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IT Job Satisfaction Plummets To All-Time Low
cweditor writes "IT job satisfaction has plummeted to a 10-year low, according to a recent survey. Another on general job satisfaction rated IT a paltry 45%. From the article: 'The CEB's latest survey found that the willingness of IT employees to "exert high levels of discretionary effort" — put in extra hours to solve a problem, make suggestions for improving processes, and generally seek to play a key role in an organization — has plummeted to its lowest levels since the survey was launched 10 years ago.'"
IT employees in the category of "highly engaged" workers has fallen to 4%
That's why there is a growing movement toward mastering our own destiny, becoming entrepreneurs and working for ourselves. Putting together a cool app in your spare time is way more fun, and it you hit the jackpot, bingo! No more clueless boss!
This article is so poorly written it is hard to take it as a valid source.
My anecdotal evidence suggests that they're exactly correct in their conclusions that we IT workers need to GTFO, misplaced double negatives aside.
Its no secret that when the economy goes south, management philosophy becomes much more "conservative" which means that managers revert back to a stragey of cracking the whip to get results rather than more modern philosophies involving team dynamics, encouraging self-regulation by employees, and so forth. The old-school tactics are easier to explain to the uninitiated shareholders or board members whereas touchy-feely empowerment strategies don't have a x=y effect on a balance sheet.
I'm coming from the hourly IT support side of things and moving into management (getting an MBA in the process) and the traps that managers fall into when dealing with shrunken budgets and raised expectations are so blatantly obvious to me that I'm having a real hard time not grabbing my superiors (who're by no means techies) by the collars and shaking some sense into them. We're in a transitional period of history, IMO (did I mention I'm a historian too?) where the status of employees as resources rather than liabilities is in danger from too many people thinking that better/faster/cheaper can apply to people as well as processes.
Maybe this is due to the dumbing down of people working in IT management in general. Nowadays an untrained monkey can become a CIO after attending a corporate brain washing seminar from Microsoft and learning the industry key buzzwords eg (sharepoint). These "managers" hire people who use buzzwords and the cycle continues.
I think people are just waking up to the fact that the actual work is largely just drudgery, after you get past all the hype of being a part of the 'computer age'. I gave up all work associated with sitting a desk all day and changed my direction. And I was doing something ostensibly interesting for a living, computer animation at an A-list production facility. But in the end it was sitting at a computer in a dark room for at least 10 hours a day. After I turned 30 I lost my taste for it. The output was great, the process not fun. I'm much happier doing various tasks in a multi-hatted job in a very interesting field. Syousef has a good point about shifting priorities as you get older, and that's why IT is largely a young person's job. It's something you do to gain experience, then move up or on to something else. We are lucky in America to have that kind of choice, given enough self initiative. If you don't like your job, do something else. As a white collar worker you generally have that choice if you're willing and capable of learning a new skill set.
I think we'll need another tech boom - one that doesn't revolve around outsourcing.
Since bubbles aren't sustainable despite the continued failed attempts by the Federal Reserve and other government entities trying to make them so (because it's the politically right thing to do), there will be a bust period and the state of things will be either the same or likely worse than before.
Job satisfaction is at an all time low in the only skilled career where the employees are routinely treated like crap? Who'd have guessed?!
That's why I'm planning on changing careers ASAP and am already sending out resumes. I've only been out of college for a few years, but it's more than enough experience in IT to know that I don't want to do it for the rest of my life.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
Every year, the news comes out that US workers are some of the most productive, and every year their productivity rises....
Yet actual wages have stagnated, and even retreated since the 1970s.
Perhaps the days of a free lunch are over, and companies are gonna have to start compensating people appropriately for their work.
There are limits. Even the happiest, most optimistic IT pro gets weary of dealing with morons, asshats, and people whose sense of entitlement far exceeds their actual worth to the organization.
... and that's in the best interest of the business. The business likes predictable systems and services.
Most of us slashdotters with low userid numbers can vouch for the fact that a whole lot has changed in the last 12 or so years.
IT used to be the wild west. UNIX was not widely well understood -- even by software developers. UNIX servers were inaccessible. UNIX servers were big bucks. Linux was obscure. Hardly any computer hardware or software did much of anything out of the box. Sysadmins, consultants, and IT workers were worth their weight in gold -- because that wasn't any other option.
Now... IT is mature. Hardware is cheap and reliable. Linux is ubiquitous. Linux admin experience is not rare. apt-get or yum can deploy massive amounts of useful, nearly preconfigured software in minutes that would have taken sysadmins WEEKS or MONTHS to build, deploy, patch, etc in the past.
