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A Quarter of IT Pros Find Their Job Very Stressful (itproportal.com)

Posted by msmash on from the how-they-feel dept.

An anonymous reader writes: A new report from Spiceworks, entitled A Portrait of IT Workers, says 41 per cent of IT pros in the UK consider themselves "accidental" -- and that they ended up in their career via a "non-traditional" route. The report, which covers areas including the career plans and education levels of IT professionals, found that a third (33 per cent) of the UK's IT job force don't have a college or a university degree. [...] When it comes to working, British IT bods work 41 hours a week, "far above" the 31 hour average across all industries. Almost all (89 per cent) see themselves as "somewhat stressed" at work, with a quarter (26 per cent) reported being extremely stressed.

108 comments

  1. Ha! by dragon-file · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "British IT bods work 41 hours a week, "far above" the 31 hour average across all industries." That's funny because I would consider a 41 hour week fairly laid back compared to the 50 or so hours I currently work. But I'm American so I won't pretend to understand how things are done in the UK.

    --
    Whenever a player quits EVE to go play WoW, the Average IQ of both games increase.
    1. Re:Ha! by lionchild · · Score: 2

      Dragon-file - We are totally workaholics, compared to much of Europe. It's a hold over from our roots in the Industrial Age, and our need to feel like we need more, More, MORE!

      However, I would be curious what percentage of US IT workers don't have a college or university degree. Just last night, someone I've worked with for 12 years asked me why I didn't have some additional sashes for presiding over a graduation ceremony, I replied that I only had a 2-year degree. He look surprised and nodded, "Good for you!" he told me.

      --
      Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
    2. Re:Ha! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My weekly average is 60+. And yeah, stressful is an uderstatement

    3. Re:Ha! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      According to the UK Government the average working week for the UK is ~37.5 hours, so I'm not sure where that 31 is coming from.

    4. Re:Ha! by AAWood · · Score: 3, Informative

      That's the average for full-time workers; 31 hours is the average including part-time work.

    5. Re:Ha! by justkarl · · Score: 2

      ... I would be curious what percentage of US IT workers don't have a college or university degree.

      I can't offer statistics but your comment piqued my interest, and I can offer you my personal experience.
      I live in the US, and don't have a "traditional" 4-year degree. I've been in the IT industry for more than 10 years and get mixed reactions when I tell people that I don't have a degree. I went to a 2 year college for a while but didn't finish that either.

      For me, this actually contributes to my work ethic - pretty similar to what you described - to prove I'm not "less than" everyone else , I feel like I work a little harder than most to prove that I can. Maybe I shouldn't have to feel like I have to prove it, but that's society's projections rubbing off on me.

      That said, I'm pretty glad I don't have the student debt to lug about.

    6. Re:Ha! by gfxguy · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I have a graduate degree (and never had any student debt), but I will say that some of the best programmers I've worked with either had no degree, or a degree in something completely different. Experience is king.

      --
      Stupid sexy Flanders.
    7. Re:Ha! by kalieaire · · Score: 0

      <quote>That's the average for full-time workers; 31 hours is the average including part-time work.</quote>

      they're still slackers.

      ;)

    8. Re:Ha! by pr0fessor · · Score: 1

      I don't have a computer related degree but I've worked in IT forever....
       

    9. Re:Ha! by fluffernutter · · Score: 1

      They're still slackers

      I'm sure their families aren't complaining.

      --
      Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
    10. Re:Ha! by skirmish666 · · Score: 1
      WTF!

      I'm more used to 60hrs as the usual, more in a crit-sit.

      Somehow though I've seen a lot of people who sit around not generally doing much work. True, they're often (but not always) the highly experienced ones. Maybe they're the 3/4 who aren't stressed.

      --
      Sigger than your average
    11. Re:Ha! by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 2

      My employment contracts for the past 10+ years have prohibited me from working more than 40 hours per week. Fortune 500 companies or the government just don't want to pay overtime anymore.

    12. Re:Ha! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I was in IT for about 15 years before I went back to college and got a degree. I found it was so easy that I hung around for a couple more years and picked up an MBA

      I was slotted for a director position because nobody else in IT had any degree at all, but was eventually drug down and sacked by a combination of HR, the CFO and a out-sourcing consultant who wanted to hamstring IT and make them more subservient

      HR only says they want degrees when they get to hire you at reduced salary

      I am a consultant now, make more than I ever did and do less work than ever

    13. Re:Ha! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's why exempt status exists - to bleed the poor suckers dry without paying overtime.

