UK Companies Love IT Workers, Love Not Returned

Roblimo writes "'The study, completed in early July, showed that U.K. employees working in the information technology industry are more valued than they think they are,' says a story at ITMJ.com, but it also says, 'According to the results of the survey, only 45% of IT workers feel valued at work, and 70% don't believe that their job reflects their true potential.' Not only that, but 'Seventy-five percent feel discriminated against because of their age; 43% say their bosses think they are too young, and 32% feel too old.' That leaves only 25% who believe they're the right age for their jobs, and only 30% who feel they're working to their true potential. Does this mean U.K. employers need to worry about a mass exodus from the I.T. field, or is this just normal griping?"

Comments

Just Griping.

[Ckwop]

Does this mean U.K. employers need to worry about a mass exodus from the I.T. field, or is this just normal griping?

Griping, as they say: "The grass is always greener on the other side."

The reality is that often it isn't, people (not just IT workers) fail to see just how good their job is and resign themselves to being miserable about it. I program C# about 50% of the time, do internal user support 10% of the time, reply to emails 10% time (this annoys me), deal with external customer support another 10% of the time. The remaining 20% is probably spent on administration etc.

I love my job, I love the variety, the sallary is good for my age and my coworkers are motivated but easy enough to get a long with. A think a key failing with IT people is believing you can storm in at 20 and somehow be a senior developer. I have a simple message to people with this attitude: you're not a genius, get over yourself; this trade takes a long time to learn. Just because you hacked together a perl script to do something useful on your private linux box doesn't make you a seasoned professional. Building professional code takes as much experience as it does intelligence.

Serve your apprenticeship get the experience and become a better coder. Don't be arrogant towards your superiors because believe it or not most of the time they deserve to be there. Remember, your time will come and for the moment there is a lot of wisdom in just be content with what you have: A brilliant job where you can be creative and intelligent.

Simon.

Re:Just Griping.

[Seumas]

The grass is really green in India.

Re:Just Griping.

[Anonymous Coward]

A think a key failing with IT people is believing you can storm in at 20 and somehow be a senior developer.

No, I think a key failing in the IT field is the application of double-standards.

For example, one job I had in my early twenties, I was relatively inexperienced. I'd had a lot of "hobby experience" and only one proper job on my CV (a company that ceased trading, so it looked pretty suspect).

Naturally, I was taken on in this new job as a "junior developer". What I wasn't told was that 75% of the development team had handed their notice in, including basically everybody who was capable of doing what it is I was taken on to do.

Within a few months, I was basically doing the job of this 75%. I was barely keeping up with the work (a lot of putting out fires), but the owner of the firm wasn't willing to hire anybody with experience - or, for that matter, anybody who could actually code.

See, I was desperately unhappy at that job, for various reasons. The main one, though was that I was treated as the junior developer for the purposes of salary, and my opinion on things was taken as seriously as a junior developers would be, but when it came to responsibility or workload, I was treated as some kind of hero programmer who could fix everything.

The owner wanted it both ways - a cheap junior programmer he could ignore, and a skilled programmer who could do the work of many. While I can't say for sure that this sort of attitude is widespread, it certainly looks that way to me. So don't be so quick to assume that it's an inflated ego that causes young people to think they can do a lot - maybe it's just that they are actually doing a lot, and just not being treated accordingly.

Re:Just Griping.

[Tet]

The reality is that often it isn't, people (not just IT workers) fail to see just how good their job is and resign themselves to being miserable about it.

I'm not convinced about this. I've worked in many companies where IT staff are treated visibly worse than those in other roles. The only exception is remuneration -- we're paid better than those in other areas. But this in itself leads to problems. Many companies see IT as a huge drain on their pockets, and resent us for it. The biggest problem, though, is that many companies fail to see IT as core to their business. They think of themselves as a bank or a publisher or an insurance broker first, and as an IT shop second. True, IT isn't the reason for their existence, but they can't grasp how much their business would fall apart without it.

Re:Just Griping.

[aralin]

I think a key failing with IT people is believing you can storm in at 20 and somehow be a senior developer. I have a simple message to people with this attitude: you're not a genius, get over yourself; this trade takes a long time to learn.

Ok, so I am 30 now, I am senior developer and still feel like being discriminated against for being too young. I had since my 11 to learn about this trade and I am darn good at it and yeah, my IQ is way above the top half percentile line required by the definition of the term genius.

I am not complaining about my job, if I want to be more creative I can always work on some project of my own, I'm just saying you have these stereotypes in your mind and its not really like this. Unless you work in a startup with a very young management all around, your bosses and coworkers will likely be around 40-50 and you will be likely viewed as too young until 30, easily. Then you have few productive years, when you can be happy and by the time you turn 40, you are not able to catch up as much as you could in your twenties and you start to fall behind and now you are too old. This is one of the very few fields where age discrimination stays long and comes early. Thats a reason for these high numbers.

Re:Just Griping.

[uohcicds]

You didn't work for a company called Tradezone did you? Because that sounds really familiar!

Re:Just Griping.

[rikkards]

I am seeing this as well in some IT contracts that are out there. They are labeling jobs as "junior" but the skill set for the job is somewhat more advanced. Plus jobs that start out as junior usually end up taking on more responsible work (which is good but only when you get paid at the same level as the responsibility) and the job role changes.

Re:Just Griping.

[TapeCutter]

Excellent FP! I spent 15 years "digging ditches" before spending another 15 yrs "sipping lattes". I have never written a pearl script but I appreciate the knowlage that my proven ability to "work it out" enables me to swap one well paid job for another whenever I feel like it.

The very first thing that spun me out about "office" bosses as compared to a "dirt" boss was that they said "please" and "thank-you". The idea that a boss would let you manage your time without a clock card was also a new experience.

To All the wasted talent out there:
If you think someone is under-estimating your talent, then quit. If you can't afford to risk quiting because, say, your boss won't stop you, or you will have trouble getting another job. Then it's likely you are full of yourself, and that, rather than the job, is making you miserable.

Re:Just Griping.

[khallow]

Ok, so I am 30 now, I am senior developer and still feel like being discriminated against for being too young. I had since my 11 to learn about this trade and I am darn good at it and yeah, my IQ is way above the top half percentile line required by the definition of the term genius.

There are tricks for appearing older (eg, grow a beard, act more mature, dress better, add a little grey to hair, etc). Ie, act and appear older, and people will treat you that way. These usually solve this sort of problem.

I am not complaining about my job, if I want to be more creative I can always work on some project of my own, I'm just saying you have these stereotypes in your mind and its not really like this. Unless you work in a startup with a very young management all around, your bosses and coworkers will likely be around 40-50 and you will be likely viewed as too young until 30, easily. Then you have few productive years, when you can be happy and by the time you turn 40, you are not able to catch up as much as you could in your twenties and you start to fall behind and now you are too old. This is one of the very few fields where age discrimination stays long and comes early. Thats a reason for these high numbers.

My take is more that old workers aren't quite as gullible. They won't fall for cheap incentives (eg, sacrificing pay for stock options) or put aside their families for the company. Depending on the area, you could fall behind in skills or knowledge (eg, if you are working on cutting edge technology or standards), but IMHO most IT jobs aren't remotely cutting edge.

Re:Just Griping.

[nkh]

There are tricks for appearing older (eg, grow a beard

That didn't work for Guybrush, the bartender would not give him any grog without an ID card.

*ducks*

Re:Just Griping.

[QAPete]

I wonder what percentage of my Brit IT friends gripe about their dental plan... Seriously, it reads like a mix of some real issues and griping. Sounds like every job I've ever had, including my current one as Director of IT for an automotive parts manufacturer. Pete

Re:Just Griping.

[Anonymous Coward]

The remaining 20% is probably spent on administration

Translation: ye spend it on slashdot ye ol' bugger!!

...and then...100% of them went bollocks

Re:Just Griping.

[Anonymous Coward]

>my IQ is way above the top half percentile line required by the definition of the term genius.

Here we go again...my IQ.

Seriously, how intelligent is it to claim that having a high IQ is the definition of genius? Who defined that? Certain people have high IQs; many of them are intelligent; some are not. Other very intelligent people have lower IQs. Haven't you read Myers-Briggs'/Jung's (etc.) stuff on intelligence?

In a field of work where high IQ (but not necessarily intelligence) is common, you will naturally find people who over-rate themselves and therefore consider themselves under-valued or discriminated against in some way. And their IQ will lead them to observe (but not prove) patterns in this so-called discrimination.

Someone of true intelligence will not need to gripe or make claims (true or not) that their IQ defines them as a genius; they will have the intelligence to know how to forge their way forwards/upwards and be happy in the process of doing so.

I'm submitting as AC; I'm not sure how the moderators will view this. For the record, some test told me I had an IQ of 150. Am I intelligent? Hell, who cares? I enjoy my life; I enjoy my work and feel no superiority over anyone.

Re:Just Griping.

[VenomPhallus]

No, I don't buy that. I've worked in an IT (developer/analyst) role in a number of companies, and they've pretty much all treated their IT staff badly in comparison with other groups. Systemic problems common to all have been:

- a complete lack of knowledge or interest in how they do their job; or, more pertinently how long it takes to do things
- repeated promises by people in charge to get jobs done far quicker than they can actually be done, leading to horrendous crunch periods
- an assumption that anyone in IT is happy to work nights
- understaffing
- no career path leading to promotions other than into management - ie it's impossible to rise through the ranks as a coder, even a spectacularly good one

etc etc.

These have been the case in every place I've worked, as well as everywhere my friends and workmates have.

Is there going to be a mass exodus? Probably not. The money is ok, and most people aged 30 and over don't have the financial option to retrain into something else and take the paycut. Luckily for me, I do, so I'm going back to what I used to do pre-IT - law. Having worked in both jobs, I can honestly say there's no comparison when it comes to the complexity of what you do, the respect your job title accords you, stress levels, and the money you get at the end of the month.

Re:Just Griping.

[databyss]

Kinda funny that you mention that. I did just that. I decided to grow in my beard after just starting my new IT job.

I look like i'm 18 with a clean shaved face. Add a little hair and I look more my age (25), maybe even a few years extra.

There definately was a visible difference in the way my superiors treated me.

Re:Just Griping.

[Anonymous Coward]

The remaining 20% is probably spent on administration etc

You mean on slashdot etc.

Re:Just Griping.

[Anonymous Coward]

To All the wasted talent out there:
If you think someone is under-estimating your talent, then quit. If you can't afford to risk quiting because, say, your boss won't stop you, or you will have trouble getting another job. Then it's likely you are full of yourself, and that, rather than the job, is making you miserable. (emphasis mine)

Very well said. I recently (~6 months ago) started at a new job...and one of the employees there had a miserable attitude. He was constantly complaining that he didn't get paid enough, didn't have enough responsibility, wasn't treated right...

Personally, I thought he was full of it. He didn't seem terribly talented/knowledgeable to me, and within about 4 months I had more responsibility than he had after nearly a year.

Eventually he pitched a fit and the boss basically told him to either shut up or leave, he left...and he's now doing construction work in the area, rather than IT. I can only hope he's happier where he's employed now.

Re:Just Griping.

[Tony Hoyle]

They do it the other way around to.

My first job was for a company who hired everyone as 'programmer/project leader'. I was only earning about half what an average junior programmer got too (I was desparate!).

That job was hell... stuck it for two years as I was too green to appreciate my own skillset.

Re:Just Griping.

[senatorpjt]

See, I was desperately unhappy at that job, for various reasons. The main one, though was that I was treated as the junior developer for the purposes of salary, and my opinion on things was taken as seriously as a junior developers would be, but when it came to responsibility or workload, I was treated as some kind of hero programmer who could fix everything.

Welcome to the real world. This has nothing at all to do with IT, all industries are like this. I guessed the problem is that when you come in to these sort of jobs being inexperienced, you're more excited about entering the field than the established employees, and work at an unsustainable level. I've had similar experiences. I thought that management hadn't noticed my hard work at all, but apparently they did, and rewarded me by firing the other employees that helped dissipate the workload somewhat.

My take-home lesson from all this was to always keep in your mind what a realistic sustained work level is for you and to not exceed it. Management's expectations are like a boa constrictor snake. Once they see you working at a certain level, they'll just keep squeezing more to see how much they can get out of you.

Re:Just Griping.

[Anonymous Coward]

It couldn't have been Tradezone. Anyone who worked there would have named and shamed in a heartbeat.

Like we both just did.

Re:Just Griping.

[jessedh]

very well said. I have a ton of friends who think that they deserve $70K a year right out of school.

Just like everything else in life you have to put in your time before you get results.

Just suck it up and realize your in the real world now.

-Jesse

Re:Just Griping.

[Anonymous Coward]

>Am I intelligent? Hell, who cares? I enjoy my >life; I enjoy my work and feel no superiority >over anyone.

This is the most intelligent thing that anyone in this thread has said.

Re:Just Griping.

[lukewarmfusion]

There are a lot of folks out there that aren't cut out to be IT workers, too. This probably comes from the mid-90s boom when people saw money as a good reason to get into IT.

When you present those people with the same problems you describe, the money is no longer attractive. Especially in a post-bubble economy where the paychecks are half of what they used to be (or less!).

A quick note on your last "problem":

While coders aren't usually hand-picked for management, the Peter Principle is still in effect. Many coders go from JR Developer to SR Developer to Team Leader to Manager to Director. In the few places I've worked with such a hierarchy (education, for one) this is all to common. There were Managers and Directors with no leadership, management, or even practical experience. While some of them were old coders, most of those had been out of the coding world for 10+ years.

Luckily, I left this environment to work in a tiny firm with no career potential - the only person above me was the boss and there was no interest in rewarding employees for "above and beyond." In all honesty, I was really wishing that I would have gone to a larger corporate structure at the time.

Re:Just Griping.

[TykeClone]

There are tricks for appearing older (eg, grow a beard, act more mature, dress better, add a little grey to hair, etc). Ie, act and appear older, and people will treat you that way. These usually solve this sort of problem.

Or go bald. Balding men usually seem a bit older than they are - which can be an advantage when dealing with others.

Re:Just Griping.

[Phisbut]

They are labeling jobs as "junior" but the skill set for the job is somewhat more advanced.

That is so true. When I got out of college with my software engineering degree, looking for "junior" jobs (knowing that I shouldn't aim for intermediate and senior positions anyway), I found a whole lot of openings with descriptions like "Junior progrogrammer position, requires 5 years of experience in C# as well as 3 years of database management experience". A whole lot of companies expect people to come out of college with 5 or more years of experience somehow. Honest to god, I've even seen, back in 2003, an opening that required 5 years of experience in .NET programming... meaning you needed to be "junior", but have been doing .NET programming since 1998! Those HR people just like to fill their openings with loads of buzzwords, but they tend to stick to it during the interview, and they don't care for whatever reason you couldn't get those 5 years of experience during college...

Actually, they just want to hire an intermediate-level coder with a junior salary.

Re:Just Griping.

[flink]

Dude, wait a few years and you'll want every single one of those years back...

Re:Just Griping.

[Zerth]

Nope, it looks like this

PROBLEM;
    DCL PLACE_AVAILABLE SEMA PRESET(1024);
free
    DCL CHARACTER_AVAILABLE SEMA PERSET(0);
DATAFETCH: TASK;
    REQUEST CHARACTER_AVAILABLE;
    REQUEST CHARACTER_AVAILABLE;
    FETCH_TWO_CHARACTERS_FROM_THE_RINGBUFFER;
    RELEASE PLACE_AVAILABLE;
    RELEASE PLACE_AVAILABLE;
END;
DATAPUT: TASK;
    REQUEST PLACE_AVAILABLE;
    PUT_ONE_CHARACTER_INTO_RINGBUFFER;
    RELEASE CHARACTER_AVAILABLE;
END;

And it is about 20 years older than Perl

Re:Just Griping.

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder what percentage of my Brit IT friends gripe about their dental plan.

Does the Brit dental plan involve lots and lots of pure cane sugar?

Re:Just Griping.

[Calyth]

Simon, I won't see you saying that if you have to face a user who tried to demand to have admin rights on his windows workstation behind my back by asking me to install the software, and when I proceed to sit down and install the software (and didn't give him admin rights), went and ask my superior for admin rights.
Since everything is a mess, and this guy is a SOB who wouldn't mind taking you out with him (he's as lowe on the ladder as you can get), and plus we don't have a written policy on that yet (gasp), he told me to grant it to him.
Sometimes it people don't feel great not because they think they're god and all the others above them are stupid. Like my situation, the two guys above me, not counting my superior, are pretty good at databases and the Microsoft environment, both of which I'm not exactly proficient - I was too lazy to set up anything database related and I ain't going to spend the time and headaches to set up a mock Microsoft server in my home. I don't think I'm always better than them, but my boss asks me about stuff on Linux, we're the Linux folks in this IT team. I realize that.
My supervisor offhandedly mentioned to his superiors that he worries about hiring another guy and have to train them because I'm heading back to school, and they're busy migrating accounting packages. That makes me feel kinda good - someone noticed that I'm pretty good at fixing these old clunkers and various software problems.
But it's the annoying users at the end that makes me feel pretty miserable (especially when I'm dealing with that pompous dimwit asking for admin rights), and I'm thinking that maybe IT workers are simply mixing misery from another front with whether the company values them.

Re:Just Griping.

[tallman68]

It's weird how age is perceived. I am the youngest manager in my IT organization (30's- the others are all 40+). Some of the folks think I am 40 and look really young. I've also encountered others who, not knowing my role in the company, think that I'm a junior programmer or sysadmin until I speak. Salesmen have asked if my boss will be in the presentation. When I inform them that I am the decision maker for project X, they are often surprised. With that in mind I try not to judge other books simply by their covers.

Re:Just Griping.

[tallman68]

My IQ tests have always been top percentile- that and $7 gets me a bus ride to work where, no one gives a poop. (It's funnier if you say it in a Triumph the Dog voice) Incidentally, I have an old friend with Mensa credentials who is cronically unemployed, so it's not everything, just another tool in the tool box.

Re:Just Griping.

[Pxtl]

Responsabilities too much? Salary too low? Working overtime?

Simple solution: don't. If they don't pay you enough to work more than 8 hours, don't work more than 8 hours. Even if that means the software won't make release date. Your job is to code. Making sure the software works and is released on time is your boss's job.

Re:Just Griping.

[lgw]

This is what most people (especially those without degrees) go through to get their first programming job. It's par for the course - it's only stupid if you stay at such a job for 1 day longer than you have to (like I did). Accept the crap job as the first hurdle, pad your resume, and look for the first job with a real company as the follow-on to the first job in the field.

After 2 years full-time programming work, you should be looking for a "journeyman" job - one that has to deal with lots of legacy code, and has some standards for maintainability, not just "does it work". Experience in this environment is a pre-requisite for mastering the trade, which is more about writing code that other people (or yourself 2 years later) can understand and maintain than merely writing code that works.

Re:Just Griping.

[lgw]

But this in itself leads to problems. Many companies see IT as a huge drain on their pockets, and resent us for it.

