The Dark Side of IT

richnut writes "Here's an interesting LA Times article on the negative side of being a well-paid techie in today's industry. " Talks about burnout, stress, boredom, restlessness, and all the other things that so many of us get used to before quitting and moving on. Been through that twice...

Comments

Make work more intersting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Install Linux. Show the secretary how to run RealAudio. Change the Internet Expolorer Icons to "Bill Sucks". Install Netscape on every machine. Teach the kid how to program Python. Setup an IRC channel at work. Put apache on the Win95 and show everybody how to make their own webpage. Learn Java. Write a cool utility to make everybody's life at work less oppressive. Rant on slashdot. Talk to the janitor. Show the liberal arts majors how to use lophtcrack. Send funny fakemail to everyone. Bitch about Microsoft. Talk about stocks/sports/girls with sales guys. Tell your boss your taking this sunny afternoon off. Ask the little red headed girl out. Sneak a beer into work and don't care if they fire you. Cheat on the drug test. Put an easter egg on the webpage. Visit spinner.com. Download a pirate m3 bootleg of yr fave band. Call your sister. Write your congresman. Go for a two mile walk instead of eating crap.

Re:This is exactly why I got an MS in CS

[Anonymous Coward]

A CS degree is NOT about employment skills precisely *because* the field moves so quickly. It's about the ability to process heaps of complicated logic.

Imagine knowledge as a hierarchy of categories and concepts. At first glance, you might say, why not only learn the bottom of the hierarchy, in other words, a disorganized mound of methods and ideas. It's sufficent, right?

I suppose it is. But it's much easier to operate on concepts and metaphors that will last a lifetime than on ideas on the bottom level that will quickly fall through the floor anyway.

Here's an illustration: you could spend hours and hours memorizing the areas of differently dimensioned right triangles. If you memorized enough of them to precision, you could be as talented as this computation as the guy who understands base x height / 2. But I think we all realize whose knowledge and understanding is more valuable.

Another important differce between computer scientists and technicians in general is that computer scientists are guaranteed to be capable of dealing with massive changes in their daily thinking. Many of them have to deal with as many as 15 languages through their years in college.

Companies don't ask for Computer Scientists because every company in the world is ignorant. That's the beauty of a fluid capitalist economy. The best idea tends to win. They ask for CS students because they tend to have extremely strong conceptual ability that goes beyond having memorized syntax or having entry level programming experience.

Re:This is exactly why I got an MS in CS

[Anonymous Coward]

The "real meat of a CS degree"? That is funny! I hear this from folks all the time, yet, those same folks tend to be the ones who talk but cannot do.
I do not question your skill or your acheivements, but a degree in CS has VERY little to do with skill these days. Everything moves too fast. Teach yourself or die. I don't argue that theory has its place, but in most schools a degree in CS is a good way to waste 4 years and spend lots of $$ drawing flow charts and state diagrams for useless code.

Did you ever notice how those that value the diploma more than all others generally are those who have no clue? (Usually ending up as managers because they are not capable of perfoming technically.) And, they are the ones that assume that everyone should waste their life away at work. I know plenty of folks that live for their meaningless job, and most have a degree. It is not weather you have a degree or not, it is what you will put up with that shapes your quality of life.

I am a college drop out, yet my life is great. I work about 40 hours a week as a network engineer/programmer, and spend most of my time with my wife and son. Yet, I am a highly skilled and respected employee. How did I pull it off? Priorities. Nobody seems to have them in ANY field these days. Those that are willing to put up with the garbage-life culture make things harder and harder on those who won't. So people jump from job to job, companies treat them like interchangeable cogs, life comes last and cash comes first, and in the end most people burn their life away without ever questioning what is hapening, or why the average quality of life today is so poor compared to that of only a few decades ago, or why kids are increasingly less human, or why they had everything and yet were never fulfilled. Religion is not what is missing, plain old value for human life is what is missing. People don't understand that life without quality is worse than death.

-Paul "Rant-O-Matic" Hirsch

Too much work, too little time for me

[gavinhall]

Posted by Mac Daniel:

Now that's an article I can relate to. Seven years in the same job: computer support and book design (the ratio has changed as the network grew). Year after year of 50 hour weeks has taken its toll. I no longer look forward to coming in to work.

So effective today, I'm scaling back to a 40 hour week. The other computer guys can handle things for the last couple hours of the day. If not, well, I'll show up in the morning. It's not like surgery, life-and-death.

For me, it's been burnout for about three months. I don't even play games on my home computer any more. I need time for myself, my wife, my kids, and my fun stuff (oddly enough, including my web site, which is techie in nature).

This article is a warning to all of us to keep things in perspective.

Dan Knight, Mac Advocate dknight@reformed.net
Low End Mac
the iMac channel

"In view of the fact that God limited the intelligence of man,
it seems unfair that He did not also limit his stupidity."
- Konrad Adenauer

Few comments...

[Masem]

The general trend of a younger workforce that
is not necessarily tied down to a spounce
or particular area is common in all the engineering and scientific fields (I know
that chemical engineers are looking at the
lack of family time due to extended hours;
however, this is being snipped in the bud as
it goes along here; IT still has it tough.