    14. Re:Ha! by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      I managed to get an MBA (with no student debt), and when I tell people that I have 20 years of very technical experience, and an MBA (in addition to a CS), they assume I'm an idiot that went into IT because I was chasing money. So the degrees doen't seem to help, and most "real" iniversities don't have a good IT program, but have CS, which, when I got it was about building CPUs and programming OSs for them, which is 100% irrelevant to IT (yes, we built CPUs, as the CS degree was conferred by the College of Electrical Engineering).

      --
      Learn to love Alaska
    15. Re:Ha! by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

      Stressful compared to what?
      So 89% of IT people feel "somewhat stressed".
      Is that higher or lower than other professions?
      My guess is that it is about average.

    16. Re:Ha! by drainbramage · · Score: 2

      Those are 'metric' hours....

      --
      No brain, no pain.
    17. Re:Ha! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Compared to nothing, to having no stress at all. That is how life, work and free time, should feel like.

      Too bad so many forget what it feels to be without stress. The get accustomed to a stress level and think it is normal.

    18. Re:Ha! by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      Isn't that a rather meaningless way of calculating it? Why not count ones who are unemployed too?

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    19. Re:Ha! by AndrewGates · · Score: 1

      Dropped out of college in 94, went to Microsoft during the 95 launch and have had a rewarding career over the last 23 years. I'm at the top of my field, making money I could have only hoped for if I had followed my original goal of being a lawyer, and I never picked up any college debt. The point of college if you expect to do technical work is to get your foot in the door the summer after graduation. After that first job, your on your own with your skills and work ethic. The joke we used to make many many years ago was that a 4 year CS degree meant you were 5 years behind the curve. Of course the go-go 90's were a different time.

    20. Re:Ha! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have seen American work. They might work 60 hours, but they are not very busy or effective and seem to get stressed easily.

    21. Re: Ha! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Depends on what you want to know. If you're after the average hours worked by full-time workers then, yeah, it's meaningless. On the other hand, if you're after the hours worked by all workers then, gosh, it's just about perfect.

    22. Re:Ha! by allcoolnameswheretak · · Score: 3, Informative

      Dragon-file - We are totally workaholics, compared to much of Europe.

      A 31h work week is relaxed by any standards, even European ones. Not sure how that average came to be in the UK.
      Most of Europe works 40h weeks, IT pros probably average at 40-50h weeks. France works 35h weeks.

      What we do have in Europe is the luxury of payed vacation (about 30 days) plus an average of about 5 bank holidays per year.

      Of course this varies a lot depending on the industry and EU country. The lower you are on the social ladder and the poorer the EU country, the less payed leave.

    23. Re:Ha! by johnlcallaway · · Score: 2

      Like so many others, I've worked in IT my entire adult life (I'm 57) and have only attended two university classes, and those were paid for by my employer at the time. I've attended many vendor classes, also paid for by my employer.

      As others have noted, I have run into many great IT professionals with and without degrees, and many not so great with and without degrees. I remember an MIT PhD (supposedly, I didn't verify) that couldn't program her way out of a paper bag and refused to learn new things. I also remember a guitar player who was one of best developers I ever knew. Plenty of anecdotal evidence for me to feel that if someone has the spatial and logical talent to write code naturally, a degree isn't necessary. And if they don't, no degree in the world can help.

      If someone wants to get a degree, and can do so in a financially prudent way, go for it. But very little in the IT field requires a computer degree for someone who is smart and willing to learn on their own. With the tremendous amount of free, or nearly free, courses on the Internet, it's a shame so many companies still require degrees.

      The good news is I've started to see a few companies return to the days of 'junior' programmers who don't have to have a degree, just some basic programming skills.

