for death every day. In my present job as a day-trader, Linux is not supported, so I am still stuck with Windows, adding to my previously accumulated "stress".

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.

Dishwasher anyone?!

[ZeroZen]

Holy crap people, has anyone ever been a dishwasher before? That's a crappy job if i've ever had one.

Minimum wage, and slave work. The last 2 dishwashing jobs i've had i lost half my fingerprints and went nearly crazy from being isolated 8 hours a day by the roar of the machine.

Once i had to clean out a fridge that had been on and broken for at least a week. 3 huge turkeys had expanded and escaped from their packaging, leaking blood and oily skin all over. And then there was the fish. I vomited. The mask helped some but sometimes it would come around the seal on my face and the stench would come through.

And you have to do whatever the surly chef tells you to.

Poltics

[upsidedown_duck]

IMO, the worst aspect of IT is the baseless politics. Everywhere are factions of people who think their tools are the best or that the latest fad is perfect for the new long-term project. No one seems to understand why all their fancy layers of abstraction are actually detrimental to resolving problems (J2EE enterprise beans for a teeny weeny website?). Oh, and we must use CVS for commercial software development...oops, now where did that symbolic link go...oh, now the high lords of software fashion will allow us to use Subversion...version 1.0...oh yippee just kill me now. God forbid we pay for VC after spending $150K for an enterprise web server.

And to have to try to manage all of this... No wonder I left.

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?

One more ugly profession...

[blueforce]

actor in Clerks? Nah.

"Have you ever wondered how much the average jizz-mopper makes per hour?"

"The jizz-mopper's job is to clean off the glass after each guy shoots a load. I don't know if you noticed, but cum leaves streaks if you don't clean it right away."

I WAS a Jizz Mopper

[Frogbert]

Well it was part of my job description, it paid really well and it was quite easy. The trick is not to be a mopper but rather a high powered hoser.

Just get a presure washer and spray away, then that stuff don't streak.

IT trash collector

[TiggertheMad]

I just want to know then, where the IT managers that work for a waste collection agencies fall in the grand scheme of things...

I guess it is matter of taste

[BigGerman]

I used to have 200K salary, 10 people under me and 2 mil / year budget. But I also had my ass chewed every day, blood pressure, divorce and lots of extra weight.
I found courage to quit and went back to coding. Today I work 40 hours a week, 10 months a year, do what I want and lost 50 pounds.

Wosrt Job? Check my last two weeks out...

[gwn]

Two weeks ago today one of the sales force brings in his laptop on a sales meeting day, as previously arranged with me, but instead of giving it directly to me decides to get his mail instead. By the way, did I mention he was bringing it to me to clean the worms and trojans he had picked up from the illegal (in our company) internet connection he decided he had to put on it and use... Yes you guessed it he infected half the machines in the building... All were running McAfee and up to date, but they got it anyway. Once in the network came to a screaming halt with worms, trojans, viruses, spyware, addware, etc...
I think I also forgot to mention that particular Monday was day one for month end closing to start... and it also happens to have been year end too.

Those of you who know what the last two weeks were like for me, need no further explanation. Those of you who haven't yet experienced it, well I don't want to scare you. Did I mention yet that I am the only Canadian IT for my company and our 350 or so users... Well let me say that my daughter did the "Daddy, I love you, I thought I had forgotten what you looked like..." speach for me.

Well the best part is that I got hauled into HR last Friday afternoon at 3:45, just as I was about to go out for some lunch (four hours overdue without any breaks since 8 am). The head of HR then informs me that I am scaring the (L)users... the "L" is no longer silent when I think it. Yes you read it right, I am being hauled onto the carpet for scaring the users.

So I ask what is it I am doing that scares them? It turns out that after doing an inventory in the morning of the printing supplies and finding that one of my brain damaged users couldn't read the description on the box, or the labels on the shelf, or event the huge sign that says "If you don't know, ask!" They had opened most of the toner cartridge boxes, pulled the toners out of the bags, and removed the tapes to try them all in their printer... They then tossed the ones that didn't fit back in "a" box and randomly put them on the stock shelf. Before cleaning this up I spent a couple of minutes developing new strings of creative language to explain the origins of the unknown user, and possibly how they deserved to win a Darwin Award. Well I guess I was overheard.

When I get out of the HR office I decided to go home for the weekend... I have had enough and don't want to scare anyone...

So here I sit, tomorrow I return to work after the long weekend, today being Thanksgiving up here, and I am trying to think of how to respond to this unsettling news.

I would appreciate any comments you might suggest... ...so how do the Darwin awards work...

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.

Dream on, law boy

[MykePagan]

I have several lawyer friends. They live the death march every day, unless they work for themselves. Those that work for themselves don't make so much money, but they make their own hours. Those that work for law firms DON'T get to see the money they bill for. They work on salary. If they don't put in 70 hour weeks, they'll never make partner, or they'll just be let go sooner or later. None of them have made partner (at which point they'll stop associating with the likes of IT maggots like myself), but once they do they'll be so brainwashed that this behavior will seem normal, and they will perpetrate it on the next generation. Of my 3 lawyer friends, one has already quit to enter law enforcement. He'd rather carry a badge and be shot at than continue the law job.

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.

75 hour weeks are ILLEGAL

[burnttoy]

Unless your a doctor of such. In the UK/EU there is a MAXIMUM working week of 48 hours. If you sign a contract that says you will work more (this is legal) then it's your own bloody problem. I refused to sign the last contract that said this. If necessary (and it sometimes is) I will work more than this (I've worked 100 hour weeks when the need arose) but I WILL NOT SIGN AWAY MY RIGHTS.