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IT Workers Face Dangerous Stress
feminazi writes "William Cross, CIO and Ph.D., told the IBM Share conference this week that IT workers often face dangerous levels of stress. In a Q&A with Computerworld.com, he described some of the manifestions: "They tend to be less emotionally stable. They tend to react strongly to small things that they might not react to under other circumstances. A change in schedule may be a crisis if somebody is really stressed." What to do? "Easy things. Exercise ... learn to relax, learn meditation, learn breathing exercises, participate in your religion — all of those things are very effective stress managers.""
This story selected and edited by LinuxWorld editor for the day Saied Pinto.
Go BOFH on your users.
It's a sure way to de-stress
What happens when our religion is our IT work? Then when we practice it, wouldn't it become a viscious spiral into hell?
For developers, or those who otherwise sit at the keyboard and monitor for long stretches, don't underestimate the importance of getting up to do a few stretches every once in a while.
Once I sat in front of Visio, concentrating on state diagrams for a loong time. (I was just learning how to use Visio.) When I finally got up, my mouse arm was wracked in pain. I had sat there for hours, sans break, without realizing it.
Dark Reflection
Those changes in schedule that IT people get worked up about:
"The hardware you wanted won't be available until two days after launch. Is that going to be a problem?"
"Why the hysterics, the manufacturer said they'll have Linux drivers weeks before our new launch date."
"How long after the launch date do you think it will be before you NEED the backup server?"
The little things I get stress over the day before a large scale deployment:
"We just decided we liked your idea. Can we make the database access clustered?"
"For our launch announcement, how long can we claim it will take to have this ported to Windows Mobile too?"
"The RAM you requested didn't arrive because we didn't order it. How many simultaneous users can we support with half the RAM?"
"We can just add the extra disk space to the servers with USB drives right?"
IT guys are sooo damned touchy!
Well that is interesting. I thought most IT people shun religion and mysticism. Goes along with being scientific-minded.
"...learn to relax, learn meditation, learn breathing exercises..."
LRN2PLY!
...remind me again, how do we measure it?
I used to believe in stress, but now I've come to realize what I was experiencing was actually exasperation at poor decisions made by people who are paid far more than I. It's not really an illness or disease, as much as a realisation that the criteria applied to who gets the top jobs is utterly useless. Less concentration on shiny suits and bullshit - more on ability to deliver results.
Oh wait, my bad! Too much coffee.
"Mail is down again! noob!"
"Everything's working fine, so what did you do today, Oh, nothing?"
"It doesn't work, fix it!"
... the average medical resident, especially the surgical residents. On the other hand, we aren't supposed to be working more than 80 hours a week.
I've been a programmer for many years. I have a personality type that thrives on stress. So you know what I do? Consulting. I get brought in on doomed projects. Every month is a working marathon. Right now I've been on a job since February, the original deadline was May, the latest deadline for that May deliver is Sept. I eat stress for breakfast, sure my health starts to go after 14-16 hour days 6 days a week (sometimes 7), but I get paid very well for it and take some time off to recover between jobs.
Well I keep meaning to take some time off between jobs, but the head hunters just throw more ridiculous sums of money at me. I haven't had a proper vacation for years, but after a week of not working I start getting bored. I'm sure things would be different if I had a family waiting for me to get home at night, but considering I'm only 3 years out of college, this is fun. Also the stress on the job pales in comparison to the stress I went through during plebe year at Annapolis. I transfered to UW Madison after that year, but stress does not effect me in the same way it used to.
I work as a Software Engineer / Oracle DBA. I have no stress. I don't like end lusers but i dont stress about them. Stress is for people who dont know the answer and dont know where to look to find it. When you know the answer or know where to look for it life is much easier. Also constant breaks to read Slashdot helps.
To deal with stress, breathe, participate in activities outside of work, exercise, set priorities and don't put too many hours in the office. These are all nice suggestions, but look at the conditions many IT workers have to work under.
We are frequently required to carry pagers or phones for 24x7 support. Work can't always be left in the office because of this. On our days off and after hours, phone calls and pages are made to us to fix what other people see as problems. Exercise more? I would love to. I used to go to the gym 3-5 times a week on my way home from work until a manager complained I was only spending 8-9 hours a day working. How about setting priorities? That works fine until someone comes up with the next burning issue (like they want a report with nice pictures they can show their boss that afternoon) that has to be handled ASAP and tells you to put everything else on the back burner.