      --
      I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
    24. Re:Ha! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wow, not wanting to be rude but if that's true then it really must suck to live in the US. 40 hours a week is 8 hours a day. That's 8:30 to 5 Monday to Friday assuming a tiny 30 minute lunch break, which seems a bit on the high side for a happy life. 50 hours is more like what, 7am to 5:30 if you only take 30 minutes combined break in your 10 hour day? Well either that or you work weekends, but in either case that sucks big time: quite apart from leaving no time for even an approximation of a life (you know - family, friends, hobbies etc) I suspect my productivity would fall through the floor if I had to sit at a desk that long. Sorry you have to live like that!

    25. Re:Ha! by greythax · · Score: 1

      I can one-up you on this. I never even finished high school (though I did get my GED). Now I am working as a data scientist. Of course, by the time I reached those critical years when I would have been receiving an education in my craft, I had already been ravenously learning programming since the age of 12. While I admit, I missed some of the fundamentals by not going the formal education route, and had to work twice as hard to catch myself up, I console myself by remembering that the skills I use today weren't being taught when I was in college (I did attend one year on scholarship). They were still teaching pascal and z80 assembly.

      In my obviously biased opinion, passion is much more important than formal education in this field. It just changes too fast. If you aren't constantly re-teaching yourself, you will quickly get left behind.

    26. Re:Ha! by mjwx · · Score: 1

      Dragon-file - We are totally workaholics, compared to much of Europe.

      A 31h work week is relaxed by any standards, even European ones. Not sure how that average came to be in the UK.
      Most of Europe works 40h weeks, IT pros probably average at 40-50h weeks. France works 35h weeks.

      What we do have in Europe is the luxury of payed vacation (about 30 days) plus an average of about 5 bank holidays per year.

      Of course this varies a lot depending on the industry and EU country. The lower you are on the social ladder and the poorer the EU country, the less payed leave.

      In the UK, you get 22 days of paid leave and 8 bank holidays (30 in total). many employers offer additional leave as part of the package.

      The problem with UK IT is that we're constantly getting pressured to do more with less. Companies don't want to spend money to replace or upgrade equipment and opex budgets are slashed but the same C-levels will baulk if you tell them that you have to cut services because they cut the budget. In many cases, you're spending man hours to keep systems from falling apart when you know they could be upgraded or replaced to be more stable and less of a chore to manage.

      Brexit is making this worse. Companies are all downgrading both revenue and profit, but not decreasing the amount of work that is being done although I'm sure that will change in the next 2 years with the layoffs that come with it.

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
  2. 31 hour average across all industries? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is that a typo?

    1. Re:31 hour average across all industries? by lactose99 · · Score: 2

      Sounds rather enlightened to me

      --
      Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
  3. As a UK IT pro by Pop69 · · Score: 1

    I do my job without needing a degree. Ability is more important than a bit of paper

    1. Re:As a UK IT pro by ma1wrbu5tr · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I'm an "accidental" geek myself having gone to trade school for welding; only to have a serious back injury on the job. During my recovery, I broke out my old 286 to give me something to do while I was bored and quickly found it couldn't really do much for me (1990s) anymore and decided to upgrade. From there, it was all about the desktop, then the network, and then on to Linux by 1998. After nearly 20 years in the biz, I've hit burnout and left my job recently. If it had only required 41 hours a week, I might not have.

      --
      Why can't we go back to using jumpers to configure slot adapter cards? Why? I say!
    2. Re:As a UK IT pro by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 0

      Ability is more important than a bit of paper

      You go ahead and keep saying that...

      --
      If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
    3. Re: As a UK IT pro by Pop69 · · Score: 1

      Fell into it myself. Used to be an accountant now I'm part of an IT department supporting specialised hardware and software all over the world for a French based multinational company.

    4. Re:As a UK IT pro by alvinrod · · Score: 2

      To get you first job, the piece of paper is important than your actual ability. After that, it hardly matters at all.

      You can still get by in IT fine without a degree, but you'll probably need to start at a small place that doesn't really care about a degree (or perhaps even know such a thing exists) and have some good references, but after a while the degree doesn't matter as in the IT world after 10 or 20 years anything they would have taught you in college is probably useless anyway.

      That a full third of British IT professionals don't have a college degree in IT shows exactly how much good that piece of a paper is really worth. If you're 18 and already have any kind of IT job and the motivation to self-learn, you probably don't need to go to college. Work experience will be more valuable to your career and they pay you for it on top of it.

    5. Re:As a UK IT pro by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      If all you get from a degree is a bit of paper, you're doing it wrong.

