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

Major disconnect from layers

[mwfischer]

The grunts know how things work and what's possible in the infrastructure.

Managers have an idea how things.

Directors don't know how things work.

C level has no idea what they even have.

--

Essentially if you're not on the front lines for long, you have no idea what is actually going on.

Re:Major disconnect from layers

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. The only difference between tech and other jobs is that tech people think the C-suite SHOULD know how the IT stuff works while other professions accept that it is their job to make sure the next person up the chain knows enough to do their job. The C-suite, whose job is to guide the company strategically, does not need to know how the hardware and software works on a detailed level, or at all really.

The assumption of intellectual superiority of the IT worker is the problem. The problem is that IT workers are on average "smart", younger than average, ambitious, etc. Management exploits perks as a recruiting tool and then... depression... work is still work, even with a ping pong table. These kids would be just as depressed without perks but management needs to compete.

Re:Major disconnect from layers

[HornWumpus]

In other words most tech workers are whiny bitches.

Re:Major disconnect from layers

[Archangel Michael]

I am assuming you've never had a C type person make huge IT decisions without having even consulted with IT.

In my 30+ years of experience, I've seen enough clueless C types make clueless decisions because some dude in a suit with a briefcase sold them a nice fat lie.

In our case "All it will take are a couple IP addresses and a server. No other IT is required" If it takes IP addresses and a server, it requires IT support. And in this case, the product was so fucking horrible that it requires regular (several times a week) IT support, just on back end crap from a product designed so bad that it just breaks every two weeks from design flaws.

Or this, "We've already bought it, you WILL support it" (with no additional IT funding for more IT help) multiple times over.

Or buying a mom and pop application with no Enterprise class requirements in its design. "What do you mean you don't do LDAP for authentication. There is no fucking way I'm entering 16,000 users by hand"

The issue with certain people is that they want "Shiny Pretty Technology" without caring, or wanting to know about what it actually takes to run. And it happens in enough organizations that I know that it is not an exceptional experience.

You're right, the C types don't know shit, which is why they should stay out of shit that they have no clue on. Yet they think they know better than the people who REALLY do know whats going on. In short, IT is a bastard child in most organizations, one that has more power than most of those C types actually know.

Re:Major disconnect from layers

[plover]

It's a huge problem when the CIO isn't an engineer. That's simply a disaster in glorious slow-motion Technicolor. Look at the time-lapse downfall of HP from a respected engineering company to one that's known today only for selling printers that are cheaper than their overpriced ink. (Thanks, Carly, I'm sure this country could use a genius of your caliber at the helm.)

But the more common source of discontent happens when developers are tossed a pile of requirements and told "shut up and make this X." Every developer I've known will have serious questions about those requirements, because they're always filled with errors and inconsistencies. In most cases the flaws are not evident until after development has progressed beyond the Rubicon. Being able to discuss the requirements with the stakeholder, to make suggestions on how to improve the product, to develop the best possible X to further the business, that's what developers crave. Give them that, and a steady paycheck, and you have happy people with satisfying jobs.

And if you tell them "hand this coding over to Haich WunBee over at Outsorcery, Inc.", don't be surprised if satisfaction drops.

Re:Major disconnect from layers

[ArmoredDragon]

As far as consumers are concerned, that's what HP is. However as far as enterprise is concerned, HP is a best known as a major vendor of network, server, cloud, and storage appliances.

In fact, HP is actually in the process of splitting the company into two separate entities with two different stock tickers. One company will do the printers and other consumer grade crap, and the other will focus on enterprise grade technologies.

But yeah, other than that, they basically only bet on sure things these days, and are much more iterative than innovative.

Re:Major disconnect from layers

[rudy_wayne]

Yes. The only difference between tech and other jobs is that tech people think the C-suite SHOULD know how the IT stuff works while other professions accept that it is their job to make sure the next person up the chain knows enough to do their job. The C-suite, whose job is to guide the company strategically, does not need to know how the hardware and software works on a detailed level, or at all really.

The idea that the C-level guys don't need to know any technical details is exactly what's wrong with businesses today and why so many projects turn into multi-million dollar clusterfucks.

At one time, most companies were run by people who had a tech background and actually knew the details of what was going on. It's not surprising that most tech jobs suck when the company is run my some clueless dolt who views developers as nothing more than glorified secretaries (Hey, it's just.typing, how hard could it be).

Re:Major disconnect from layers

[TWX]

You can physically look at a plane. You can touch the plane. You can even conduct real-world experiments like windtunnel tests with smoke introduced to observe with the naked eye how the machine might fly, and you can grab the wings and pull them in different directions to see if the fuselage cracks.

With computers and telecommunications equipment the bulk of what actually makes it special is in the abstract. You can see devices and cables, but what actually makes the processing and traffic flow function properly cannot be touched, and in some cases isn't well-represented even when data is captured and plotted, and worse, seemingly small changes in this abstract layer can have far-reaching consequences.

That's the problem when someone that doesn't understand the technology dictates technological decisions for IT, they have no idea what it takes, so they cannot evaluate if their IT people are honestly telling them of the minefield in front of them or if the IT people actually are lazy; they fall into MBA-whip-cracker mode to make it happen, and the IT workers are left with the stress of being between the unstoppable force and the immovable object.

Re:Major disconnect from layers

[Shadow of Eternity]

Saying C-level guys don't need to know how their shit works is like saying the people in charge of subways and railroads don't need to know how trains work, and then wondering where the problems are coming from when you get a boss that expects two head-on trains to "move sideways" instead of colliding.

Re:Major disconnect from layers

[drinkypoo]

And yet, I'm pretty sure Boeing's CEO doesn't order the employees to start building planes without wings (I don't care, just do it! You're the engineer, you make it work or I'll find another that will!) Something tells me he knows planes a bit better than "not at all, really".

Sure, but he doesn't actually need to if he's smart enough to listen to the people who work for him. You ask your engineers about engineering changes. You ask bean counters about counting beans. A company the size of Boeing does a feasibility study before they change toilet tissues.

Re:Major disconnect from layers

[KGIII]

I owned my own company for a long time. Eventually I was kicked out of my own server room by people I paid to do a job. You know, I listened. I could do the job well enough but they could do it so much faster. Eventually I no longer even maintained my own code. "Code comments go in the code and not on a pile of coffee soaked index cards, asshole." Again, I listened. Sure, I could do all those things effectively - efficiently if you don't count my time but I paid experts because, well, they were better at the job than I was.