And yet, according to the surveys in TFA, this is mostly wrong. Most IT workers are support - they don't directly make or sell the product - and so *of course* they're a cost to be minimized. This doesn't mean that employers have a sore spot for IT vs, for example, facilities expenses. Nothing is hated more than facilities costs when you're stuck with a bad lease! How many companies actually resent paying their IT staff more than they resent paying their legal staff? Not many I'd suspect.

Re:Just Griping.

[Radres]

...and what comes after the "journeyman" job? And after that?

Re:Just Griping.

[Artfldgr]

Someone of true intelligence will not need to gripe or make claims (true or not) that their IQ defines them as a genius; they will have the intelligence to know how to forge their way forwards/upwards and be happy in the process of doing so.

Highly intelligent people have the same foibles and eccentricities of any other group, and some would say maybe even more.

it is only the less intelligent that think that being smart or having IQ is a panacea that would rationalize peoples behavior.

they may NOT have the intelligence to forge their way upward, and in fact most do not. often those that do succeed are protected by mentors, good bosses, or the educational system.
they often suffer in grand scale when they get caught by someone that needs to use them without reward or just compensation.

often they are naive because they think things out and the premises we hold about people to get through the day dont allow us to easily think ill of everyone around us.

intelligent people often blow the curve, and dont play well socially. this makes any group that has a certaion status quo to want to get rid of this person, or keep them down so that they dont blow the curve at work too. this is natural, and the smart often dont know why they often have this 'bad luck'.

so no.. its not what someone of lesser thought would think it is. being smart is not the boon that makes the clouds open the angels sing and the harps play for your presence. I know, i also have a very high IQ (i went to bronx science a year early and consistently tested in the 99.999th percentile), and what does this mean. it means i usually can get answers faster than other people, and amazingly so in my domains of expertise. it means that i am not liked as much as other people, for i am overly helpful, and it has taken me years to learn to let people struggle and such (though if you do this you also have to create the situation that you couldnt help either, its a damned if you do damned if you dont situation).

in general co-workers think me odd... because after work i work... because my interests are things like high end fashion photography (i am signed and my work has been seen all over the world), and physics and r&d, etc. you see my interests are less limited by ability than most peoples.

am i successful... not at all.. i still get tripped up by all the same foibles (and some special ones).. as an older programmer they dont think i can do the work, though i can run circles around the younger ones. they are VERY shallow in skills, personality, ability, and such.. totally naive, and a product of feelings education over meritocracy... so image has something to do with how well you program.. the bottom line is that i am over 40 and i am rotting on the vine making the salary i was making 12 years ago.. they get 20 years experience for half price...

now if they can figure out how we can purchase the products we make when we dont earn the money any more? i guess i should have learned erdu... as it is i am learning Bahasa Indonesian... so maybe i will not be crushed as hard as someone not as smart, but i will still be stepped on.


[note that a shmoozer social person can get backing for a product that wont work, but a geek type cant get backing for a product that works real well!]

Re:Just Griping.

[lgw]

If you want to make management money as a coder, you either have to work for an engineering company large enough that is has a technical career track (there are few such companies, but they are ususally huge companies, so there's a fair number of total jobs), or take a chance on a startup and hope that pays off.

If you're not yet a master of your trade (which means at least 5 years real full-time experience, even if you're brilliant, and probably 8 years for most who think they're brilliant), you're not working at that paygrade yet, so don't sweat it. Once you have that solid resume, you should have some maneuverability (at least, during times whean *anyone* is hiring) and should be seeking a company that will value your skills.

It's not enough to be great at somehting, you have to also find an employer who *needs* that level of skill if you expect to be paid appropriately. This can take a while, and then of course you have to prove yourself to the new group, but there is still a real career path for coders in the industry.

Re:Just Griping.

[infinite9]

Don't be arrogant towards your superiors because believe it or not most of the time they deserve to be there.

In my experience, most IT managers couldn't find their ass with both hands and a hunting dog.

Re:Just Griping.

[lgw]

The point of the "journeyman" job (or jobs) is to find the right environment in which to master the trade. This takes many years, but eventually (I'd guess about 5 years past the "apprentice" job for most bright coders) you get to the point where you know how to solve all the problems in your field well, and you have at least some feedback on how your favorite solutions actually work in practice.

Beyond that point, your skills are only going to grow in depth by seeing the true results in the field and maintenance costs of different strategies, and that's a long slow process (but if you really pay attention and keep an open mind, there's a huge difference in your abilities after 20 years as a result.) Breadth is pretty much forced on you, if you have any ambition, because the "best tool for the job" changes slowly over time, and your favorite languages, libraries, and tools should too.

But in any case, by the time you've masterd the trade you should have a reasonably impressive resume, because of the difficult problems you've solved to reach that status, and you should therefore have the career maneuverability you need to get a job with a good company with a real career path. What many coders in their 20s don't realize is that, because they stil have a lot to learn in their field, they don't have much career power yet. Labor supply and demand doesn't favor you until you've mastered the trade, have the resume to prove it, and have some breadth of experience to go with the depth.

If you learn valuable skills (which by definition means skills that many need and few can offer), a career as a coder becomes a much brighter path, but those valuable skills are necessarily what you don't learn in college or your first job.

Re:Just Griping.

[Bellyflop]

laf, that's just great - In a similar vein, in about 2000 or so, I saw someone who was looking for 7 years of Java experience. I tried to explain to them that they are pretty much looking for Gosling himself, but they were sure that they'd find him. Given a few years of looking, I'm sure they found him. :)

I think the major problems with IT staff and corporations are:

a) they often lump anyone having anything to do with computers into one blanket term "IT"
b) they see this staff as a "cost center" and a drain on their profits since developers usually don't directly book profits
c) they have a disincentive to engage in the type of long-term planning in which experienced developers participate

So in the end, they look for young/cheap developers and expect a lot and are often disappointed.

Re:Just Griping.

[Snowdog668]

I see this all the time in the local (Chicago area) want ads. There are always "Entry Level" jobs with descriptions requiring five years of experience.

As for the junior position increasing responsibility, I can vouch for that. In my first pro job I started as a PC tech. Within a few months I was taking on a lot of what was considered the Network Administrator's job, account maintenance, setting up network printers and queues, installing and upgrading servers, running cable, maintaining wiring closets, etc. Once I was comfortable with that job the two Net Admins got promoted to Network Engineers (a new position that was created just for them). They got the pay increase to go with the promotion, I got left with the title (and salary) of a PC Tech but was handling all of the Net Admin tasks.

I did learn a ton of stuff there and am glad that I had the opportunity but it would have been nice to have the salary to go with it. Heck, I might have stayed if the pay had been better even though the director was a pain to work for.

Re:Just Griping.

[Hosiah]

The reality is that often it isn't, people (not just IT workers) fail to see just how good their job is.....I love my job, I love the variety, the sallary is good for my age and my coworkers are motivated but easy enough to get a long with.

Thank you so much for being our sunbeam. You may now retire from your prozac break and go back to work.

For the rest of us, living in the world with the *blue* sky, this study proves (a) you still get bothered at work by morons waving pieces of paper in your face, demanding that you fill them out immediately, and (b) The UK and US are pretty much in lockstep.

But no need to worry your pretty little head about it over on that side of the pond! I'm sure that UK society will become the same kind of totalitarian Fascism based on slavery and pillage that we enjoy over here on the red, white, and blue soil. They have some catching up to do, but they've got a second wind. And when they do catch up, they can rest assured that their workers will stay in their hamster wheels just like our American workers do, simply because there is no option.

Until you buck the system and go do your own thing, of course...

Re:Just Griping.

[Hosiah]

In my experience, most IT managers couldn't find their ass with both hands and a hunting dog.

That's been my experience as well, and also that an IT manager qualifies as a computer expert if they don't yell into the mouse or shake the monitor to reboot it, whereas an IT worker is treated like Forest Gump no matter how many degrees and years of experience they have.

Folks, managers see IT workers as...plumbers. Plumbers who sit and watch the data flow through the pipes in the basement. When the pipes clog, they suddenly discover the IT department to ream them about it. The rest of the time, you don't exist, especially not every two weeks.

Re:Just Griping.

[Anonymous Coward]

The reality is that often it isn't, people (not just IT workers) fail to see just how good their job is and resign themselves to being miserable about it. I program C# about 50% of the time, do internal user support 10% of the time, reply to emails 10% time (this annoys me), deal with external customer support another 10% of the time. The remaining 20% is probably spent on administration etc.

I call bullshit! I would redo your numbers for approx 3%-10% reading/posting on slashdot!

Re:Just Griping.

[EnderWiggnz]

>b) they see this staff as a "cost center" and a drain on their profits since developers usually don't directly book profits

thats because, IT staff, in the vast majority of cases, is a cost center, and not part of the core business.

so, dont be surprised that you're on the chopping block if you are in a cost center.

Re:Just Griping.

[Y-Crate]

Was his name Peter Gibbons?

Re:Just Griping.

[Anonymous Coward]

YES!

im sooo sick of hearing about how people dont get paid enough but as soon as i ask them "well have you asked/demanded a raise (depending on conditions)?" they always say no.

they expect to be paid what they are worth, but that isnt reality. they pay what they can get away with.

if you know you are worth more you better ask for more or dont complain at the end of the day.

(never threaten to leave or say you have been looking around eitehr though).

be positive about what you do and stay firm.

Re:Just Griping.

[budgenator]

Junior Programer wanted, must have 5 years experience in language only 2 years old, and at least 2 years experience in all the buzz-words the CEO saw if FORBES magazine last month. Education and experience enough to get senior level job helpfull; being able to train your offshore replacement a definant plus.

Re:Just Griping.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ability to speel and tipe properly is helfull to.

Re:Just Griping.

[grassy_knoll]

See, I was desperately unhappy at that job, for various reasons. The main one, though was that I was treated as the junior developer for the purposes of salary, and my opinion on things was taken as seriously as a junior developers would be, but when it came to responsibility or workload, I was treated as some kind of hero programmer who could fix everything.

Have to say we have the same problem, although with DBAs. We've got a lot of mainframe retreads who were given relational databases to manage. In many cases, the don't seem to have the skills. Junior personel then do the work to fix whatever problem occured, while the more senior people collect larger salaries for doing less work.

The only real solution seems to be to have high-profile failures; i.e. let the retreds fail if they can't figure it out.

Re:Just Griping.

[us7892]

>The remaining 20% is probably spent on administration etc.

Who are you kidding? "etc" = Read slashdot, slack around the office, socialize, and generally goof off at least 50% of each day.

Re:Just Griping.

[ksheff]

b) they see this staff as a "cost center" and a drain on their profits since developers usually don't directly book profits

Some companies have realized that various IT related projects can have a positive impact on sales and factor that in when determining whether or not to fund the project. They have also realized that new coding done for the business can be classified as a capitalizable expense that could be spread of a few years instead of just one.

Re:Just Griping.

[Mister Incognito]

Make that quote in 5 years and I guarantee nobody will get it.

Re:Just Griping.

[deaddrunk]

No firing you and hiring someone who will work unreasonable hours is your boss' job.

Re:Just Griping.

[Mister Incognito]

... what? nobody posted a goatse? must be the summer ...

Re:Just Griping.

[Pxtl]

You'd be surprised how resistent many bosses are to firing people. Remember that you, as an employee, are an investment by the company. The amount of time it takes for an employee to get to a "useful" skill level is a massive sunk cost. They don't give you raises because they want to pay you what you're worth - they give you raises so you won't quit.

If you're thinking "all the other developers do too much overtime too, they'll just find another" - then all the developers are probably as pissed as you. At that time you should start thinking about the 5-letter-word that all so-called "libertarians" are terrified of: union. Before you panic, remember that a union doesn't have to be a massive, oligarchial beaurocracy. In some places, it can be as simple as your fellow coders just unanimously agreeing that none of them will do any more unpaid overtime. Your boss can't fire you all - they would effectively lose all their projects, incurring several man-years of work to do.

Re:Just Griping.

[sanosuke76]

That can work, unless your company's decided that its prospects are grim enough not to give raises to anyone.

Wait, that's both the companies I've worked at over the past three years. *grumble*

Re:Just Griping.

[Anonymous Coward]

I program C# about 50% of the time, do internal user support 10% of the time, reply to emails 10% time (this annoys me), deal with external customer support another 10% of the time. The remaining 20% is probably spent on administration etc.

You forgot "10% posting to Slashdot" (seems a little much to slip into 'etc')

Re:Just Griping.

[Anonymous Coward]

Tried the internal union approach myself at my place of employment... but getting 15 other staff onboard to stand up against sh*t is almost impossible. They all hate their jobs, but when it comes to putting their nuts (or boobs) on the block, they're terribly wussy.

Re:Just Griping.

[Shajenko42]

There's only one reason why these things happen so frequently - the employers have the economic power, and the employees don't. Otherwise, the good employees would have found jobs where they were appreciated and paid well long ago.

There's one way to fix this problem - unions. But as long as 90% of IT worker think they're in the top 10% in skill, and employers can threaten offshoring, this won't happen.

Re:Just Griping.

[Bellyflop]

Consider a financial firm - they have a big cost center called "compliance". They'd never dare cut people from that particular cost center because the cost of not having compliance far outweighs the cost of having them. It's really easy to measure the cost of not having a proper compliance staff by looking at recent settlements. Unfortunately, IT doesn't have quite the same luxury of being easily measured.

Re:Just Griping.

[Alex P Keaton in da]

Thats great... I had a head injury in 2002, and I was at a big hospital in Cleveland with a great reputation, and they gave me all these tests. I scored a 185 on the IQ thing once, another time I scored 135, and another time in between those two scores. It is a joke. It measures nothing, as you can see by my three scores. I am absolutely not a genius by anyones definition, yet the 185 says otherwise... The only people who brag about (or even mention, or for that matter even know) their IQs are people who feel superior to others because they did well on a reasoning test, yet have no money/crappy jobs.... As in, well, I may be broke and have no woman, but my IQ is 50 pts higher than the salesman who is rolling in money and has a nice looking wife.... That and $25 will get you a Blowjob downtown
Give me 100 people who know their IQ, and I would wager 95 of them are assholes with crappy jobs

Re:Just Griping.

[twstdroot]

the sallary is good for my age

Why is your salary good for your age? Shouldn't it be good for your skillset? If I can do the same job as someone ten years older.. why does he get more money? I don't care that he has a wife and kids to feed...

Re:Just Griping.

[Anonymous Coward]

Get an MBA. Or go make more money as a fashion photographer. Forget technical stuff. Seriously.

Re:Just Griping.

[timmarhy]

i couldn't agree more. i worked in a busy 24/7 environment for 3 years. i started out fixing pc's and learning about their in house application. by the end of it i was the network administrator, jnr dev, printer service tech. pretty much everything. on top of this they had somehow pushed me into this position where everyone expected me to be on call 24/7.and my pay had not increased dispite countless promises of reviews. well, inspite of this i really enjoy working with computers, and the experience was good for me, so i never complained. UNTIL one day some management dickhead got this idea that they could push me even furthur and not pay me call out or over time. i snapped hulk style when i saw my pay slip and was told i was no longer to write my over time down. fromt hat day forward i didn't answer my phone if it was work. i never did anything outside my alotted hours. i stopped all development work and stuck to my assigned role. and you know what? no one ever said a word. managment knew they had no right to be doing what they had done, and so i cruised out my term there and moved on to better things

Re:Just Griping.

[khallow]

Yes. Just think of the hundreds of millions of people on their deathbeds who are going to say "Gee, my greatest regret in life is that I grew a beard when I was 23".

Re:Just Griping.

[Doyle]

I program C# about 50% of the time, do internal user support 10% of the time, reply to emails 10% time (this annoys me), deal with external customer support another 10% of the time. The remaining 20% is probably spent on administration etc.

But that leaves 0% for posting to Slashdot! ;)

Re:Just Griping.

[Kuro-Bishounen]

How appropriate, you fight like a cow

Re:Just Griping.

[Lars T.]

Ahh, so only people who are ruthless and/or willing to brown-nose and/or willing to have sex with superiors are intelligent enough to be a genius.

In other news:

[aixou]

37% of U.K. workers don't feel they belong to any statistical demographic.

Re:In other news:

[CloudDrakken]

3/5 of all statistics are made up on the spot

Re:In other news:

[JustOK]

and 5 out of 4 people have problems with math.

Re:In other news:

[stridebird]

And (allegedly) 90% of people respond that they are "above average". It's the other 10% I (sometimes) worry about...

Re:In other news:

[TapeCutter]

"It's the other 10% I (sometimes) worry about..."

Honest and dumb make up 10% of the population? Obviously evolution is a factor here.

Re:In other news:

[Anonymous Coward]

...and 50% of people are below average. We need to fix this.

I think we can all agree...

[Afecks]

70% don't believe that their job reflects their true potential

I'm not surprised. I don't think anyone wants to imagine "Help Desk II" being the maximum of their potential.

Re:I think we can all agree...

[IWorkForMorons]

Sadly, this is the best level that some will achieve. Not because the market is bad, or they are being unfairly discriminated against, but because they truly don't have the skills/discipline/abilities/whatever to become a senior developer. Then again, there are many other options besides developmemt. Working in a developer role is a very narrow definition of being an IT professional. There are multitudes of other roles to aim for, second and third tier support being some. There's people who specialise in database creation and management. Some do reporting and data mining. Some do technical writing and documentation. I knew one person in college who was an average coder, but blew everyone out of the water when it came to screen design. These are all vital roles in the IT arena. But too many people are focused on "must make senior developer...", seeing everything else as below them, that they don't realise the incredible opportunities that are available to them. So they wallow in misery trying to get that developer position from their helpdesk job...

Re:I think we can all agree...

[jellomizer]

Actually that means that close to 30% are under qualified. I have a BS degree in Computer Science with focuses on Parallel Processing and Interprocess Communication. And what do I do PHP scripts and VB code. My job which requires a 4 year degree at least is the job that a 2 year degree person can do. The stuff that requires a Masters degree is the stuff that I can do and be close to showing my potential. The stuff that the PhDs are doing are things that Master Students could do just as easily (I could even argue a 4 year degree person can do some of the work)

Re:I think we can all agree...

[Anonymous Coward]

And what do I do PHP scripts and VB code. My job which requires a 4 year degree at least is the job that a 2 year degree person can do

Your current job does not require a degree at all fromt he sound of it. But then most IT jobs don't.

Re:I think we can all agree...

[Eskarel]

I don't really know, I have less experience than most of my coworkers, but I have a degree and they don't. I find that I'm catching on at a much faster rate so that while I'm in some ways still less experienced, my knowledge will catch up to theirs very quickly.

Re:I think we can all agree...

[senatorpjt]

My job which requires a 4 year degree at least is the job that a 2 year degree person can do. The stuff that requires a Masters degree is the stuff that I can do and be close to showing my potential. The stuff that the PhDs are doing are things that Master Students could do just as easily (I could even argue a 4 year degree person can do some of the work)

I suspect this may be the same in every field. Personally, I'm a chemist, and the same situation applies. To get a job doing what you learned in a two-year program, you need a BS. To get a job doing what you learned in BS, you need an MS. And, to get a job learning what you did for MS, you need a PhD.