    6. Re:As a UK IT pro by TWX · · Score: 2

      Heh. I did it as a hobby as an adolescent and teenager and then made a career out of it.

      Now my hobbies are working on cars, woodworking, working on machinery, etc.

      Suffice it to say, I do not agree with those that maintain making your hobby into a career will make you happy in your career. It may simply ruin your hobby.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    7. Re:As a UK IT pro by TWX · · Score: 2

      This may be so, but on the other hand I have worked for or with far too many people in this field that have plenty of credentials but have no ability. Fortunately many of them end up eventually running afoul of management when in a crisis they fail to perform, but until that time they chiefly seem to increase the stress in the workplace through bad decisions and an inability to contribute their fair share of the workload.

      A lot of these kinds of IT workers seem to have forgotten the KISS principle too, and they end up creating these convoluted messes that collapse when one piece goes bad. Not fun.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    8. Re:As a UK IT pro by ma1wrbu5tr · · Score: 1

      Suffice it to say, I do not agree with those that maintain making your hobby into a career will make you happy in your career. It may simply ruin your hobby.So very true.

      --
      Why can't we go back to using jumpers to configure slot adapter cards? Why? I say!
    9. Re:As a UK IT pro by Hognoxious · · Score: 4, Funny

      That's why I didn't become a porn star.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    10. Re:As a UK IT pro by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thank you! Someone that understands. I am in a posh education job and is paid ok, but the users are the main cause of mental drain and stress.

    11. Re:As a UK IT pro by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      My internship after getting a two-year degree was with a Fortune 500 company. That was 20 years ago. I've been pigeon-holed by recruiters and hiring managers as an enterprise-level tech from the beginning that I'm only considered for Fortune 500 or government IT positions. If I try to interview at a small- or medium-sized company, I'm told that I'm "too big" for them. I'm sure that's in reference to my experience and not my weight.

    12. Re:As a UK IT pro by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 2

      There's money to be made in cleaning my up other people's tech messes. I've cleaned up quite a few over the years.

    13. Re:As a UK IT pro by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      http://www.ptypes.com/cyclothymicpd.html/

      404 - Not Found

    14. Re:As a UK IT pro by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are you fucking kidding me? Are you that dumb? I'm not the OP here, but have you ever, in your life, seen a fucking directory named .html.

      Remove the fucking slash at the end moron. And yeah - this is definitely what you got. I'm sure you won't agree and blame the world and asshats again.

    15. Re:As a UK IT pro by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      Remove the fucking slash at the end moron.

      Sorry, I'm working on my code. I don't have time to fix other people's mistake.

    16. Re:As a UK IT pro by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      but you have time to spam slashdot with bullshit. oh, and you're not working on code nor "refactoring" anything. you're a guy who runs windows update and picked up an intro book to a kid language. i'm not a programmer, but i was one a long time ago
      10 print adam is awesome
      20 goto 10
      c code
      c code run
      run code run

      I am actually amazed how you can turn a whole website against you and think everyone is an asshat here. Fine - we are asshats. Rarely to each other, but almost always to you. If you don't like us, go somewhere else or stop complaining about asshats, fathead. Or neck, Or.. wait - is your neck Bigger than your head? how..does that sweat a lot? how do you shave? does it smell bad? If you were hung, would it let you live? Do you float?

      I really - it would be awesome if you answered all of those point by point.

    17. Re:As a UK IT pro by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 2

      I am actually amazed how you can turn a whole website against you and think everyone is an asshat here.

      A half dozen asshats don't represent an entire website.

    18. Re:As a UK IT pro by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      let's see...

      my diet and workout are fine. I'm 350lb for other reasons
      my salary is fine - everyone else is just underpaid and i'm overqualified as recruiters tell me
      i'm getting shit on by everyone, but nah, it's just a dozen people

      you know what heavy cream? it's one person. that's me - i post all the negative posts about you on every site you are on, and since it's one person you can just ignore it - everyone else likes you.

      and this level of stupid delusion is how one ends up with heavy creamer's life. by the way creampop - i'm 52. i retired at 45. emc solutions architect was my last title, and yes, my student loans are paid off.