I suppose you could have called me a CEO, I mean I technically was, but we weren't real big on titles. Hell, my company paid me less than some of my employees made (of course I had the cookie jar).

I guess my point is that not all bosses think they know everything. My understanding is the new parent company has kept the culture much the same. It was not entirely uncommon to see a curious look when I admitted I did not know something and would like to consult with someone who did before making choices. I can only surmise that the behavior is due to ego.

Re:Major disconnect from layers

[jsrjsr]

The one I really like is -- "We bought that company for their technology, so figure out how to use it in a product!" when the company already has several other products shipping that do the same thing as the new technology.

Re:Major disconnect from layers

[ArmoredDragon]

To be honest (and my employer probably wouldn't like to hear this) I'm not a big fan of HPs enterprise solutions. It mainly comes down to them typically eschewing standards that everybody else uses (such as IPMI) and then slaps a fee on top of it (their ILO feature.) And then to make things worse, you have to have an active service contract in order to get firmware updates, even if they're only security related.

This might be fine for a big IT shop, but if you're a small to medium sized business (which most IT purchasers are) then HP is a terrible choice, because your shiny new servers may very well be doomed to the trash heap after 3 years unless you're willing to spend more than you can afford.

Re:Major disconnect from layers

[Anonymous Coward]

Just from your description it sounds like your company started off as a small 1-5 person operation where you had to know most things and it grew from there. The problem isn't bosses like you who have been there. It is when someone comes in with their MBA having never dealt with the technology they are now making decisions about. I'm currently in one of those situations. Company was sold, old boss who had started the company is no longer, new boss has no clue about the technology, but he is the one making decisions on it.

One thing gets suggested to him by the staff, another gets suggested by the salesman. Sales guy throws a pitch at him about how what we suggest is about to become obsolete because their new gadget is so much better, of course the sales guy gets to sell his new gadget that doesn't really work for what we need and we are the ones that have to make due equipment not suited to the job.

Yes, it depends on the leadership, some cases they know to trust the people making things work over the sales pitch, unfortunately it seems the larger the business the more likely the person in charge is to listen to the sales guy and not the people doing the job.

Re:Major disconnect from layers

[multimediavt]

An example of your point would be Lotus Notes. Users loved it. Admins hated it with the fire of a thousand white hot suns.

Re:Major disconnect from layers

[KGIII]

No freelancer and no contractors. We never needed them or, really, wanted them. I'm sure you're great and all that - that's not the problem. The problem is that it's not a jail and you can leave any time you want. The reason they don't want to leave is because we paid well (I'll touch on that below) and had great benefits.

I think I'll touch on both of those and remember to say thank you for the compliments - I appreciate it. From the sounds of things, you'd have fit right in. I just wouldn't have given you an incentive to leave.

For starters, well, in my industry we paid more for hardware and software than we paid for employees. Yeah, and we paid the best in the industry though I suppose you could say we were, at the time, pretty much the only ones who did what we did. (Traffic modeling, both vehicular and, eventually, pedestrian but "on a computer.") I don't know every industry out there but I can say that labor is absolutely one of the lowest expenses a business has. If your boss says they can't give you a raise call them a liar. We spent more money on Xerox (I kind of hate those pricks) than we spent on a single employee. (We did a lot of printing.)

I wasn't really expecting much of a response so I hadn't thought this through or anything. Hmm...

We weren't a "family." We were all friends. I'll try to give an example? I'm not the most articulate.

The office shut completely down on a number of occasions. At one point we had a guy in the server room who lost a good portion of his family in an accident - a wife and his two kids. The office was a ghost town and stayed that way for a couple of days and was completely closed during the day of their funeral. We did miss a client visit during that time, sort of. They called me on my personal cell phone (they were bigger back then) and I listened politely, explained the situation in some rather vulgar terms, and the rep actually sent flowers and food - lots of food. It turns out that the money was from their own pocket, the client was a state government and would not have paid for it.

Things worked out well. I posted another reply above to another AC.

I guess my point is that you'd probably have hung up your freelancer hat and stuck with us. Well, assuming you fit in and enjoyed the work. I think that pretty much everyone did both the fitting and the enjoying. I'd like to think they did and would actually feel like a bit of a failure if they didn't. My greatest assets were luck and the willingness to shut the hell up and listen.

I don't know everything - not even close. It's up to you to tell me what I need to do and, importantly, why. I'm not an idiot - you needn't explain it like I am five but making it overly complicated isn't going to help you convince me either. I will stop you and ask you very specific questions and we can waste both of our time extracting the information from you or you can just tell me - it would save some effort and time.

Except DB admins, seriously... Have you ever met a DB wizard who was, you know, not just a little odd? I don't know what those guys do, I mean I know what they do but not really, but they make stuff work and when you're crunching a TB or two of data then you REALLY want a good one. I don't care that he was gay, vegan, or had a habit of not talking to anyone for weeks at a time - and then saying something profound. What I care about is that he constantly looked like the guy who was going to snap and bring an AR-15 to work - and we were NICE people. I was more worried he'd use it on the hardware than on a human.

Anyhow, I eventually was offered an absurd amount of money to sell my child. The parent company does almost nothing except niche fields that fill government contracts. You probably know who they are, actually. They do everything from food to security to information services. I do kind of giggle at the idea that they now have a Human Resources department. I think a distinction needs to be made. Humans aren't resources, they're assets and, more importantly, humans.

Re:Major disconnect from layers

[RabidReindeer]

Biased opinions like yours regarding millennials is what discourages younger generations from respecting those who are: already established, who didn't have to worry about a great recession caused by the previous generation that is constantly threatening the potential job and stock markets

Oh fuck off, 2008 wasn't the first, or worst recession during my lifetime. You get one about every ten to fifteen years, but if you're twenty you can't remember the last one and think you're uniquely cursed.

Absolutely. And the offshoring thing - which is relatively new - hits older workers just as hard as younger workers. The difference being that older workers get hit harder finding new work since then, but younger workers have the pleasure of seeing it hard to find work for their entire lives. Or at least until the Western countries sink down to Third-World levels.

Re:Major disconnect from layers

[BVis]

That's the new American Dream. It used to be "work hard, play by the rules, you'll get a middle-class existence and the chance to provide better opportunities for your children". Now it's "Get some socially inept chump to break his back without paying him overtime and keep all the money for yourself".

