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Abused IT Workers Ready To Quit
An anonymous reader writes to tell us that new research is suggesting as many as a quarter of all IT staff in small to medium businesses have suffered some sort of abuse and are looking for careers elsewhere (PDF). "The study also found that over a third have suffered from sleepless nights or headaches as a result of IT problems at work, while 59 percent spend between one and 10 hours a week working on IT systems outside normal hours. ... The biggest cause of stress among IT staff is problems arising from operational day-to-day tasks, the survey found. Another major cause came from loss of critical data, according to Connect."
59 per cent spend between one and 10 hours a week working on IT systems outside normal hours.
That's the problem right there: in IT, work can be endless. Saying no is key to keeping your sanity. But 2009 is not the best year to take risks. Good luck finding a job elsewhere.
It's bad in IT, but at least you get to use your brain (to some extent) and some of it is sometimes fun. That's a start.
Do fun stuff on the side and keep your skills current. That could become very handy sooner than you think.
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FairSoftware.net -- the community for fair entrepreneurs
Yes I work in IT I think TFA was referring more to the personality type that migrates towards the IT jobs being nerds. Thus being nerds IT types tend to take abuse rather than standing up for themselves. If someone is being abusive they are probably just stressed out themselves. If it happens where I work I just quietly walk away and they are usually falling over themselves to apologize later(so I will come back and fix their computer). This is not because of some god complex. It is because I treat everyone in our diverse workplace with respect. So I demand it in return. BTW I have thick skin so it takes a lot for me to walk away but I will.
"The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget." -Thomas Szasz
There is a severe lack of respect for IT; a number of comments in here are unexpectedly examples of it.
IT work can be easy. IT work can be hard. IT is generally very time consuming; whether it be easy, or difficult.
I've done the gauntlet, from network drops, router configurations, firewalls, server installs, application suites, application development, end user training, requirements gathering. In the end the biggest problem is that everyone seems to think everything takes only about 10% of the time it actually takes. They see that one instance when everything goes right and decided that it must always be that fast and easy. It seldom is.
I've taken a lot of abuse as an IT employee. I worked 60 hour weeks without overtime pay. I did whatever I was asked to do. And I never quit. But I did start pointing out (in very diplomatic terms) that I was being abused. At which point I was fired.
It'd be nice to end this story by pointing out how much happier I am now. But that's hard to say when I'm working part-time at a job I was qualified to do 20 years ago, because that's the best replacement job I can find. It's little wonder that workers are abused when the employers hold all the cards.
At least they do for a certain type of personality.
While you are responsible for EVERYTHING, that means that you get to set up everything the right way. Your way. If there's a problem, you can fix it the right way.
As long as you can put up with the salary and hours, the job should be a cake walk.
When I first started working in IT 15 years ago, I felt the same way that you do. IT People can often walk around with a superior attitude. I was determined to be the exception.
I tried to be patient as I explained for the 10th time to a user how to login to their computer and why passwords were necessary. I tried to be helpful when users told me they had lost their documents but, couldn't remember what they named them, when they saved them, which application they used to create the documents or even a few words or phrases within the document. I considered it part of the job when I had to work 110 hour weeks for the Y2K death march because management would not purchase the software upgrades that were requested in February until late November. Of course, it would have been nice if one of the business managers that depended on the systems had checked to see if we had food or needed any assistance.
I tried to take it in stride when year after year, all training money was cut from the budget. I had to buy my own study materials and train myself at nights, weekends, holidays and vacations, neglecting my family the whole time. It was OK because I was part of a team. Every vacation that I have had for the last 15 years, I've been called and had to spend hours on the phone helping someone with a computer problem no matter how self-inflicted. I've been repeatedly called by "frequent flyers" at 3am to unlock someone's account because they can't be bothered to remember the password. I've had superiors bring their home computers into the office for me to fix as a "favor." So why is it that when they have the office Christmas party, I'm not invited? When problems occur in other people's area, it's said "Don't call them, they are on vacation, it can wait." The equipment I use is the discards from other departments.
Why do I have an attitude? I may have stayed up late every night for the last 4 months teaching my self how to support the newest technology that management is demanding, only to be verbally abused by the administrative assistant that is told not stream media over the Internet because it uses up all of the bandwidth. Finally the truth has hit me. The BOFH attitude is a response to the treatment by the users and management.
This type of treatment causes one of three responses. You either become down trodden from the abuse, you become a scowling vicious dog, or you leave. You can either be a victim or refuse to be victimized. I chose the latter. I've joined local professional associations, added to my skills, and began heavily networking. Despite this crazy economy, I have continued to generate job leads and obtain interviews. I have a very serious prospect at the moment and expect to leave within the next few weeks.