  4. They're done sanely by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    and without a pointless race to the bottom. And I'm an American, and I look on with envy at people who don't treat being overworked and underpaid as a badge of honor.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re:They're done sanely by freudigst · · Score: 1

      Exactly. It's scary to see how deep the banksters and their corporations have their claws sunk into the hides of modern Americans.

  5. In the UK by jbmartin6 · · Score: 1

    In the UK sure, they are all stressed out over Brexit.

    --
    This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
  6. In other news... by Nutria · · Score: 1

    75% of British IT workers do not see their jobs as very stressful.

    --
    "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
    1. Re:In other news... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      I did that for two years (2009-10). The experience of being unemployed for that long was quite stressful, especially with hiring managers saying you were "overqualified" for minimum wage jobs and recruiters saying you're "unemployable" for everything else.

  7. Stressful.. by oakgrove · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Before getting into IT, I busted my ass roofing, landscaping, framing, and pouring concrete. My feet hurt so bad at the end of the day I'd have to walk on the sides of them and don't even ask how much money I was making. Now I sit on my ass all day typing shit in on a computer. If one finds IT "stressful", I assure there's a world of opportunity waiting in the trades. Let me know how wonderful and carefree your life becomes.

    --
    The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
    1. Re:Stressful.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      That's just physical stress. Some people do that to relax.

    2. Re:Stressful.. by Fire_Wraith · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The problem, both in your response and the article itself, is that neither focus on why a job is, or could be, stressful.

      For instance, constantly living in fear that management is going to ax or outsource your department/your job could be pretty stressful for most people. Having a terrible boss is stressful regardless of where you work or what you do. Having coworkers that are annoying, bad, lazy, backstabbing, etc can be pretty stressful regardless of the physical conditions.

      Were pay/benefits not an issue, I'd much prefer a job that involved lots of hard physical labor but had a team with strong camaraderie, a decent boss, and a sense of accomplishment/value at what I did, to one that lacked those things but was in an air conditioned office at a desk.

      And yes, I've worked at jobs like that, as well as in IT. I've even worked in jobs where I was getting shot at as a part of job (military). Certainly that was stressful too, but that's hardly the only thing worth considering, and it sure doesn't mean that there aren't other situations that are also stressful to some degree.

    3. Re:Stressful.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Remember folks, things are way shittier elsewhere, so you have no room to bitch about how things here are. If you don't like it, get the fuck out. -----Conservative mentality

    4. Re:Stressful.. by skirmish666 · · Score: 1

      Entry level, apprentice trade salary is literally 2.5*entry level IT salary where I am.
      Cry me a river.

      --
      Sigger than your average
    5. Re:Stressful.. by DigiShaman · · Score: 2

      IT Pros such as myself actually suffer PTSD. I've almost admittedly lost my shit working on a project that took well over 60s in a week, and hundreds of people depended on it. Wasn't my fault. It was a fucked up situation that I walked into as was tasked to deal with it. But yeah, now with this ransomworm going around, how would you like to deal with people literally dying on you as it ravages the medical industry?

      As for the PTSD, it's grown worse. I can't tell you how many times I'm interrupted when trying to perform deep analytical troubleshooting in a complex environment. I love the work. Can't fucking stand the interruptions! I want to be placed in a box with just my computer, coffee, and NO FUCKING PHONE!!! I'll get the work done faster, and with less stress. But nooo, us IT Pros are getting constantly hounded. As for my boss, yeah, he has it worse. Somehow drinking helps him cope....

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    6. Re:Stressful.. by Vince+Ferg · · Score: 2

      Then you must have one of the easy IT jobs. The job I work for does not do a great job at managing its limited resources very well so basically we are always really stressed out either by the long hours we work, the amount of never ending work and projects we are tasked with where every one of them is "priority #1" and then since this place is 24/7 they live with the rule that nothing can ever go down at any time and when something does you are basically being called every 5 minutes with status updates on why its still down which I never understand because just LET US DO OUR JOB instead of fielding calls to talk to you and it may be done faster! On top of that patching systems and praying they don't break and maintaining backups and hoping none EVER fail and if they do your basically out of a job for something that may or may not have ever been your fault to begin with. Basically IT is the job where everyone hates you for that 1 thing that goes wrong and get no credit for the million things you did right cause normally the higher ups have no clue what your actually doing. I don't know what field of IT you deal with but for us system administrators and networking guys I really do believe there is a lot of stress that is put upon us to have things work 100% of the time all the time which any normal person knows is ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE.

