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.

Comments

Ha!

[dragon-file]

"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.

Re:Ha!

[AAWood]

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

Re:Ha!

[gfxguy]

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.

Re:Ha!

[allcoolnameswheretak]

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.

Re:As a UK IT pro

[ma1wrbu5tr]

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.

Re:Stressful..

[Fire_Wraith]

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.

Re:As a UK IT pro

[Hognoxious]

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