One possible suggestion: in this article,
it claims that e-commerce is 24/7, which I
don't argue with. However, most chemical
plants also run 24/7, and if something
fails, it's usually more than just money that
can be lost. So why is there a difference
between this and IT? Mainly, it's because
there are shifts, with 3 people that are
sufficiently familiar with the equipment
to monitor it and watch for problems, while
one or more people up the chain are well-skilled
in the plant design that can be called it
when things are beyond control. The
shift workers need to know various details,
but don't need to be able to design and debug
a plant as well.

The same concept can be used towards IT, I think.
You still need the webmaster/server/whatever
expert that can do all the design and such, but
his time should not be spent monitoring the
system from day-to-day. Instead, hiring
some proficient IT workers that can monitor
the status of the server, and know how to
restart the web server process or shut it
down, or various other details, and can then
contact the higher-up in case of a major problem.
Then, you'd just need to put the 3 workers on
a shift rotation. (Mind you, this scheme's not
perfect, but I think it might be something to consider).

I'm not feeling it..

[Defiler]

I won't specify how much I make, but it's a damn sight more than the 50k the article talks about. I left college in my Junior year of CS/Linguistics to become a contractor for the IT section of a state agency. It's an extremely weird feeling; I make as much as my parents, but I can't legally buy alcohol until August. I think that the problems listed in this article aren't symptoms of the industry itself as much as they are of those who work in it. The distinction might be minor, but I think living our your life as a network admin is not the only path in the IT field. Sure, that's where I started, but if you show some initiative you will be able to take on greater responsibility. Greater responsibility leads to a more rewarding job experience. I will admit that I have the advantage of working only 40 hours a week, and living 10 minutes away. I don't think that that's what makes me enjoy my job more than some nameless NT worker.

If you feel tired when you get home from work, maybe it's time to kick that caffeine habit.. Maybe it's time to stop smoking. If you're working 12 hours a day just to pull down $50k, it's time to look for another job. Next week, try fighting back the urge to crash when you get home.. Grab a good book.. try The Clock of the Long Now by Stewart Brand.. I just finished it, and it's a fun read. Hell.. Just read the comics page of your local newspaper, or even just turn off the PC for a while! Take up racquetball, make a sock puppet.. Take a break, and watch your outlook improve.

I hope I didn't come off sounding like a cheerleader. ;)

Re:try and get a non tech to understand the darksi

[Defiler]

Yeah, I agree.. I hate how all the bank teller chicks have started hitting on me now.. They didn't do more than smile before I started this job.. Money isn't everything, people.

This is exactly why I got an MS in CS

[timur]

Network administrators and web site maintainers really are the janitors of the computer industry. This article validates some beliefs I've had for a long time. You keep hearing about people who leave college early for $40K+ jobs, and this is exactly where they end up. I have no sympathy for them at all, because they thought they could make easy money by ignoring the real meat of a computer science degree.

My salary is also "up there", but I don't have to work these ungodly hours. I don't work on the weekends, I don't work late into the night. I have a beeper, but I only wear it when I go to lunch, and no one's every beeped me anyway. How did I manage this? I got a real education in computer science, and now I work as a BIOS programmer for Dell. I do real CS work - very few people can program in this environment, and the courses on microprocessor and microsystems design I took in grad school were valuable.

Oh sure, there are exceptions. One of my colleagues here never got his college degree, and he's at least as good as I am at this stuff.

--
Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address

Re:This is exactly why I got an MS in CS

[richnut]

There's a lot of "meat" working the "janitor" jobs as well. I worked at an ISP for 3 years and I'll tell you right now keeping that perpetually overtaxed system running and preparing for future expansion taught me a lot more about the "meat" of computer science than my instructors did. I found myself digging back up my old texts and reading the chapters my foolish instructors had never covered. Re-writing our broken systems allowed me to finally apply and hone the skills of programming way more than writing contrived problems did. OS design and implementation was suddenly something I *needed* to know, not something I needed to complete so I could move on.

My point is that you can advance your knowledge at one of these "janitorial" jobs too. But only if you're really in it because you enjoy it. A person driven only by a quick buck in a grad program will still come out of college an idiot.

-Rich

First comment? Why Open Source...

[Frank Sullivan]

Why is Open Source doing so well? Because software SHOULD be emotionally as well as financially rewarding. Programming can be a high art form, in the right environment. Writing free software is a chance to care about our code, not our paychecks.

do as is done unto you

[xeno]

Yeah, it seems like there's a lot of identification with this story, and I'm no different -- at least in terms of environmental stress. But how I react is, I think, a little different and a little more constructive.

I've been in the professional ranks for ~10 years, and just ended a four-year salaried stint at a big telecom monolith, back to consulting (hourly). The new place is the most politicised, disorganized, ugly environment I've seen since I left my short stint at MS, but I'm more positive and upbeat. Why? Because I'm in control of my situation.

I'm in control even when I should be powerless. I keep reminding myself that 10 years ago I was jobless and homeless, living in the back of my van in the woods near where my girlfriend was going to school. So, even if I'm fired, I quit, and every other support structure in my life falls to pieces, I have faith that I can get back on my feet.

With this bit of knowledge in my back pocket, I can walk into my place of work every day and say to myself "If they genuinely want the work done, I will do my best effort, consistently and creativly. If they want to fuck with me and use me, I'll roll with it and use it to my advantage -- consistently and creatively." Call it flexible ethics, but I will do unto others as they do unto me. At the previously mentioned telecom monolith, I put in three years of solid, dedicated, hard work. Then they started to jerk me around, promise promotions and then fail to deliver when the prerequisites were reached, yank my projects, and use me as a political pawn. I turned around and made a conscious effort to make my boss (and his boss) look *very* good. That made me valuable, which enabled me to request and receive training "to try harder for that promotion" (read: "to make me more valuable"). Every time they jerked me around, I smiled and used it to my advantage. When I walked out the door, they lost a significant resource, and I added another major digit to my yearly salary.