Re:Major disconnect from layers

[KGIII]

I'd like to think so. But... Well, no. Not everything, not even close. Though I learned from mistakes and already knew when to ask for help. I think a big thing is knowing your limits and being honest with yourself where those limits are? I can only guess, really. I also didn't chastise people for making mistakes, for a variety of reasons. What I did do is get a bit unhappy with someone who thought they were capable and then made mistakes instead of asking for help. It was usually a very short and brief problem - we fostered the idea of being able to ask for help.

Nobody knows everything and knowing your limits is essential. I mentioned earlier that employee salaries are actually a really tiny percentage of the expenses. If you worked for me and needed help then we will hire help - we will find the best out there and pay them what they truly are worth. If you really wanted then we'd send you back to school to get additional education - and those percentage points were still fairly trivial. If your boss tells you the business isn't making enough money to give you a raise they're a liar. Or, well, the business should probably be in receivership.

I don't know... I guess I type out these long replies because there's some hope that there are others who can and will do. I also hope that those who are in crappy situations get the hell out. Do you know what I learned? It seems pertinent at this time. If you give a person their desired salary when they start and tell them to just come ask when they feel they deserve a raise - they'll go YEARS without asking for a raise. Sometimes they do crazy stuff like try to decline a raise - you have to convince them to take it. I know it sounds counter-intuitive but it's very true. If they know they're appreciated and they're making enough money they are content. They might even be happy.

Finally, absolutely true. The company would certainly not have survived without the people who worked to make it happen. It was a very successful company, it still is really. The people who were there in the beginning probably don't have to work any more but a number of them still remain with the new parent company. I made sure that each individual was truly aware of how much appreciation I had for their talents, their willingness to work long hours if we got too busy - because I'd screwed up and not properly bid something, and their ability to just be open and honest humans. I asked a lot, was given a lot, and have tried to show how much it mattered.

Maybe someone will see this and a light will click on. There's even a few former co-workers that hang out here and this may make them smile. Too many people have jobs they are not happy with and, really, there's no need of it.

Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at all the freebies here, if you can find a break in your 80-hour work week, you'll totally dig them!

Re:Heh

[hey!]

One thing I've noticed is someone who is very good at a tech job isn't just twice as productive as someone who is lousy at it; the discrepancy could easily be 10x; or it could be that he produces positive progress and the lousy guy produces anti-progress. This is clearly true for software developers, but I've seen it happen with network administrators too: small cadres of happy, super-productive admins outperforming armies of miserable tech drones.

But the thing is if you don't understand anything about (a) the technology or (b) human beings, how do you get a worker to be more productive? You make him work longer.

I'm not talking about striking while the iron is hot. When opportunity produces the occasional 80 hour work week, that's a totally different matter than having no better idea of what to do than setting unrealistic goals and leaving it to workers to make it up through sheer, unsustainable effort. Too often in the latter case you end up producing the semblance of progress. Yeah, I finished the module but someone's going to have to throw it out and rewrite when it blows up in the customer's face.

Re: Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

That's how pay has been cut - one of the ways - inflation is the other.

When I started, you could work a 40 hour week - less, we took long lunches with our boss there.

Then, after the dot bomb crash, there were a LOT of tech workers running around, so we had to take pay cuts to work - at least we younger guys. The older guys - 30 something's - were left in the dust.

Then, we had to work more than 40 to make dwadlines.

Then it turned into if you got your work done in 40 or less, you don't have enough work. But if it takes you more than 40, it's because you are not smart enough to get it done on time.
Catch-22.

And, over the past decade, pay has gone down, back in 99, a C programmer around with 5 years of experience made about 80k.
Now it's 65 and in 00 money, that's 40k.
So, we're working much harder for half the pay - and food is on us.
And the poor bastards who were let go after 09 were never hired because businesses figured out that they can just their current workers work harder. Don't like it? There's a line behind you.
There is no shortage of STEM workers. Obama needed to stop listening to tech industry lobbyists.
Read here: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/09/07/college-calculus

Re:Heh

[Grishnakh]

I interviewed at a place that had some of that, like an air-hockey table. I didn't see anyone using it. Maybe it got some use over lunch break, but stuff like that seems like a waste because if you use it, then you're obviously not working, and that isn't going to look good if you use it too much. You could use it after work in your off-hours, but who wants to spend their spare after-work time at work? By then you're ready to get home and eat something.

Re:Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

This. When a salesperson gets downsized, they get two weeks to tie up loose ends, 1-2 months of severance.

A tech person? You don't even get to clean your desk. Security escorts you to the door, and there is a good chance that your car likely got towed because it is an "unauthorized vehicle".

A few years ago, One small company I worked at got bought out and "merged" with an offshore place.

Well, the day the shit hit the fan, my cube was in the middle of a row. A ruckus was starting at an end row, where some guy was getting into people's faces. The dialog went like this, from cube to cube:

"You are fired. Leave at once."
"Are you threatening me?"
"SECURITY!"
*two guards rush in, jam a stun gun in the poor schmoe's back, other guard twists an arm, drag the person away*

When the fourth guy on the row was having his face used for decoration on the carpet by two rent a cops, I got the Hell out of there, out an emergency door and to my vehicle. I was ready for a three day weekend, so had my pickup truck + truck camper parked in the street. It was lucky I did, since I found out later that the company towed every single employee vehicle in the garage.

To boot, the guy called up a few weeks later demanding $1000 because I "didn't follow proper procedure when exiting a secure building". I mentioned in very terse words that that won't happen anytime soon.

CAPTCHA-"confront". Quite apt.

Re:Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

Ouch! Hot button issue with me.

The diversity push is one of the more irritating things I've experienced in my career. For several years we have had to interview someone who is a minority or female before we can hire anyone. Sounds like a simple way to improve diversity, doesn't it? 'Course, unless you can get a "diversity candidate" to apply, you can't hire anyone. We love when a "diversity candidate" applies, because we can finally hire someone. It's even better if the "diversity candidate" is the best-qualified candidate, because then we don't have to argue with HR about not hiring the "diversity candidate".

BTW, the "diversity candidate" phrase came from HR.

Re:Heh

[Ol Olsoc]

Yeah, this is why all this push to get women into IT is annoying as hell. Has anyone actually *asked* them why they're not interested?

In the Take our sons and daughters to work da Activities I participated in for many years, we did poll the young ladies - and the "sons part of that was only added after some sexism complaints, but we all knew it was really about the young ladies.

STEM wasn't at all n their radar. They were interested largely in becoming veterinarians, Doctors, MBAs, and a low but still surprising number wanted to be entertainers. These were sons and daughters of engineers, scientists, technicians and programmers. People who largely encouraged and told their daughters they could be anything they want ot be. The part of my demonstrations that was well recieved was 3-D animation and photography. Computing and database work? You could see the girls eyes glaze over. They simply were not interested, not one little bit.

