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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.
Millennials are also expert users...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
The survey, which started in 2012, just released its 2015 report, and found that of 78% of the IT workers surveyed consider their job stressful. That's up just 1% from 2014, but in 2013 the figure was 57% and in 2012, 67%.
Their numbers are jumping all over the place. I also don't see how they can jump to any conclusions regarding Millennials in the workplace after only four years with such a small sample, and they don't break it out by age group.
Someone needed to fill a column with some words - so here are some words. Come back next week for more words in this column
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?
Or maybe its all the crap, half baked technology being used over the last few years. I think we are sort of in a time period like the mid/late 90's where everyone was shoveling garbage windows apps out the door before they were done baking (and win9x itself was a pile of crap).
It seems to me, that over half the "web stacks" are just steaming piles of unfinished garbage. Same with a lot of the core infrastructure technologies that are all the hotness (see docker, openstack, etc).
So, its no wonder these things get stressful, someone hits a bug and suddenly they are trying to fix software that is way over their head on a deadline.
They may be more brittle than the seasoned individuals who self selected to stay in IT for 10 or 20 or 30 years. But are they actually more brittle as a group than the people who dipped their toes in the IT waters when you first started, many of whom removed themselves from the professional over the course of years because they could not hack it? I have no doubts there are aged based differences, but it is difficult to tease out the self-selection bias between generations.
Good point. We are seeing a group before years of selection process.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
"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?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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'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.
And for the record, we who have been in the industry long enough to remember a time without all these resources - we who are decidedly not "Digital Natives" - we're the ones who created FaceBox, YouScreen and WhoBook et. al. And we still have a much older word for "Digital Natives" - we still call 'em "n00bz".
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.
I disagree with lumping Gen Y in with millennials. The definition of the term is just stretched way too wide in most cases. You can't tell me that someone born in 1980 is going to approach the world the same way as someone born in 1995. Gen Y (the "early" millennials) grew up on BBSes, Commodore 64s, Apple //e computers with Oregon Trail, and NES consoles, while "late" millennials never knew a time that the Internet wasn't ubiquitous in society. To the early side modern technology is amazing; to the late side, it *just is*.
Some highlites:
I had one who wouldn't answer his phone. He insisted that he be texted. I put up with that for a few days, but eventually told him he had a choice of responding to my phone calls, or I would personally pay him a visit every time I needed to interact with him. If a person cannot interact except with text, he needs to get a job that requires only yes or no answers.
Another who would panic every time I spoke with him. This guy was bizarre. I can tell a person to go to hell in such a nice way that they look forward to the trip, but he just couldn't interact properly.
Another guy who went batshit nuts on me when I pointed at his laptop screen. He's busy screaming about "Dont touch my screen! I'm not going to tell you again!" I was so shocked at that inappropriate outburst that I was actually silenced for a few seconds.
Then there was the young lady who we hired, and immediately after getting hired, she goes on a month and a half vacation (unpaid of course) during the year she worked with us, she went on around 3 and a half months vacation, spent most of her time on Facebook, and wouldn't interact with anyone unless absolutely necessary. She quit after a year to go live at home because she found work too stressful.
There were other experiences, but those were the most unbalanced ones.
In general though, they have a tendency to come into the workplace with some overblown expectations, expecting very little interaction to people other than "their friends", and those via texting or facebook updates. They also have a rather exaggerated opinion of their own technical prowess, most believing that anyone of their parents age or older have very little clue about anything, and none whatsoever about computing. At best, we were there to provide support for them.
Amazingly enough, most were looking for a promotion and big raise after a year
The two who we the exception were both young ladies, who were simply incredible. One who was a talented illustrator, and also had a great work ethic. The other was simply amazing, who would finish her work, accurately, on time or sooner, and then ask if there was anything else she could do. I expect to see both as leaders some day.
We might ask why this happens?
One of the biggest culprits IMO, is the self esteem movement. Children were and are being told they are special (and they are) and taught to think very higly of themselves. from an early age these days.
What could be wrong with that?
One of the first things is that people with real self esteem issues tend to have those issues no matter how much "uplifting encouragement" they get. Its a neurosis.