    7. Re:Stressful.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Cry more, bitch

    8. Re:Stressful.. by skirmish666 · · Score: 1

      Sounds almost like he has data entry or reception work confused with IT.
      Working with a computer = IT whiz? Sure, I bet he can write a vba script to catch the killer's IP address.

      --
      Sigger than your average
    9. Re:Stressful.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      PTSD is for veterans who fought terrorism for our freedoms. IT workers can't have PTSD, you're just a lazy idiot who's too stupid for IT work, and you need to shut the fuck up. Either you do the fucking work or you're fired. If you lose your shit for any reason, you are fucking fired for cause. I don't care what your fucking excuse is, you're replaceable, we have ten other guys who can do your job for cheaper than you, and the other guys don't fucking whine like you. This is your last chance, you do the fucking work you are fucking paid to fucking do, or you are fucking fired.

      - your boss's boss

    10. Re:Stressful.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No fuckstick. People hike to relax. Nobody does professional landscape work for fun day in and day out. Go fuck yourself for being ignorant

    11. Re:Stressful.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You must the third worldest of the third world then. Cry your own river bitch

    12. Re:Stressful.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      TIL: my boss's boss is an angry unemployed manchild who lives in his mother's basement with nothing better to do than fail badly at trolling. Top fucking kek xD

    13. Re:Stressful.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ... roofing, landscaping, framing, and pouring concrete ...

      Working a trade means one is paid enough so that, with good money management, one can retire at age 55, when the body is too old for 8-12 hour shifts of manual labour.

      If you are a dogsbody, your life was devalued long ago and you now face the problem of your job killing you painfully since improved medicine and safety means you won't die young.

      ... I sit on my ass all day typing shit ...

      Bosses don't want to train old people so I assume you got this job before you turned 30. If you didn't, kudos but you are the exception. Moving from a dogsbody job in labouring to a dogsbody job in the office is a vast improvement but starting a 'career' late means one is competing with teenagers, who cost much less and fit into the youthful image that businesses pretend they have. Even worse, re-purposing your life from a paying job to learning a profession, is viewed as a bad thing although that, paradoxically, is the reason why they've got your resume.

    14. Re: Stressful.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Aaaand wrong. Anyone can experience ptsd. Not just people in the military. Source: a thesis on ptsds in prison. People get scarred for life.

    15. Re:Stressful.. by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      My brother got into landscaping design after he couldn't find a doctor to certified that he was disabled in the knees after 30 years as an auto body specialist. He used two years of unemployment benefits to start his business. Works side-by-side with the laborers he picked up at Home Depot. Still complains about his knees.

    16. Re:Stressful.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Protip: If you're going to try to pretend you're not oakgrove don't share his political views.
      yw.

    17. Re:Stressful.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As someone close to an engineer who was literally forcibly committed directly as a cause of job stress, reducing down to a salesdroid promising "yeah we can do this thing that will probably kill people if it fails, that's never been done before, at this low, low price, sure"...

      Let me say two things must always go together. "Responsibility" and "authority to actually do it".

      The former is always demanded, In terms of financial and organizational authority, the latter is rarely sufficiently commensurate.

      You might be tempted to think "it will get better". It won't. If management didn't see the problem before you, they won't during or after you. Find another management that does.

    18. Re: Stressful.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fuck you slut!

    19. Re: Stressful.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The last war fought for anyone's freedom was WWII. Nice try fuck face.

    20. Re:Stressful.. by skirmish666 · · Score: 1

      You must the third worldest of the third world then. Cry your own river bitch

      Hey, I know America isn't as great as it's always been but calling it 3rd world is a little harsh.

      --
      Sigger than your average
    21. Re:Stressful.. by tehcyder · · Score: 2

      That's just physical stress. Some people do that to relax.

      They don't do it for ten hours a day, 5 days a week, 48 weeks of the year.

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
    22. Re:Stressful.. by tehcyder · · Score: 2

      IT Pros such as myself actually suffer PTSD. I've almost admittedly lost my shit working on a project that took well over 60s in a week, and hundreds of people depended on it. Wasn't my fault. It was a fucked up situation that I walked into as was tasked to deal with it. But yeah, now with this ransomworm going around, how would you like to deal with people literally dying on you as it ravages the medical industry?