And there were no mentions from parents regarding how their daughters were being ostracized or sexually harassed by the boys. They just were not interested. in that kind of career.

One thing that some of us came up with was that the young ladies might have seen their fathers coming home late at night after going in early the morning before, and on and on and on and on while they were growing up, maybe missing out on a trip to Disneyland when their classmates did, because dad or mom was working on some hot project. Then another hot project, than another.

Considering that my son saw the many all nighter's I did, the 60 - 80 hour weeks, the many canceled vacations - I canceled many more vacations than I ever took - and decided "Fuck that shit!"

I was sort of lucky in that while I worked my ass off, I was well respected. Pay was good also.

But both of those were the exception, and I did many different things, pretty well. Most of the IT folks were looked at as rather lowly.

I'll bet the poor reputation of the career (as you point out) is one big, big reason. You have to know all kinds of arcane crap, you have to go through hard degree programs in college, the pay isn't all that great, workers are laid off all the time, and the social factor sucks. Women are usually much more social than men anyway (especially compared to IT/engineering men), so why would they be interested? If a woman's smart she'll probably go into finance, law, or medicine instead.

Hehe, I started commenting before I read your whole post, and look how the polling results I posted line up very well with your comments!

Because it's soul-killing, uncreative shit.

[Rinikusu]

I can't speak for anyone else, but most "tech jobs" I've held were with companies whose futures and business I had no stake in, nor interest in having stake in, and the work to be routinely uninteresting where creativity was actively discouraged (for good reasons, many times), individuality was suppressed, and I was treated as a replaceable cog (and I was). I'm fortunate in that I have many other outlets for my creative needs, but dealing with corporate bureaucracy, idiot bosses, etc does take its toll. The paychecks are nice and allow me to have a comfortable life outside of work, but I will say that after 2 decades, I'm ready to throw in the towel and do something else, even if it means downsizing again.

Re:Because it's soul-killing, uncreative shit.

[LessThanObvious]

Agreed %100. I'm not sure why companies seem to think engagement in your work just happens naturally. If I have no reason to care about the continued existence of a company and care nothing about the why behind anything they are trying to accomplish, it's just about making money for someone else. That doesn't interest me in the slightest. More than anything I'd like to work for companies where there is a good reason to be passionate about the company's mission.

Re:Because it's soul-killing, uncreative shit.

[taustin]

That's no different from any other industry. The only thing different in IT is that IT people tend to be younger, and more naïve, which is to say, clueless enough to expect better. In other industries, people learn fast that most jobs are shit, and if you don't like it, get another one and move on, and keep moving on until you find a decent place to work. (I've got 22 years on the same job, and still get up in the morning looking forward to going to work. Yes, in IT.)

Whining only reduces your chances of getting a better job.

Re:Because it's soul-killing, uncreative shit.

[eulernet]

Whining only reduces your chances of getting a better job.

Whining just helps people to discharge their frustration.
In fact, it encourages people to remain at their job.

When you stop whining, you start seriously to seek for another job.
Since you stopped complaining, you don't have a distorted view of the reality, so it's easier to detect problems when your mind is clear.

Cause work sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Cause so many workers dislike their jobs, or in the words of Deichkind, "Arbeit nervt" - "work is annoying"

Re:Cause work sucks

[mjwx]

Cause so many workers dislike their jobs, or in the words of Deichkind, "Arbeit nervt" - "work is annoying"

I like my work.

Its the people I have to deal with that I find horribly annoying.

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?

Re:Three main types of bad jobs.

[swb]

Basically tech jobs are closer to blue collar than white collar

A peer and I once made the same comparison. We called ourselves digital maintenance men, because by and large that's what it is.

I've never worked for a company that had a significant manufacturing component, but I kind of wonder how the blue/white collar split works there for the people who setup, maintain and manage seriously complicated factory systems. I think they might have been called millwrights at one time.

Are they treated like blue collar people (probably, if the job involves any serious mechanical tools), or because of the sophistication of the equipment (all computer driven and complicated) are they treated like dirt, like other blue collar jobs, with all the usual management/labor hostility, clock punching, etc.

And why do "office" jobs seem to escape a lot of that labor/management hostility? Even the lowly marketing associate seems to get treated better than the most skilled blue collar worker. I've known some electricians who were really intelligent and used to sort out cabling issues in my data center better than I could, even though he didn't know how to configure the equipment. He'd make suggestions via some kind of intuition that never dawned on me.

Special

[mobby_6kl]

Probably because they think they should be special and immune from the shit everyone else deals with.

There are many reasons.

[dablow]

Some places have no idea what a sysadmin or software engineer is supposed to do. They assume we are all one and the same. So you will be harassed for any problem that involves using electricity.

Some places refuse to follow or put in place process/policies/limitations and enforce them in order to make the workload manageable.

Some places refuse to see the value in our work; They only see it as a cost center to be minimized at all costs, morale be damned.

It is a thankless job (and who cares about being thanked, show me the money lobowski!), yes most place refuse to pay what the position should be paying. So you either end up with subpar employees or are forced to work with subpar employees that cause a lot of problems you need to cleanup.

And the list goes on and on.

Re:There are many reasons.

[pr0fessor]

So you will be harassed for any problem that involves using electricity.

I had an exec ask me if I could fix the plug-in and lamp in his office once, I jokingly asked if he was promoting me to "stuff that uses electricity dept". He thought it was so funny that he started introducing me to people as the "VP of Shit that uses Electricity"

Re:Losing at capitalism 101

[TheGratefulNet]

it most certainly IS factory-style work here in the bay area.

95% h1b, from 2 countries (guess which; neither is US). all are under 40. most are under 35 yrs old.

as soon as you grow and get experience, you have eaten the forbidden fruit and you know how you should NOT be treated. at that point, they dispose of you and from then on, you will have nothing but 'short stays' if you are even lucky enough to get short term contracts.

tech work is mostly just unskilled labor, banging out bullshit code, full of bugs to never be fixed and replaced with some new buggy shit. lather rince repeat.

I'm fed up.

I work for non-profits on purpose

[Anonymous Coward]

So I can have a life. I work Monday-Friday 0800 - 1700. No nights, no weekends. I use Macs, Linux, Windows (very little), a little coding, a little networking, run the PBX, tweak the existing firewall, a little Exchange Server and AD, a little grunt work here and there. I don't get paid as much as I could, but I have my own office, a lot of down time whilst at work, a boss that leaves me alone for the most part. Not much to dislike, really. I cannot move up here, but I could keep this job theoretically for years to come.