Then we have the rest of the children. Its good not to hate yourself, and no doubt. But real self esteem comes from accomplishments, and not being told how special you are at every chance. High esteem with no real accomplishments is not a good combination. It tends to make you think that life is a sprint, and not a marathon.REal self esteem comes from doing good work and accomplishments, not being told you are special all the time.
Then we have the parents. Parents want the best for their children, but since the rise of the helicopters, and especially the dreaded blackhawk mother, (this is the one who does their children's homework for them so they can take their special classes out of school) We have parents who simply refuse to allow their children to grow up. Ever see those diaper commercials showing 6 year olds? Helicopter fodder.
So now we have the cellular//smartphone. The helicopters can now keep in constant contact and control of ther children. It's completely insane on college campuses now. These children are physical adults, but not at all mature. A friend who is a cou
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I have a few thoughts of my own on the subject, based on my own work situation, and they don't quite line up with theirs.
First off, yes... I would say that at least for our workplace, stress levels in I.T. have generally increased over the last few years. (I work as part of a 4 person I.T. team for a marketing firm that has several locations strategically placed around the country, close to the majority of clients they have or want.)
Marketing is definitely a business where lots of millennials are hired. Our I.T. group and upper management are really the only people in the company of an older generation than that, other than a few random exceptions.
But to claim the I.T. stress levels are correlated with the millennial generation's lack of in-person communication skills? No... at least for our industry, that's not the case at all. You can't be successful working in marketing for us if you're not an exceptionally good in-person communicator. I know I'm far less comfortable chatting up random people in social situations than any of the millennials we've got working as creative directors, producers, designers, etc. Maybe we're constantly hiring the exceptions to the rule because of the nature of the business ... but regardless, that's the situation for the people our I.T. group supports.
Where I see stress levels climbing has more to do with people expecting more and more from the computerized tools they're given. For example, when I started working for these guys, several of our offices literally spent 90% of their day buried in Outlook. Everything revolved around email correspondence and scheduling meetings or appointments. Sure, they had the occasional need for the rest of the Office suite (especially PowerPoint or Keynote for our Mac users, if they were preparing a presentation for a client), but the vast majority of support calls or issues were "Why did my email bounce?", "It says my mailbox is full!", "I can't find this message I know I saved someplace in here earlier today.", or "So and so received my calendar invite 3 times in a row for some reason." Stuff like that, along with trouble opening various email attachments they received.....
Looking at how things have evolved now? We ran into issues where some of the huge Word templates they use regularly to produce client proposals got too big to keep editing reliably inside Word. (Lots of copy/pasted graphics in them and all that.) So we now paid for a cloud based service designed just for such proposals. Instead of constantly filling mailboxes with email attachments getting shared around, we set up DropBox for Teams so I.T. creates any of the "top level" folders anyone requests and makes sure the proper folks are given read or read/write access to those shared resources. As we've grown, the Finance department required better automation so they could process all the invoices in a timely manner as offices generate them. So they put in dedicated scanning stations at each office with document capture software that goes to "watched folders", with special software that can toss them into their accounting system as it sees new ones appear. The original few, designated office people with copies of Adobe Acrobat (full version, not reader) kept growing as more users saw the benefits of being able to actually edit a PDF document on their Windows PC (or saw Mac users doing it natively with Preview and asked why they can't have the same capabilities). So that led to buying Creative Cloud with user accounts I.T. again has to manage.
On top of that, one of the offices is trying to get more serious about offering in-house video rendering capabilities instead of outsourcing it all the time, so now we're starting to build and support a rendering farm and high end video packages on the clients.
What we haven't done is hire a single new I.T. staffer to help with any of this.... We push for it all the time (especially when one of us is out sick or on vacation and the pressure is really on). But at the end of the day, manag
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.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Back in the 90s, IT people were magicians. Now they are plumbers. So much of today's infrastructure relies 100% on IT support -- people can't just write it down, or file it manually. IT folk are in charge of a giant, critical piece of the everyday workload. But expectations are that it will just work, and that things will keep moving forward as new technologies arise. Back in the day, IT could handle an entire 500 person company with 2 or 3 people -- it was all printers and email. Now it's files and databases and remote access and web apps and mobile apps and security and policies.