I think it was funny that this CIO was talking about these things with IBM considering that IBMers in Global Services are REQUIRED(!) to put in at least 15% OT in 2006. (yep, especially the salaried ones).
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
"They tend to be less emotionally stable."
But is that because they are in IT, or are they in IT because of that?
..... That make firms with rec rooms, fun company outings, enforced breaks during the workday (to read, improve your IT education, etc.), and subsidized memberships to gyms and the like the ones to work for. I would suspect that those companies have IT staff that are less stressed and they have less retention issues..... Not to mention they lower the risk of some overstressed IT person going postal. More examples can be found here:
. htmly our-employees-by-offering-company-perks/
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,20972,00
http://self-help.vocaboly.com/archives/495/value-
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
No wonder IT workers are still under so much stress!
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
You go to the scary devil monastery, and your spiral into hell starts when you go Down, not Across .
This only happens when you have neglected all of the appropriate rites and rituals of the faith. This especially includes the sacrificial white chicken on the Altar of the Keyboard of the Server Almighty. Your input mast be acceptable and perfect in form and function, lest you be pointed out by the flying fickle finger of fate, and your errors are made known to all. Only the most arcane masters may substitute a rubeer chicken, and then only at great peril.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
People work better when they get enough sleep and aren't working extremely long hours! Furthermore, workers who are able to have a life outside of work are happier, get sick less, and are able to spend time with their families!
I find it disheartening that a manager figuring that out would be worthy of an article. I mean, this shouldn't be rocket science. The general idea I've gotten from various managers is that you can get more productivity out of people with a certain amount of overtime for a short period of time, but frequent overtime or extreme "crunch time" will in the end just destroy your work force and with it your work.
I am officially gone from
While it's true that most of us (speaking from a software dev's and previous support analyst point of view) are stressed. We aren't overly stressed to the point of snapping when the smallest thing goes wrong. I'm used to having things go wrong, unexpected bugs popping up, code just not compiling... etc etc, as I think most developers are. It's a stressful job (particularily close to release date), but so are most. I certainly wouldn't call it "Dangerous levels of stress".
To understand recursion, one must first understand recursion...
Depending on your coworkers and what happens during the little bits of downtime you get, how the stress affects you (well, me anyways) can change drastically. I work IT at a college, and we're being prepped for the onslaught of the students returning next week. Basically, we're having our shifts broken up, everyone is working, and we are keeping the workers in and out so no one gets fucked by the horde of students who don't know how to take care of spyware. That seems to be a fairly good model, and one that I know is used by the fast food industry, or at least places I've worked at.
On top of that, I think that a lot of the stress that common IT jobs have is from the repetitiveness of what happens all the time. Explaining the same thing not only to customers, but to your boss or to management several times is much more annoying that one would think. Sometimes I get pretty ecstatic when someone comes in with an extremely difficult problem as opposed to an easy one, simply because I get to actually think about what I'm doing instead of just regurgitating the same stuff over and over again. The stress doesn't necessarily have to come from the work load; sometimes it's just a lack of job satisfaction.
It's not stress. They've renamed being a stressed out geek. It's now called "Aspergers Syndrome", and you can claim to have it on message boards so that people pay more attention to you. You also can get on the whole "disability" gravy train, even though there's nothing wrong with you. It's really a great advancement for all IT workers.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
The truth is, American workers are the laziest and unproductive workers in the world. Part of their unproductivity lies in the feeble nature of their bodies.
You don't hear of Chinese or East Indian workers suffering from this kind of stress, do you? That's because they love their work and they're grateful, unlike you lazy union commies. They could be digging a ditch filled with Union Carbide chemical waste and they'd be singing in the acid rain.
It's articles like this that convince me that you IT workers need to be relieved of your stress by laying you off and sending these stressful jobs to East India.
After a few years in poverty I'm sure you'll come crawling back to Corporate America begging for a chance to work 24 hour shifts writing software.
Your health doesn't mean squat; corporate profits are far more important!
[libertarian parody off]
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Of course it's the fault of the workers. I mean, why should anyone get stressed working 12 hr days 6-7 days a week on some death march. Seriously people, just go for a jog. That'll fix everything.
people in other Industries when though the same things long hours, no over time pay, on call all the time, bosses who want stuff done now even know that takes longer then they give you the time for and other things.