However, I don't think it's at all unreasonable (unlike I did before I started my PhD). Just look back at how ridiculously easy your freshman class material seems now that you've finished the BS. I vaguely remember my sophomore organic chemistry classes being challenging, but now that I'm a grad student teaching recitation to sophomores, I can't understand how they are having trouble with the material! In fact, I know the sophomore organic material far better after finishing my MS work than I did after I got my BS. Studying in the field for a couple years beyond the material you're expected to be able to implement on the job really serves to cement the information in your mind to the point where it's old hat.

Re:I think we can all agree...

[jellomizer]

Usually people with degrees have a better understanding on what is happening underneath. So except for focusing on learning the syntax you are focusing on the method. And just looking up the syntax when you need it. Programming in different languages is a piece of cake, when you know how languages work

Re:I think we can all agree...

[Kafka_Canada]

That has more to do with intelligence than education, although of course there's also a correlation between intelligence and education.

Re:I think we can all agree...

[cbeaudry]

Education is about knowledge, not intelligence.

Re:I think we can all agree...

[Austerity Empowers]

Jokes aside, Help Desk is probably the toughest IT assignment. Any dork can hack some perl, it's hard to solve someones problem on the phone. It's totally unrewarding, and a job that pays dick, but it's in my opinion harder than anything else IT people do.

Also probably the one that qualifies people for management the best. If you can keep your temper when dealing with the dumbest of dumb on the phone, you're probably ready to politic with your peers successfully. Sadly, that's about all that qualifies people for management these days.

Re:I think we can all agree...

[lgw]

This is because no one actually learns anything useful when they "learn the material" (especially something as memeorize-and-regurgitate intensive as orgo!), but actually use that material for a couple years when studying something else, and it's a different story.

Re:I think we can all agree...

[Kafka_Canada]

And knowledge is easier to gain and use with intelligence.

Re:I think we can all agree...

[cbeaudry]

Indeed, which by your meaning, also implies, intelligence is pre-existing to education, and not a result off... the later.

Re:I think we can all agree...

[Kafka_Canada]

Yes -- as I said, "That has more to do with intelligence than education, although of course there's also a correlation between intelligence and education."

Re:I think we can all agree...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's true, I run a Help Desk and have worked (briefly) as a developer. Help Desk is definitely underpaid for the kind of shit you have to deal with and requires a distinct skillset that seems to be lacking in many IT people (at least the ones I have known).

We don't spend all day going to meetings or writing code or fucking around, we spend all day dealing with everything from idiots to power users and we have to keep our cool no matter what. When the shit hits the fan it's our phones that ring off the hook, it's us who gets yelled at when the idiots in the sysadmin group fuck the Exchange server over and no one can check their email for two days. We have to calm users down and we have to answer every fucking stupid question they have, and every difficult question too. We do full support for every single user yet we get paid half what some codemonkey does to sit in his office listening to music while he bangs out a few lines, or what the sysadmins get to sit in the server room fucking around with a switch (or more likely, breaking it), or what the web-dev team gets to hang out smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee all day (seriously, do those guys work? they get paid $60k+ and I've yet to see them do anything except order lots of expensive gear which we have to prepare and install for them). We get paid like shit and treated like shit but without us everything would turn to shit.

Re:I think we can all agree...

[budgenator]

now that I'm a grad student teaching recitation to sophomores
I've frequently assigned my "slow-learners" to teaching/trainning roles and giving presentations, nothing like the fear of failure to get the learning juices flowing; the key is to make the assignment a bit of work for them and rehearse them so they will not fail the first few go rounds. Amazing how some "problem-children" can bloom with a little active management.

Re:I think we can all agree...

[StupidHelpDeskGuy]

Boss...Is that you? Quit reading slashdot and get back to work? Seriously though, I think I work with that guy.

feel?

[c8to1]

feel valued?...show them the money...

Re:feel?

[Midnight Thunder]

feel valued?...show them the money...

It doesn't always have to be about money. Other things that can make a person feel valued are:
    - returning time or some other kind of perk for extra hours worked o a project.
    - Saying 'thank you' and actually communicating. How many times have I been told "we think you're a key asset", and then find that I am the last to know about important decisions

Re:feel?

[Bob McCown]

Its definately not about the money. I'm paid very well, but I only get 2 weeks of vacation a year (been at this job almost 5 years now, and in the industry over 20). Last 2 reviews Ive asked for more vacation instead of money, and both times been told "thats for larger companies". ugh

Re:feel?

[budgenator]

Giving more money to someone who feels used and abused only makes them feel used, abused and paid-for. You can't pay them enough when they feel used and abused, it just adds insult to injury.

What the study realy shows all those people-skills that supposedly "they" have and "we" don't, they really don't have either, else the people who hold the keys to the kingdom wouldn't feel so used and abused.

Re:feel?

[sanosuke76]

*raises hand* Some of us really ARE mercenaries at heart... I'd take the money and be happy. Then again, I'm single and like my job, so free time isn't my key to happiness anyway.

Re:feel?

[c8to1]

yeah...i didnt mean money makes up for having a shitty work environment... i meant that saying "oh we value you so much" doesnt make up for being paid peanuts... two sides of a coin. i guess i was thinking along this line because a friend of mine who works extremely hard for no money, discussed the situation with his boss, and the boss said, "oh well dont underestimate the value of working on these projects" was a total joke, considering its basically a data entry company. also friends of mine who work in retail get crappy wage (thats ok, because the marginal productivity is low) but then have to turn up for unpaid work meetings and get shafted on overtime...just because they get the priveledge of selling clothes. so theres companies that always try to do things on the cheap, and sell the work environment angle, and theres companies that have crummy work environments and just try to pay their way out of the problem.

It's just normal griping.

[BitwizeGHC]

Of course it's just normal griping by the expected percentage of always-disgruntled employees. We here at Yoyodyne value our employees, and try to create a flexible work environment that enables them to be more productive with less stress.

Now quit posting to Slashdot and get back to work. You've got a deadline coming up and it looks like you'll be working an 80-hour week to catch up. I suggest you get busy.

Re:It's just normal griping.

[DenDave]

ROFL!

Actually I think the biggest problem is the lack of "pat on the back", alot of IT folks end up doing alot of jim'l'fixit's and it becomes an expectation. I personally don't think I am underpaid but sometimes a hoot of "you da man" would do miracles for my smiling...yes, we have egos, yes they need stroking..

Re:It's just normal griping.

[Anonymous Coward]

Get busy? ME, a NERD?
Are you *crazy* ?

Re:It's just normal griping.

[bm_luethke]

While this is a joke, I would have given it an "insightful" mod.

My experience, on both sides of the isle (both as a manager and as a "grunt" - though as a different profession in each instance), has been that employees always feel underrated and what they want is overrated. Employers have always underrated thier employees and felt they over rated them.

Never really understood that - never understood why both sides can't seem to see the other. You find the ocassional person that does, even the occasional entire company that does see it right (and they are a great pleasure to work for or manage), but it very very rarely seems to happen.

I've always wondered if it isn't some type of "chicken vs egg" argument - do companies do it because employees want to much? Do employees do it because employers want to give to little? I would say "yes" to both and wonder which happened first?

And, of course, both sides *always* feel they are justified and take the above as being good on them. Chances are that if you think your employer is screwing you - you aren't worth what you think. Chances are if you think you are great to your employees and they are ungrateful you are screwing them. My personal experience places both of these at a 90+ percentile point - there are people being screwed and there are employers who bend over backwards but they are few and far between. To note, you will not make what you did during the dot-com bubble (and hence the bubble) and a software engineer is more valuable than a ditch digger (try and get the ditch digger to write software).

Re:It's just normal griping.

[NekSnappa]

I'm with you on that. I've been with my company for almost 15 years (engineering not IT) and every time I've been rewarded, other than with salary, was when I did something outside my normal tasks. While all of my day to day work which is harder and I am more proud of barely is acknowledged.

This once again confirms...

[ceeam]

... that nerds tend to have more psychological problems than general populace.

Any links to studies about it and/or "professional advice"?

Re:This once again confirms...

[Anonymous Coward]

... Or maybe that spending one's life in front of a computer screen sucks? Whatever you may think about it, it is not natural for a human being to keep staring at a little shiny rectangle for 8+ hours a day...

Re:This once again confirms...

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe the nerd needs some woman around them.

Re:This once again confirms...

[m3rajk]

no. nerds are just more likely to recognise they have issues and try to get them fixed.

Re:This once again confirms...

[sanosuke76]

Ooo, shiiiny...

100%

[Anonymous Coward]

...and about 100%, or roughly 1 in every 1 employee in this study could do with getting laid more...that's usually when the focus on and complaining about work ends.

Sturgeon's law correction

[Janek Kozicki]

90% percent of all news is a PR stunt.

what those statistics intend to tell [1], apart from taking valuable space in front news?

[1] they can't, because it's statistics

Always examine the source

[Anonymous Coward]

A quick check of this "survey" sponsor shows that it is a company called skillsoft. Skillsoft peddles seminars and courses on how you can start your own website for fun and profit. This would seem to be right up the alley for people creating FUD about how you will be fired, since you're in a more precarious position than you think at work -- check our survey results! So, take this whole thing with a grain of salt.

Re:Always examine the source

[Shaper_pmp]

... Except, the conclusion of their survey is that IT workers are more valued than they believe, not less. Hence, they're less likely to get fired, and so are less likely to want Skillsoft's courses. I know this is /., but can you at least pretend to have RTFA before posting half-baked incomprehensible conspiracy theories?

PHB - leave us alone!

[AccUser]

I used to work developing software for a global telecommunications test equipment manufacturer. The job was well paid, with good team working, and interesting challenges. The problem was that our managers (or one in particular, you know the story) was obsessed with components and re-use. On the face of it, the drive for re-use made sense, but in practical terms, made the lives of most of the developers difficult, since we were expected to develop software and firmware components that could be re-used on other platforms.

I remember one particular meeting with a manager who was raving about one project team that had delivered a load of components into the component library. All the developers knew that these weren't really components, since they would only ever work on the platform that they were developed for, but nobody else realised that, or was even prepared to accept that was possibly the case.

Whilst managers thought the component development was new and exciting, it got most of the developers down. I certainly felt undervalued as the push to develop more components became the mantra of the managers, and all the developers struggled to accept the drive to then outsource our component development. Managers seemed to feel that we developers would prefer designing code and performing integration testing, rather than developing the code ourselves. Who'd have thought it? :-)

Re:PHB - leave us alone!

[BarryNorton]

You come off really well in this story...

Re:PHB - leave us alone!

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh? "Expected to develop components...on other platforms". If your product was expected to work on multiple platforms, then the manager is surely being reasonable. If components (properly designed/coded) make testing/debugging easier and a more robust product is the result, then the manager is right again.

You sound like the sort of developer who makes life hell for everyone else... (yes, I am a Development Manager who has a multi-platform product written using components).

Re:PHB - leave us alone!

[evan1l38]

I gotta agree...I love reusable components. Everytime I start a new project and get to reuse significant chunks of code rather than have to rewrite them, it makes me happy. And if you work on multiple platforms and don't write multi-platform code that works on all platforms...man, I'd absolutely refuse to even try to maintain that nightmare.

This is a huge problem!

[raehl]

I predict an immediate exit of qualified people from the IT industry in favor of more fullfilling careers like chip frying, garbage hauling, and TV/VCR repair.

Re:This is a huge problem!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes as I sit in my cramped cubicle trying to finish projects with impossible deadlines for a miniscule paycheck, I think of what it would be like to herd sheep in New Zealand.

Re:This is a huge problem!

[TapeCutter]

"Sometimes as I sit in my cramped cubicle ... I think of what it would be like to herd sheep in New Zealand."

Huh? You want to be a sheep dog?

Re:This is a huge problem!

[squeee]

Not too far off actaully.

In the office I work in (in the UK where this survery was done) I've heard heard many people voice dissatisfaction with their job and a desire to do something more meaningful. Like paramedics, police etc. I get the impression that this is a growing trend.

Re:This is a huge problem!

[Anne Thwacks]

In previous employment, One of my colleagues left software to be a meat porter (for more money) and another to become a carpenter (he wanted to do something tangible). A third (different company) became a farmer "I'm fed up with nanoseconds, I dont want to worry about any unit of time smaller than a season".

Personally, I would love the money that other people who have studied for similar amounts of time get (Doctors, lawyers, etc) and I'd also love to be bullied less (You can't have your holiday now! Wait till after X, Y, Z etc)

I worked for a while as a truck driver, and it was less stressfull, but similar pay! Unfortunately the hours were longer, and even more bullying, and a worrying disregard of health and safety regulations.

Re:This is a huge problem!

[Lonewolf666]

TV/VCR repair is in danger of becoming extinct, because manufacturing new units tends to be cheaper than repairing. Otherwise, I might be tempted...

Re:This is a huge problem!

[Dogtanian]

TV/VCR repair is in danger of becoming extinct

I wouldn't even waste my time considering learning VCR repair; you can pick up a new VCR for less than what any reasonable repair person would have to charge to fix the majority of faults.

Additionally, they'll be dead for pretty much any purpose in the next couple of years, as DVD recorders and PVRs (*especially* PVRs) take over.

In short, utterly pointless business to consider even working in; doubly stupid if you have to learn the skills first.

TVs may be different, but they're still semi-disposable, and the technology is fast moving away from CRTs (yeah, CRTs will still be in use for years to come, but the people using them will mostly be those at the bottom of the market, and they'll replace their old CRTs, rather than paying to have them fixed. Anything else will probably be very niche, high-end CRT apps...)

Re:This is a huge problem!

[Anonymous Coward]

I predict an immediate exit of qualified people from the IT industry in favor of more fullfilling careers like chip frying, garbage hauling, and TV/VCR repair.

I can't figure out if you're trying to be a smartass or not. Yes, I work in the IT field (but I'm in the US, not the UK). Yes, people are leaving.

So far we've got one that just left to do a masters degree in social work, another went to library school, another went to law school, and I'm looking at a masters in accounting (even though I've got an IT undergrad). Ages range from late 20's to early 40's. Of course we've got a couple of folks doing MBA degrees at night. We've even had a few go into construction.

Some of these folks no longer give a damned about the money, and give more consideration to work environment, future prospects, and social responsibility.

And here's the ego part: every one of us are considered top flight employees. The marginal employees seem to be the ones who are sticking around.

The secret? Live within your means. Retraining is virtually imminent nowadays.

Re:This is a huge problem!

[AnotherBlackHat]

"Sometimes as I sit in my cramped cubicle ... I think of what it would be like to herd sheep in New Zealand."

Huh? You want to be a sheep dog?

Sure - free room and board, you get to work outside, and the women all have 6 breasts.

Re:This is a huge problem!

[r6an]

Funny... I'm thinking about the same thing. Police Officers get more pay, more benefits, more time off, and (depending on where you go) you don't have to take your job home... One day...

You know, this happened to me just today.

[raehl]

I've been working at my job doing verification work for about 5 years. I generally feel like I'm doing the same job I was doing 5 yeas ago without any real change or growth.

But today I had one of our new hires come in and ask a few questions about solutions that are pretty much daily routine - obvious - to me now. And I realized that 5 years ago, I had to ask very similar questions. Since then, I had become the expert. And thinking about it, there are a lot of job proficiencies and responsibilities I've acquired over the 5 years that I just wasn't consciously aware of on a daily basis without actually stopping to think about them.

It's easy to forget that you didn't always know everything you know now, and that your job has changed more than just salary grades and amounts.

Re:You know, this happened to me just today.

[sammy baby]

I'm not trying to rain on your parade, I swear. However, there's a joke I've heard that applies equally well to any white collar job as it does to IT work:

Q: What's the technical term for an employee whose skills and responsibilites increase significantly, but without a proportionate increase in salary?
A: Schmuck.

Without going too much into detail, the same thing is happening right now to my wife. She was brought in at a very late stage (just before user acceptance testing) on a software project that has been turning out to be a huge boondoggle. None of the project managers prior to her were able to either make the client happy, or keep the development on schedule. But she's seen in the company as the "rain maker," and pretty much the only one capable of getting things back under control. Guess what the conclusion management drew from this is?

If you guessed, "Sammy's wife should be a project manager, with the corresponding major increase in salary," nice try. The correct answer was, "this project doesn't really need a project manager to be there, as long as she's on the job." Of course, projects still need to be managed. The only difference here is that rather than being managed by a stuffed shirt with PM credentials who will proceed to f*** things all up, it's being managed by someone who actually knows what she's doing, but can be paid at about half to two-thirds the rate.

(Sorry. Can you tell this is something of a sore point for me? ;) )

Re:You know, this happened to me just today.

[gwicks]

She should aim to get formal training in project management or management trouble shooting (PRINCE2 for example - in the UK at least. I'm sure the US has similar standard PM certification).

By asking for it, she will know if she is really "appriciated" as a trouble shooter. If they say "no" then you know that they just want her to "knock heads together" and then go back to her day job. Good for the boss as he get's the praise and profit, and no increase in salary costs.

If she get's the training then she should take on a role to "train the PM's" and stop these projects going tit's up in the first place. Good for the companies reputation?

If they don't then it's obvious that your wife has a brain, is not afriad to use it, so go get another job!

But if the job suit's her (close to home, child care) then stop kicking the horse. It's dead!

(My wife in a similar role at work - but they keep asking her to go for promotion and she refuses cause it would screw home our life.)

Re:You know, this happened to me just today.

[duffbeer703]

She's also a woman, which doesn't help.

I worked as a DBA after I left school. On of the more experienced DBAs that I worked with an experienced DBA who was on-call 24x7 and was one of the only operations people who knew how the massive application that we administered worked inside and out.

Her pay in 2000? $27k after five years.

I was making nearly $50 as a clueless newbie two weeks out of school because I negotiated.

Re:You know, this happened to me just today.

[lgw]

It's very rare that you can actually move up within a company proportional to your growth in skills. The worst mistake I've made in my life is staying with my first employer in the field for 5 years (abusive sons of bitches, too). It's always worth shopping around every year or two. You'll either find something better, or become disabused of your notion that you're worth more than you're paid. Either way leads to more satisfaction, in my experience.

Re:You know, this happened to me just today.

[Bellyflop]

I find it rare to get a significant jump in salary without leaving a company and going to another. Sure, there's often a small (10%) yearly increase, but if you want any significant improvement in terms and conditions, the best thing seems to be to shop around. It sucks from a loyalty perspective, but then again, where does their loyalty lie?

Re:You know, this happened to me just today.

[eam]

10% yearly increase is SMALL?

Wow, I want to work where you work.

We're happy to get a 3% yearly increase, and that is eaten up every year by the increase in parking costs.

The biggest increase I ever got was 17% and that was only because they had to beat another company's offer.

Re:You know, this happened to me just today.

[BurntNickel]

Where are you working at that a 10% annual increase in salery is small? Please let me know because I want to change fields.

Re:You know, this happened to me just today.

[GreyPoopon]

She should aim to get formal training in project management or management trouble shooting (PRINCE2 for example - in the UK at least. I'm sure the US has similar standard PM certification).