When I first started in IT, building a server was an *ART*. Each one was unique -- from the hardware to the disk layout to the partitioning, to the OS, to the locally installed software. Building a server was like building a Stradivarius.
Now, building a server is like stamping a kazoo out of tin. I can make 500 kazoos a day. They're all the same. I don't even need to log into them once.
In the past, general IT folks were quite often the white hat security experts who learned by doing/experimenting. Now... most companies have security teams an intrusion detection systems that sound alarms if anyone runs nmap on nessus.
Your average IT guy USED to have endless opportunities to be a hero by introducing opensource software options that almost nobody else in the company knew about. Linux in the mainstream has changed all that.
A *GOOD* IT worker used to have almost magical abilities to do orders of magnitude more work. Now, large scale admin processes are much more widely understood, there are many more tools, and those magical processes are well documented and demystified so that even the junior IT folks can do them.
How many IT jobs today involve compliance? How rewarding is compliance-related work? I bet that some of the lack of willingness to suggest process improvements is somehow tied to the process baggage of IT compliance.
I still like my job, but it's changed a lot. I don't *just* do IT. I add value to my company. Today, IT needs to be much more closely integrated with the business. IT needs to be a business partner. I doubt any businesses today would hire a BOFH.
The jobs of half of your colleagues have been outsourced to India or replaced with Indian "consultants" in temporary placement, your "time flexibility" is always seen as "you need to work more hours today" never as "you can go home earlier today" and, especially in these times, you know that you can be fired for any reason whatsoever that has nothing to do with your performance.
Mosty of us working in IT know for sure that the company will not be there for you, so why should you be there for the company above and beyond the call of duty?
(I do know one or two examples of small companies in which the Directors are close enough to the employees to actually care about them. In big companies, however, you're just another number in the ledger).
I long ago left "traditional" employement in IT for freelancing: I came to the conclusion that "the company" didn't care when the technology bubble burst when companies started firing the same people that just months before had been working their asses of giving their 110%.
Everyday when I come to work I'm surprised how so many of my colleagues still settle for getting less that half as much as I do in exchange for the illusion of job safety and a fickle bonus which has little relation to their actual performance (I work in the Finance industry now, bonuses are mostly dependent on the performance of the business unit you work for which pretty much just follows the market for the types of instruments they trade).
Occam's razor: off-shore labor is a lot cheaper, therefore employers will off-shore every possible job. If you do your job sitting in front of a computer, then your job can probably be off-shored - if not now, then certainly in the near future.
Furthermore, the simple laws of supply and demand dictate that the few jobs that are not off-shored, will have a glut of qualified applicants. The experienced developers who have their jobs off-shored, will clearly try to leverage their existing training and experience into the few remaining IT jobs that can not be easily off-shored. This causes a glut, and drives down wages.
The IT worker glut will be increased even more by improved automation of information system maintenance, standardization of software, and non-IT specialists who are increasingly sophisticated with information technology.
There can be nothing to stop this devastating trend, due to the following:
1) Corrupt USA politicians
2) USA IT workers are not willing to organize
3) Influential corporations have effectively distorted the issues
So there you go, it's as simple as that.
IMO: this trend is presently in it's infancy. The present trend has very little to do with the present economic slump. In fact, when the US economy recovers, this trend will accelerate even faster. The present situation for US IT workers is much better now, than it will be five years from now.
http://techtoil.org/wiki/doku.php?id=articles:no-brainer
I think one thing that is missing is that companies abuse their IT workers. They often pay them salary and them make them work 24-7, and if one complains they retort "be glad you have a job". Some of them are in clear violation of employment laws yet employees feel trapped. So they remain oncall 24-7; even when they are on vacation in states far away. It's hard to give a shit, and fo the extra effort when your employer is basically an abusive slave driver. With most jobs, when you go home, its done, and jobs that require you to be always on compensate you fairly.
The place I used to work for... I loved the technology. I cared about its quality.Loved my co-workers. In return? Low wages, zero freetime, a douche bag who I'd have to clean up after, broken promises of change/tools/company car... My eye would twitch with the stress... While the sales people would gloat about the new house or car they just bought with the convoluted deal they sold and said 'make this work, and you have 2 days.'... (the new digs are the complete opposite experience.)
Lots of IT shops are glorified sweatshops.
There's no such thing as overeducated, merely educated enough to qualify for a job better than the one you have. Education is a human good, not a device to get you ready for your job allocated from Your Corporate Lords and Masters. You're thinking of job training.