Why Do So Many Tech Workers Dislike Their Jobs?

Nerval's Lobster writes: So what if you work for a tech company that offers free lunch, in-house gym, and dry cleaning? A new survey suggests that a majority of software engineers, developers, and sysadmins are miserable. Granted, the survey in question only involved 5,000 respondents, so it shouldn't be viewed as comprehensive (it was also conducted by a company that deals in employee engagement), but it's nonetheless insightful into the reasons why a lot of tech pros apparently dislike their jobs. Apparently perks don't matter quite so much if your employees have no sense of mission, don't have a clear sense of how they can get promoted, and don't interact with their co-workers very well. While that should be glaringly obvious, a lot of companies are still fixated on the idea that minor perks will apparently translate into huge morale boosts; but free smoothies in the cafeteria only goes so far.

Comments

Three main types of bad jobs.

[gurps_npc]

1) Tech in a non-tech company. Here you have little to no opportunity for advancement. The bosses think of and treat you like janitorial staff - cleaning up their messes. At JP Morgan, you are more likely to go from Mailroom to CEO than from Server Admin to CEO.

2) Minion in large tech company. Here you have opportunity for advancement - but only by working EXTREMELY long hours for little pay.

3) Owning/working for a small start up. Same as Minion, only pay is far worse but you have a lottery ticket to make it big.

Basically tech jobs are closer to blue collar than white collar, despite requiring significant intelligence. Oh, and did I mention the risk of being outsourced to china/india?

Thanks, Dice!

[DoofusOfDeath]

For a second I thought the editors and community may have promoted this story to the front page because it was informative and insightful.

Then I saw it was from Dice, and I knew better.