Bingo! Exactly right. What she is experiencing is absolutely typical, particularly in the IT field. As your experience goes up, you absolutely will not be rewarded for it in the job you are in. The best path is to get formal training and certification on the job you want to have (and have probably already been doing). With that, you have a solid resume, and you can even use your experience in your current job to back up the training you've had. The next step is to either seek the job you want in another company, or within another department at the same company. In many cases, if you seek a position within another department at the same company, you may find that the department you are currently working for will make a counter offer to give you a title (and salary) more in line with what you are seeking.

Re:You know, this happened to me just today.

[Lodragandraoidh]

Our PMs, with one exception, do not understand software development. As such, they make bad assumptions regarding what needs to be done on a project.

So, I end up holding their hands and telling them how to do their job. Of course, on the next project I will get another PM - and the whole process starts over.

It would be better to do away with the PM, and raise my salary just 50% what that PM was making to do the same job. This would save the company quite a bit of dough over the long term and I would be properly compensated - particularly given the 'we've got to have this widget NOW!!!' syndrome that is prevalent with management.

They greatly appreciate what we do; they disrespect our interests in getting fairly compensated for it.

It's either the Lottery or dogfood for my retirement I fear...

Re:You know, this happened to me just today.

[budgenator]

Most often the vampires, OOPs I mean Human Resources Personnel, feel that experience and training gained in is already paid for by the company rather than an investment with a maintence cost.

Re:You know, this happened to me just today.

[sanosuke76]

Geez. Last raise I received didn't even keep up with inflation, and that was one company and three years ago. I did, however, receive about a 14% raise when going from the one job to the other.

I don't know anyone else who's received regular raises at either company in question, actually.

3% sounds really good to me. :p

Re:You know, this happened to me just today.

[Bellyflop]

Yipes, I made a mistake. I didn't mean to put 10%, I meant to put a less than sign in there!

Re:You know, this happened to me just today.

[cas2000]

> It would be better to do away with the PM, and
> raise my salary just 50% what that PM was making
> to do the same job. This would save the company
> quite a bit of dough over the long term and I
> would be properly compensated -

sorry, you're not qualified for that kind of project management role - you sound like you're a tech.

as a Project Manager you're supposed to be able to say "yes, of course we can do that" to any brain-damaged idea uttered by senior management or a customer.

as a tech, you're likely to say undesirable things like "no, we can't do that" or "that's the stupidest idea i've heard for a long time" or even the more politic "i'll have to think about that and get back to you".

this kind of unwanted adherence to reality and truth are what disqualifies you.

Re:You know, this happened to me just today.

[Lodragandraoidh]

If I had points I would mod this reply up 'Funny'.

(ah - at least I think you are trying to be humorous, right?)

Stop whinging

[nighty5]

I litterally got back from London last week (I'm living in Sydney) and the market is healthy.

Most good IT workers in the UK are being paid very well so that alone should make them think twice before whinging.

Re:Stop whinging

[leathered]

Parent is quite correct and not trolling. I live in one of the quieter parts of the UK and the market is healthier than it's ever been since 2000. Wages have risen greatly of the last 12 months and there's no shortage of work.

The company I work for has if fact had to ship some its development work to India, not for the usual cost reasons but simply because it can't fill the positions it advertises despite offering generous packages.

Re:Stop whinging

[mikael]

Well, I think the reason you can't find staff is blindingly obvious. You may be wanting IT staff in the short term, but what guarantee can you give them that you won't outsource their jobs in the long term?

Also, can an entry-level member of staff afford a house in your area? Is there a good range of local entertainments; restaurants, bars, fitness centres.

Is it a small town dominated by neds, scallies, chavs?

Re:Stop whinging

[Tony Hoyle]

Let me guess.

"Developer required. 25 years JDK 2.0, 10 years VS.NET 2005 experience essential"

I know a *lot* of unemployed developers. I also see a lot of job adverts not far off the above.

Companies are just not prepared to let a programmer learn something.. and yes I have seen VS.NET 2005 as a requirement for a job - how long would it take for someone used to VS.NET 2003 to pick it up? 30 seconds max... but they won't get the interview.

(I was once rejected for a job as I only had 2 years Java, and the company had a requirement for >10 years. - Java was about 4 years old at the time...).

Re:Stop whinging

[Anonymous Coward]

..what guarantee can you give them that you won't outsource their jobs in the long term?

The pure, unending stream of shit that poors forth from Indian outsourcing companies should be a pretty good garuantee. Outsourcing to India is a short-lived fad. The big boys played with it for a little while, have all got burnt badly and are getting back to hiring real developers for real money. The smaller companies are even begining to learn that anything outsourced to India "on the cheap" will end up costing you twice as much to fix in the long run than if you just employed competent developers in the first place.

Re:Stop whinging

[senatorpjt]

No wonder companies hate IT people. What a bunch of bitches.

Seriously, though. Most of the IT people around that aren't in senior positions these days probably entered the field in the late 90's when it seemed like every kid who knew how to write batch files ended up being an idle millionaire at the age of 25.

IT is no longer seen as a golden egg that can turn any business around, it's just seen as another essential and noncentral function like janitors and electricians, with the requisite amount of respect afforded these positions. Aside from companies with a central focus on developing software for sale, the guy that keeps the computers working is no more important than the guy that makes sure the lights come on when you flip the switch next to the door. Less important, considering that qualified electricians are harder to come by than CS degree holders.

Sure, you could point to the higher skill level required for IT work (maybe versus a janitor, but even an electrician apprenticeship takes longer than a BS degree!). "Highly skilled" doesn't mean squat as long as there is some other guy waiting in line to take your job if you don't like it.

But, you say "If the computers stop working, the business grinds to a halt." Yeah, but computers run on electricity, as does everything else. The electrician is more important than you.

In short, IT people need to stop thinking they're so much more special than everyone else at the company. I suspect that this holier than thou attitude that most IT people seem to have is the real origin of the disdain that management has for IT staffs.

So, if you have an IT job, just be glad you have a job. If you don't, then the sense of entitlement IT workers have may work in your favor - when they quit because they don't have a special parking spot with their name in solid gold letters next to the front door.

I understand being bitter about how much better things were a few years ago, but it's over. Get over yourselves.

Re:Stop whinging

[oxfletch]

So what is the going rate in the UK nowadays for
"senior programmer" types? I finally gave up in disgust and moved to the US, but I'm curious if it got any better since 1998 ...

The UK just does NOT value techies like the US does, in my experience.

Re:Stop whinging

[mikael]

Because the government wants people take more financial responsibility for the lives (students loans for university education, mortgages for housing, private pension schemes for retirement), and also wants people to have more children earlier to keep the worker/pensioner ratio in balance.

Because savings rates offered by banks are meagre and stocks are not doing as well as they used to be, this only leaves property to invest in. So there is a national obsession with trying to get onto the property ladder as soon as possible, which is also encouraged by TV series promoting get-rich-quick schemes based on property improvement.

As an example, our neighbour who was an electrician lived in a entry level top-floor two bedroom victorian apartment. He bought out the access rights to the attic (which had no lighting, walls or windows), redeveloped it into to a loft apartment with bay windows and balcony - thereby doubling the value of his investment.

Traditionally, a first-time couple who buy a cheap run-down property and do it up themselves over a couple of years then move on up the property market. Now, there are privately owned companies which do this methodically within months, then move onto the next house.

Re:Stop whinging

[Tony Hoyle]

My last job before I went self employed was £35,000 as 'principal' programmer (lead senior programmer... I was the highest paid non-management employee, but this was in an IT company and had nothing but IT staff).

That equates to about $60,000 I think.

The 'junior' (actually a damned good java programmer who was completely crapped on) was earning £20,000 (about $34,000).

It's still pretty poor...

OTOH I'm earning even less than that now (about £15,000 at the moment) and damned happy working from home with no boss to piss on me from a great height.

Re:Stop whinging

[Anonymous Coward]

>> I litterally got back from London last week (I'm living in Sydney) and the market is healthy.

Good. If you had metaphorically got back from London instead...I wouldn't have a clue what you were talking about. :-)

Re:Stop whinging

[Deviant Q]

I would definitely think twice before "whinging." I try and partake only in actions I know how to spell.

Re:Stop whinging

[Mister Incognito]

Apply. When questioned, mention you qualify as you have 2 years of java experience and the requirements stated 1. 1 because "obviously 10 was a typo since Java is 4 years old" 2 out of 4 sounds good enough.

Re:Stop whinging

[Anonymous Coward]

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=whinging

I would definitely think twice before making an ass out of myself, too.

Re:Stop whinging

[Anonymous Coward]

Having lived in various parts of the UK, I would say... if you find a creative software development job take it if you can. But saying that, there are both city and rural areas which it is entirely uneconomical to live unless you are subsidised by your parents.

There is hardly any (if any at all) rentable property for locals let alone graduates, which means that they have to live in the nearest towns. House prices there are being set by retirees from London. And since there are no bus services, a car is essential, which costs around 6000 pounds/year. Given that an entry level salary is around 20K or less, the combination of 25% income tax, 40% rent, 10% food, having to use a car will make the venture a loss-maker.

We also have stories of admins who were forced to leave London, because the living costs of renting a room and commuting by Tube exceeds that provided by their salaries.

It's not IT-specific, it might be UK specific

[Teun]

I work for the Dutch branch of a British company.
I see these problems in all our departments, not just IT.
And it has come to us in The Netherlands through an imported British manager.

Continental Europe has historicaly concidered worker participation as important, the UK fights this concept tooth and nail.

The feeling that you belong to the company and that your opinion is valued is an important factor for employee satisfaction and the company will prosper bacause of it.

Re:It's not IT-specific, it might be UK specific

[The Lost Supertone]

I agree... all the jobs I've had have always made me very discouraged when I didn't feel I was part of a group of people I wanted to succeed. Sometimes though you'd be part of one dept and you'd actually more want to simply show management that they were idiots or something... so you're try harder for your other co-workers more so than anything else. That said working with my Church's youth group something I'm very passionate about... I'll give tons of my time, energy and even cash that I don't really have to the kids I work with because I know I'm actually making a difference.

Re:It's not IT-specific, it might be UK specific

[quarkscat]

Okay, so this study was done in the UK. But the UK has (largely) adopted the USA's management style. Which is to say, those domestic IT jobs that have not already been offshore outsourced, or (IMHO even worse) filled by imported foreigners at lower wage and benefit level, face increased pressure to "do more with less" -- more hours and expanded job functions with less staffing and resources and wages.

Many of the USA's IT workers feel "unrequited love" for the work they do -- where IS the love?
No doubt, many of the the UK's IT workers feel similarly.

Re:It's not IT-specific, it might be UK specific

[Anonymous Coward]

Australia seems prone to this crap too.

Hypocrisy?

[MartinG]

Seventy-five percent feel discriminated against because of their age
43% say their bosses think they are too young, and 32% feel too old.

Anyone else see hypocrisy there? The age of your boss is irrelevant so long as (s)he is competent.

Understandable...

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't moaning about things the unofficial English pastime?

"Moaning is often the first point of contact for English people who haven't met each other before." --Martin Clunes (on Parkinson)

Re:Understandable...

[Hal_Porter]

Only about mundane stuff like office politics and the weather.

"The bus I was running for _blew_up_, and I thought bugger that for a lark"

Re:Understandable...

[Pxtl]

Not according to a certain English rock band.

"Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way" -- Pink Floyd.

India, there we go!

[Mister Incognito]

IT workers in the United States tend to feel undervalued also, according to a 1999 survey conducted by Computerworld. In that study, respondents said that while they are happy to be working in IT and are loyal to the companies for which they work, they believe they are not valued enough by their employers, are overworked, and receive too little communication on how they can contribute to the company's bottom line.

Please. A 1999 survey. 1999.

What a stupid study. For starters, nobody is gonna recognize in public they don't value their employees (unless it's in a stockholder meeting, in that case you better say you are ready to "trim the fat" in your company).

And then you got the big company "moves" in which today we kick 15,000 US/EU employees due to alleged redundancies, tomorrow we hire 14,000 in India/China. Sure they are in their right to do so, but people will not be happy.

Or today we lay out a couple of thousands of our senior consultants, and tomorrow we hire a bunch of noobs for 1/10 the money, which they will accept because they need the experience.

Coworkers value IT people? Sure they do! When their OS dies due to user stupidity, it is magically fixed! Every time! Hey, that guy must feel satisfied, he's been working nonstop! ... If it was a piece of machinery that they broke, I know where that person would be.

And anyway, what is exactly an IT worker?

Re:India, there we go!

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who knows how to copy and paste without a mouse.

WOW!

They only care when they can't surf the net

[Neo-Rio-101]

I want to feel valued by having a wage increase. I don't care much for the smiles and congratulations.... they're few and far between anyway, and then what are they going to say? "Thank you for keeping the network up, like it should be anyway"?

As far as I'm concerned, nobody knows I exist until the network goes down - then they all start to care.

I don't mind. I just want the cold hard cash anyhow.

Re:They only care when they can't surf the net

[peterh42]

That is the same at the company I work for. If the internet is down for 2 minutes, the complaints come in. The other developer and myself have been on the same wages for the last 4 years, so when you see all these other workers complaining that they have not had a cost of living pay rise this year, I think you are lucky to get one.

Re:They only care when they can't surf the net

[ggzeama]

Sounds like you have nothing to do. Use their time to kill some of your frustation: become involved in some open source or read some philosophy (this can be a lot more rewarding then managing a network)

Or, if you believe only in cash, try to expand: start a company and provide services to your current users, etc.

Sitting in a chair and awaiting I-do-not-know-what to happen will not make you feel better.

Re:They only care when they can't surf the net

[dalutong]

You don't think that is an unfulfilling attitude?

Is your life's end-goal really money? Or do you want money so you can spend more time with your family? Or what?

If it is in any way people-oriented, why can't that include people at work?

Obviously we need money to pay the bills and to live, but what's money if it isn't to free you so you can enjoy the truly pleasureable things in life? Just seems like an odd priority.

Re:They only care when they can't surf the net

[ACORN_USER]

I recently hammered a management friend of mine ( here in the UK ) with an essay in response to his telling me that senior IT manageers in our firm had decided that they would be able to take care of our moral problem by throwing increased and guaranteed bonuses in our general direction. People lose morale and feel unappreciated because they are. The structure of your working environment is put together by people hire up who are often a lot less enformed than a lot of the 'good' ( we'll ignore the bad ) IT people below. As a result people end up working towards gluing together an inefficent architecture which I'm sure other studies have shown cause developers to spend huge portions of their day maintaining and interfacing badly designed cr@p in a poor architecture conjured by the wrong people. With so much panzy, refactoring and redesign to be done over and over again, it's no wonder that IT guys are valued. The problem is shoveling 5#1t causes one to lose his self-worth. It sounds insane but imho architectural decisions should have to endure an RFC process which allows technical bashing and adjustment from those lower down the food chain. And those above should trust their in house skills base to contribute towards designing an architecture which works and creates an environment where everyone is challanged in working to his/her full potential/satisfaction ( - the usual daily laziness ).

Re:They only care when they can't surf the net

[vrai]

I guess I'm lucky then - my employers pay well and treat the programming/systems staff with the same (high) level of respect as the non-technical employees. There's no out-sourcing, no contractors, no PHBs, no pointless HR rules and a completely casual work place.

The trick is to avoid software houses and consultancies. Writing in-house software is much more rewarding (in all senses of the term) and much less stressful. I've also found the standards are much higher with in-house coders which makes my own work much easier.

Re:They only care when they can't surf the net

[Kafka_Canada]

He didn't say his life goal is money, he said his work goal is money.

(Not that I necessarily share that view, but you're misrepresenting what he said.)

Re:They only care when they can't surf the net

[mopower70]

I don't care much for the smiles and congratulations.... they're few and far between anyway, and then what are they going to say? "Thank you for keeping the network up, like it should be anyway"?

As far as I'm concerned, nobody knows I exist until the network goes down - then they all start to care.

Then you should find a new place to work. I've been an IT manager almost as long as I've been a tech and if anyone who works for me can honestly make that statement, then I'm not doing my job. Good people take pride in their work - it's often the only thing keeping them here - and many times the only thing I can do as a manager is to acknowledge their excellence. If you truly believe that no-one (who matters) knows you exist until there's a problem, then your manager is not marketing you to the rest of the company. Yes, shit rolls downhill, but so should adulation for your expertise. If you're not seeing it, your manager is likely taking credit for all of your success.

Re:They only care when they can't surf the net

[dalutong]

Yeah, but he said he didn't care about the ppl at work (or what they thought about thim)-- which seems to indicate he doesn't care much about ppl in general.

but you're right -- it's best to be clear when responding to someone.

Re:They only care when they can't surf the net

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you'd get a pay rise if you learnt to spell?

Re:They only care when they can't surf the net

[nzkbuk]

That's another problem with the IT field. Managers will have bonuses for getting projects finished ontime. The people doing the work will be lucky to get a pay raise at the end of the year if they have meet all their targets

IMHO

[m00nun1t]

In my opinion, IT workers generally have an over inflated view of their own importance. They serve a business function that helps the organisation run, same as personnel, finance, facilities, etc. So many IT folk think they are the company. The guys who bring in the money and make the actual product are the ones that count, the person maintaining the mail server is no more or less important than the person who makes sure the air conditioner is working correctly.

Re:IMHO

[Mister Incognito]

AC stops working for a few days: Expect slight decreased productivity and whining.

Mail stops working for a few hours: Expect YELLS! PANIC! We lost major $$$!!

You should had chosen a better example :)

Re:IMHO

[OneSmartFellow]

Hmm..

I wrote a system that allows uneducated, lazy stock market traders make money despite their own incompetance.

They get paid on a commission basis for trades they make on other peoples behalf.

I designed and implemented the system which allows them to click about three buttons and type in about ten characters in order to do their 'job'. They make several hundreds of thousands of dollars, I barely break 100K.

They get their jobs through the good old boy network, I have to apply for mine.

Tell me again how I have an over-inflated view of my importance.

Re:IMHO

[PigleT]

Yes, quite.

I spent 15mins writing a quick perl script - I forget what for, now - a few years ago, to facilitate some big-bucks deal. Transpires that deal was worth about $4million between the two companies. Did anyone remember my work? Did I see any of it? Like heck.

Now I spend my time doing a bit of development and sysadmin work. I find the latter more fun - currently converting a bunch of boxes to Debian for ease of ongoing updates - and yes, I can safely say that I'd like to see the marketing muppets try to live without DNS or mail or firewalls...

Re:IMHO

[Anonymous Coward]

So many IT folk think they are the company. The guys who bring in the money and make the actual product are the ones that count, the person maintaining the mail server is no more or less important than the person who makes sure the air conditioner is working correctly.

Huh.

I agree with the other guy, that's a bad example. A lot of people (stupidly) rely on email as a part of their business.

The janitor goes on strike, you get a new one. The head chef at the cafeteria on the second floor quits, you've got a gajillion more out there to replace him. But who the hell is going to explain to you how that Perl hack on the mailservers works? Who's going to explain to you just what the hell the user administration interface is doing -- and where the source is? Who can name every system on your network, by name and IP, along with physical location, hardware configuration, operating system, and what its purpose in life is? Most importantly, who else can get it back up within 10 minutes after getting paged at 3am?

Yes, I'm sure the janitor is vastly important for his knowledge of why you shouldn't mix bleach and ammonia, too. But the world isn't going to end if he quits tomorrow.