Why do I have no problem with this seemingly amoral behavior? Because I know that my soul belongs to me, not to any company. The adage is true -- what doesn't kill you makes you stronger as long as you are conscious of it. Noone can take knowledge, skills, dedication, achievement, or experience away from you. However, you can certainly surrender any of these, and you are often encouraged to do so. Some of the best companies try to instill a sense of teamwork or community without realizing that what they're really trying to do is convince individuals that they can only truly achieve in a company-sponsored group or community. Somehow you're supposed to believe that great things can be achieved by collective use of mediocre skills. (And of course, your skills are mediocre by definition, because they are not yet associated with the power of teamwork... feh.) It's bullshit, and most of them don't even know why.

The real power is in the strength, knowledge, and leadership of the individual. The structure of most IT and development organizations is designed to squash/coopt that. You have to resist it with all your might, or you will find yourself just as this article describes -- overworked, undercompensated, lonely, and stressed out. Maybe you can't change the reality of your job requirements, but you can change everything about yourself: Use every opportunity to educate yourself. Use every task as an opportunity to learn. Study and remember everything you can, even if it's just whatever is visible on the boss' rolodex today. Register for whatever classes your employer will pay for or you can afford (even if they have nothing to do with your job). Take a foreign language. Sign up for vocational tech classes (I am a decent cabinetmaker and blacksmith, among other things). Paint. Sing. Write kernel code. Help your coworkers; get them to think of you as a resource. Don't play paintball, hit a punching bag, let loose primal screams, drive fast on the way home, or take things out on your mate, even if it makes you feel better. These things are temporary at best, and you could use that time to develop something in yourself that is lasting.

Focus on the strength, and the worst you can do is make yourself happier and more self-confident.

Jon xeno@wolfenet.com

Not all technicians have it bad!

[dattaway]

Have a slight career change if work is hell...

I'm a senior electronic technician at a manufacturing plant and get to watch big machines make product at amazing speeds. My responsibility as the sole technician is just to keep the machines running at night and everyone is happy. As someone sig says, "work fascinates me. I could sit and watch it for hours." I work 3 or 4 nights a week in 12 hour shifts. People on the plant floor really appreciate someone who can keep a machine running so they can just sit back and press a button to feed the machines.

The best part about my job is that I'm on the hardware side. Electronics. I get to have fun with large equipment and powerful coordinated 400 horsepower motors. Computers just remain an enjoyable hobby.

If I had to do NT or some kind of technology I had no control and could not fix, I would be packing boxes and my resume would be hitting the printer.

Re:Telecommunications

[Frederic54]

A friend who's a couple of cubes over has accepted employment elsewhere. He's trying to convince me to jump ship, too. I'm giving it a lot of thought

do it! i almost cried when i read your email :-(...
we are not "numbers", we are free men! what you live is quite horrible i admit... no vacation, 60h/week until december 1999 i guess...
jump!
--

My experiences

[edgy]

Granted, I didn't have much of a job, but I had a pretty decent job as a temp, and I didn't have a college degree. I figured it was cool doing tech support for Windows 95, since I had figured out the ins and outs of it. And it was actually rather simple. There are quite a few tricks you can use to avoid re-installing Windows 95.

But the company I worked for (First Data) "right-sized" and laid me off. I was one of their best workers, and was just about to become permanent. Unfortunately, there was nothing my boss or his immediate higher ups could do. Or at least nothing they did do.

I was also pushing Linux to certain of the IT folks, and they were interested after seeing that Linux had a GUI and they could also use it for certain server tasks.

At any rate, I took getting laid off as a cue to go back to school, and I've learned a lot more about Linux since then and would much rather work with it or Open Source when I get out of school. At least with a college degree I can pick and choose from jobs I'll enjoy more. Besides, I'm finding computer science quite interesting. It's funny, I hated math until I realized that computers and math go together. Now I like math.

But anyway, anyone have any experiences where you got pissed of at the job market and decided to go back to school?

You know what got me the most? There were people with college degrees that knew less than I did and were incompetent. But they had the higher paying jobs without the glass ceiling. And _that_ is what bothered me the most.

I suppose I should have tried working for a more forward-thinking company. The company drug tests and from what I remember it reminds me of typical corporate drudgery. Maybe I would have done better in another job.

I figure school is a better bet anyway, since I will have plenty of time to work for the rest of my life. I should give myself a better base set of skills to build on and a better job to start with.

Granted, a degree doesn't make you brilliant, but it can give you a better salary and better benefits/conditions to start off with.

Ben

techies who hate their jobs...

[mazeone]

I have to wonder how many of the people who were surveyed got into computers in college because they were told it was such a lucrative field. My programming classes were full of these people, who knew nothing about computers and couldn't have given a crap about them, they just wanted the big bucks when they got out of school. Where I work now I'm surrounded by these people...so I got a new job at a place where the people seem interested in computers and what they're working on. It seems like the people who got into the tech industry because they liked computers already do fine, it's just the people who got into to make the big $$$ who get burntout. Or something.