But the managers have a hard time asking for the purchase of a backup infrastructure too because it does not bring in direct revenues.
The other day management was screaming about the number of servers we have and demanding to know what the function of each and every one was. They put a freeze on buying new equipment (but not a freeze on the projects moving forward which require new equipment). IT suggested that we do virtual machines on existing hardware, but management gave a flat-out no on VM. Management must have discovered some immunity to paradox.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I'm looking over the postings here and have realized that the people who are saying that IT workers are whiners and should suck it up - they have never worked in IT and have no idea what it's like. It must be just like any other job, right? No, it's not.
It's a job where upper management sees you as a cost center; you contribute nothing to the bottom line. They don't want to spend any money on IT upgrades either; that old server has been working this long, it can keep on working for years. Problems? That's why we have IT staff.
When things are working you've got management wondering why they pay you. They are constantly finding busy work for you so that you're not just sitting there. But when something fails - be prepared to work as many hours as it takes to resolve the issue. And don't be surprised if you've got executives standing over you and berating you while you're trying to fix the problem.
Imagine (if you can) the Exchange server taking a crap (like they're known to do). The database is corrupt? No problem, that's why we have backups. Now, restore the last backup and while it takes HOURS to complete you get to deal with every asshole in management demanding to know where their email is and why you haven't got it fixed yet. It's a test and if you don't have the right answer you're out of a job. Too bad there's no right answer - good luck trying to think one up.
I survived for eight years doing this job for a major international corporation. Would I go back to it? I'm not sure; the money wasn't too bad but oh geez, the working conditions were awful. It's not the actual problems with hardware and software that get you, it's the problems with all those managers and executives that seem to think that nothing should ever go wrong because they have an IT department taking care of it. And when something does go wrong it's because those IT people didn't do their jobs right and should be punished.
For those of you who think that this is overstated - go get yourself a job in IT and see how you like it. After you've done it for a year or two let's see if you still think the people who have actually done it are nothing more than whiners.
No, unions do not prevent people from being fired for cause.
Pro-athletes, writers, directors, and actors can make vast sums of money, are rewarded for success and creativity, and yet are members of unions. There is nothing about unions that would prevent you from making that six figure salary and getting that Viper you've wanted since you were 16 - nothing.
Yes, sometimes unions make mistakes, and some union members are lazy. But who hasn't worked at a non-union shop and seen lazy people who manage to keep their jobs.
Enron. Worldcom. Bear Sterns. Morgan Stanley. AIG. CitiGroup. Big companies that probably managed to lose a trillion dollars between them. Therefore, big companies are bad, will never work, and should be eliminated. Hey, it's the same tired argument that get's used against unions.
Unions haven't driven a single job overseas. Not one. You can blame executive greed and "free" trade for that.
No, union workers in Detroit do *not* earn $71 an hour. That figure is a lie, created by adding up all the compensation paid to current workers and the benefit costs to retired members, and dividing that by the current number of workers.
You work hard, you get rewarded. That's how it's supposed to work in this country. Yet if the minimum wage had increased at the same rate as the rise in productivity from the American worker, it would be $19 an hour today. If it had increased at the same rate as CEO compensation, it would be over $50 today.
Union workers make at least 11% more in compensation, have more vacation time, have *much* better health benefits, and have much greater job security than non-union workers. You may think you can do a better job negotiating alone, but it's simply not going to be the case. Unless...
Finally, say you really are the hot shit you think you are, AND ignore point #2 above. If you really are 10x as smart and work 10x as hard as the next guy, you don't want to be a worker bee in any case - you want to be in upper management, where union rules don't apply.
The issue in IT, at least from my experience, is not about missing deadlines or other planning, it's about work that springs up suddenly or constantly. These tend to be because of many factors:
a) Budget: A lot of small or mid-sized companies can't afford a huge amount of redundancy. If a server goes down, there's not a drop-in replacement for it. If you're smart there are backups, but one still has to get them up and running.
b) Time=Money: a little different from (a) Time is money. In environments that require near 24/7 uptime, downtime means money lost, which means that you're required to get things up and running ASAP, whether it's 3:00pm or 3:00am. Often again going with small-mid businesses, you may be able to afford all the expensive resources to keep things up (this includes redundant staff)
c) Other People: Plan all you want, but when your development team's latest project breaks a server at 1:00am, or marketing needs a last minute push, or a million other things... and you're the only one who can update or fix a live server... you're going to get a call.
It's funny though, because my previous job in a union shop with strict hours was irritating in the opposite way. I wasn't even *allowed* to work overtime except with large amounts of paperwork, so that means cramming what you would normally do "after hours" in a rather open schedule in a small and very stressful "window"