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Is IT Work Getting More Stressful, Or Is It the Millennials?
dcblogs writes: A survey of IT professionals that has been conducted in each of the last four years is showing an increase in IT work stress levels. It's a small survey, just over 200 IT workers, and it doesn't account for the age of the respondents. But some are asking whether Millennials, those ages 18 to 34, are pushing up stress levels either as IT workers or end users. The reason Millennials may be less able to handle stress is that they interact with others in person far less than other generations do, since most of their social interactions have been through Internet-based, arms-length contact, said Billie Blair, who holds a doctorate in organizational psychology. This generation has also been protected from many real-life situations by their parents, "so the workplace tends to be more stressful for them than for others," she said. Others are wondering if Millennials are more demanding of IT workers. Millennials are also expert users, and "are no longer in awe of technology specialists and therefore demand higher service levels," said Mitch Ellis, managing director of executive search firm Sanford Rose Associates in St. Louis.
Lots of conclusions drawn from a very small sampling size, there may be some truth to these generalizations but I'd prefer to see more data.
Have a squat over at the hobo house.
I think some of it is the demand that everything work, all the time, without any room for maintenance while at the same time not being willing to pay for the resources to deliver systems that can provide that.
During the recession, many firms cut jobs and made 10 people do the work of 15. That saves money and resulted in no quantifiable loss in productivity of the group, so the firms never rehired the people they got rid of. How would this not be a more stressful work environment?
They drive up the stress levels for the rest of us, coming in thinking they know everything, implementing stupid fucking ideas that never pan out, then buggering off to another company before implementation is complete and without any strategy for support or long-term maintenance. Their turnover rates are routinely cited as reasons why our jobs are being shopped off shore, which just adds to the stress.
Funny, most of the people I know who are doing that are usually 40-50 year old MBA managers and CXX-titled executives.
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"Do more with less, and with fewer coworkers with less experience. You have four weeks of paid vacation, but no backup (fewer coworkers, less experience), so if there's a problem, you need to fix it on vacation, so your vacation needs to be a stay-cation." -New corporate management motto.
morale = morale - 4
Except for a few top guys and the occasional person who wins the lottery in life pay is what is was 20 years ago after 20 years of inflation. Companies are merging left and right and everytime they do it's another round of layoffs. Offshoring and onshoring (via H1-B) are nuts. If you work in IT you're probably seeing something like a 70% Indian workforce with only the occasional American to fill a spot when they ran out of visas. Meanwhile it's a statisical fact that productively is way way up, meaning you're doing more work. Even if the tools are better it still means you're responsible for a hell of a lot more. How the hell would that _not_ be stressful?
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Many places are trying to adopt styles/methods/etc that are well suited to a startup in manic phase. They don't seem to realize that you can't keep this up indefinitely. Just dump bodies in the meat grinder, and code comes out the other end.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
I've seen it time and again, with the people around me who insisted to spawn child processes. The mix of helicopter parents who would not only ensure no "bad" experience would ever happen to their little precious but also made certain that anyone not seeing their brat as the special snowflake they are will get their banshee like fury, coupled with a school system that promoted feeling good and "everyone's a winner", where you would already get rewarded for showing up, whether you can actually accomplish anything or are essentially a useless waste of oxygen, that can only lead to a VERY hard fall when they come into contact with reality.
These people are by definition not going to be able to handle stress, or even any kind of frustrating experience, well. They are by no means prepared to it. And no, that's not true for everyone born in this age of overprotectionism, but it's never been as bad as it is today.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm in my thirties. I can attest that twenty somethings freak out like little bitches and make non-issues into epic sources of pointless, unnecessary stress.
Just like they did when I was a twenty something.
Just like the 40+ crowd did when they were twenty-something.
Just like they have been doing for generations.
You're seriously talking about kids who have just left University of Daycare and are stepping into the big bad real world for the first time. They're not established. They don't have stable careers. They have no real life experience. Give 'em a decade and I'm sure we'll be treated to another asinine buzzword declaring that yet another generation is completely incomprehensible to everyone in spite of simple human nature being very easily understood.
Stress in the workplace has always existed. Granted, this generation tends to communicate more but using tools such as Instagram and Twitter where the communications are short, don't convey much information and are non-personal. Granted, the older generation used email (after the memo went the way of the dinosaur)- primarily to put the discussion into a more formal written form. The phone or in-person conversation allows one to hear the emotion and concerns of the other party. It's easier to resolve issues when speaking with the other parties than to try to hash it out over email or some chat technology for all but the simplest of issues.
The other night, there was the discussion on why hiring an older person wasn't such a good idea with one person insinuated they (older workers) wouldn't work late nights on a regular basis to get the project done. Someone with experience knows that proper planning and design can alleviate most of those late night coding cycles. As such, they are inclined to find a better balance between home and work and still get their work done without burning the candle at both ends. They also know when late night exercises ARE useful or necessary.
What we old fogies have a hard time dealing with is being treated (along with our coworkers) like a disposable napkin. Workplaces that foster that attitude coupled with limited human interactivity breeds stress. And, that stress doesn't know generational boundaries.
Considering the extent of ageism in IT (why keep an old-timer who will only work their 40 hours per week and won't put up with sh*t when we can hire 2 kids at half the price and burn them out) it's more likely that the pile of defective garbage is designed and implemented by the young'uns.
25 years ago software wasn't shipped with continuous patching over the Internet in mind. It had to mostly work as promised because the cost of sending out patch disks was a lot higher. Today, the attitude is "ship it, we'll patch it later." That attitude doesn't come from old coders and product managers who took pride in their work and were in it for the long haul, rather than the quick cash-out.
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When I was a kid, we didn't have any of those sissy antibiotics. When we got sick, our grandmothers would perform extreme unction on us and then leave us on the roof overnight. If we were strong enough to climb down in the morning we got breakfast. If not, we got buried. It made us learn the meaning of a dollar, because for a dollar my sister would bring me a snack up there and leave the ladder against the side of the house. And there was none of this mp3 youtube nonsense. If we wanted music, we had burn the barn down and dance to the crackling fire. I can still beatbox a three-alarm blaze. And sex? We didn't have sex. We just set the women folk up on the roof and if they had the strength to climb down in the morning, grandpa would take them out to the barn and make them pregnant. And that also taught us the meaning of a dollar, because for a dollar, he'd let us hide under the hayloft to watch for Zeus to appear in the shape of a bull to impregnate the females. And if any of us showed any visible signs of arousal, we got beaten with a sickle and our parts were left on the roof to die.
The kids these days don't know how good they got it with their quarter million dollar school loans to prepare them for jobs that don't exist or go to internet scammers in Bangalore. They don't realize how lucky they are not to have to worry about privacy any more, because by god there is none. They make me sick, with their rising sea levels and paint thinner in the water supply and multinational tech companies tracking their every movement. Because when I was a kid, my total lack of self-awareness convinced me that I got where I am today only because of my hard work and talent.
You are welcome on my lawn.