This isn't most companies. But the ones that need us need us bad.

Re:IMHO

[Anonymous Coward]

Mail stops working for a few hours: Expect YELLS! PANIC! We lost major $$$!!

Toilets stops working and flood the offices with sevage for a few hours: Expect DEATH THREATS! Customers leaving!

You should have chosen a better example.

Re:IMHO

[malkavian]

Interesting viewpoint.
The difference between the chap keeping the air conditioning working, and the guy who keeps the servers running is that when the air con fails, people open the windows to the street to let air in, and feel hot and bothered.
When the servers go down, the people who bring in the money suddenly can't contact by email the people they need to talk to, to get money in.
The secretaries can't produce documentation, or access their calendars. Meetings fall off the face of the earth. Important messages don't reach their destinations.
The IT dept are responsible for making sure the history of the company is recorded, and to make sure people get the information reliably that makes the company operate. No, they're not the whole of the company, but if they screw up, it can almost kill a company stone dead, or at least damage it badly.
I'd hazard a guess from this, that you're someone who's never worked in a high availability server environment, with sensitive data, and having to translate business requirements into infrastructure.
By your argument, the 'guy who brings in the money', i.e. the sales department staff, would be just fine if you cut their email, phone and mail services. After all, those sections don't bring in any money do they? So they don't count do they?

And before you talk about company structure, I've run my own company for a considerable time, hired staff, and run it from the perspective of MD.
Everyone in that company is there to bring in money efficiently, and without communications, you may as well shut up shop and go home.
IT, lest it slip your mind is 'Information Technology'. The technology part is not the big part. The information is. And when you trust someone with ALL your information, that's a hell of a responsibility to carry.

So, IMHO, you're pretty far off the mark.

Re:IMHO

[m00nun1t]

The guy in personnel (hopefully) put in place hiring procedures to make sure you were hired. So, personnel are equally or more important.

I'm not saying you aren't important, just keep it in check - they made money before they had IT.

Re:IMHO

[mormop]

The parent is wrong on so many levels.

As an experiment, try rebooting your servers at 3pm and see what happens. Every, and I mean every department will decend on you like a ton of bricks because like it or not, IT is now the core of most businesses and not a service. Cripple the Finance departments software for a while and suppliers and employees don't get paid, cripple the order department for a day and everyone's schedules get set back.

A companies network is infrastructure in the same way that a road network is infrastructure and breakages impact the business in the same way that a major car pile up can cost a city's businesses millions in delays to travelling staff, deliveries etc. A smooth running, well designed and maintained IT system can make a significant difference.

Having said all this, it's notable that the UK coastguard service when hit by Sassa (I think) lost all its IT and fell back on paper maps, protractors and set squares but how many companies have a fall back to paper emergency plan in place with staff trained to deal with such an event?

Re:IMHO

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm.. I cut the grass that allows uneducated, lazy stock footballers make money despite their own incompetance. They get paid on a commission basis for goals they score on fan[b]'[/b]s behalf. I tended and cut the grass which allows them to kick a ball about for 90 minutes in order to do their 'job'. They make several tens of hundreds of thousands of dollars a week, I barely break 30K a year. They get their jobs through the good old boy network, I have to apply for mine. Tell me again how I have an over-inflated view of my importance.

Re:IMHO

[Anonymous Coward]

This illustrates the original poster's point *perfectly*. Seriously, it does.

Sure, you helped the traders to do their job. So did the people in HR who recruited them. So do the people in payroll who make sure they get paid the right amount, on time. So do the people in Finance. So do the caterers. So do the janitors.

Most organisations have only a small number of functions that actually directly bring in the money. In your case, it's the traders. Everybody else is just there to support them. Now, pay levels aren't actually determined directly by this; rather, they're determined for the most part by supply and demand.

Although you don't want to acknowledge it, I'd bet you any money that those traders have a whole range of skills that you don't. If they didn't, they wouldn't be in the posts to begin with. The genuine old boys network in these areas (and believe me, I know), died out over a decade ago. There's too much at stake to employ somebody purely on the basis of who they're related to or which school they went to.

This is the biggest problem with a lot of IT workers; they find it impossible to acknowledge the skills of people in other fields. A big problem here is that you get too many people working in IT for whom the field is their entire life. They've grown up as nerds, they've been nerds at school and now they work in nerd positions. They've become used to judging people purely on the basis of IT competence. Moreover, before they actually got out into the workplace, they've been allowed to get away with this. What you need to do now is acknowledge that other people, be they traders, or in HR, Finance, Marketing or even plain old building services, have skills that you do not, just as you have skills that they don't, and that in some cases, their skills are more valuable and in demand than your own.

Re:IMHO

[boicy]

I think you may be missing a corner case.

I work in IT as a Software Engineer (java/C++) and have done for 8 years. The product that the company sells is "actually made by me" (sic) and I feel undervalued.

Perhaps things aren't quite as simple as a still dry MBA might otherwise suggest?

Re:IMHO

[MartinB]

Cripple the Finance departments software for a while and suppliers and employees don't get paid

As an experiment, try not paying your suppliers... No, wait, don't, as someone's already tried it this week. You lack an understanding of the true significance of other corporate support functions. Cripple the Finance function and your company dies on its arse *very* quickly. Actually, Red Letter Days was also killed because not paying suppliers got into the national media over the weekend. Company was dead within 1 business day.

IT is now the core of most businesses and not a service.

No, IT is still a service. A significant one, true, that the rest of the company leans very heavily on, but by no means anything other than one of several significant services.

Re:IMHO

[Qzukk]

har har funney!

At a Good Job, importance is not reflected through hiring procedure or salary. At a Good Job, everyone recognizes that it is the entire chain of employees working together that makes the operation run smoothly, without blowing up. At a Good Job, your boss will find a way to make you feel appreciated even if you aren't the "star quarterback".

At a Good Job, you may not be paid $2 million an hour, but you're also less likely to come to work one morning and find security guards and plastic bags at your desk when they sack the whole R&D team because the quarterly report was more important than the company.

Re:IMHO

[TapeCutter]

"..the person maintaining the mail server is no more or less important than the person who makes sure the air conditioner is working correctly"

The responsibility for maintaining the "mail server" rests with the CIO who normally sits on the board of directors.
OTOH: The AC is usually the landlord's concern.

Re:IMHO

[L.Bob.Rife]

You're missing an important distinction. They didnt have servers fail and not be able to pay bills for one day. They slowly went bankrupt until the day arrived that they could no longer pay their bills.

Re:IMHO

[L.Bob.Rife]

You might find it interesting that as an IT guy, I'm the one responsible for maintaining the server which tells the A/C repair guy when an A/C unit is failing.

We have an automated system across 6 buildings which communicates to a server all of the relevant information on how well the A/C units are functioning.

If that server goes down, suddenly the "person who makes sure the air conditioner is working correctly" can't do his job properly, and we would need to hire 2 more people to make up for the additional difficulties in error reporting between "its hot in here", and "widget #85 on unit #4A has failed and needs replacing".

Re:IMHO

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're a production line. Big deal. How about cheap Chinese kids making Nike products, or the man the presses the button to start the burger press.

Re:IMHO

[anno1602]

Except that if AC fails, servers overheat and perform emergency shut-off (hopefully), leading to YELLS! PANIC! We lost major $$$!!

Re:IMHO

[webview]

The difference between the chap keeping the air conditioning working, and the guy who keeps the servers running is that when the air con fails, people open the windows to the street to let air in, and feel hot and bothered.
When the servers go down, the people who bring in the money suddenly can't contact by email the people they need to talk to, to get money in. The secretaries can't produce documentation, or access their calendars. Meetings fall off the face of the earth. Important messages don't reach their destinations.

It's actually just supply and demand. If there were only 4 AC repair people in my city (sorry, the windows in my building don't open) you can bet he/she would be extremely highly valued.

If you can find 10 AC repair people to fix your problem, it will be more competitive (i.e lower cost to the customer).

Same goes for software development, where as odd as it sounds, the customer is the employer looking to pay employees to do a service.

As software development gets easier, languages get more powerful and require less knowledge to accomplish 'greater' things, the average salary for a developer won't increase as much.

This is very evident in Indian-outsourcing (just an example). While it doesn't apply to all companies (I know many software companies who could never outsource their development), it does fit a lot of the generic IT software groups.

Re:IMHO

[QMO]

"they made money before they had IT"

But they would sure go out of business quickly if they lost it now.

Re:IMHO

[Anonymous Coward]

Try posting your opinion with an air conditioner.

Re:IMHO

[dtfinch]

Here you cripple one system, and everyone just uses pen and paper. Employees get paid, orders get taken, processed, and shipped, parts get purchased, etc. I swear, it's like they all know how to do their own jobs or something.

That said, it would cause some serious anger and frustration if I rebooted the servers at 3pm. Maybe they'd decide to hire a real IT guy and let me focus on development.

Re:IMHO

[jcaren]

A good friend who I shared an office with for 2+ years used to run the email systems in his own time.

The company used extensive paper mail (memos) delivered by staff with little trolleys but
email was taking over. There were around 100,000 emails perl day or more - of this number one or two would be "Lost'.

Initially the recipient or originator would come into our office full of righteous indignation expecting Bryan to drop everything and find his
missing email.

I suggested that he place weekly stats on our office door. People still came up but looked at the ~500,000 msgs/week. Thier perception was that bryan delivered email *by hand* ala post trolleys
and was responsible for every message.

When they saw this number their perception of him was of someone doing "magic". You could see the fire die in thier eyes and the majority turned away and never barged in :-)

Moral: perception and reality differ - changing perception may be more important that trying to change reality.

Re:IMHO

[Anonymous Coward]

> IT workers generally have an over inflated view of their own importance.

Which IT workers... the managers? The clerks? The junior admins? The architecture guys? Break/fix? What do you mean by "generally"? The more you're responsible for, the more important you are.

> The guys who bring in the money and make the actual product are the ones that
> count,

Companies commoditize the guys who make the actual product. The business is designed to make them modular. They have not yet figured out how to do this with IT.

> the person maintaining the mail server is no more or less important than
> the person who makes sure the air conditioner is working correctly.

There is a world of difference between a limited-function system (like an HVAC system) and a general-purpose system (like a computer network). Unless your core business is AC, then the AC guy is not going to be worth more than the typical IT guy, and for good reason.

Re:IMHO

[Oriumpor]

Accepting the obvious fact that IT was created as a method for increasing productivity, and has evolved into a conduit for providing customers services, sales (websales anyways) and a good portion of customer service (telephony.)

Without Phones (voip/pbx), email (presales/sales), digital documents (fileservers), and the network to run these things for users all of a sudden business grinds to a halt.

Unless you're running POTS/Typewriters/filecabinets instead of modern solutions you're going to have time re-adjusting if all geeks suddenly disappeared. Don't kid yourself. We're needed.

A business air conditioner is very rarely a conduit for making business happen. Unless you're selling them that is.

Re:IMHO

[SatanicPuppy]

Typical response from someone who doesn't know.

The truth of it is very simple to grasp, if you bother to check. How long does it take to replace an ad rep? An accountant? A HR person? A facilities maintenance person? All those jobs require general skillsets that are applicable everywhere.

Now how long does it take to replace a DBA, who has to work with a database that is unique? How long does it take to replace a coder who has to maintain a critical system written by his predicessors, which is likewise unique? How long does it take to replace a tech whose job it was to maintain 200 odd machines from different upgrade cycles, which each have special issues and seperate repair histories? A network administrator dealing with a unique network?

If your AC breaks, and your facilities guys can't fix it, you can call in a tech from the company that made it, because your air conditioner is just like every other one they made.

But when everything is custom made and custom configured, and in big companies it ALL is, you're screwed. There is no one to call. There are people in my company whose retirement will force a multimillion dollar software/hardware upgrade because if they go, parts of the system become unmaintainable.

Don't kid yourself. Data is the heart and soul of every company these days. And the people who protect and maintain the data are critically important.

Re:IMHO

[Fulcrum of Evil]

As an experiment, try not paying your suppliers.

How's that a problem? Don't pay them for 2 days, call them and make an excuse, then process the payments on day 3. Not even a blip on the radar.

Re:IMHO

[megarich]

What company to you work for? Remind me to never work there. And as I always say preventing the loss of money and production is EQUALLY as important. If you seriously feel that way about your IT you should do like you do with your ac guy and just only call upon 3rd party to help out whenever something is down.

Re:IMHO

[LordIvan]

Sounds to me that we're not building our IT systems as well as the engineers are building their air conditioners.

Not something to boast about.

Re:IMHO

[corblix]

I wrote a system that allows uneducated, lazy stock market traders make money despite their own incompetance. ... They make several hundreds of thousands of dollars, I barely break 100K.

Maybe you should quit whining and become a trader.

Re:IMHO

[Mister Incognito]

Ah, but its not because the HVAC (which I doubt the parent refered to) system failed, but because the _mail_ server failed. They don't care if the computers fry as long as they get mail.

Re:IMHO

[BryanR1977]

Yeah, unless said company is an ISP, then IT makes the product, everybody else just serves a business function.

Re:IMHO

[SatanicPuppy]

Sure, because there is no difference in the complexity of the tasks performed by each. Right? Isn't that what you're saying?

I can only guess that you're being willfully ignorant. The difference is, people don't decide every few weeks to make the air conditioner do something different. It just moves hot air from a to b. An IT air conditioner would move hot air from points a1-a10000 to b1-b500 and c1-c500 and make muffins, and keep track of the air molecules, and make copies of itself to put in new buildings.

The thing is, it isn't IT that makes the job hard, it's business that makes the job hard. If the requirements upstairs never changed, we could make bullet-proof never-fail systems. But stuff changes all the time, and there is never enough time to deal with it all, and you have to do the best you can to keep on top of it, and when it all falls apart for whatever reason the people like you, who think its all air conditioners, start ranting and firing people and it gets even harder, until it all ends up in the toilet and you're stuck with a hopelessly obsolete system and faced with ridiculous upgrade costs and no skilled labor because you didn't get it the first time when someone told you that it was important.

Re:IMHO

[bhv]

Your assembly line. The product is conceived, made and owned by the company which is made up of all persons employed by it. If any of you are hit by a bus tomorrow, including the CEO,CIO,CFO or whoever the company survives.

On the other hand, if the product was truly concieved and made by you and the company reaps the reward......your a dumb ass.

Re:IMHO

[bladesjester]

You don't seem to grasp the concept that there is a difference between mass-produced items (air conditioners, for example) where there are millions of them which are literally identical and unique systems which were built in order to satisfy a buisness requirement which is likewise unique.

There's a sizeable difference between those two things.

Re:IMHO

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

[...] the person maintaining the mail server is no more or less important than the person who makes sure the air conditioner is working correctly.

Despite the fact that most companies seem to treat their IT staff as little more than "compu-janitors", somehow I think most major companies would panic a lot more if their email went down than if they had to put up with hot offices for a few days.

I've been trying to escape IT for years, and this attitude is the primary reason. Being a good IT person is a lot like being a famous sewer worker ("Look at the horrible pile of crap! We'd better call so-and-so, he's the only person who can shovel THIS out!") Or perhaps like being a proctologist, except without the high pay and prestige of being a medical professional.

My problem is, finishing college (long story) requires having both time AND money at the same time. The rate of income from my IT work would just about cover the exorbitant college costs here in the US if I had time left after the 50+ hour work weeks for it, and of course if I were to quit I'd have plenty of time but no way of covering living costs (I'm not young enough to leech off of my parents for years - and even if I wanted to try it anyway, I think my wife would disapprove).

Unfortunately, it's difficult to take science lab classes over the web, so that's not an option either. (I'm not looking for an MBA or something - I DO enjoy using computers to solve interesting problems, I just don't like my job always devolving into "compu-janitor" when people find out how good at it I am.)

And now I'm starting to rant, so I'll stop. I suspect, though, that I'm far from the only person who feels this way.

Re:IMHO

[m00nun1t]

Try turning off electricity at 3pm, and then see which is most important. Sure, IT is important for the running of the business. Yes, IT can add value.

A smooth well run finance department can make a difference & add value as well.

Shut up and get back to work

[Anonymous Coward]

UK IT workers would choose the money over the lip service any day.

Somebody really needs to take these poor pollsters out back and shoot them. Intentionally doing more harm then good (always predictable).

Re:So True

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, this is about the third time I've seen that link, any chance you could stop spamming your shitty blog?

Science education is important.

[Asprin]

Does this mean U.K. employers need to worry about a mass exodus from the I.T. field, or is this just normal griping?"

I dunno... It's impossible to tell without CONTROL GROUPS, which is why research based upon the principles of the scientific method has them.

Re:Science education is important.

[mikael]

All the large companies without IT departments went bankrupt.

Re:Science education is important.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is an observational study.
Control groups only relate to experimental studies.
If they really wanted to know, they could have compared their observations with similar samples in other countries or other fields, but they didn't change anything about these people in the first place... how could they have another "Control Group" that they again didn't change about to compare this to?

My boss values me

[Smuttley]

so much that I got stuck on a 3 month notice period, which makes it almost impossible for me to find a new job without handing my notice in first.

Thanks Boss!

Re:My boss values me

[uohcicds]

3 months. Pah!

I'm on a max of 4 months (in academia). Getting out of that is a real pain, although from discussions a work colleague in the same position as me had with a solicitor (who does some employment law work) suggests that having the period and actually being able to enforce much more than one month (if you're only paid a month in arrears, say) are two very different things...

Re:My boss values me

[Smuttley]

yeah, I hear that a lot too. I'd kinda like to leave on good terms but if it comes down to it I might grow the balls to walk ;)

Re:My boss values me

[The_Mr_Flibble]

yeah we used to have that but they messed up with the new contracts they forced us to sign.
If you read the small print in them I can give 1 weeks notice.

Re:My boss values me

[cheesemp]

At least you've got a notice period - I haven't even got a contract yet (which is illegal in the UK) - I'm coming up to three years employment in November. I think I need a new job where I know what the terms and conditions of my employment are!

Re:My boss values me

[Gotebe]

Here (Belgium) three months is pretty much standard (it may even be mandated by law, not sure). But, it cuts both ways, i.e. if one is fired, company pays him three months after that (one may choose to stay at work nevertheless after the notice; probably not if he/she does something stupid, like burning its office down). Now, the question did they (Belgians) cut the right compromise between the mobility of the workforce and the job security? It seems about right: I'd like it to be more easy to jump ship, but I'm sure somebody other appreciates it to be nicelly lulled... Anyhow, it seems that something like this should be regulated, don't you? Now, the exact period is to be obtained through carefully planned and executed public analysis and discussion, just like media and politicians always do for matters of interest :-))

Re:My boss values me

[Tony Hoyle]

I haven't even got a contract yet (which is illegal in the UK)

Yes you do.

There's an implied contract - and just because it's not written down doesn't mean the employer can suddenly decide to stop paying you.

If you've been doing the same thing for 3 years that is the terms of your contract.

Re:My boss values me

[Anonymous Coward]

My company tried to introduce a new standard contract a few years ago. I crossed out all the bits I didn't like (on notice, working hours, IP ownership for independent projects) before I signed. And I'm on the board now. Don't act like a sheep.