Re:techies who hate their jobs...

[fable2112]

Sounds too familiar. Sounds like a lot of people I know, my boyfriend included (he declared a CS major originally for this exact reason).

The really scary ones are the ones whose lives are so focused on accumulating wealth that they justify it as "their favorite hobby that they happen to be getting paid for," let ALL other interests and human relationships dwindle (D&D? Sorry, got no time for that, have to go program ... coffee? Maybe if we can go at 3 AM when I'm done with my latest project), and then act as if they're the smartest and most wonderful people in the universe.

To be fair, I know tons of CS-folk who are nothing like this. Our local SCA group's fencing marshal, for one. But it hits too close to home for me both because of my father (which I posted about previously) and because of my boyfriend, who was well on his way to becoming one of the aforementioned arrogant antisocial cartoon-stereotype techies when what he wants to do and would do in a second if the money was there is run a bookstore.

"Well, I'll work insanely for ten years and then settle down and everything will be fine and I'll have enough." That's what he used to say, and it took a lot of persuasion on my part to convince him that those years don't come back.

(Not to mention, the only reason techies make as much money as they do NOW is because the older generation is scared of computers. Hell, I'm an end-user who only ever took one class in programming, useless Robbie the Robot-PASCAL, and my boss thinks I'm some kind of expert! He's not the first that I've worked for who thinks this, either. Once the computer-savvy become the majority of the workforce, this whole little speculative bubble is going to pop REAL fast. IMHO.)

Sorry. Got carried away. *steps off soapbox*

Re:It all depends on the company

[jshare]

The company I used to work for started out really good. I came in as a summer-intern. I worked there for 3 summers and winter breaks. Then I decided to leave school, and go to work full-time.

At first, it was basically the same job (end user support, which I really love. Yeah, they are dumb, but it's not their job to be smart about it. I just like helping people.) as when I was an intern. I had no real responsibility, other than to fix the problems that came up, roll out new machines, and some basic administration stuff. I didn't "own" any projects.

I also was given a pretty good raise when that time rolled around (not much really, but good compared to the others).

Then, the upper management changed. They basically became very focused on tracking every minute of our time. I resented this.

I'm pretty smart (if I do say so myself), and I was good at my job. You would have been hard pressed to find a user who didn't have something nice to say about me. Definitely in comparison to other people there. So, when they started expecting me to work at full-tilt for the same pay (basically getting more work from me for free), I got a little pissed. I could easily do as much work in 4 hours as most of the others did in 8. Also, new hires, (who were less skilled/experienced than me) were coming on at my salary. So, the raise that I got ended up really just being a cost-of-living type increase.

Then they started requiring that we carry our Nextel phones at all times. 24-7. We didn't get paid for this, but we had to be available at all times. Not to mention the actual "on-call" pager that we passed around 1 week at a time.

Anyway, I realized they were treating all of us as components in a machine. Basically they put a lot of checks in place so they could see how much time the "components" were working. I can see this being an effective management strategy. You could definitely min-max your salary-paid for work-done. But it doesn't account for varying people's skills, and it doesn't treat people as people.

So, I left. If they replaced me, they probably got someone who wasn't as good, who they are probably paying the same salary. Their loss.

In a way, it was kind of good that it turned to shit, because I didn't feel bad about leaving (since they gave me a job w/o a college degree, and the summer job).

(Rant mode off)

Jordan

Slashdot IS busted!

[Signal 11]

Ya, there's alot of articles showing up blank. I think rob killed mysql. :( I fwd'd him a copy of the broken pages I could find. Bear with him - I'm sure he's under siege!

--

I don't work on weekends...

[DMC]

I don't know about programmers since I'm a system/network admin, but my systems don't break. I set them up and let them go. If you are constantly fixing your network, then you are doing something terribly wrong. Working on the weekend is a rarity that I reserve for major upgrades and downtimes.

The only time I worked long weeks was at my last job. When I got there, the network didn't stay up for more than a day at a time. After beating on it and getting new equipment, it would hum along until our crappy power flaked. Shoestring budget didn't have room for good UPSes. :)

My point is that in the system/network admin field there is a shortage of people with clue. Therefore, people lacking in clue get put in charge of networks, and break them. If your network breaks because you are using a hardware/software combo that sucks, then change. If management doesn't want to change, then quit and get another job. Don't complain that you work too hard. Do something about it, and quit whining to me that your job sucks and you work too hard. The jobs are out there, and if people start leaving due to lack of response from management, chances are they'll start listening. It's hard to find good people.

Damon - quit complaining and so something about it.

Other Professions... (and 2nd careers)

[trims]

So HiTech catches up with other professions. Alot of the nasty problems people seem to be encountering in hitech are the same for other "glamorous" and attractive professions: lawyering, doctors, investment bankers. Many professions these days are long hours, incredible stress, and low status. The upside of course is the pay.

Unfortunately, people outside the profession in question seldom take the time to consider all the angles before choosing to go into it, and then, WHOA! Big surprise! It's not all gravy! Part of the problem with hi-tech is that it's not old enough to have gotten the slow messsage out (as have lawyers and doctors and other high wage/high stress jobs) that there are downsides to things.