Re:I work for non-profits on purpose

[Anonymous Coward]

This. Lots of tech workers spend 60 hours at work, get paid for 40 of them, and do useful work for 30 of them, mainly because of mental fatigue.

An ideal tech company would split the company in half—a M–W shift and a W–F shift. Employees would work 24–27 hours per week, and Wednesdays would be spent on meetings and other soul-sucking tasks that require everybody to be present at the same time. It would then pay 60% of the salary for 60% of the work. Workers would be happier because they would have more free time, and the company would be happier because actual work per dollar spent would increase by up to 33%.

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.

Shamefully biased...

[mgoheen]

When you see a graph (from the first linked article) that shows 22% as THREE TIMES LARGER than 19% you know you are reading crap...

Maybe becuase

[John Napkintosh]

All the jobs I've had involve doing work.

Re:Maybe becuase

[phantomfive]

So many people enter the tech industry because they want money, not because they like tech.
If you're a programmer who doesn't like programming, that's basically like you wrote down on your college application, "Hello, I want to be sad for money."

Maybe you should have studied welding.

Most people hate their job

[netsavior]

It is called being a grown-up. I don't recommend it. I actually tend to like my tech job, but make no mistake... it is still a job.

Re:Most people hate their job

[coldsalmon]

Many other commenters have pointed out that one factor is thinking you're special when you're really not. There are a whole lot of highly-skilled people in the world, and it's not really special to be highly-skilled anymore. Lawyers are highly-skilled, but they are among the least-satisfied of workers. As a society, we have learned how to make highly-skilled laborers interchangeable, which yields productivity gains. In the top echelons of every profession, there are those who work creatively and enjoyably, but the vast majority are doing routine tasks. Doctors perhaps have slightly higher satisfaction, but keep in mind that they are at the top of a highly-regulated and stratified industry; a more apt comparison would be healthcare workers in general vs. IT workers in general. It is possible to be high-skill and low-level.

Free Time is the only currency worth a damn

[captjc]

Every company that gives perks like that is only because they want you to stay all hours of the day and night. Sure, that is great and all and the money is wonderful at those places, I'm sure. However, the only thing that many of us care about is actual free time.

It seems like the whole culture is pushing this "Work your life away because it is the American thing to do" agenda. "40 hours a week is for lazy gits who will get nowhere in the workplace." Hell, where I work, don't work less than 90 hours a week if you want to make it through your next performance review. Most people start with at least 7 "use it or lose it" personal days and god help you if you actually try to take one. I am lucky because, as a contractor, they actually think twice about making me stay late as it is costing them. Salaried, I would never want to work there as that kind of environment is toxic to one's health and soul. This kind of shit is what makes tech workers hate their jobs.

Work to live and not live to work, words to live by.

What I don't like

[transporter_ii]

A lot of tech work is reactionary. And if all you have to do is put out fires, it isn't terrible. But you are usually expected to work at other things between fires. Which means the second you start doing one thing, you have to stop and go fix six other things. Always feeling like you are getting pulled in eighteen different directions sucks.

Companies don't get it....

[clifwlkr]

I've been in the software industry for a bit, and am appalled at what companies think attract great talent. It is so far off base today, that no wonder people aren't happy. Let's take a look at the things they believe are great:

Open office environment: What they say is it is great collaboration. What it really means is that you sit at benches back to back and face to face with your coworkers all wearing headphones. None of them talk, you have little personal space, and if you don't actually want to listen to music, you hear 3 different songs through the headphones. Never mind the Skype calls going on around you, or everyone's computer/phone./tablet all going off at the same time as the company wide email goes out. Good luck concentrating.

Game room/exercise room: What this means is more distractions for the young workers who already can't focus on their task for five minutes and get something done. Now they need to bug you to play with them and wonder why you say you don't have time as we are already way behind. So now you end up doing their tasks while they are shooting pool just to make sure the client gets what they were promised. Basically, more people NOT working while at work, forcing you into more hours to pick up the slack. BTW, how many hours a week does your company actually expect out of you?

Agile: A form of development co-opted by management and companies to micro manage you at every possibility, without actually establishing any direction. Yes, I know this is not how it is supposed to work, but after being in many companies doing it, it is all too often done this way. Everyone gets creative about 'what they did yesterday', and 'what they will do today', yet we still don't have a clear direction on 'what the heck we are doing'. That gets frustrating.

Unlimited vacation: What this actually means is no guaranteed vacation. You get to take it 'if you have time'. So the people who don't actually work take tons, and those who actually care about delivery get squeezed down. Reward is opposite to accomplishments

No Real WFH: Most places frown on WFH, as you are supposed to be collaborating. So you sit on your bench desk with trendy uncomfortable chair with said coworkers all plugged into their music not talking anyways. Why couldn't I work from home?

Quality of code: This one is debatable probably, but in the last three to five years the quality is so poor it is scary. People are rushed and rewarded for 'just getting it out' even though it fails all the time. How about rewarding people for putting something out that actually works and is stable? Could we actually teach proper coding in college?

What I really want is an actual office with walls and a window. Give me a door that I can leave open most of the time when people have questions, but I can close when things are crazy or tough. Give me co-workers that want to solve real problems, and care about unit tests, comments, and making a GOOD solution. Pay me for delivering quality, and more importantly, stop trying to figure out if I am operating at 100% efficiency all of the time. Define what the heck we are trying to accomplish up front, and then iterate rapidly on the solution. That would make me happy, anyways.....

Rant off.....

Re:Companies don't get it....

[phantomfive]

Unlimited vacation: What this actually means is no guaranteed vacation.

Take your vacation, man. You're shirking your duty if you don't. When someone says, "you have unlimited vacation," they are trying to take money from you. It is in no way rude to take the money back.

If you aren't sure if you'll "have time," plan your vacations several months in advance. Even if you stay at home for your vacation, you'll feel better if you take them.

Re:Companies don't get it....

[Anonymous Coward]

Agile...without actually establishing any direction.

That's the point of Agile! If you can't do it in one sprint then you cannot do it. We've promised a lot of features to customers that development could not work on because they can't be completed in two weeks. Agile has made my life much easier. You only plan and work on one small, well-defined task at a time. In the six years since our board voted to require Agile and hired a certified scrum master, the work we've done has all been very well-defined and we have met every single sprint deadline for every single developer. We have completed 120 sprints with around twenty developers on average. That means we succeeded 2,400 successful dev-sprint units, and with an average of 2.5 user stories completed per sprint per dev, we're at over 6,000 completed user stories all delivered on time! It makes the developers and management look awesome. The only downside of Agile is that we've lost our three largest customers because we can't deliver, and it looks like we're going to have to layoff most of the team before the end of the year.

