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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.
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.
You need to experience more of the world. What passes for "religion" in the main stream media (and politics :-( ) in the US is just a stagnant tidal pool among all religions.
I'm reminded of a great quote from the Dalai Lama(iirc, and *) that I saw a few months ago. Some interviewer was asking what it would mean to Buddhism if scientists proved something contrary to our teachings. He looked at the interviewer like he was insane, then said that the teachings would be changed to reflect reality. No fuss, but then again the central premise of Buddhism is to become truly aware of what's going on. (Which is an incredibly scary thing, once you start to get serious about it. You can't hide things from yourself any longer.)
(*) ObDisclosure -- I consider myself a Buddhist in a Tibetean tradition, so strictly speaking the Dalai Lama is our spiritual leader. But it's nothing like what you would see in the Catholic church, for instance. I just thought the statement really caught the way that it's a non-issue.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Stress is when you get given too much work to do in too short a period of time and it can only be completed through your own raw output, not by referencing the work of others - usually as a result of poor resourcing and budgeting by management, and over-commitment to service levels.
one might say people who continue to work for such companies or in such conditions are idiots and just stressing themselves. This is either true (in a lot of cases) or just short-sighted (in many others).
As an example, I work in a high stress position, providing my services cheaper than my peers for a job I genuinely believe in (providing technology to under-privileged children so they can complete school and break out of the poverty cycle). If that's not worth a bit of stress, I don't know what is.
anyone who says they have no stress or don't believe in stress just doesn't have a stressful job. their experiences don't define anyone elses - nor invalidate them.
I worked for IBM Global Services many years ago. They were trying to pull this kind of mandatory overtime crap when I quit in 1997.
This seems like an attempt to circumvent labor laws. IANAL. In any event, it skirts the mutual understanding between you and your employer when the salary offer is made: the annualized figure is based on a standardized number of work hours per year, which is calculated from a 40-hour work week. Requiring 15% overtime (46 hours per week, or over an hour a day) amounts to a de facto pay cut. Put another way, if any hours worked beyond 8 in one day are worth time and a half, then your paycheck should be 22.5% bigger. IBM, if your pay and benefits aren't 22.5% higher than the competitive benchmark for this position, than you're SOL.
This is such a sneaky, underhanded tactic. Boo!
The rest of the IT people are probably touchy and grouchy because the intern is taking too damn long to do even simple jobs and spends all their time talking to the users when they should be moving on to the next task. Plus management has just dumped another 4 man weeks of extra project work per week on them because they've got an intern to pick up the day-to-day work.
Stephen
"Don't write down to your readers, the only people less intelligent than you can't read" - Sign on Newspaper Office Wall