I've met very very few IT workers who are happy with their jobs • Hacker News Board

Re: I've met very very few IT workers who are happy with their jobs

#51

Post by reduxredacted » Fri, Jun 26, 2009, 2:35 AM UTC

jerryji wrote: post #47

menloparkbum wrote: post #20

I used to read the Joel On Software forums. The awful life of an IT drone was a common theme, it would show up about twice a week. The sad thing is that I recognize some of the posters' names and it's the same people who were posting the same complaints 6 years ago. If you're still complaining about your career after six years, the problem is you, not your job. I would rather not draw that crowd over here, or have th…

I voted you up. But I don't fully agree with you. Maybe you didn't mean it but your tone sounds a bit too condescending to me -- like some Wall street rich guy saying if you were poor and still are poor, then it's your own problem, just get out of my sight -- not everybody has a dream job at a dream work place, in fact, I would argue most don't, regardless of industry. Should we care why many IT workers are not happy…

Jerriji, I felt like I had to reply to this because I don't think your wrong, and in light of my last reply I think I may have come off the same way.

"If you were poor and still are poor, then it's your own problem, just get out of my sight"

I didn't take that away from the topic at hand. People unhappy in their IT jobs are employed and not poor in the Western world. So the unhappiness comes from something else. I've seen very well paid developers just fall off a cliff and suddenly hate their job.

I don't understand the reasons, but I don't doubt that they are all that different from the reasons the rest of the working world faces. Sometimes it's time to change careers. As human beings, change is feared (or family obligations come into play that make accepting risk less desirable than doing a job you hate).

I feel compassion for those individuals, but in as much as I have to work with them, my compassion is driven to finding ways to identify "great things" about the job they hate.

Negative attitudes are poison and there seems to be a lot of that in IT. I can't tell you how many meetings I attend where the various stakeholders in our organization are at eachothers throats and my boss or me are called in to mediate. It's not an exercise of mediation, it's an exercise of breaking a cycle of frustration, taking the emotion out of it and focusing on the problem as the thing that gets the brunt of the righteous anger (it's amazing what happens when you take three pissed off people and focus their anger at the problem rather than at one another).

Sometimes we're in departments that are only noticed when "nothing is broken" and are hammered on when some extraordinary circumstance causes something to fail. We resent the fact that the people doing the yelling don't understand how unpreventable that circumstance was. It's a tough roll to sit in and tolerate and breeds contempt.

But focusing on that element of the job IS poisonous.

Re: I've met very very few IT workers who are happy with their jobs

#52

Post by menloparkbum » Fri, Jun 26, 2009, 2:36 AM UTC

jerryji wrote: post #47

menloparkbum wrote: post #20

I used to read the Joel On Software forums. The awful life of an IT drone was a common theme, it would show up about twice a week. The sad thing is that I recognize some of the posters' names and it's the same people who were posting the same complaints 6 years ago. If you're still complaining about your career after six years, the problem is you, not your job. I would rather not draw that crowd over here, or have th…

I voted you up. But I don't fully agree with you. Maybe you didn't mean it but your tone sounds a bit too condescending to me -- like some Wall street rich guy saying if you were poor and still are poor, then it's your own problem, just get out of my sight -- not everybody has a dream job at a dream work place, in fact, I would argue most don't, regardless of industry. Should we care why many IT workers are not happy…

My comments are specific to the Joel on Software forums.

IT can be a crappy job and complaining from time to time is a good way to blow off steam. But consistently venting about the exact same thing for 6 years is pathological. It also set a pretty lame tone at the JoS forums. Certain people would show up in nearly every thread about anything to snipe it down and remind everyone that life sucks and then you die, that's just the way it is kiddo, you picked the wrong job and there ain't nothin' you can do about it now. We just don't get any respect! It was like a Rodney Dangerfield sketch on repeat, except it wasn't supposed to be funny.

One of my theories is that in addition to providing an alternative to sites like ExpertsExchange, Joel Spolsky joined up with Jeff Atwood to start Stack Overflow partially because his own forums got spoiled by a bunch of bad apples who wouldn't leave.