Re:Companies don't get it....

[Anonymous Coward]

> The only downside of Agile is that we've lost our three largest customers...

My last startup was Agiled out of existence like it sounds like yours is headed to. We had a sixty person team between devs, product, project management, and QA. To story point every task, it usually took us longer to explain and estimate about 1/4 of the tasks as it took to do them. That meant instead of spending one man-hour to do a task, we spent sixty-man hours. For example, most of the web-related web tasks, like changing a stylesheet or wording, took about twenty minutes to do and test while they took at least five minutes to explain in sprint planning. That means a simple task takes about 5.5 total man hours instead of 0.5. At $100 per hour per employee (including benefits and other costs and since we're in the Bay area), that meant, for example, changing the size of text on a web page cost us $5,500. Agile is a great way to waste time and money.

Re:Companies don't get it....

[J-1000]

Agile: A form of development co-opted by management and companies to micro manage you at every possibility, without actually establishing any direction. Yes, I know this is not how it is supposed to work, but after being in many companies doing it, it is all too often done this way. Everyone gets creative about 'what they did yesterday', and 'what they will do today', yet we still don't have a clear direction on 'what the heck we are doing'. That gets frustrating.

I'm with you on every point except your agile comments. Yes many companies get it very wrong, but many companies get waterfall just as wrong. For me, coming from a massively waterfall environment to an agile environment has dropped my stress level considerably. Here is how agile (Scrum, specifically) is supposed to benefit you:

• Gives you clear short-term (one sprint) goals.
• Divides work (backlog items, tasks) into manageable chunks.
• Offloads vague, stressful long-term goals to the Product Owner. They are responsible for measuring velocity, and planning accordingly. They are responsible for cutting features in order to make a deadline.
• You commit to two weeks worth of work. The work is not committed on your behalf, and you can and should refuse unrealistic goals for each sprint.
• Gets management out of your face. Want to know my status? Attend the standup meeting. Want to know our status? Look at the burndown chart, or ask the Product Owner.
• Allows room for input on and interpretation of requirements. "Acceptance criteria" bullet lists are intended to give you just enough requirement detail, but not so much that stakeholders are attempting to be engineers.

If you have been using Scrum, it sounds to me like your group is in desperate need of retraining. You need an effective Scrum Master, an effective Product Owner, and team members who understand Scrum.

Re:Companies don't get it....

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Hell I make it a point to take my vacation and when I am on vacation I have made it very clear that I will be unreachable for most manages definition of reachable. I had one dickhead manager who wanted to know if I could get a hold of me when I was on vacation once. The fact that I would be out of cell range was lost on him. Finally when he insisted that he have a way to contact me in case of emergencies I told him where I planned on leaving my car and walking into the north woods of Minnesota. Then I told him to start there then hire a trained tracker and a team of dogs.

Having to show the dumbest graphs in existence....

[GerryGilmore]

...will do it, too. I don't doubt the accuracy of their surveys, but - Crikey! - look at some of the graphs they use! One shows a 5% delta as, visually, the difference between a ranch house and a skyscraper. Another shows a larger % difference, but visually much closer. Not to be too pedantic, but there's this great old book called "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information". It'll make your job more satisfying...

So does everyone else.

[coldsalmon]

"That's why it's called work," as they say. I laughed at the very misleading graph showing 19% of IT workers vs. 22% of non-IT workers saying they are very happy at work. That is a difference of 3%, but they made the graph on a scale of 19-22, so it looks huge. It's also not clear how much the authors cherry-picked data to support their thesis. On every measure cited, IT employees score poorly -- but do they score better in other areas that weren't reported? Why do they only report those who answered with a 9 or 10? How many answered with a 1 or 2?

Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose

[naasking]

Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose: you'll be happy with your job to the extent it has these qualities. How much autonomy do most engineering jobs give you? Not much I imagine. How much mastery? Well you're certainly not going to be exploring many new skills, or even masterting particularly difficult ones on average; it's mostly repetitive scaffolding with glue.

Purpose is pretty much the only one that technology work has plenty of. Everything runs on information technology now, so if you're interested in tech, which you probably are, you'll find lots of purpose in developing or administering information systems. This only goes so far before the lack of autonomy gets to you, or you hit the mastery ceiling pretty quickly at any given job.

No one wants to pay for you

[fluffernutter]

Constantly being treated like an unwanted expense might have a lot to do with it.

Re:duh

[Archangel Michael]

if i had hookers on my desk, i would feel different. very much different.

that feeling is called an Itch. You need to have a doctor look at it.

Blockades

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

I work for the State, a place where progress, innovation, unique thinking and independent action, go to die.
But man are the perks awesome. As is (in my case anyway) the pay, it's obscene. Especially compared to the amount of work I am allowed to do.

Most of the day I am in an office, handling systems remotely, but when the systems properly locked down and managed, very little goes wrong.

So I write, read, and generally goof off. Sounds great, no?

Not really, anytime there is an actual issue (like out NAS running out of space) I have to get 15 different people involved before I am allowed to make a decision, and then my decision is sent around for review.

I've been waiting for a larger NAS for 8 months so far...

Here's my take on it

[erp_consultant]

People that are attracted to Tech in general are people that like to build stuff. They like to tinker and figure out how stuff works and make things better. So they figure why not make a career out of it and get paid to do things they like.

Then they enter the workforce. Chances are pretty good that your boss not only doesn't have a clue about programming, they probably look down their nose at you. The boss lives in a world of spreadsheets and project plans and deadlines. Their goal is to get it out the door and worry later about the bugs. With any luck it becomes someone else's problem.

This flies in the face of the programmer who wants to do it not on time but do it right. Programming is a creative process and sometimes it's hard to put a specific time frame on that. That's the first problem.

The next problem occurs when you take a look around you and discover that the ones getting the promotions and big raises are not the best programmers. They are the ones that have figured out how to game the system. To move into management you are expected to leave your technical skills behind.

Sure there are some executives that are technically skilled (Gates and Zuckerberg come to mind) but most of them are MBA types.

Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it has something to do with companies gleefully grinding down their employees with 80-hour work weeks before replacing them with an Elbonian who works for six cents a day. Or maybe it's related to the company-wide policy "No Dev Left Behind", where each programmer has his own clown car full of Pointy-Haired-Bosses to help him brainstorm and debug. It might even be the business language flooding tech meetings. "We're synergizing bold new paradigms for market leverage."

But if you ask me, the number one mood-killer for me when it comes to technology is from within. I'm talking about the 'elitist programming culture'. Hacker News is the perfect example of this. "You use an Object-Oriented language? Puh-lease. I write in a language so obscure and difficult to comprehend nobody has ever actually finished a program in it ('apps' used to be called programs, FYI)." Everybody's gotta fluff up the release announcement for their stupid web-based whatever with fancy technical jargon and a pretentious academic tone. Every program, product, and library must have a logo, a mascot, a "Philosophy" page, and a lower-case name with a random vowel omitted (Bonus points if you use the domain as part of the name, like .io). And last but not least, there's the bewildering tendency for tech-related stuff to get sucked into political horseshit now. "Are Tech Companies Excluding Women?", "Is Google's New Image-Recognition Program Racist?", "10 Tech Companies You Won't Believe Donated to This Candidate! Get Outraged!"

I like programming, but I really don't like the overhead it brings in. It's not about solving puzzles anymore.

Re:Hmmm

[benjfowler]

Upvote parent. Underrated.

My own bugbear, is prima-donna lead developers who can spin enough bullshit to con the managers into letting them goof off on company time. We had a cluster of these hyperactive bozos at my last gig who thought it would be fun to crank out shoddy rewrites of GridGain, Mongo and SpotFire, because they wanted to waste company resources fucking about reinventing (badly!!!) existing free off-the-shelf products. FML.

Re:I love my job...

[OrangeTide]

It's not the job, it's the people.

Re:Not enough transgenders and women in tech

[OrangeTide]

Plausible, possibly women have evolved an ability to put up with more stupid evil shit as a survival tactic to deal with the patriarchy?

Another possible cause

[RogueyWon]

I've certainly noticed that as we move into our mid-30s, a lot of my techie friends (who I've known since college days) are increasingly deeply unhappy with both work and home lives. Some of this might well be down to job-specific reasons such as pay, working hours, corporate culture and career advancement. But I don't think that can account for all of it.

Given that my friends have generally gone into techie jobs because they've had a passion for computing since their pre-teens, I suspect that a good deal of it is because they've eroded the barrier between "work" and "hobby". What they do for relaxation in their own time starts to look an awful lot like what they do for a living on the company clock, and the latter inevitably starts bleeding into the former. I've one friend who fought tooth and nail to break into the game design world and succeeded (getting past the entry-level QA and developer roles into one with a lot more meat to it) and who now takes no pleasure at all in actually playing games.

By contrast, I took a decision aged 16 that I wasn't going to do that. As a result, I'm in a field that I never for a moment imagined I'd end up in when I was 16, but while I can't claim that I wake up every morning brimming with enthusiasm for my job, I do generally enjoy it. The work's varied, it's intellectually challenging, being a niche (but in-demand) field the pay and conditions are fairly good and I mostly get to work no more than around 45 hours a week (with the odd exception, but I do get overtime for particular crunch periods). Plus I can go home in the evening and actually switch off from work and enjoy my hobby.

The educational establishment these days puts a lot of effort into persuading people to "follow their dreams" and "work on what interests them". I do think a more mature approach would be to help people realise that turning your hobby into your job doesn't work for everybody and that there's work of interest in a lot of fields if you're prepared to look for it.

Treated as an expense, not an asset

[NitroWolf]

One of the major problems with IT and engineering departments is that they are treated as an expense. They are something distasteful but necessary to the business, but the business would rather do away with it if it could. When you and/or your department are viewed like that, it's hard not to become cynical and annoyed with the other departments.

Often times IT is the gatekeeper of information and much like dentists and doctors, they are often times the bearers of bad news, even though they aren't the cause. They are just the messenger, but when you're told "No, you can't access Facebook during work hours," the IT department is often blamed, even though they didn't make the policy.

Engineering is seen as an impediment to sales and progress because they are the ones that have to keep saying "No, it's not ready yet." or "No, we can't do that." Engineering is like the police department... everyone hates them until they need them. Then when that need is over, it goes right back to hating them.

Work-life balance

[larryjoe]

Things that are high on my work satisfaction list:
Work-life balance
Work-life balance
Work-life balance (did I mention work-life balance?)
Good working relationship with my boss
Good working relationship with my coworkers
Non-stressful commute

Things that don't matter:
Work satisfaction (it's work; I get my enjoyment from the part away from work; hence the supreme importance of work-life balance)
How well the company is doing financially (unless I'm going to be laid off soon or I own a huge amount of company stock)
Lunch or snacks (free or otherwise)
Promotion and titles (unless they come with financial compensation and I'm not yet adequately compensated)

Things that sort of matter:
Financial compensation (but only up to the point where it meets my needs, some wants, and savings requirements for retirement; past that it doesn't matter)
An office (cubicles and open space are horrible; I would trade an office for lowered financial compensation)

Even companies that have good reputations emphasize the lunches, cubicles, money, and work satisfaction but never mention work-life balance unless it's redefined to mean the exact opposite. Even here on slashdot, none of the moderated comments mention work-life balance.

"Mom and Pop"

[mariox19]

I work for a "mom and pop" shop, as you call it, and I can sympathize with what you're saying. But it goes both ways. We built an application for a company that I am sure you heard of. Let's call it "Acme Inc." One of the application's requirements was that it support SAML authentication. That's fine, we could handle that. All we asked for was some particulars about Acme Inc's environment.

Could we have a sample SAML token, to see what kind of assertions Acme would be requiring? Could we have the SAML version, 1 or 2, that Acme uses? The responsibility for providing us with any of this was "delegated" to people who already have too much on their plate, don't really know what is going on themselves, and who lack the mojo to get a quick response from the various systems administrators at Acme who could help. A couple of weeks later, the stakeholders at Acme are crying, "Come on, come on, come on! We want the product!" Of course, none of these preliminaries have been attended to.

Then, when the product is finally delivered, the guy at Acme charged with putting the product through its paces has no idea how SAML works, and is asking me to walk him through it. (Remember, this was their idea.) We come to find out that he has no test server to use as an "Identity Provider" (don't ask!), and he wants to know if can I help him there.

Granted, this is all ultimately a managerial screw-up. But, my point is that even if a mom-and-pop does code up an LDAP, who's to say the customer has it together on its end?