I still don't see this as necessarily bad. I'm 28, been in the business since 22, and plan to bail out before I'm 40. I suspect alot of folks are in the same situation - they'll put up with the downside to make the cash while they're young, then move on to another field which caters to their more "personal" needs later in life. Hell, my earning potential for the 15 or so years I'll be in IT should average out to be at least $100k/year - if I save correctly (or pehaps pay for the big ticket items (can we say house?)) while I'm doing IT, well, then, I can move into a $40k/year jobs that I enjoy (and has much less stress) afterwards and not have to worry about financing.

It's a possible change in the "work-lifecycle" - it used to be:

1. Start at entry-level, low-paying job
2. Slowly move up food chain, maximizing your earnings at 45-55 or so
3. Retire at 60ish to live on your IRA.

Perhaps now, we get:

1. Start at high-paying job
2. maximize earnings at 30-40
3. Switch careers and work at a much lower pace for 40-60
4. Retire

   I for one are more than willing to put up with 15 years of doing a job I like, but that is severely stressful. I figure that about 40 I should have all the cash I want, my kids will be 5-7 or so, and I can be a park ranger (or whatever) and not worry about finances, and still have time for my kids. Fine By Me. You just need to have all the facts going into the equation.

   IT - it's not for wimps. :-)

   -Erik

   (Oh, I'm a SysAdmin/MIS type)

College is great!

[198348726583297634]

Yeah, when I got out of high school I was farmed into a growing isp's HTMl department (yuck), and when I learned perl, they set me on that too (had self-taught C knowledge).. got burned out on that, quit, and found another perl job. I love the language and write all my own web hacks in it, but writing code for several hours straight just isn't fun.

So I went back to school and am on the proper track never to _have_ to write code again. Of course I will continue to write code, because it's so fun. But I won't have to.

My hobby as my job...

[zealot]

I am currently enrolled at the University of Illinois, going for a BA in computer engineering. When applying for college, I found it very hard to choose what I wanted to do... and I finally decided that I would be most interested in either psychology or computers. I finally chose computers because I had always been interested in them, and spent a good deal of my free time in high school fooling around with my pc.

I love my course material, and find it all very interesting, but one of the hardest things to deal with is that my hobby will become my job. It sounds like a dream come true at first... doing what you love every day and getting paid. But after meeting many fellow students here and going on a co-op last fall, I've become very frustrated because so many in the industry don't have any passion. I work on computers, and I love it. But so many work on them because they did well in math in science in high school and knew it would be a hot job market. They're just in it for the money, and don't hold any real interest in computers.

To quote JWZ, "You can divide our industry into two kinds of people: those who want to go work for a company and make it successful, and those who want to go work for a successful company." I'm definitely in the former group, and I wish more people in the industry were. It's hard to work on something when other's don't have the same passion.
-------------------------------------------

Some of my experiences...

[grappler]

You know what my favorite windows trick is (short of trashing it of course)? I tell this to anybody that isn't literate enough to point toward linux. When you install it, you can pretty much count on having to reinstall it later, so just make at least 2 partitions on the hard disk. Install the OS on one of them. On the other, make directories like "downloads", "installations", "programs", "documents" etc. The programs that don't install by spreading themselves all over the place go on the second partition. The ones that do get the actual installation file in the "installs" directory so they can be easily be put back on. That way, when windows is to the point where the only thing to do is wipe 'er clean (and it will get there) reinstalling becomes a 3 hour job, tops. Plus, if you use tape backup, just backup the second partition.

My experience with the low end of the corporate world began with the (idiotic) idea of getting a job at the local radio shack. I easily passed their stupid test of tech proficiency (better than anyone else at the store could I suspect) but then I had to go to the local office and watch a long video that made the point again and again and again thta this was, in fact, an equal opportunity employer. Then I met my boss-to-be. He was a short, round little guy with a sallow complexion and beady eyes that gave the impression that all his spirit, pride in his work, sense of humor, and interest in life had been beaten out of him long ago. Then I had to fill out a huge (HUGE- it took over an hour and a half) packet with questions about drugs and stealing from your employer and crap like that. I felt insulted.

Anyhow, I was supposed to meet him one more time before it would be decided whether I would get the job. I decided then to screw it and go somewhere else. I'm glad I did. It would have been hell.

I still go in there sometimes when I'm passing by (It's inside the local mall) and pepper them with questions that they couldn't possibly know the answer to. Don't ask me why, I just feel like it. Their stuff is too overpriced anyway.

Wow! Thanks!

[Anonymous Shepherd]

That's the best advice I've had yet.
I'll give it a try; I'll keep you posted on how it goes!

Hm, if I happen to kill myself when I'm happy, then everything will be perfect. Why don't more people do this?

Thanks!


-AS

Good Advice...

[Anonymous Shepherd]

Everyone has had some excellent advice...

My dad says its a fine balance between enjoying your life and saving it; on one hand killing yourself for $75,000 a year and saving all of it is worthless compared to a more leisurely life on only $50,000 a year.

Money exists only to be spent. He's told me to sink everything I can into 401k, stock options, etc., to also not to fear spending, especially when I'm young. Of course, he's view is that I will essentially be working for the rest of my life, since there isn't a real value to quitting/retiring if you enjoy what you do.

Thanks again

-AS

I fear burnout...

[Anonymous Shepherd]

Graduating this year, and I see all this talk from friends and /. about burn out...

I approach the work force with trepidation; any hints, suggestions?

Follow passion over paycheck? That's my initial reaction at least.


-AS

Re:I fear burnout...