Re:My boss values me

[Mage Inq.]

Is that legally enforceable, requiring you to put in several months notice before leaving? In certain states in the US, there's an "at will" employment rule where the employee can quit at any time, and also the employer can let an employee go at any time. It is usually courtesy to give a couple of weeks notice, but not a legal requirement.

Of course if you are contractually bound to your agreement, then this is a moot issue.

Re:My boss values me

[AuMatar]

I'm not Belgian, but I've aken an offer of voluntary severance that had me as a lame duck for 3 months like that (3 weeks to go- yeay!). Its been a major pain in the neck- few companies will interview you (a lot wanted to, but couldn't wait 3-4 months to fill the position). And at work there's a major lack of incentive to get shit done. I'd much rather have been let go in 1 month like everyone else who got the offer, but thats life.

What...

[Virak]

...the fuck?
They aren't talking about their damn bosses, they're saying that their bosses think that they (the IT workers) are too young.

Re:What...

[MartinG]

Ah, yes.

My general inability to read and think strikes again.

MOD TROLL

[Anonymous Coward]

act like one, then get treated like one Louis Waweru

Re:Reality of UK IT industry

[Smuttley]

it's almost day light, shouldn't you be heading back to your bridge? ;)

Don't you hate that

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you hate that, when a PHB has read a technical article in a magazine and then knows your job better than you do.

Or worse when one of those consultancy firms has come along and sold him on 3-tier architecture, when the products is best as client-server. "But they have 3 tiers, its like, one better - and they're sun boxes too!"

The British love complaining

[Rico_za]

Complaining is a national passtime in Britain. Everyone complains; it's expected of you. So these stats actually point out that IT wokers are happy, relative to the general population.

IT Woes

[Cookeisparanoid]

The big problem with IT is the perception most staff just expect IT systems to work and get very irate when things go wrong. It also means they are not usually grateful when things get fixed or improved which leave it staff feeling very undervalued.

Re:IT Woes

[jonlan]

In my experience it is quite the opposite. People expect IT systems to fail and so are not prepared to put in the time and resources to do things properly
Management are focused on high profile new developments, and rely upon support staff fire fighting rather than proactively preventing problems

Just keep paying well and don't burn them out

[syousef]

The rest is griping: a combination of a lack of social skill, lack of understanding of their place in the world, and fantasies about being the IT hero and changing the world.

Re:Just keep paying well and don't burn them out

[malkavian]

You forgot the 'give clear specifications for the work to be carried out'.
I've seen so many managers give 'specifications of a system', with a straight face, as a series of wireframe drawings of the user interface, with no mention of data inputs, outputs, movement, translation or any other thing it's required to do.

As for fantasies about being the IT hero.. Each time you recover someone's data, roll back a mistake they made, or otherwise sort out a problem, you change a little bit of the world each time.

Re:Just keep paying well and don't burn them out

[syousef]

As for fantasies about being the IT hero.. Each time you recover someone's data, roll back a mistake they made, or otherwise sort out a problem, you change a little bit of the world each time.

It's called doing a job. Every time a taxi driver takes someone where they want to go, they change the world a little too. Are they heros? Same for every other job.

A hero is someone that does something remarkable, at great personal risk and or cost.

Re:Just keep paying well and don't burn them out

[malkavian]

A fireman is doing a job. A doctor. A soldier.
After hitting the ceiling and going through a 'burn out' period myself, I know just what sort of risk that is.

The daily grind isn't the heroic part. The stepping, occasionally, above and beyond the call of duty is.

Australian response

[Jacques Chester]

I think it's fair to say that 100% of poms are upset about the recent Ashes result.

Re:Australian response

[MartinB]

Those of us in Scotland (ie in the UK but not English) are rather happy about the recent Ashes result, supporting as we do anyone playing against the Sassenachs.

Not sure if your definition of 'poms' includes all of UK or just England...

Re:Australian response

[magpie-uk]

Nah its got to be much less than that as there are quite a few who dont give a sh1t about the cricket and as far as I can tell the result is nothing new anyway. However losing to your team at football was a national disaster, ok so it was only a friendly but still Australia........

Re:Australian response

[Fatchap]

But we all loved the recent tri-nations!

Re:Australian response

[Anonymous Coward]

Not everyone in Scotland holds such views. I for one would like to see our neighbours perform well.

Oh, and those of us in the UK but not English may also be Welsh!

Re:Australian response

[Anonymous Coward]

Or (Northern) Irish!

Nice Opinions

[rettridg]

Clearly everybody has thought about the same thing once before, including myself. Some nice replies there which reinforce my personal opinions.

Never being satisfied helps motivate you to progress.

Re:Nice Opinions

[Anonymous Coward]

Never being satisfied helps burn you out. There comes a point in "progress" where if you aren't satisfied and you stop giving a damn...and that's the same point where progress stops.

18yr Old

[gpmidi]

Well, I started at a certin large security company at 18. I'm 19 now and still have coworkers at about the same level who are more than twice my age. I'm also quickly becoming more senior than a lot of the people here. Tho many of them have a lot more -real work- experence than me. ~Paul

Re:18yr Old

[TapeCutter]

"When I was 18 my dad was so out of touch, but over the last 3 years he has really wised-up alot!" - Unknown.

Re:18yr Old

[pinko-rat-bastard]

When you are 18, you think the sun shines out of your ass. As you get older, you will eventually come to the realization that the burning sensation you are feeling is really caused by something else.

Re:18yr Old

[dejaffa]

That's a paraphrase of Mark Twain, and the original is better.

"When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."

Re:18yr Old

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. Talk about being on the road to some certin [sic] disillusionment! ;)

Re:18yr Old

[Anonymous Coward]

I know people who start out near the top. Do you work for your dad, or your uncle?

Propaganda

[streepje]

Does this mean U.K. employers need to worry about a mass exodus from the I.T. field, or is this just normal griping?

It's is an article in an IT management journal about a study commissioned by a company that makes "21st century information products."

Obviously UK IT employers are worried, otherwise they wouldn't be commissioning these kinds of "studies".

In that context the conclusion (that IT workers are more valued than they think they are) is hardly surprising!

Your case may not be typical

[NickFortune]

A bit of context: I've been coding professionally since 1984, hacking C, C++, perl and various dialects of shell.

Most of that time has been as a contractor. That distorts the workplace experience a little, but it also means I've seen a lot of different companies and how they treat their personel. I'm quite content in my current role, but I think I've seen both ends of the spectrum over that time.

Increasingly over that period, some environemts have come to see IT staff as a necessary evil. One CEO of a software house(!) gave a speech at the company's annual meeting saying how salesmen were good because they brought money in, and how developers were bad because all they did was cost money. I don't know what he though the salesmen sold. That sort of thing gets dispiriting real fast.

Overall I wouldn't be at all surprised if the general level of dissatisfaction among UK IT types has increased. Are we going to see an exodus? Of course not - coders still need to eat. However a low morale workforce benefits no one.

Re:Your case may not be typical

[lgw]

If you're IT staff but don't make the product, then you can expect to be treated as a cost to be managed - since you are. If you're an engineer designing the product in *any* field and you're treated like a cost to be managed, it's a real good sign that there's a better company out there looking for you!

Re:Your case may not be typical

[NickFortune]

If you're IT staff but don't make the product, then you can expect to be treated as a cost to be managed - since you are.

Would managing us involve a public slagging off at the AGM? If so, I'm not sure I'd agree. Any employee is deserving of some basic respect for the tasks he performs. I can understand taking fire if a group have been performing poorly, but purly because of the function they perform?

In any case, the coders in this case were making product.

If you're an engineer designing the product in *any* field and you're treated like a cost to be managed, it's a real good sign that there's a better company out there looking for you!

The turnover at this place was indeed very high. I knew one guy who signed on because his partner was in scotland, and the company had jsut started a big project there. Within a week he'd been transferred to the opposite end of the UK. I remember the farewell party when he left.

If you want someone that doesn't make anything, there's always middle management. They don't make product, so if anyone was going to be de-humanised into "a cost to be managed" you'd expect it to be them. Doesn't happen very often compared with IT guys for some reason.

Re:Your case may not be typical

[lgw]

Well, if you feel that being talked about as a cost to be managed "de-humanizes" you, you might try thicker skin, but of course it's bad management to actually tell people that to their faces, as respect is cheaper than salary as a retention mechanism. Management seems to attract those with no people skills, however, I just can't explain that.

Re:Your case may not be typical

[NickFortune]

Well, if you feel that being talked about as a cost to be managed "de-humanizes" you, you might try thicker skin,

Well, I can see how that might help. However, leaving aside my oh-so-delicate skin for a moment, I also don't think it helps to get into the habit of thinking of people as units or costs. It reduces the amount of empathy in the workplace. People will treat "costs" with far less sympathy than they would "people"

of course it's bad management to actually tell people that to their faces, as respect is cheaper than salary as a retention mechanism.

Gosh yes. Because workers are regularly rude as hell the the company CEO and he never objects because he gets all that money... no, wait, it doesn't work like that does it?

Maybe people value both money and respect?

Re:Your case may not be typical

[lgw]

I also don't think it helps to get into the habit of thinking of people as units or costs. It reduces the amount of empathy in the workplace. People will treat "costs" with far less sympathy than they would "people"

True enough. Sadly neither of us have the power to change the world, so accepting that this is a common flaw of management makes one take it less personally when treated impersonally. So to speak.

It's cheaper to retain people with respect and money than with money alone. As the saying goes "it doesn't cost anything to be polite". I can't understand why more corporate cultures don't embrace this idea, but I suspect it's because so many people get into management just so they can have people to boss around.

Re:Your case may not be typical

[NickFortune]

True enough. Sadly neither of us have the power to change the world, so accepting that this is a common flaw of management makes one take it less personally when treated impersonally. So to speak.

And yet, if we all, stoics to the end, suffer in silence, then the problem is never discussed and the situation never improves.

And we do too have the power to change the world. You and me and everyone else on the planet - a little more every day. Defeatism serves us ill.

It's cheaper to retain people with respect and money than with money alone. As the saying goes "it doesn't cost anything to be polite". I can't understand why more corporate cultures don't embrace this idea, but I suspect it's because so many people get into management just so they can have people to boss around.

Alas, I think I have to agree with you. Still, I take heart from the fact that many corporate cultures do "get it". I suppose the question is how do these companies form and how can we encourage them over less enlightened entities...

Get Real

[16K Ram Pack]

A few times, I've worked in call centres - sitting at a desk next to the users for a few months. Working with people earning a lot less than IT people, with less job security and less mobility.

I heard much less whining sitting there than in the average IT department.

If there's greener grass in another company, leave and go work there.

Re:Get Real

[Anonymous Coward]

Call centers are the concentration camp of the it industry.

love? or despise..?

[Cederic]

I can confirm that my company clearly does not love IT workers.

Take a look at the obvious measure any company uses: Cost.

IT is a cost centre. We're seen as an expense. The business resents the expense.

Ignore the way that the technology we recommend and implement now generates a significant percentage of our sales (over the web), how better telephone systems (including VRU) mean greatly reduced call centre cost, how the business would collapse if we switched off any of the 140+ systems essential to our daily operations.

We're kept out of decision making. Our director isn't directly on the board, he reports to another board member - who also owns finance and HR.

We're treated like second-class citizens. Shiny new building goes up; IT get shoved into the old building.

The business want shiny new features - on the websites (we have dozens), in the call centres, in our retail estate. So they go out and buy expensive systems, make deals for software, agree hosting - and then blame IT when things don't work together, when we have massive duplication of functionality and capability, when vendor lock-in causes excessive cost. So much for using the experience and expertise of the IT professionals that would have stopped them making those mistakes.

On top of all that, they decided to outsource all our development to India. Current status of outsourcing:
Development costs : Higher
Delivery timescales : Longer
Quality of deliverables : Lower
Customer (i.e. internal customers) satisfaction : Lower

The last thing that hurts is that the internal politics here are the worse I've ever seen. Different departments actively try to make the others look bad, and IT systems often become the battleground. Result? Continual derision of the IT systems we put in place to their specs.

Yet despite this, my team is very capable, very loyal, we are well paid compared to other people in the company (but don't quite reach average levels for the IT industry) and we continually push, recommend, innovate and strive to improve the business, the IT systems and processes supporting it, all while keeping costs down.

If it wasn't for the great CV fodder I'm picking up I'd personally have walked out a long time ago. This company doesn't love its IT people, and its IT people definitely don't love it.

Re:love? or despise..?

[eztiger]

Curiously our IT department also falls under the supervision of the finance and HR head.

I'm not sure why this seems to be a pattern, it seems an odd trend.

It isn't so bad here, we're reasonably lucky to have one who concedes no understanding of IT and is more than willing to act on sensible recomendations but I can see how it could easily be as bad.

Other than that, yeah treated like shit. Refurbished building....we were told to buy our own furniture out of our recurrent costs (desks for our offices or badly needed DLT tapes...decisions, decisions) because they'd 'overran refurbishment' budget by kitting out other offices properly. We were also dumped (again) in the basement so not much light and down with all the heating...no air con in my office either but I do have heating pipes. ~30c on a good day in summer.

There are lots of teeny little gripes like that which sound petty but all add up to get on your nerves enough to seriously impinge on the way you work.

ho humm rant over :P

In summary, completely agree.

Re:love? or despise..?

[anno1602]

Curiously our IT department also falls under the supervision of the finance and HR head. I'm not sure why this seems to be a pattern, it seems an odd trend.

The pattern that I see is that IT, finance and HR are regarded as necessary evils to run a business.

Re:love? or despise..?

[COredneck]

Sounds like the first job I had after I graduated back in 1990. Our IT Dept. was under Executive VP of Finance who has been a bean counter all her life. We were given crappy furniture, we always got leftover computer equipment to do our development on. We also had to follow a strict dress code which also applied on weekends such as for business trips. When we went to the company plants, she would always accompany us. The people at the plants were very uncomfortable when she was around. I visited the plants without her and they acted much better and were more relaxed.

The VP had a reputation as being called the "Wicked Witch of the West" and she was proud of it. She also did not like our group too well since we had a cowboy way of doing things. Our group made a decent software package for a given industry and our manager wanted to sell it to help the company to make money. He was not allowed to do that which was a means by the VP to keep us down.

Re:love? or despise..?

[Bimo_Dude]

We were also dumped (again) in the basement so not much light and down with all the heating

But... did they let you keep your red Swingline stapler?

:-)

Re:100%. Mod up parent!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, this really makes sense. There was a comment above saying something like "show them the money". Noooooooooow way. Show them the pink!

I think that after your comment and this discussion, I am really getting to the deep, true character of our profession (comment applies only for males). We are like the ugly friend of a girl, with whom she will never have sex with. Yep, thaaaats right.

Mary:Ooooh John (skinny-with-huge-glasses John), I feel sooooo bad 'cause Chuck (stallion-son-of-a-bitch-who-has-sex-every-week with-a-different-girl Chuck) does not love me anymore.

(John hands her a napkin. He is having an erection. They will never have sex of course)

Oooooh yes. When the computer crashes they all "love us". Once its working again, we are back to the cave. And this is no batcave. If they would really love us, wed be considered sexy. We are not considered sexy.

Between the lines, this comment states somewhere that loves=sex, which is of course, ridiculous. But I think I might on to something here.

...but this comment applies only to you, not to the author of course

110 110 110: the mark of the beast

Thankfully this just confirms ....

[WebfishUK]

I'm British, therefore I whinge.

(I am British by the way, and I do love to whinge!)

Re:Thankfully this just confirms ....

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, I'm British too, and I wish to complain about your gross generalisation!

If only it was that simple

[Moraelin]

The reality is a bit more complex than that "oh, they'd be griping anyway" over-simplification. A lot of working places really _are_ bad at showing any appreciation, if they actually appreciate their employees.

Yes, the trade takes a long time to learn, and I can certainly realize that after over 20 years of programming computers. But that also means enough time to see such "employee appreciation" as:

- control-freak PHB's.

True story: I've worked a couple of years for someone who genuinely thought that he needs to keep clicking on Netscape's title bar to show it that he's watching. He genuinely believed that it makes Netscape load faster. I swear to God I'm not making it up.

True story: we had to make a nazi time-keeping program for another company. Think popping up every few minutes to ask you if you still work on the project. And if within 1 minute you didn't click on "Yes" (e.g., because you needed to go talk to another co-worker about that very project), it would close the project and mark you as idle.

- people who think that negative feedback and threats are the only thing that motivates their team, and god forbid ever telling someone "you've done a good job" would turn someone into a slacker.

I could give a personal example again, but a sadder one are the recent stories about a HP PHB making "it could be YOUR job that moves to India next" the corporate motivational motto. Yeah, that sooo makes people feel "appreciated." Not.

- Pushing people to do massive unpaid overtime. Often not even as a desperate crunch phase at the end, but actually planning from the start that you can use and abuse people for 84 hours a week.

E.g., see the famous EA employee's blog. E.g., see the fucktard, the name escapes me at the moment, who was complaining that the VC-appointed CEO ruined his company by letting programmers work only 40 hours a week.

True story: Dunno about you, but having someone (A) override my time estimates on the _explicit_ assumption that he can use me twice as many hours a week anyway, and (B) have him then tell me crap like "wth do you need free wekends for anyway? You'd just sit in front of a computer anyway" and then "ok, then I'll cut your salary if you only want to work 40 hours a week" (i.e., "only" the time in my contract)... doesn't exactly tell me "you're appreciated". (And, yes, I did quit after that.)

- Huge egos.

True story: the company with the nazi timekeeping program again. Among many other nasty experiences with the boss there when we delivered the program (such as demanding that we bring sleeping bags and noone leaves until we undo the changes that his representative had asked us to do), one thing that irked me was his repeating about twice per hour, "The golden rule is: whoever has the gold makes the rules. And that's me." So, hey, he's the guy with the gold, everyone must obey him like they're serfs. If he says bring a sleeping bag and sleep here on the floor tonight, you're supposed to say "yes, sir!" because he's the guy with the gold, you know.

(Tangent: I had assumed he was the company owner or something, the way he kept repeating that he's the one with the gold. Turned out he was just an employee, which they fired later for horrible job performance.)

- Seeing purchases and decisions made by blatantly disregarding the feedback of the programmers/IT workers who'll actually use that crap, and trusting the nice snake-oil salesman instead.

Yeah, it so says "appreciated" to see you're not even trusted to know the language you program in, the architecture you've designed, or the IDE you program in. Surely a high level manager coming from, say, the automotive industry knows better than you, and is more qualified than the programmers to decide such stuff.

Etc.

Basically, trust me, if the only reason to "gripe" you've seen so far is "but I wanna be senior developper at 20 years old", then you have a damn good job. Hang onto it at all cost. In the rest of the world, there are far worse gripes than that.

Re:If only it was that simple

[lgw]

True story: we had to make a nazi time-keeping program for another company. Think popping up every few minutes to ask you if you still work on the project. And if within 1 minute you didn't click on "Yes" (e.g., because you needed to go talk to another co-worker about that very project), it would close the project and mark you as idle.

I love it when people try shit like this with programmers. Thank Goddess for GUI automation tools! But mostly it's a helpful sign that you're not working for a good company, and should be looking.