Perfect. Another "abuser" who so easily gave up her name. Let me go see here... Clickity, click, click, clack... Ahhh, yes. Let me see here. hmmm... looks like all her current programming work is being done out of her home directory. Click, click, clack.... Too bad it just suffered a disk failure. And lets go look for those backup tapes so I can perform the recovery. Lets see here, yes, tape103842. Lets just put it in the specially built "custom" DLT drive (you know the one that I modified the read/write head so that it actually writes the binary converted DC electric sine wave from the power supply to the tape when trying to "restore" a file). That will get things back in order. Let me also go connect my "special network patch cord" in for Libby's computer (the one that connects to the 240V 40Amp plug back here with the other end being her computer's NIC). Bzzzzz... POP! Yes, another satisfied customer.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
The FBI will relentlessly hunt you down for that.
If you filch my personal info from a data center in India and sell it to Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, however, the FBI can't touch you! Identity theft is much more fun than wrecking a computer! And remember, it's easy to get my information... just bribe the data center manager a year's salary... which amounts to your lunch money for a week.
Ah, the joys of offshoring!
[this is a parody, of course]
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Asperger's Syndrome is a form of autism. It can lead to being a stressed out geek but it is not the same thing.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Lets see... Taoist based kung fu
Exercise - Check
Relax - Got tai chi? - Check
Meditation - Check
Breathing Exercises - Check
Participate in your religion - Check
Maybe I am on the right path afterall. This computer stuff is for the birds. It wrecks the body (got carpal tunnel) and stresses you out. After spending too much time in front of a computer, Taoism is a great balance. Now if I could only get RealWorldExp (tm) transfered into my WoW character for all the time I spend at the temple. Maybe something where every gate opened = 1 talent point. =)
Anarcy in a suit.
Anarchy was good enough for me..
Good enough for me and Ayn Rand.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Exercising is a stressful activity. It stresses you physically. If you're already overstressed how will this do anything other than make you more stressed?
I'm asking this as a serious question. I work out and exercise all the time but when I'm really stressed from work or whatever I have to cut back on the physical exercise or I really start to flip out with anxiety attacks, panic attacks, etc. It just adds to the emotional instability. Again, it's not like I'm a computer using couch potatoe, I exercise all the time doing 7 days/wk stretching, 3 days/wk light aerobic, 3 days/wk weights. I just have to cut back when I get stressed. Work doesn't stress me a whole lot though. I love what I do as a programmer even with tight deadlines... it's the social stuff that's emotionally stressful.
Am I the only one like this?
The ratio of people to cake is too big
Only people that are diligent and take pride in their work get stressed, which applies to most of the IT people that I've met. People that don't care don't get stressed.
Since managing a group of computers running Windows is a hopelessly impossible task to do perfectly, because it's a moving target, it creates great stress for those diligent people.
I would suggest that because the vast majority of IT people are managing MS Windows that the real culprit is Windows itself, and not IT intrinsically. Until IT people refuse to manage MS Windows they get what they deserve; a good salary and a lot of stress!
"Meaningless!, Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless!"
Start by printing out a free chart for your area. You get on the train/bike/bus/car at the crack of dawn, arrive at work an hour later, and similarly step off that train/bike/bus/car at sundown. Tell them you are a vampire. Every moment of daylight belongs to the company, but not one minute more.
Using the printout for Miami as an example, you'd be at work from 8:01a to 4:33p on December 17th (worst case from a company standpoint) and from 7:30a to 7:15p on June 28th (worst case for you) which may not be much different than what you already are doing.
At least during the equinoxes you are at work exactly ten hours, and then it averages out just plus or minus the same amount of minutes for the surrounding days on either side. Depressing, but nobody steals your nights and weekends if they already own every moment of every day.
Your life sounds entertaining, and I would like to subscribe to your Web 2.0-enabled newsletter
Wana relieve stress? Well as a computer guy you can have alot of fun screwing with others...for instance one guy at my office I felt like pranking...I took a screen shot of his desktop...moved all his icons and put them in a hidden folder...then applied that picture as a background...hah he restarrted that damn pc more times that i have fingers. Took him about 30 mins to figure out what was up...That sure is a stress reliever.
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
I self medicate ... if you know what I mean. It would be nice if I could take a vacation without getting support calls. So far I have averaged 1 day of vacation per year since I joined the IT department.
The definition of stress is STUPID END USERS.
How many times have you had to tell the same dumba$$ "Don't do X", yet they go and do it, and then whine to the boss that it's got to be fixed "right now" for the 47th time?