The IT folk who are more stressed are the ones who haven't staffed up. I've no comment on the younger set...I'll defer to Socrates as people have suggested.
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.
It's not the Millenials. They're a bit more demanding, yes, but not significantly so compared to all the other groups of clueless users I've dealt with over the last 3 decades. Mostly they can be dealt with by telling them that I'd love to be able to do what they want but management's refused to allow it so they need to go talk to $AppropriateExecutive and convince him to change the policies on it. That gets them out of my hair.
Mostly the stress comes from management wanting more and more from fewer people with fewer resources, less funding and lower salaries. Instead of being skeptical, they buy into the salespeople's lies completely and then yell at IT when what was delivered doesn't do what was promised and never will. And gods help you if you do manage to prove the salesperson lied, because then it's your fault management bought into it. This from management's not a new thing, I've watched it growing since the early 90s.
Bad example, this was written just before the collapse of the Athenian empire, so the guy had a point. Socrates himself was tried and executed by the invading forces.
Totally historically inaccurate, but let's address whether it's a bad example; it's not.
Actually, it's a great example.
The current article was written just before the collapse of the American empire.
My actual statement to TFA is that it's impossible to measure so impossible to make any such claims. I don't know anyone that has worked in the IT industry and become successful without putting in loads of work early in their career. I spent about a decade working damn near every waking hour. Everyone I know in IT was doing the same thing at about the same time/age.
Claiming this generation works harder is a bullshit generalization, just like claiming my generation worked harder would be a bullshit generalization. I know some millennials that put in a lot of work, but I see quite a few that don't as well. I don't expect them to last long working in IT, because it takes a shit ton of work to gain enough skills to become a commodity.
The second part that becomes impossible to measure is how I rate people I no longer work with? After 30 years of work in IT I don't interface with entry level people very often. Do I have more knowledge than them? Absolutely, I have been at this for 30 years and am very good. Do I have to, or want to, work 90 hour weeks still? Hell no! I did my time in the trenches. Does that mean an entry level person does more than I do? No! Part of the reason I don't have to work 90 hour weeks is that I am more efficient than I was as an entry level person. My tasks are different today, but if I have to help someone with a bit of code I don't have to spend much time looking things up and experimenting.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
The point being made here is that there is nothing new under the sun. People pissing and moaning about *how times have changed* are full of it. Nothing has 'changed' except the pace of events.
You are having a forest and trees moment. Yes nothing changes, but the point is that when a society gets to the point that self-indulgence *greatly* exceeds a sense of duty and obligation to society then that society falls. Things sometimes change for the worse. And certain behaviors are a recurring theme prior to such changes.
I'm not saying we are there. For example many of those of the current generation who went into the military got past the coddling and fake trophies and perform as well as any other generation. And some have faced the hard realities of the present and learned to deal with it, getting past their upbringing. Maybe its more a matter of the current generation needing more time to adjust to reality since they were kept farther away from it.
...because the Tea Party took scalps . They defeated Republican incumbents in primaries. They ended political careers. That's what forced Republican office-holders to take them seriously.
As far as I can tell, an Occupy-backed candidate (if there even is such a thing) hasn't defeated a single Democratic incumbent. As such, the Democratic Party can continue to ignore them the way they ignore black voters.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
I hear it all the time from vendors and at conferences. "IT is being expected to do more with less."
Our IT budget has been flat for five years, and we're supporting double the number of employees.
Do we have difficult users? Yes. I haven't noticed any correlation between difficulty and age, though.
From what I've experienced in the last few years, IT _is_ getting more stressful.
I left a job that I had liked alot until I started being worked to death. They wouldn't replace people and they kept piling H1B garbage on top of us, all during a pay freeze. Since then, I've seen an incredible amount of incompetence that is bad enough on its own but even worse because it's institutionalized. At interview time you're expected to have a ton of skills and experience but after hiring it all goes out the window in favor of blind obedience. So the boss, who is stupid, forces everybody to be stupid, and then when the project fails because of that stupidity, guess who the blame falls on. It's almost a relief to be fired.