[remande]

The nice thing is that you will often make more money doing something you have a passion for than going into a more lucrative field without the passion.

I will go so far as to say that passion trumps competence as a factor in how well you will do in a position. If you can't program well, but passionately love to code, you will try to learn. You will either succeed and become competent (likely more than competent), or lose the thrill and go to something else.

Somebody with true passion has a real shot of getting into that top percentile in their field. And the top percent of professionals in a low-paying field is often paid better than a median professional in a high-paying field. Without passion, you will be close to median.

In short, the best carpenters out there make more money than the average programmers. If palm sanders and rotary saws float your boat more than TCP stacks and bogoMips, drop the mouse and pick up the hammer.

I don't get it...

[Cyberfox]

Greetings,

It doesn't make sense to me... The only times I burn out at companies are when the companies themselves are screwed up, and can't provide me with interesting work to do for the 60-80hrs/week I *LIKE* to spend there.

I program at home, I program at work, hell I write code on napkins, notebooks, and book-margins while sitting at a restaurant eating dinner.

The absolute best companies I've worked for were ones where I spent 80+ hrs/week for months on end doing amazingly cool development.

Burnout is only a factor for programmers if you work for a company that can't keep your mind occupied.

I can't STAND most large companies, as they're always ass-backward, and the developers are parceled out little tiny tasks to complete, and then micromanaged all to hell for those parcels. In small companies, you do EVERYTHING.

My first job out of college (10 years ago, dropped out to take a $35K/year job (I make well more than 2x that now) on the other coast), I developed two commercial products from scratch, convinced the company to set up an internal network, specced and hand-built the network (including running cable), did technical support, did sales, reverse-engineered software, and wrote probably a thousand small tools to automate tasks. I *LOVED* it there, and I only burned out when they got big and corporate, and wanted me to only do a single task or so.

Boredom kills.

If you have a passion for what you do, find a company that needs someone who has a passion for it. Not a company that just needs another body to clock in and out. You won't burn out until the company does.

Cyberfox!

It's all about priorities

[bobdehnhardt]

I've been doing sysadmin-type work for almost 20 years now, and I've nearly burned out a couple times (like when I was the only PC support tech for 240 users). But I have very clear priorities in my life, and I made them clear to my bosses when I was hired. I put my family first, then God, then country (okay, I'm a patriot, so sue me), and then career. I would be flexible, working weekends and evenings when it didn't conflict with other plans, but I would not sacrifice my Life for my Job.

Sure, it's caused problems sometimes. I had one boss that constantly rode me because I wouldn't stay late - I had to leave in time to pick up my kids from daycare. I eventually left that job for one closer to home. I probably have missed out on some promotions and raises along the way because I wasn't putting in the extra hours.

But, it's all worked out just fine. I'm currently employed at a company that is thrilled with the amount and quality of work I've been doing. They are paying me well, providing me with excellent career opportunities, and giving me interesting and challenging projects to work on. And they totally agree with and support my priorities in life.

As an example: My Dad was going in for some minor surgery, and I had wanted to be with Mom during the procedure. As I was getting ready to leave, we had a major server crash. I pitched in to provide some services on other servers while we ressurrected the original system. My boss noticed I was still there, stopped me from what I was doing, and said "We can handle this. Get out of here." Now at the time, her staff was a contractor that had been on-site for about a week, and a junior admin that had been hired two days earlier. It took them twice as long to get things back up and running without me. But she respected my priorities, as did her boss (the V.P. of I.S., who was in the server room when she kicked me out).

The Times article is true in many cases. But it doesn't have to be. It's all about establishing your priorities, amking them clear to your employer, and accepting that there may be consequences.

I wish I could quit and travel, too.

[cpeterso]

I've worked at two "great jobs" at growing software companies, but I'm still unhappy. As it happens, there is more to life than computers and work. I just need to find it. I have a fantasy about quiting my job and traveling abroad for many months. It takes courage to leave one's complacent "safey nest". There is so much more out there in the Real World..

restlessness?

[aphrael]

I'm interested every time I see an article claiming that restlessness is particular to the tech industry; it implies that there are people out there who aren't restless ... an idea which to me is incomprehensible.

Restlessness is simply a fact of life. I'm relatively lucky; I have a strong emotional commitment to the product I work on, and I check in while on vacation not because I'm required to, but because I _care_ ... but there is still always a restlessness in the background, a thought that there must be more to life than this. I quit my job and travelled for six months, and that luzlled the restlessness into a sort of quiescence, but it's still there, lingering, building pressure, waiting to come out and reassert itself in the future.

Is this because I'm a tech industry worker? Am I a tech industry worker because of this restlessness? Or is there something about life in our culture, the modern consumer culture, which encourages restlessness and angst?

What is important in life? What truly leads to happiness? My parents didn't know; I've never learned it in school and my friends and colleagues don't know ... and i live in a fast-paced world where the entire universe can literally change overnight, where I feel like I am always responding to events not driving them, even when I'm making the decisions. When do I have time to sit back and learn the things i've never learned?

I love my job. I love my friends. I live in a city that seems like paradise whenever I describe it while I'm travelling. I'm more or less content. But I'm not happy, and the worst of it is, I don't know why.

Burning Out? Work Hourly.