Our example. We'll call her Melinda to protect the stupid. In the three years that Melinda worked for us, her workstation managed to contract every single virus that came through. Melinda would uninstall her antivirus software "because it made her computer slow". When we disabled her access, she went and bought a windows CD so taht she could reinstall the OS, sans patches and sans AV. Each time her computer crashed, which was frequent, someone had to rebuild it and of course Melinda was breathing down their necks the whole time. I think we were probably the happiest people in the building when we got email about Melinda's going away party.
How many times have you had some end user who did something incredibly stupid (C:\> format c: ) blow up at the IT staff, acting like it's their fault?
This is an actual conversation:
User: I got an email that said to type in format c:
Admin: Do you have the email?
User: No, it's on my computer and my computer crashed
Admin: Well, we can reinstall all your software, but I think your files are gone.
User: (expletives deleted) Why can't I have my files back
Admin: You can but you'll have to give us an account number
User: Why?
Admin: Because we'll have to send the drive out and see if anything can be recovered off it
User: How much does that costs?
Admin: $125/hr + some other fees per GB for the data
User: Why is it so much?
Admin: Because you took the drive apart to "fix" it
How about users who just totally disregard anything that the IT staff has to say? Yet this too magically is our fault. Lemme see, I email you once maybe twice a year - yeah, that's the one you wanna skip. Gee, it sure is easier to get the new system to work if you read the instructions we wrote for it and you check your email to get your user name and password.
Prime example of this. We recently had to move about 200 users to a new server. As we moved each one, we sent them an email with their account information as well as all the information necessary for them to access the new machine. It uses a simple web based interface to upload files for intranet distribution. Do you think they read it? No...maybe 10-12 of them read it. The rest of the started calling, complaining that they couldn't get back into the old server. They threatened our manager and our director if their access wasn't restored. When it was pointed out to them that they got an email from us, they still had the nerve to huff and puff and pretend it was "those IT people's fault." Well, I'm really freakin' sorry you're too freakin' stupid to read your email. Why our management doesn't make reading email mandatory is beyond me, but it isn't. We have to send out a memo (ON PAPER) the next time we do something that requires "a change in the user's behavior to complete a process." I guess the memo is so that we can wipe their a$$ for them too?
HDGary secures my bank
Frag. Seriously. I use FPS games to relax. When something isn't working or somebody is causing trouble I frag. During periods of time when I'm not stressed I don't game (haven't played an FPS in two months).
-Tim Louden
"They tend to be less emotionally stable. They tend to react strongly to small things that they might not react to under other circumstances. A change in schedule may be a crisis if somebody is really stressed." Just sounds like it is describing anyone who ever ends up entering INTO the IT field!
The Tech Terminal
Do not take responsibility for things that are not your fault.
User does something dumb, loses their work or whatever, and has a go at you about it. Is this your problem? No - so don't take any shit for it. *Politely* inform them of the options, and schedule work when you can fit it in. If it's going to take more time for you to fix it than it will take for them to start-over, then too bad for them. No, an emergency for them is not an emergency for you - unless it truly is more important to the production of the company as a whole than what you're currently doing (in which case they need to provide justification as to why you should be working for them instead of for the company).
In my years in the industry (11 so far), i've come to the conclusion that it often attracts "shy" or easily intimidated people who simply don't like dealing with people (they get along better with hardware - that's WHY they're in the industry) and when they actually have to deal with users, they're easily intimidated. Hence, they roll over and "take it".... and then time management becomes a problem because they're spending too much time on the unimportant (in the scheme of things) tasks.
If you're truly stressed because you do not have enough staff, raise the issue with management before people start complaining about it. Just do your homework before doing so, and have available details of what sort of tasks and timeframes you have to deal with.
Just my 2c...
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
I was going to write a comment about why you're on a narrow-focussed path of self-destruction, but I think I'll just hit you with a stick instead. :-)
I've found that I get sucked in too easily. Someone at work tells me to "take owenership" of a problem and I really do. You have to keep a barrier erected between you and your job. That job is NOT what defines you. It may have been the case 50 years ago, when an engineer was proud of what he was doing, but now that has been drained away. We're all throw-away human resources, and we have to remember that if firing us would save $10/year the companies we work for would do it. (I'm not saying don't work. Make the effort you put in equal to the job security you have.) We have to keep that in the back of our minds when someone tells us to take ownership of a problem. So when Dickwad McGee brings you that last piece of work at 4:57 that he f$@#%d up and expects you to fix, smile, say, "Yea, I'll take a look at it," and save it for tomorrow. Because it's not worth it. Your soul, or whatever you believe makes up you, is worth more than all the money that company will ever make and you shouldn't forget it.