      As for the PTSD, it's grown worse. I can't tell you how many times I'm interrupted when trying to perform deep analytical troubleshooting in a complex environment. I love the work. Can't fucking stand the interruptions! I want to be placed in a box with just my computer, coffee, and NO FUCKING PHONE!!! I'll get the work done faster, and with less stress. But nooo, us IT Pros are getting constantly hounded. As for my boss, yeah, he has it worse. Somehow drinking helps him cope....

      Having to work to strict deadlines, on intellectually demanding tasks, with frequent interruptions and conflicting tasks to prioritise is not unique to the IT industry.

      It's basically the definition of a professional job.

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
    23. Re:Stressful.. by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      Bosses don't want to train old people so I assume you got this job before you turned 30.

      Bosses in the private sector don't want to provide training. If you want training, you will have to do it yourself. If you work in government IT, you're going to get training each and every year whether you want it or not.

    24. Re: Stressful.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Freedom to continue driving a gasoline-powered car?

    25. Re:Stressful.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You should invite him to come join slashdot. You two can talk about running windows update and how heavy storage arrays are, while the rest of us talk about actual real code and how thin provisioning works on CAS systems. Deal? In fact, submit your own story on your subjects, we'll upvote them so they make it to the front page, and then you two can talk on there and we'll just hide the stories you submit. It's a perfect solution that will make everyone here happy.

      Shoutout to Heavy Creamer from Ann Arbor! Sorry I missed shitting on you yesterday. I was fucking a girl.

  8. Not our creimer! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Creamer is never stressed because his big fat cock fits into his mouth and all day long he sucks his own cock just like a pacifier.

    1. Re: Not our creimer! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Lucky Creamer - not sure that even counts as an insult. Admit it, you would if you could.

    2. Re: Not our creimer! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Of course I can. You mean to say you can't suck your own cock?

    3. Re:Not our creimer! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That guy has it SO HARD. So HARD that he won't even ask for more money to suck dicks.

    4. Re:Not our creimer! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Our creimer doesn't want more money because big money attracts big women begging to be his big wives.

  9. Crab Mentality = Downplay Others Suffering by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Instead of focusing on the fact that others are suffering, you attempt to negate it.

    "Not as bad as I had it" is lacking in empathy and completely ignorant of their industry's own problems.

    What center of self.

    1. Re:Crab Mentality = Downplay Others Suffering by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Cry more bitch

    2. Re:Crab Mentality = Downplay Others Suffering by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Crab Mentality

      So the best you can come up with a tired irrelevant cliche. Fucking pathetic. No wonder you're here crying about your life.

    3. Re:Crab Mentality = Downplay Others Suffering by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      suffering

      You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.

  10. Stress! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I find my job stressful because my work underpays me by at least 4 dollars an hour, offers zero benefits(2 weeks of vacation after 10 years), I am usually picking up everyone else's slack, and following a merger I went from being a sysadmin to being completely relegated to Desktop support - the new owners of my company are too paranoid to introduce the incoming techs to their systems.

    I've already got my exit planned. It's a matter of time and money. Unfortunately.

  11. babysitting the incompetent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I don't know about anybody else but I find it very stressful babysitting retarded H1Bs (oops, repeated myself there). I can do the work myself but the organization has decided that handing untold amounts of taxpayer dollars to "minority-owned" body shops is our priority over software that is correct and efficient.

  12. Responsibility doesn't match authority by AK+Marc · · Score: 2

    You have the responsibility to keep the email up 105% of the time. You have to use Office 365 in Azure on a single instance without failover, with authentication/DNS being done over a VPN done with the free tools in Azure and the 400 year old Firewall that came with the office building when they moved in.

    You don't have a budget to improve the VPN (which dies daily, causing user auth issues). You have no control over the AD environment which has 10% of the users in the wrong groups, causing mailing list and other problems. You don't have the authority to increase the Azure cost to deploy the service across multiple datacenters.

    But you have the responsibility to keep a 105% uptime.

    That's the source of the stress in my job. Being given sub-standard tools to do a job, then being required to use those tools, and no others.