Re: I've met very very few IT workers who are happy with their jobs

#53

Post by reduxredacted » Fri, Jun 26, 2009, 2:47 AM UTC

biotech wrote: post #17

I can't seem to link to an individual comment, so I'm just going to repost it here. It's by Katie Lucas. Begin Quote: The problem with IT, generally, is lack of respect. Because it's something that looks easy and looks like something anyone could do, people don't respect experience and talent. For some reason this just doesn't work in other fields. While everyone feels they can put a sticking plaster on a cut, they g…

"Whereas, it's quite common in IT for micromanagers to overrule the professionals."

I completely agree with that statement.

IT is a discipline of intellect. Managers are successful when they understand the strengths of those they manage and allow them to take ownership of the things they are responsible for. Men (and women) of reason, don't thrive in an environment of button pushing and lever pulling.

Micromanagers destroy innovative thinking and ultimately destroy themselves by pushing their staff into a cycle of mediocrity.

"Most IT projects are a failure in one way or another"

Managers and companies who understand this won't miss out on the handful of breakthrough innovations that transform their business as a result of a brilliant mind rethinking the way business is being done.

Re: I've met very very few IT workers who are happy with their jobs

#54

Post by pie » Fri, Jun 26, 2009, 3:01 AM UTC

menloparkbum wrote: post #20

I used to read the Joel On Software forums. The awful life of an IT drone was a common theme, it would show up about twice a week. The sad thing is that I recognize some of the posters' names and it's the same people who were posting the same complaints 6 years ago. If you're still complaining about your career after six years, the problem is you, not your job. I would rather not draw that crowd over here, or have th…

Yes! All types jobs have problems and unhappy employees and generalized complaints of dissatisfaction.

Consider the other, personally motivated side of this "IT dissatisfaction" scenario: specifically, that the type of people who work in IT fields are often fairly passive and sometimes choose not to stand up for themselves when they really wish they had.

Someone with this type of demeanor might tend to find themselves settling for the wrong job, as well as staying in a job that turns out not to be so great somewhere down the road.

Could it be?

I have experienced this personally and have seen others go through similar scenarios. Not quite Milton in "Office Space," but some have come close.

Re: I've met very very few IT workers who are happy with their jobs

#55

Post by kragen » Fri, Jun 26, 2009, 7:14 AM UTC

Brushfire wrote: post #23

patio11 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think small businesses get about the sweetest retirement packages in the United States which do not involve backstopping by the taxpayers of California. With the SEP plan (one of a few options) you can sock up to, essentially, $5k + 25% of salary (capped at a very generous number) in a tax advantaged retirement account. It is like the IRAs available to regular wage employees, except superior in just about every way…

I might be wrong, but Ive always though $1 in my business is worth a lot more than $1 in any sort of retirement account I wont need for 40 years. Business-exit is my retirement fund.

Maybe diversify a bit, just in case?

Re: I've met very very few IT workers who are happy with their jobs

#56

Post by kragen » Fri, Jun 26, 2009, 7:21 AM UTC

blhack wrote: post #14

I'll admit that I am very unhappy with my current job. Part of this is whining, I know, but just hear me out. One major, major, major problem with my job is that I work for a small company, and am the only person here that knows tech at all. This was really great for me at the beginning. I am very proficient in BSD and Linux, so everything (mailserver, file server, FTPs, VPN, firewall, etc.) was built on one the two.…

One person I know who had this problem solved it by changing his hours to be 4 AM to noon. This gave him four hours before anyone else came in to prevent future problems, then four more hours to handle current problems. It worked well for a number of years, but eventually he ended up leaving for the West Coast.

