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

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.

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  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 AAWood · · Score: 3, Informative

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

    3. 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.

    4. 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.
    5. 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.

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

      Those are 'metric' hours....

      --
      No brain, no pain.
    7. 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.

    8. 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.
  2. 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!
  3. Re:31 hour average across all industries? by lactose99 · · Score: 2

    Sounds rather enlightened to me

    --
    Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
  4. 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 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.

    2. 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.
    3. 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.

    4. 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
    5. 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
  5. 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.

  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 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."
  9. 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.

  10. 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.

  11. 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.