[davewill]

I was in that rat race, 70 hour weeks for months on end. I finally quit and went to work for a local temp agency. I now get to change work environments regularly, and make more than I did as a salaried employee. I only work overtime when it is truly important because the client isn't getting the time "free". Over the last two years I've only been out of an engagement for three days. Some company may someday make that proverbial "offer I can't refuse", but for the forseeable future I'm much happier this way. I spend more time with my kids and my wife, and am much less stressed. PHBs don't bother me because I feel free to speak my mind and if they don't listen they either end up paying me or someone else to fix it later.

Surprise?

[Vlad Drac]

Is it really? I have been hearing about this sort of thing for quite some time.
I think that the key is knowing what you want and not settling for less.

Yes, sometimes it's not easy, but getting what you want rarely is. :-)

As well, perhaps the better portion of these techies who get bored aren't in it for love, just *money*. Seems to me the people who really have passion rarely get involved w/ something that just 'pays the bills' (or makes 'em loads of green!!) :-)

It's a balancing act

[faster]

I've been playing with computers for money since 1977. I've never had a job longer than 3.5 years, and I actually had three fairly different jobs at that company. Usually I quit because I got burned out, not because I had a better offer. I always ended up making more money at the next job, though.

My dad worked at Rockwell for over twenty years. My father-in-law worked for TWA for 38 years. I just can't imagine that. I need the challenge of learning something completely new every couple years. And being around different people has helped me to see more ways of thinking about problems and their solutions.

I've been stressed in good ways and bad. I've learned how to detect BS without hardly listening. I've developed a cynical but very accurate way of rating executives, and predicting the success or failure of their pet projects. That's stressful because while I'm not underpaid, they are pulling down 2x-3x what I make, and often producing nothing but poor morale and economic losses.

But the other side of it all is that I have enough money to travel, to live in a nice house, to drive a fun car, to spend time with my friends and family. I can even make time to go to the gym once in a while.

The people who really burn out are the ones who can't find enough balance in their lives. Even the deepest wirehead needs to be social in a real-time 3D tactile environment sometimes (i.e. the real world, with real people). The ones who don't acknowledge that and MAKE TIME for it are the ones who have daydreams about moving to a teepee in northern Idaho.

restlessness ofcourse.. what job doesn't do that.

[cybrthng]

To start things off, i dropped out of highschool during my senior year. wasn't doing good, was into other things and didn't fit in. I felt restlessness in high school because i wasn't doing what i wanted to do..

I had many tech support jobs, i felt restlessness because, it too was simply not what i wanted to do.

I've had many sysadmin/tech positions, hell i was the sr sysadmin for IDT for a while, but i quit that job. Cause of restelessness and stress. I worked lots of hours, the drive to New Jersey sucked, and they were completely and totally understaffed. Which, cause me health problems, stress, and ofcourse restlessness..

I'm back in small company, with great people, doing the same thing i have done for the past 8 years, making full beni's and a nice 60k a year
salary.

best part, no restlessness.. ofcourse i get mad hours, i'm the admin of the network. its my baby, and my responsibility. but i think the whole stress factor and restlessness issue is management, money, and people... money has *ALWAYS* been a problem, working for small isps, you don't always get your paycheck on Payday, doing contract work, they often dispute one thing or another, working for small startups (99% of the internet is small startups or was within the last 10 years) they often don't have the capital, the time, nor the people.

so my point is, make yourself happy, choose a nice place to work. and don't jump into anything. If you don't know how to install solaris, Don't put that on your resume, because the second your told to install solaris, your SOL! that goes for anything, if you don't know BGP4, don't add it.. make your life easier before you make your bosses life easier and set your limits..

I've learned through some hospital bills, several jobs and years of experience what i can and can't do, and i think that governing yourself is the major factor in the amount of stress you create for yourself..

geez

[felix rayman]

what a bunch of whiners.........

I can't believe this crap, all these people whining about how their jobs suck but for some ridiculous reason or another they just can't leave,
you all remind me of the people in the factory where I worked paying my way through the first few years of college until I could start getting programming jobs.

You whine and whine and whine and do nothing else and then get up in the morning and go to the jobs you hate, what a bunch of whipped puppies.

It's all real simple. I don't know why I'm even telling you because it's probably too simple for you supposed geniuses to understand.

If you hate your job here's what you do:
you take a walk out the door.
It's easy.
Just walk away.

Same thing goes for everything else, your career, your family, your religion, your country, could be anything, doesn't matter, if it doesn't work, and you can't fix it, throw it against the wall, cuss at it, toss it in the trash and walk away.
If you have the right job, you don't care, you just want more work. You don't care that you have no friends, that your girlfriend left you, that you're destroying your wrists, that you don't even feel like a human anymore, you don't care about that, you want more code to write. If you've never had a job like that, I pity you.

If you don't love your job, walk away. Life's too short. Throw old things away.

Re: Why Open Source...

[krog]

a wonderful thing is that boring jobs and free software go very well together. when there's nothing else to do, free software projects give the chance for intellectual stimulation (while getting paid and looking like you're doing something job-pertinent).

It all depends on the company

[JatTDB]

I used to work at a technical support call center sweatshop, working long and odd hours with pay that paid the bills but not much else. Employees were treated like doggie doo on the bottom of the boss' shoe. Management was flaky, bad techs were seldom punished for making the rest of our jobs harder, and repeated promises of raises and benefits took forever to be implemented, if they ever did. I worked there for approximately 3 years, mostly because I felt tied to the place since I helped get it off the ground (I was the first employee). I went through several "burnout" periods at that place. I also didn't think there was much better out there, as the previous jobs I'd had were often similar.