Re: I've met very very few IT workers who are happy with their jobs

#57

Post by kragen » Fri, Jun 26, 2009, 7:25 AM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #15

roc wrote: post #8

It's a living-to-work vs working-to-live question, really. As it turns out, far more people choose to compartmentalize their work-life into an annoying, necessary evil than to dial back their standard of living while dramatically increasing their work responsibilities. And this is true of more than just programmers. I've heard similar from accountants, lawyers, cooks, bank reps -- basically everyone I've ever worked…

I think small businesses get about the sweetest retirement packages in the United States which do not involve backstopping by the taxpayers of California. With the SEP plan (one of a few options) you can sock up to, essentially, $5k + 25% of salary (capped at a very generous number) in a tax advantaged retirement account. It is like the IRAs available to regular wage employees, except superior in just about every way…

That's an after-tax $1, before-tax $1.25? If so, that's assuming about a 7% risk-free return over 40 years, and that isn't very likely, at least if we're talking about inflation-adjusted dollars. (And we should be.)

If you assume a more reasonable 3%, you get 9.8¢ per year in perpetuity from your after-tax $1 invested 40 years earlier.

Re: I've met very very few IT workers who are happy with their jobs

#58

Post by radu_floricica » Fri, Jun 26, 2009, 7:53 AM UTC

I'm a freelancer, and I have 2-3 long time clients. For several reasons this year I haven't looked for new ones, so work is not much.

A couple of months ago I did something between risky and impolite. I started insisting, as hard as I could, that they only used phone/ymess for emergencies. Normal communication like feature requests of bug reports should be either by mail, a bug-reporting app or monthly face to face meetings.

It was ugly, to say the least, and at one point I thought I would have to choose between the policy and one client, but it worked out in the end. It helped that I was always very prompt with the owners of the businesses, but they had little time to call me anyways.

Anyways, why did that do my job better? For one thing, I am much less stressed. I barely get one phone call per day. Second when I start working on a project I don't solve just one bug at a time anymore, so I'm a lot more productive and a lot less prone to mistakes. And third, a lot of problems which were false alarms don't even get to me anymore. Writing a mail is apparently different enough from grabbing a phone that even the total number dropped (which is made up in the face 2 face meetings, when I press them for bugs and features).

Anyways, even if it made their experience worse (at least for a while), I think it was well worth it. I don't know how this would work if you were employed, but I'm guessing obtaining 2-3 hours per day of closed phones/messengers/emails from your boss would make a lot of difference.

Re: I've met very very few IT workers who are happy with their jobs

#59

Post by wyclif » Fri, Jun 26, 2009, 8:22 AM UTC

wildwood wrote: post #44

blhack wrote: post #14

I'll admit that I am very unhappy with my current job. Part of this is whining, I know, but just hear me out. One major, major, major problem with my job is that I work for a small company, and am the only person here that knows tech at all. This was really great for me at the beginning. I am very proficient in BSD and Linux, so everything (mailserver, file server, FTPs, VPN, firewall, etc.) was built on one the two.…

I've been in a similar job before, as the lone tech guy, and one small step that really helped me was to require that all work requests be sent by email. I put a sign on the door to my office/server room that said "Verbal requests will be cheerfully forgotten. Mail to tech@company.com". That won't get rid of everything that comes in your door, and you may find yourself reduced to sending the email yourself, for somet…

I use this technique as well, an additional benefit is the record of requests from specific individuals: "Hey boss, check out how many times X has emailed me asking to reboot his 'workstation' for him."

Re: I've met very very few IT workers who are happy with their jobs

#60

Post by gaius » Fri, Jun 26, 2009, 10:13 AM UTC

rbritton wrote: post #34

I consider IT to be the systems maintenance and administration role -- programming is another occupation. While I love the technical stuff, I can tell you very specifically why I hate my job: 1. Constant interruptions. I cannot accomplish anything of any degree of complexity when I get nipped at at all sides for a piece of my attention. 2. Micromanaging boss. My boss has this peculiar trait where he insists on observ…

I consider IT to be the systems maintenance and administration role

Even programmers often consider the sysadmin/DBA/network admins to be "mere technicians". Infrastructure is a) at least as complex as software and b) if we screw up we don't have legions of QA to catch it 6 months before ship date, it takes the system or the site down there and then.