Turned out he was just an employee, which they fired later for horrible job performance.)

And that, OTOH, is a good sign. Sucky management is by no means unique to IT. Assholes are everywhere. A company that's willing to fire bad managers is at least not totally hopeless.

Re:If only it was that simple

[Moraelin]

"I love it when people try shit like this with programmers. Thank Goddess for GUI automation tools! But mostly it's a helpful sign that you're not working for a good company, and should be looking."

Well, that _is_ why we had to do their programs, this this timekeeping monstrosity included. As I later found out, they used to be a software house. Only after they hired the "golden rule" boy, _all_ their designers and programmers quit en masse. Some 6 months later the "golden rule" boy still needed to sub-contract everything to others companies.

Obviously, his conclusion was that he wasn't oppressive enough, since that's about the time we were asked to do that timekeeping monstrosity for him.

"And that, OTOH, is a good sign. Sucky management is by no means unique to IT. Assholes are everywhere. A company that's willing to fire bad managers is at least not totally hopeless."

True, but still, the aforementioned farce had continued for about 1 year before they finally fired him. It's not just that he was mean to the employees and managed to not have many left, but he had alienated a lot of the company's partners and bled money hand-over-fist before someone finally stepped in and fired him.

So, well, while I won't lose any sleep over it, it still makes me idly wonder if in the end all that mattered were the lost profits. If he had managed to be a total asshole that nevertheless turned a profit, can it be that he'd still be there, ranting about how he's the man with the gold?

Re:If only it was that simple

[lgw]

It's certainly possible, but any good middle manager understands the cost of recruiting and retention, and deals appropriately with a first-line manager that chases workers away. In my experience it's a corporate culture thing though, and too many companies just can't see the problem with abusive managers, as they're filled with them from top to bottom. :\

Re:If only it was that simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you worked at The Cobalt Group too?

Re:If only it was that simple

[jburroug]

Among many other nasty experiences with the boss there when we delivered the program (such as demanding that we bring sleeping bags and noone leaves until we undo the changes that his representative had asked us to do), one thing that irked me was his repeating about twice per hour, "The golden rule is: whoever has the gold makes the rules. And that's me." So, hey, he's the guy with the gold, everyone must obey him like they're serfs. If he says bring a sleeping bag and sleep here on the floor tonight, you're supposed to say "yes, sir!" because he's the guy with the gold, you know.

I worked for a guy like this once too. An oncologist. I wasn't just the IT Manager at his clinic, in his view, I was personal IT techie for his home computer too. He called me into his office one afternoon to tell me his cable modem was out at home and I needed to go over there to fix it.

When I suggested that I leave work at 3:30 or 4:00 so I'd have time to fix it and head home by 5:00 he tore me a new asshole and said I'd leave when he did and I could just follow him home around 7:00 that night. When I told him I couldn't because I plans with some friends after work that night he responded with:

"Do your friends pay your salary? No, I do."

I'd've quit on the spot for that by taking a shit on his desk if I hadn't needed the money so desperately at the time, still recovering from 7 months of unemployment, and a cross country move.

Anyway I was only there for a few more months before I had another offer. Then I quit with short notice, stayed on as an outside contractor to do after hours work for a couple months and triple billed him for my hours and stole hardware whenever I was there. I'd come in sundays to work with my replacement (he was hourly so getting OT) and we'd sit around the server room with a six pack for a couple hours, do some looting and then bill him 3x the hours. Kept that up for a good 5-6 months. Saved up a nice down payment on my new car and eventually stopped coming in when my replacement left with a better job offer himself.

Wages.

[Anonymous Coward]

They could make us feel more valued by at least offering an inflationary rise. I work for one of the largest IT employers in the country, and I've seen a 1% rise in 3 years, vs 3 years of 2-3% inflation. Throwaway remarks from management such as "if x leaves we can just get a contractor" and the practise of never replacing fulltime staff don't help too much either.

Valued my arse.

This just in...

[quibbs0]

Recent studies show that 98% of me hates statistics while 1% disregards them and a startling 1% just plain wants to work for Chef Gordon Ramsey instead.

How do you know if you are loved?

[QuestorTapes]

You only know if you are loved based on how the lover treats you. A lot of times, I know I was 'valued' by the company highly. But the treatment I received indicated that management valued me as an asset, not as an entire person. I was valued, but many qualities I consider integral to my sense of self were viewed as 'inconvenient', and 'obstacles to my advancement'. This is a very mixed message. It doesn't say, "we love you", it says, "we -would- love you if you were a little different; all you need to do is to stop being -you-."

Many managers, both in and out of IT, are very poor at communicating with employees.

Another problem is that many IT people are dissatisfied with "the way we've always done things." A lot of times, management insists on doing various things in very sub-optimal ways, and it can grate on the nerves of people who can't help but see better and more efficient ways to do things.

When your ability to patch the same broken software, on your day off, for the 300th time is 'valued', but your repeated requests to be allowed to -fix- the damn thing once and for all are ignored, it grates on the nerves.

In the post titled, "PHB - leave us alone!", AccUser points out another thing. It can be reslly frustrating to do something really spectacular and have management ignore it, while simultaneously misrepresenting and over-praising accomplishments that the IT staff knows are technologically crap.

A lot of bosses can't step outside their world view enough to really communicate with techies who have very different values. I've turned down some very lucrative jobs because there is no way I could reconcile my values with those of the firm's managers.

Managers focus so much on delivery dates, market share, product names, what color the splash screen should be, etc. These are necessary things, but a smart manager will realize that these are -never- going to be the motivators for the tech staff. Getting defects under control, smooth and predictable integration, automating bullshit tasks or removing them entirely; -these- are the IT staff motivators.

Re:How do you know if you are loved?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a Development Manager, believe me, tech. people in my teams are not viewed as just 'another asset'. It's the non-tech managers who think people can be moved in and out like PCs. The effort required to get competant enthusiastic people who understand requirements, the design process, who can write good English and who can estimate effort accurately (myself, I don't ever expect an accurate answer in a meeting, it needs thought) can be considerable.

But managers underestimating their IT people is nothing new. When I started in the early 80s, I saved my company's life by designing a solution that replaced file indexes using sums of series (the data allowed this). The reason was that disk in those days was wildly expensive and our clients' machines had very limited space. My method saved up to 20% of disk space and meant we could just fit the whole solution on their limited systems. No one else in the company had the background to think up this solution. Did I get any thanks? Not a peep.

Re:How do you know if you are loved?

[Anonymous Coward]

So basically what you are saying is that IT staff are motivated by getting the business running properly and efficiently, which management tends to not care about (and often finds inconvenient).

This certainly fits with my experience, and of every other IT professional I know.

Re:How do you know if you are loved?

[coolGuyZak]

who can write good English

I believe that would be "Who can write english well"

da-da-dump *ching*

Re:How do you know if you are loved?

[coolGuyZak]

So basically what you are saying is that IT staff are motivated by getting the business running properly and efficiently, which management tends to not care about (and often finds inconvenient).

Well, of course management doesn't want an efficient company. If it were efficient, then they'd actually have to earn their salaries.

ZAM! I'm on a roll today.

Re:How do you know if you are loved?

[Doctor Faustus]

I think they're actually both right. When you write English well, the result is good English.

Re:How do you know if you are loved?

[QuestorTapes]

> So basically what you are saying is that IT staff are motivated by getting the business running
> properly and efficiently,

Well, those areas that are in the 'line-of-sight' of the IT person, anyway. I don't know that IT people are, on average, any better at improving efficiency in areas outside their specific area than the next person. Many IT people are trained to think in terms of automating the tedious tasks,

> which management tends to not care about (and often finds inconvenient).

Many managers are unconcerned about the inconvenience -their employees- have to put up with. Only when it is so inconvenient that it spills over into poor customer service and lost business are they concerned about these inconveniences. I ran into this a number of times in customer service positions outside of IT.

Especially true when the people who deal with these issues work in departments that are viewed as a cost center, not a profit center.

Sometimes, too, it's not that they are unconcerned; it's that their lack of technical competence causes them to 'tune out' and fail to apply reasonable cost benefit logic to technical issues. Instead of looking at the cost, they react from an 'if it ain't broke, don't mess with it' perspective.

Certainly, it's not true of all cases. I don't even claim it happens in a majority of cases. But it does happen, and too often for my taste.

Re:How do you know if you are loved?

[glesga_kiss]

In the post titled, "PHB - leave us alone!", AccUser points out another thing. It can be reslly frustrating to do something really spectacular and have management ignore it, while simultaneously misrepresenting and over-praising accomplishments that the IT staff knows are technologically crap.

Tell me about it. In the place where I am now, a bunch of devs pulled out the stops to get a release together. Lots of burning the candle at both ends, stress, email arguments etc. Then, some silly little blonde in marketing spends 4 hours in photoshop updating the product logo.

Who gets the full page article on their work in the company news letter? Go on, have a guess...

Griping, obviously

[kinglink]

It's the human condition to focus on negatives and ignore positives. That's why when 9/11 happened that was the focus for 3 monthes. When a death happens it's the focus of a week or two, even if it's random people.

However at the same time these numbers appear to be lower then expected. The quesiton that the management must ask themselves is "should we do anything else to make them happy" not "how can we make them happy" because let's be honest, even if they had cushy jobs they'd feel bad.

I personally joined up with a financial firm recently and I'm doing IT, and I must say I'm very happy with my job. I'm just out of college, I program about 80 percent of the time, and that's EXACTLY what I wanted. It took me 11 monthes to find the job and I found a job that meets my criteria for happiness and thus I'm happy. If anyone else isn't happy with their job and is getting at least a little in the way of benefits and such, I suggest changing your job, because honestly so many people are in jobs they hate for no reason other then they haven't looked around.

Re:Griping, obviously

[demon]

"9/11" was the focus for three months? You sure about that? I think that's conservative, given the media and most people around us still won't allow us to forget about the incident and move on - but that's a whole other thread...

Re:Griping, obviously

[m3rajk]

agreed. i like my job. right now it's about the only thing in my life that i dont dislike. (that's a long arduous story i wont bore you with) i graduated Dec 2004 and had a background of FTE sys admin/net ops in college with a CS degree (programing theory). this got me a lot of second round interviews where i lost "entry level" jobs to people that had mid-level experience. the versatility became a double edged sword that was hurting as much as helping. combine that with having an electrical engineer for a father and viewing cs as bot the hardware and software. (i've been using computers since before i walked. literally.) i went into retail sales in order to get insurance, and did freelance webscripting. i was able to fund a few semesters of grad courses. during this time i applied for a part time net ops internship figuring the "real world" experience would be worth sacraficing the extra money of the scripting. i lucked out. the reason why my dad told me to look this company, as it turns out, is because someone he worked with at a previous company (3com) came here and they had talked recently and it was suggested i look here. my timing was perfect. the day after i sent in my resume i was called by the HR director and asked why i applied for an internship. i explained my situation, and was asked if i'd mind if my resume was fwded to a manager who is trying to finalize funding for a spot opening. she was about to tell me the job description when there was a beep, she went to get the line, it was the manager asking her to get me in for an interview asap. 2 weeks later (3/21/2005) i started this job. now i'm a systems engineer. i'm using the skills from the FTE jobs as well as the training of the degree and learning aspects of other engineering trades that are involved in computers. the variety of aspects to the job is what makes me like it and look forward to it every day. personally, i feel too many people have gone into CS for the $$ instead of the interst. i think that's part of the griping. if you dont like your job, find somehting you enjoy, and find a way to make money in it. it'll allow those of us who like it to be more valuable as we are not only happy with our jobs, but we have less competition.

Re:Griping, obviously

[m3rajk]

typo. night grad classes was 2004, undergrad graduation was Dec 2002

Re:Griping, obviously

[kinglink]

well 9/11 was the primary focus for 3 monthes.. then "getting them" was the focus after that. The point really is that tragedy remains is far greater then happiness.

Of course tragedy isn't forever, every yeah less people remember Oklahoma City, Columbine and such... But we do focus on the negatives more then positives.

We need statistics on other areas

[hellfire]

Particularly, we need similar statistics on other industries in the UK, and similar statistics on IT companies in other countries. You could come up with several reasons, such as IT employees tend to be more jaded than other types, or that UKers tend to be more cynical. However, one couldn't possibly make that comparison without the right figures for the comparison. Without that, these are just random figures the media put into a story to stir up attention and hits to the site.

Then again, what story with statistics posted to slashdot hasn't fit this description lately?

Being appreciated...

[thewiz]

It is rare to find a job, in any country, where management vocalizes their appreciation of the work IT professionals do. Of course, bonuses, awards, etc help too! Management may say they value their IT employees to a reporter, but how often do they say it to the employees themselves?

After being laid off in 2001 (shortly after 9/11), I spent the next three years looking for a position that could use my skills, where I'd learn new skills, and where they'd appreciate my effort. After trying jobs where I was just warming a chair so the company could fulfill their contractual staffing "obligations", working as a contractor to build and setup PCs, and setting up AIX systems for a company that didn't know which direction they were going, I finally found my current job which I love.

I'm appreciated and they let me know it! I'm using the skills I have, learning new ones, and feel that I am accomplishing something worthwhile. Most of the people I've met in the IT field are looking for the same things. Maybe the managers in the UK need to have an "IT Appreciation Year" to show their IT staff how much they value them.

Rights, or Markets?

[QMO]

It may not be a "right" to own a home as an entry level anything, but if your potential employees can afford a home somewhere else wouldn't that be a disadvantage to your recruiters?

As an entry level community college instructor in a rural area I could afford to buy a comfortable house.
As an entry level actuary in a New York City suburb, I make 65% more, but can't afford to buy a condo, let alone an actual house (and my commute takes 6 - 7 times as long).
I'll probably find a place (new job) where I can afford a home as soon as I get a little more experience (and pass a few more exams).

It may not be a right, but it definitely is a market force.

Why did I change jobs? That would be a very long offtopic post, full of humor and pathos.

You are not a rare and precious snowflake

[gelfling]

You are a cog, a part, a line in the overhead, like lights and rent and shrinkage. You should be grateful you have a job because we are thinking of shipping your job off to the place that had a thousand people drown in the monsoon flooding last week.

Re:You are not a rare and precious snowflake

[Number6.2]

The terrifying thing is the parent was modded "insightful" rather than funny.

Gallows humor, anyone? Oh, sorry, that's handled by our OffShore staff now...

--
My mom is only forgetful sometimes. Does that mean she has Somezheimers?
Generated by SlashdotRndSig via GreaseMonkey

Re:You are not a rare and precious snowflake

[Anonymous Coward]

"You are a cog, a part, a line in the overhead, like lights and rent"

Yep, try operating when any of those fail...

what is IT anyway?

[old man moss]

I'm puzzled, what counts as an IT worker?

I work for a software company, most of the people I work with are software engineers. They are all very professional - they all seem happy and the company seems happy with them.

We have an IT department that looks after systems administration - I've only met one of them, once... they are very efficient but hide somewhere and only accept questions via phone or a web-form.

I have friends who call themselves IT consultants - they are so professional that they don't even have to write any software, ever... they make presentations about it and talk a lot. They don't care about being valued because they get paid loads.

Are all three groups IT workers?

Re:what is IT anyway?

[coolGuyZak]

Are all three groups IT workers?

Software engineers within a software company are most likely not IT workers. IT works on the infrastructure of a company. The enineers you speak of usually work on "manufacturing".

I have friends who call themselves IT consultants - they are so professional that they don't even have to write any software, ever... they make presentations about it and talk a lot. They don't care about being valued because they get paid loads.

Sounds to me like they are motivational speakers and marketing, not IT.

What?

[QMO]

"When a death happens it's the focus of a week or two, even if it's random people."

What do you mean by "random?"

Do you mean that if the target of a killing was just arbitrary, like a bomb on public transportation?
Or, to you, does "random" just mean "someone you don't know?"

Re:What?

[Tony Hoyle]

It's just not that simple an equation.

Tens of thousands of people die every day....

War, Famine, Flood, Pestilence (plus Ronnie Soak).

We generally see it as background noise and ignore it.

We only care about it when it affects us in some way.

1 person killed can be national news for weeks... do we really care about them? Probably not.. we care about our sense of safety (especially if it was a murder). To a certain extent we care about what the newspapers and TV tell us to care about too.

Re:What?

[kinglink]

Well I meant people we didn't know before the death, the Cub Scouts death was in the news for almost a week, Bombings of course will be in the news for at least a month but when more then two or three people die, or at a well publicized event we see, hear, and think about them far longer then we hear about Judy and John Bloom's marriage if we hear about it at all.

Granted not EVERY person's death is going to draw attention but the negative news tends to linger where the "happy" news is forgotten. (and news here means information we get and retain, not media, though the media does contribute)

weak

[AxemRed]

It sounds like UK technology workers have a lot in common with US teenagers.

Griping as a Hobby

[Thumper_SVX]

I'm British. There, got that out of the way. I'm a British citizen still working and living in the USA after 10 years, so my viewpoint on the British workforce is probably a little different than the linked reporter.

There's a pervasive attitude in British industry that the work is just a job until something better comes along. I think it really is a deep-seated feeling that the British Empire is smaller than it used to be, but its citizens should be above tedious menial labor. Now, this attitude isn't as pervasive now as it probably was in the past, but it's there and it's addictive. I know, I felt exactly that way when I lived and worked in London.

Now, I'm not saying the report is invalid but I do feel like other posters that the report is too focused on IT. If you did the same survey with accountants you'd probably find very similar numbers.

I'm also not saying that this is unique to Britain. I'd say the figures would be very similar in the USA if not more so. One need only look at the humor of a culture to get a good idea of how it views work. OK, so the British have The Office... but the USA has probably longer history of work-related comedy than the British do: Dilbert, Office Space, you name it.

I'd say from my non-scientific and unstudied viewpoint here working for an American company with American colleagues that generally people are somewhat disenchanted with their jobs, but generally seem to be relatively happy with their lot. Remembering my colleagues in Britain, it seemed they were never happy. This was not limited to IT either; it was true of everyone.

Ironically, I'd also say that the British people I still work with today within this American company tend to be more focused on their work... but maybe that's just because of the type of people I deal with.

Draw your own conclusions from my ramblings :)

I think we can all agree-I'm an SOB.

[Anonymous Coward]

What an arrogant SOB. Help Desk isn't some kind of punishment. Help Desk is hard, and apparently requires skills this crowd doesn't have. People skills. Not only do you have to be technically proficient. You need to be able to handle people. Of course most "I really want to be a developer" types don't have that skill, so their miserable all the time, and take it out on those who are good at what they do.

Re:Reality of UK IT industry

[megalomaniacs4u]

The workplace these days is just a bad parody of The Office.

Actually the reason I found The Office unfunny was the very bad parody of real life. I've worked with/for people like that, they are ten times worse than that in real life.

Mind you Nathan Barley was quite amusing, I've worked with those idiots as well, of course that bombed as nobody could believe there were people out there like that (except for people being spoofed, but they just missed the joke).