Back in June of last year, I finally got tired of it and quit the hellhole. Before too long, I was hired by the company I work for now. Wonderful benefits package, great pay, intelligent and hard working coworkers, etc. Also, burnout doesn't seem to be nearly as much of a threat with what I do now. Sure, fixing user problems gets mundane now and then, but it's sprinkled with a nice mix of server administration, network planning and implementation, a little programming now and then, and other things that I genuinely like to do. For the first time in my life, I can see myself being with the same company for a long, long time to come. And it feels good.

Burnout! HA!

[New Breeze]

After 18 years at this, I've figured out that it has nothing to do with where you work, but everything to do with the attitude you bring to work. I used to put in 100+ hour weeks, saving the company. I got burned out and left several companies, and you know what, the companies somehow survived! ;-)

Now I don't carry a pager, work 9-5 M-F and make 3 times what I did when I was killing myself. I speak up when schedules are unreasonable or when designs and specifications are flawed. As a result, I meet deadlines with well designed products, rather than some of the 'night before the ship date' builds I used to send out.

Lots of techies seem to have problems dealing with management, but do little to improve the situation. The suits don't want to lose their staff, or be known as the manager of a failed project, so unless they are complete idiots, I've found most will listen to reason. It's up to us to speak up though!

Re:Oh,

[remande]

There are enough guru jobs out there. But, like Yoda, those who can best swing a debugger don't anymore, except in extreme circumstances. The best find that their talents can be best used to leverage others, by training, leading, or assisting them.

Management is not the Dark Side. PHB is the Dark Side. If you find yourself being pulled in that direction, follow the path of the CTO, and never forget where you came from. Actually grokking the biz, and grokking the people within the biz, can simply not be learned within an MBA program. Such talent is worth that of ten programmers, plus two.

One nervous breakdown is enough

[thistle]

I had my first complete breakdown at age 22 while programming for Mindscape/Software Toolworks. It taught me that nothing in life is worth that kind of misery. I have no fear of demanding a work place that I can stay sane in because getting fired is nothing compared to letting your life be destroyed. Today I am 28 and I skateboard an hour a day and kickbox three times a week. I am healthy and modestly happy and would rather go to jail than be that miserable again. NOTHING is worth it. Not love, money, success, or pride. Use all your efforts to discover what makes you happy and make sure you do that thing. Oh yah, and give up caffeine. I was up to four pots a day when the end came.

Heehee!

Telecommunications

[rjh]

I work for one of the Big Three telcos (AT&T, MCI-WorldCom, or Sprint -- won't say which, for reasons which I hope are obvious). I'm currently doing QA work on mainframes, analyzing and approving software written in COBOL and JCL designed to run under TSO.

Nevermind the fact that my background is in UNIX, C/C++, Java, networking and security. This is where the corporation "needs me", so here is where I am.

On the next floor there are eight openings for C developers in an AIX environment. I applied for a transfer, only to have the project lead up there tell me that although he had openings, he had no budget with which to pay me. There goes that opportunity to escape from the hell of IBM Big Iron.

When I first started here, the work week was 37.5 hours. The policy was that "we work hard all week, so everyone gets Friday afternoon off." On top of that, there was a liberal flextime policy. I accepted a $38,000/yr job here over some mid-$40K jobs elsewhere due to the great corporate policies and benefits.

After six months, policies changed.

It's now become a 48-hour-a-week-minimum shop. We've been told that, due to the upcoming Y2K bug, that no vacations will be approved for the rest of the year. (And what if, like me, you were planning on using your vacation for your honeymoon? Forget it. You get married, you show up at work the next day or else your job won't be here when you get back. And if you don't use up your vacation by the end of the year? Sorry -- no carryover.)

There's increasing pressure on us to put in more and more hours. 60-hour weeks are now standard in my division. We've been told that come the end of June it'll revert back to a 40-hour week; we don't know whether or not it's true. I imagine it's not.

We're losing people due to the awful work conditions. A friend who's a couple of cubes over has accepted employment elsewhere. He's trying to convince me to jump ship, too. I'm giving it a lot of thought.

After all, layoffs are on the horizon, too.

60-hour weeks, no vacations, reduced benefits, and the threat of impending layoffs just do wonders for employee morale.

I've done it, you can too

[anticypher]

The hard part is getting your life neat and tidy so you can disappear for 6 months and when you return its not all in shambles.

It took more than 2 years from when I first really started dreaming about travelling until I was on a plane. I had to make sure all my debts were paid off, like my student loans, and I got rid of all my credit cards except one, and it was tied into an automatic debit scheme with my savings account.

At some point, you realize that you have almost no ties the real world except you are still earning a salary and paying rent. That is when you can escape and go travelling. If you can put your stuff in a pre-paid storage place or with your parents, then you will have no bills coming in until you come back and settle down.

Then you are free. The first time I went travelling, I started with a plan which got tossed within the first week. Suddenly I could take a job for a few weeks in a nice seaside town, and just take it easy. Or I just hitched rides in whatever direction seemed interesting. I got back after six months, and work life was never the same since.

A few years ago I burned out a second time, and for two years I travelled around the world, working all kinds of small jobs, living off my savings. Does it sound good? It is!

So make a plan, pick a date, and work hard towards that one goal.

the AntiCypher