    Usually the problem lays in inefficient middle management. They are so busy trying to make their bosses see how much they do with so little, they don't appreciate what those below them do to make it work.

    --
    Learn to love Alaska
    1. Re:Responsibility doesn't match authority by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      105%, huh? You sound like a whining fraud.

  13. Duh... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No comment needed see subject.

  14. Stressful is... by EzInKy · · Score: 1

    ...seeing a person go in to VFIB on the monitor and finding them pulseless when you go into their room. Stressful is knowing that if you do not perform your job right that person may very well not live. IT does not have even an inkling of what stressful is.

    --
    Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
    1. Re: Stressful is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      IT made sure that monitor worked in the first place, dip shit.

    2. Re:Stressful is... by kretara · · Score: 1

      As someone who worked as a provider in a Level 3/4 NICU and worked trauma at THE trauma center for an entire State, I have to disagree with you.

      In my experience, healthcare is spurts of (sometimes intense) stress followed by lots of busy with some not so busy thrown in. Very rarely are you under intense stress for your 8-12 hours shift (barring a weekend working the ER).

      I had far more downtime as a health care provider than as an IT professional.

      Much of that is down to management. Hospital Admins/Nurse Mgrs can try to do more with less, but physically a nurse can only do so much per shift, a respiratory therapist can only do so much per shift. A health care provider is NOT seen as a money sink.

      In many IT enterprise level positions and IT health positions, you are seen as a money liability to the company/hospital. Managers keep piling more and more on you until you have to work 10-12 hours per day to just keep up.

      I spent 5 years supporting EHR's (sunrise/epic) at a large, teaching hospital and I was one of the people responsible for keeping the system up 24x7x365. If I programmed a drug calculation wrong, multiple people could be harmed/die and the hospital was on the hook for millions in damages. If the new version of Citrix was flaky and was sending printouts from the EHR to random printers anywhere in the hospital, I was one of the people who had hospital administration breathing down their neck and reminding us that WE were the reason the hospital could have a HIPAA violation of a few million dollars. Meanwhile, the health care staff and admin would often be heard complaining that us IT people made decent money and only scheduled for 8 hour shifts and can't we make cuts in IT so we can hire more nurses?

      As a provider, I had responsibility for a few sick patients for a limited time (8-16 hours).

      As an IT person I have responsibility for every piece of equipment in the business/hospital, every piece of software the business/hospital uses and some that vendor use, every user, every customer (patient) and the security/reputation of the business/hospital. Management is also very quick to tell us that as we are salaried, our responsibility is 24x7x365 and nope, you won't get paid for any overtime you work (unlike more nurses and other health care staff).

      As a provider, I could go home after a shift and know that my relief was there taking care of my patients. In IT, I go home after work and know that there is no relief working on the issue, that I arrive in the morning management will be asking why the issue isn't fixed yet and a response of we are understaffed/overworked is not a valid excuse, that I am expected to fix the problem in a timely manner, still get my other assignments done on time/under budget and somehow be responsible for making sure that I am working on future problems before they are even identified.

      But, I no longer feel like I have to sit in a rocking chair, rocking a baby (if the parents are not there) as it takes its last breath, just so the baby can have some human contact before death.

    3. Re:Stressful is... by wyHunter · · Score: 1

      You said: >But, I no longer feel like I have to sit in a rocking chair, rocking a baby (if the >parents are not there) as it takes its last breath, just so the baby can have >some human contact before death You were a better healthcare provider than many I have known. Burnout hits a lot of them, they don't care, and become less than human. My hat is off to you.

  15. Life sucks, news at 11 by luis_a_espinal · · Score: 1

    A Quarter of IT Pros Find Their Job Very Stressful

    And what branch of work doesn't have a good share of stressed workers? 25%? I would find that a very low bar in stress given that 75% do not find it stressful.

    1. Re:Life sucks, news at 11 by malkavian · · Score: 1

      That would be 'extremely stressful', you know, burnout level stress, not your ordinary every day stressor that makes you work better and gives you that bit of get up and go.. This is more the 'lie down and weep' kind.

  16. /r/talesfromtechsupport/ by CrossCom · · Score: 1

    You just have to read https://www.reddit.com/r/tales... to know why this is true