Re:"Mom and Pop"

[Archangel Michael]

mom-and-pop does code up an LDAP, who's to say the customer has it together on its end?

You see problem, I see opportunity. I see an excellent opportunity to expand your companies services, and earn additional revenue.

"We've coded our application so that you put your authorized LDAP query user name here, password here, the sever address here, the LDAP scope here ... Fairly simple process. If you don't know how to do that, we can send one of our consultants over and help implement LDAP in your organization, please see our Technical Sales group to define the scope of that project and get a quote together for you"

lack of sane hours

[epyT-R]

The primary reason is lack of sane hours. Period. Most of the ailments they have can be traced to lack of good sleep and exercise.

manchild and thier nerf toys get real

[johncandale]

I want to come to work at 8:30, take an hour lunch and leave at 5:30. During that time I work, I don't facebook, I don't surf the web, I don't IM on my phone. I don't need perks besides a quiet office environment with a comfortable chair. I really don't need lunge chairs in the lounge or a lounge at all or nerf toys or free snacks all day, and I don't want the co-workers those things attract

Because most people do?

[Gumbercules!!]

Because many people across many industries dislike their jobs? Seriously - most people are paid to go to work, for a reason. Sure, some people have the luxury of loving their job (or just liking it) but they're not the norm, they're the exception. Most people find the things they do at work, day to day, unpleasant.

IT workers have the added gripe that no one ever contacts us for good reasons. It's just one endless day of bailing out thankless users / customers. However I think you'll find many other industries feel the same way about their work.

We also have the negative that our work usually follows us 24x7, while many people just clock off at 5 and go do whatever it is they do. Other industries have this, true - but IT probably has this at a higher level.

Re:I've been in the business for 40 years

[FrozenGeek]

Concur. I started in the industry 29 years ago (dang). It was cool. It was fun. We actually got to build interesting new stuff. And, yes, there were boring patches, but a lot of the time I actually woke up Monday morning thinking "I get to go to work today."

Now, we struggle to get permission to implement best practices. Instead, management wants to perpetuate the mistakes we've made for the past N years.

Actually, the biggest issue I seem to be encountering is "me, me, me". I used to encounter a team ethos among most, if not all, of my co-workers. Now, nobody seems to care about the team or the mission. It's all about them, and if things don't go precisely their way, they do their best to make everyone miserable. What scares me about this is that I'm afraid of becoming like them. Maybe it's time to spiff up the resume. Any good SW development firms in Canada (Ontario and Quebec excepted)?

Re:Nelson: Ha Ha.

[dgatwood]

Maybe pay is a problem for IT, but it usually isn't an issue at all for programmers. For example, here in the Bay Area, at roughly $90-$150k per year, the hourly rate would still be better than most jobs even if it required working 80-hour weeks. The problem is that most people can't survive an 80-hour work week for more than a couple of weeks, and even a 40-hour week is horribly inefficient and, frankly, exhausting at times.

The 40-hour work week is optimal for menial tasks that require very little thinking. For a technical workforce that spends most of their day thinking and trying to solve complex problems, workers are most efficient when working six or seven hours per day, not eight, and certainly not 12. Long before they reach the 50-hour mark, they're actually getting less work done per week than somebody working a 35-hour week, because they have less energy and are less focused. In fact, I rather suspect that the optimal work week in tech is somewhere closer to 20 hours, and that even a 35-hour week involves significant loss of efficiency.

What we need is for employers to hire twice as many people, pay them half as much, and work them half as long. Doing so on a broad scale, however, would require some serious changes, particularly in the way we try to attract people to the field. But it should be done, not just because employees would be happier with a better work-life balance, but also because employers would be getting what they paid for instead of only about two-thirds of it.

Career advancement

[codeButcher]

Looking back at a few previous employers, I could just shake my head at the practical test one had to perform as part of the interview process, but which tested skills (Java programming) not related to anything one actually did on the job. After some months on the job, you realize that to stay current, you will either need to do a lot of reading (hahaha - those play examples seldom scratch deeper than the surface of some of the stuff needed for actual worthwhile enterprise stuff) or work somewhere else (hahaha - it is likely that you will find out only some time after the interviews that this shop is actually more of the same old).

* EJBs? You mean that pesky indirection shell that we have between our back-end and our front-end (containing all logic, including anything resembling business rules), just because somebody read that one has to have a three-tier-architecture?

* Concurrency? Apart from all the application server constructs that all but hide that, never seen something like that used in the last decade or so.

* Streams, Lambdas, generics, foreach loops? You mean to tell me you actually got around to upgrading your "tried and tested" application server that "just works" to a recent version?

* Unit tests? Documentation? You mean like all that legacy outsource-generated drivel masquerading as code is so generously endowed with?

And come on, those things are still fairly run of the mill... As I passed the weeks doing freshman-level hacking at my new employer (spoken about in awe and envy even by recruiters who didn't try to place my there, and the company that tried very hard to have some sort of googlesque atmosphere by giving out free snacks, having generous free-drinks parties, and a conspicuous social media campaign extolling themselves as an employer of choice) only my frustration (and waistline) grew...

I think one of the best things an employer can do is make it's employees more employable (by exposure to practical experience, not theoretical learning only). As paradoxical as that may sound, that would probably make me less inclined to leave their employ. (But I'm only speaking for myself.)

Re: Why? WHY???

[BVis]

No, management is paid to get the most work out of you for the least pay. "Motivating" people to work these days frequently takes the form of "work harder or we'll fire you", instead of something constructive like making the employee feel involved, or valued, or anything else but a greedy lazy interchangeable cog.

And I don't see where GP mentioned unions. He mentioned "job descriptions", which are difficult (or, frequently, impossible) to enforce without a union. This should not be the case. If I get hired to write code, and the first day of work I get told I'm going to be doing sysadmin work instead, there's not much I can do about it except quit. If job descriptions were enforceable, I would have the right to say "That is not what you hired me for. Make my job duties line up with the description that I accepted or face large fines." Employees should not have to suffer for management's incompetence or lying.

Re: Why? WHY???

[KingMotley]

Because holding on to experienced knowledge workers is often the best way to achieve a better work/cost ratio than throwing away years/decades of knowledge and experience to achieve minor short term goals. Often, mistakes are very costly and reproducing them over and over because you've let the ones who already made them and learned from them leave is more costly than minor changes that produce happy employees. Seen it time and time again, and poor management that doesn't understand why they are failing even though "productivity" is up. The easy to measure productivity that doesn't include the cost of avoidable errors had they not driven good employees away.