Standard IT Economics/Sociology

[Bob9113]

U.K. employees working in the information technology industry are more valued than they think they are,

I think this is reflective of some general truths about IT workers. We are primarily computer people. Generally the political side is at best a secondary skill and more often a deficient skill. As such, we are less adept than those in other sectors at negotiating and getting the maximum compensation that is warranted by the amount of wealth we generate for our companies. The profit maximizing solution from the company's perspective in this situation is to undercompensate, underpromote, and underraise. We resign ourselves to it, because we do not have the skill set necessary to negotiate a profit minimizing deal (ie: minimizing the margin between the corporate revenue we generate and our compensation + overhead).

Moreover, since many of us are not good at negotiating profit minimizing deals, those few of us who are good at it are market disadvantaged. As my brother (on the finance side of things) says, "It's not about what you're worth, it's about what it costs to replace you." Not being mean - simple pragmatic truth.

An unfortunate side effect of this is that many of us feel undercompensated. In such reduced morale situations, productivity is hampered, and the margin between productivity and compensation narrows, but not in the good way. In theory this leads to a market opportunity for a company that compensates IT people in a profit minimizing way, because the increased morale would lead to increased productivity. This is the market opportunity famously exploited by Henry Ford when he started compensating factory workers $14 per day, well above the market wage (though in that day the inequity margin was, I would guess, far greater). But I digress.

If we were good at the political / profit negotiation side of things - if it were our primary skill set - we would be in management or finance, not in IT. I'm not bitching (well maybe a little bit) - I love IT, and would do it even if the profit margin for my employer were significantly larger.

Of course I do hope and believe that the continued expansion and maturation of computer science in business will continue to lead to a more efficient market for IT labor, ie: a narrower profit margin and thus higher compensation for my skill set.

What she ought to do...

[sean.peters]

... is start looking for another job. Once she gets any kind of offer, she should tell the current outfit she's leaving unless she gets $X increase in salary. If she's really seen as critical to the success of the project, they'll cough up.

Sean

Re:What she ought to do...

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Once she gets any kind of offer, she should tell the current outfit she's leaving unless she gets $X increase in salary.

Terrible advice. What happens is, should gthey cough up, they now view her as disloyal and will can her at the first downturn. The proper way to do it is to document the projects she's saved, with specifics as to how, make a nice quick pitch document, and request a 50-70% raise. If they go for it, then great. If not, you've got tested material for the job search you should do, as you'll never be taken seriously.

Dial Tone Comes From God

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing I've noticed in telecom, and noticed more and more with computers, is the expectation that everything should work perfectly at all times. Users believe it is a god-given right to have everything work perfectly, and are extremely annoyed by anything at all that causes them to do any work or adjust at all to use a system. A perfect computer and telecom system isn't just something nice, they expect it as a right.

Re:Speaking of age...

[symbolic]

I'm curious as to what people think is "too old" for IT? I'd say that there could easily be problems where someone refuses to keep abreast of newer technology, but for someone who finds this an interesting challenge, how old is too old?

Attitude at the top

[noz]

I work for a financial institution in Australia (as a consulant/contractor/slave) and the permanent staff were surveyed on their level of "happiness" in the workplace. The executive management of the company is genuinely concerned about their morale.

I was happily surprised and it is one of the nicest places I have worked. Has anyone else experienced this?

Also, with respect to age, I'm quite young and learnt quickly to keep that to myself. When you impress them with your work quality and then your age is discussed it is not an issue.

Re:It's just normal griping

[ewg]

I second this: a pat on the back would go a long way. It's human nature to focus on problems and neglect things that are going well. I know I feel insecure all year long only to get a positive review when my anniversary arrives.

Quarterly mini-reviews might be nice. Nothing involving a salary adjustment, just a systematic plan for having a private chat with your boss.

OK

[QMO]

That makes more sense.

Over-inflated view of importance?

[King_TJ]

Well, yes and no. In some aspects, computers have become more critical to business operations over time - to the point where sometimes the I.T. staff really *is* the company. (At least, in the sense that if the systems go down for even a few minutes, the business loses hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars.)

For example, I have a couple friends who work for a major news and financial information distribution firm. The ability to keep the data constantly streaming to the customers is really the "core" of the whole business. I'm sure some of the management types would argue that "No, the people gathering our information are the most important ones!", but what good is the info if the computer systems aren't feeding it to the people who want to pay for it?

I think one reason I.T. staff feels "undervalued" is exactly the mentality you describe, where folks view them as glorified "air conditioning repair people". Last I checked, heating and cooling repair might require some skill and trainning, but it required very little in the way of imagination or creativity. It doesn't typically require lots of continuous research either. (You don't see your HVAC guy surfing the HVAC "news sites" on the net each day, trying to keep up with the latest updates and fixes for things.) Half of I.T. is keeping on top of what's changing, so you're aware of all of your options when it comes time to implement a new solution. Otherwise, you may be paying way too much for a relatively poor software/hardware solution, just because it's the "only one you were familiar with".

Re:Over-inflated view of importance?

[Anonymous Coward]

... and you don't want to know how much those air conditioner repairmen get a year either, do you.

(I've heard those guys who do installations and repairs of residential reverse cycle air cons get paid very very well)

mo money

[wuice]

Personally, I say save the pats on the back and give me a goddamn raise. I really don't go to work to have my ego stroked. I go to do work for money. I'd rather recieve the compliments from someone who's opinion I give a fuck about.

My example...

[popoutman]

I have a fair idea of what kind of person the article is talking about...

I am the lead technician/engineer/problem-solver in a company of 18 that provides satellite-based internet access. I was brought on 2 years ago as a dish and hardware installer at a rate of 19k euros. Within 3 months, the office admin left, the other office tech left, and I was drafted in to the role of office admin.
Responsibilities increase to the point where I am customer facing with regards to putting out the fires, planning the future of the office network, introducing nagios and sugarcrm to the company and streamlining the office network.
As for the expected salary increase from going from ladder monkey to top-of-tree technical person, no, that hasn't happened. Only after much cajoling and threatening to leave was my salary increased to 23k euro, last january.

The funny thing is that the major client of the company (major telecomms provider in the country) regards me as 'the guy that fixes things' to quote the relevant product manager, and has come to rely on my services in customer management and problem solving.
I's going to be a big shock to the company when I give them 2 weeks notice of my leaving next week, because they won't get anyone to fill the same role for anything close to the same salary. I am just at the end of my patience with the company, as my wages are consistently late (3 times late in the past 5 months, and something similar last year) and I know that the 2 brothers that own the company are taking about 8-9k euro out of the company a month in wages and expenses. Not a nice thing to find out when your bank gives you letters for late bills and you have no chance of getting a mortgage for 5 years because of the irregular payment schedule.
Yes there are mitigating circumstances in why the company is in such dire straights (mostly incompetent management that bleed the spare cash off..) but I have given them 2 years to get the act together and start paying me what I am supposed to be earning (around 33-35k euro). What sucks for the other workers in the company is that the product is great, and is selling well, just no money there for anything useful..

To cut a longer story short, I know that I am valued in the company, but there isn't anything tangible to show that, coming from the company.
I'll be wishing them the best of luck, and advising those that are left to jump before the whole thing sinks.

When I leave it'll all go to crap, but I don't feel bad about that.

Re:My example...

[MemoryDragon]

Delayed salaries, not trying to raise the expenses and then being surprised because you leave, is a sure sign of a bunch of crooks in front of the company in conjunction with bad times for the company (the later one not being obligatory) Been there done that, usually most of these companies go down under once the low paid techie who runs the place leaves and the crooks stand alone and not being able to find a replacement.

Re:My example...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you've already found a new job, then you really owe it to yourself to use it as a negotiating point with your current employeer. I was in a position very similar to you, in terms of company size, and customer-facing IT role.

What I did was write (not email) them a detailed letter right before my review (which had been posponed 3 times), explaining my need for "compensation", and respect consistent with my revenue generating abilities... I used my time sheets to determine the revenue that I contributed over the course of a year, which I estimated to be $200K (USD). (I later found out though "back-channels" that it was closer to $225k). In the year prior, I receved a raise from ~$37k, to $44k. After the letter, and the resulting negotiation, I went from ~$44k to ~$60k. Now, my boss did put in a good word or two with the owners, and that helped. But from my perspective, working in a small business, and with other small businesses... you're value is in your revenue generating capabilities, and your customer/relationship ownership. If you can put a dollar (or pound) to the what you contiribute to the business, then you can really negotiate yourself something descent.

That being said, small-business sucks because no matter how great you are, you're never going to be making as much (or more) than the owners.

Re:My example...

[tyroneking]

Two points:
If you are regarded by your company's clients as an eseential person then you have signed your own termination warrant; no company will allow a single person to be essential to the running of a business - they always seem to get rid of such people even if it is to their detrement (jealousy I guess).
Secondly, the only way to progress in most modern companies is to bring in revenue; failing that, only introduce systems if you can provide metrics on how the system improved profit. if you can't do that then don't introduce any new systems.

Re:My example...

[ediron2]

If it is any consolation, the same crap happens everywhere. Do what you can to help your coworkers minimize their losses ('no good deed goes unpunished', so be careful here), and get far far away as fast as you can. Keep a fairly detailed logbook/journal in case you get falsely sued, too. And sit back while I tell my tale of karmic blowback:

A friend, web/graphics/artist wizard (I really don't know anyone half as good as he is on the nontech aspects), became the single go-to guy at a tiny company that did custom printing. Since he could do amazing graphics and design and knew how to program the press to do custom tricks, he was priceless to 'em.

They sold their service as a franchise, which made them a few millions. They had a half-dozen 'company-owned' vanity cars, vacation homes, and liked to live like they were billionaires. Meanwhile, he couldn't get a raise, and they'd do bizarre/insensitive stuff like 'forgetting' to do payroll or pay bills. His christmas bonus, where he was promised several thousand dollars, was a rodded-to-death porsche, which he resold on ebay for $5000. Literally 3 'owners' were living fat and happy off his work. Meanwhile, he worked mountains of unpaid overtime, had paychecks bounce, stood by while impound people took back office equipment whose leases weren't being paid, had to endure the phone getting disconnected, couldn't get reimbursed for expenses, etc.

Then at the beginning of holiday season (Thanksgiving in the US), ... this was the kicker... he was given an ultimatum by his company: fire 'Bob' (a guy with the same job title, but less experience) or you're fired. Three weeks later, nearing Christmas, the boss's wife called him in and said: "Call Bob up, offer him his job back at half-pay. If he says no, let me know immediately so we can challenge his unemployment insurance payments and get them stopped."

Finally, he found a new job, and gave them notice. The evil wife literally burst into tears every time she saw him after that, probably realizing her days of easy money had just come to an end.

And then... after a lot of begging from them, they started paying him his full salary to come in 2 days a week as a consultant. He'd get paid upon arrival, accepted only certified checks or cash. Until the strain got to be too much, he had them utterly over a barrel, since they've got angry franchisees, clients, etc. Now, he's gone, lawsuits are flying, and they'll be lucky if all they get is bankruptcy court (since they have done more than a few fraudulent things).

Personally, I'd have let them sink into the swamp. Or offered to testify against them.

There are really some evil people in the world... why do a disproportionate amount of them have MBA's and law degrees?!

Re:My example...

[popoutman]

Thing is, I don't want to work for them anymore, they have had the chance to improve conditions and all that stuff. If he comes back with a counteroffer, it's 18 months too late, and 10 sets of late wages too late...

Re:My example...

[popoutman]

There are really some evil people in the world... why do a disproportionate amount of them have MBA's and law degrees?!

There are also a disproportionate amountb of idiots and incompetents amongst that particular group too..

No, it's a British thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever talked to an Englishman? Standard practice when meeting a stranger is to open with a comment about the weather, which is usually a complaint. Then it's off to complaints about technology, the government, etc. Even compliments are replied to with self-disparaging comments...

Re:No, it's a British thing

[chawly]

It's a British thing, is it ? Have you ever talked to a Scotsman ?

Such a sore point, in fact...

[raehl]

That you read what you wanted to read, and not what it said. I was saying my job growth included sometimes unobvious growth in skills etc IN ADDITION to obvious growth in title and salaray, not in lieu of. ;)

So has your wife raised this issue with anyone at the office? It's interesting that you tell the joke, but don't seem to consider that maybe the problem is that your wife is the schmuck? Has she explained this issue to her management? It's quite possible that while it's obvious to her that this is the situation, her managers just know that she can fix problems, so they assign her to fix problems. One of the best ways to get a raise is to ask for one.

Demoralising!

[popoutman]

Just as an example of the way that the owner of the company thinks:

The company had an account set up with a local safety equipment provider for hi-vis jackets and boots for the ladder-monkeys. The MD comes bounding in when he found out saying something along the lines of 'Oh great. I need a few fire extinguishers and things, for the house and the boat'. Nice.

Example 2:

Anytime the MD goes to Dublin (the company is Irish based), no matter what time the meeting or whatever, he'll drive up the evening before, stay in a E100 hotel near the city centre availing of whatever services he can from the hotel. It would be reasonable to stay a E10 taxi ride out a bit farther in a hotel for E50 a night (same standard of place - I was in both).
I do understand the importance of being fresh for meeting people to invest in the company, but he is taking the p*ss when the rest of us are being pinched.

His brother is managing the office and the general operations, and has made noises about getting me certified and changing my role to that of a network specialist to justify the increase to 33-35k euro, but that increase in wages just won't be a help when the wages are irregular.

Onwards to my next job interview on Thursday, keep the fingers crossed!

I'm not in the UK but...

[SenorChuck]

I can definitely sympathize with the 70% who feel they're not living up to their potential, and the 45% who feel discriminated against because their employer thinks they're too young.

I'd put myself squarely in those brackets.

Maybe I'm more valued than I think I am, but it certainly doesn't feel that way on most days. That could probably be helped by having a more positive work environment, and not the regular rat race.

main isuue

[Anonymous Coward]

is that most IT people make their hobby their job.
or expected more from it.

Re:How do you know if you are loved? - Time and At

[garns]

Where I work I have largely been left to my own devices. I am assigned a task and bothered again until I ask for more work. I thought this would be the ideal work environment, however, I find that I miss having attention paid to me. I want my boss to stop by and ask how it is going and give me input to the project I am working on.
 
I don't feel that I am an insecure person, but I still need that. I work for a large company, I feel that I am be better suited in a smaller company. But times are tight...

Appreciated ?!

[smoker2]

I work for a company, not in an IT capacity, but as I do IT work "on the side", I decided to build them a web site.
So, I designed the graphics, built the site, did all the donkey work inputting the data and product details, set it all up on my colocated server, even adding sms messaging to the contact form (to make sure they paid attention to contacts).
All of this was done at my expense, in my own time. And I was happy.
It was a small company, and I could see a time when I could "grow" into running some aspects of their IT for them.

After 2 years, they sold out to a larger concern. I received a phone call one day ( out of the blue), asking me to transfer the domain over to the new companys nameservers, and also provide all the data I had used to build the site as they wanted to run the site but they don't run php (complete Microsoft shop).
I pointed out that I had never received a penny for the work I had done on the site, and that I would speak to my boss about it. The guy on the phone said I would probably be able to claim for my expenses, so I raised this issue with my boss. He said to make up an invoice, and he would submit it to head office.

This was 2 months ago, and as far as I know, the invoice is still in my bosses desk.

BTW, the parent company decided to bypass me and have bought a new domain, here's what they've done with it....
bah humbug

IT is its own worst enemy

[stress4dad]

IT in most companies has become so isolated from the business that it's no wonder they feel marginalized...THEY ARE. Back in the day, I was working in the military as a mathematician, and since I was the youngest in my office (who had been using computers since 7th grade), I was THE IT department. Hardware/software orders, installation, troubleshooting, network installations (in a heterogenous environment (UNIX, Win 3.1, DOS, Mac)). Sure, I was busy, but I was part of the business and was valued for the direct support I gave and because I knew the needs of my office. Nowadays, I call a central help desk (are they even in the same city?) and have to go through the Tier 1, Tier 2, ..., Tier K (K=some large number) to get the problem fixed (which I often know how to do, but don't have the adminstrative access to do).

What is needed is more IT trained people directly involved in the day-to-day work in local sites and offices. Then the real issues will be known by IT and real problems can be solved.

Just my $.02.

Re:Just Griping. The good comes with the bad.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you look at most of the IT technician generation, quite a number of them were either abandoned infront of videogames, computers, and televisions and found computers and electronics, and the society already on them, as a suitable replacement for their parents.

The rest were either raised by their parents fairly well and were encouraged to play with electronic junk and were educated by their parents, or found someone else to help them with it.

The rest of the people who try to get into the tech field are "mundaine"; they are sheeple with a very specific set of skills, some with a greater than average aptitude for whatever it is they do.

In any case, the labor market isn't like it was in 1950 or 1960, it's more akin to how it was during the beginning of the industrial era. First we had the skills era; where skills were taught to apprentices and were major skillsets were needed to survive. Industrialism brought in mass production, which significantly reduced the workload on everyone. Now we're in the information age. Like the change from a trade-based society into an industrial society, management styles and skills become obsolete.

However, unlike the change from the trade age to the industrial age, your average IT worker either gets the respect, pay, and friendship they deserve or the management gets a broken company. This is a consequence of what I call "Idiot grouping"; the idiot managers get the idiot IT workers and the smart IT workers get the smart managers.

Anything inbetween is abuse from one to the other. If you accept the abuse, and do your job well, you're an idiot.

During the industrial revolution anyone with a hard work ethic could get a job; this isn't true for this age. The good IT people are damn hard to come by and the ones who are good are smart enough not to deal with idiot managers. I have a friend who's boss called in a guy from india who was a world renound security expert to do his systems and taught him a bunch of stuff. When this guy did the companies computers, he found that all the machines had passwords like "User001, pass001".

His boss is a jackass and treats everyone like they're bad people. So the guy did his system lickety split, took the money, and went on his way.

The lesson? Smart IT people don't waste their time on bad managers and as such, bad managers with a high turnover rate destroy their company because nobody will stay in for more than a few weeks, or at least that's how it's supposed to work.

yea, great

[voudras]

now shut the fuck up and get back to work =P

Skillsoft - Bah Humbug

[Scooby71]

From the article

"Forty-five percent of U.K. IT workers want more general business skills; 40% said management and leadership training would help them achieve their potential; and 55% want to hone their IT-specific abilities."

This survey is by Skillsoft, who supply outsourced training at my employer and who I spent 3 days trying to convince that the training course I requested was the I actually needed. You can imagine this helps my job satisfaction.

Life is to short

[RogerWilco]

For al the people griping and whining in this thread I have only one advice:

Do something about it!!
ask for a raise, get another job, ask for training,...

Life is to short to waste it filling other peoples pockets with money while you have a hard time.
It took me one year to find that out at a previous job, I've never been happier that I quitted.

I know exactly how valued I am

[andyfaeglasgow]

A letter comes every month telling me about it. If my employer values me more than this, then he knows what to do about it.

I see. Bosses also post in slashdot!!!

[Requiem18th]

So stop surfing /. and go back to... make other people work!

Seriously, telling an unsatisfied worker to 'get real, get over themselves and learn to love your job' is like telling a man who is gang-raped dially 'get real and get into gay s+m for crying out loud!'

If a worker complains, fix the worker.