If my boss wore a decent helmet I could crack him round the head with a bat everytime I felt stressed. Cause and effect really.
I currently have a summer co-op as an IT intern. I have to say that yes, the IT personnel at the company I am working at are quite touchy, grouchy and don't necessarily enjoy doing anything work-related (I hear them curse alot throughout the day). I, though, simply help the people (and take my time doing it as I am paid by the hour) and then explain to them what went wrong and how I fixed it (so that perhaps they can fix it themselves if it goes wrong again). I feel that IT should just take things easy and slowly instead of trying to have everything done perfectly and swiftly (this causes major stress, headaches and bugs; believe me). I think that IT personnel need to be equipped with vibrating chairs and white noise machines. This way, no one gets angry ;)
Just give me back my fucking stapler and everything will be ok. I swear one of these days I'm going burn this mutha' to the ground.
I work for the worlds largest wholesaler in our industry, and am the only IT person in the Canadain opperation. The company has made some really hard to swallow changes in the last few years and I have just adapted. I felt I had good stress management skills, a fun personality and the ability to let the sh*t people throw and ignorant (sometimes cruel) managers tell you to eat fall off my teflon armour. Well I was wrong and just fooling myself. Two weeks ago I suffered a health event that my doctor tells me gives me a 30% risk of having a stroke in the next month. This is 100% related to the job I do and the bullsh*t and stress caused by the changes the company has decided to implement and ignorant management. Needless to say as soon as I am out from under this cloud I will be working somewhere else. In the meantime I am telling people exactly what I think when I think it. I am not internalizing or holding on to any of it. Consistantly high levels of stress can and will destroy you. Don't ignore it. Don't get addicted to it. Do whatever you can to minimize it.
I do not want to be lumped into "IT". I am a programmer, not IT.
Programmers do real work. IT is, more often than not, the adversary.
IT: We are taking away administrator rights.
Programmer: What?
IT: If you download and install any software from the Internet, you will be fired.
Programmer: What?
IT: If you need anything installed, we will install it for you.
Programmer: I need X, Y, and Z installed.
IT: That software is not on the approved list
Programmer: What software is on the approved list?
IT: This list is empty.
Programmer: Can I at least have an editor?
IT: Windows comes with Notepad.exe. Use that.
The above is a true story.
I recall reading not too long ago about a study done regarding stress. They found that the amount of stress a person felt directly correlated with how far down the corporate food chain they found themselves. The study had nothing to do with IT stress specifically, but I personally have found that after working for a few small companies over the years, and now working for a giant, I would agree with that finding.
I'm a programmer, not working in support (directly), and the job is pretty much the usual: design, code, design, code, crunch, recover (very little here, however), code, patch, repeat. I find however the extra layers of management just pile it on as more people "need to know" project status. Or worse, the more people that can pull you away at any time to work on a pet project.
Life is 10% things that happen to you and 90% of how you react to those things that happen.
/raises eyebrow.
Personally when really crappy stuff happens to me I react as if I were The Rock.
I say this jabrone hunk of crap however you spell it j-a-b-r-n-e-x-y-z-a-b-c oh whatever... isn't going to get me down. No cuz i'm gonna drop the people's elbow on this situation and it better fix itself if it knows what's good with it. Cuz you can smell what the tech guy is cookin!
Bring it on!@!!!!
I really hope this was a failed attempt at sarcasm instead of a serious comment.
I'm redecorating my apartment these days, and I'll take your comment in that context as I can truly say I'm only working for myself on this one (no wife to be upset etc) so the risk of self-deception and bunk is much reduced.
The art of measurement is a subtle one - it is only noticable in the end result when one has failed.
A few questions come to my mind when reading your post: You claim that one "ne[...]ed[s] to have a measurable metric of effort". Why is that? What is a measurable metric of effort? Is effort measurable? Isn't a metric a measure of measure? Would anyone want an immeasurable measure of measure? And can one measure the immeasurable by measure of a measure just for the sake of having measured?
Furthermore, given a measure of the immeasurable, and another identical measure of the same kind of immeasurable, will they measure up to each other when placed side by side?
And how does one measure the analogy between a measure of the immeasurable and the square root of minus one?
Please share your management secrets with me, as I can make immediate use of them in throwing away my measurement tapes and just drill holes using naught but a small measure of intellectual laziness and my sharp eye. Then when my kitchen is only a little visibly off level and my flat screen hangs 10 degrees off and my parquet floor almost reaches the walls I can at least say I used top notch management measurement science and blame the workers.
oh wait..