IT staffers on ragged edge of burnout and cynicism

IT security staff?

I can tell you that operations staff may well be at the same level, what with 24/7 operations that have to run on a shoestring budget powered by hairy rats running in threadmills in the server room. You then get "agility" pushed in your face which basically means that an upgrade will be forthcoming at date X and operations has to somehow choose what to leave out to nevertheless reach an acceptable acceptance level [which basically means the application stack will crash after 2.5 hours instead of immediately, great perspective], you write up an assessment of the problems to be solved [most of them of an as-yet-unknown or even unidentified nature], nobody reads it or reacts on it, marketing makes fun of you because you seem to pressure your coworkers for no good reason, at date X-2 you get told that you should have "informed" people beforehand that there actually were problems (you don't say?) and that your assessment is anyway worthless because there is no precise planning in it, just about thirty blocking points of which two have recently switched to "green". Come again? THIS IS CLOWN INDUSTRY.

I agree

Finally someone seeing it formally at last. 3-4 years ago I upped sticks walked out of the company I was in employ with due to useless managers that tried to pin something on me. I had already started an ecommerce venture for my wife which now is sustaining us both. I've been offered work (even from the same people I walked out on) but now just tell them to eff-off.. I'm sure I could do better but I like our little shop and there's no one on our backs - just chasing suppliers heh..

Several people were in same boat - walked out and refused to have anything to do with them any more...

Work in a company me? no thanks ...

stress, cynicism ?

Thought they were mandatory attributes for IT staffers.

How else can one cope with PHBs who implement the opposite of what they say routinely ?

In this shop, enthusiasm is seen as inexperience, much as we wish it were otherwise.

I watched this farce

Company says oooo, let's do a survey of workloads and right-size down to just the number of people required to accomplish the tasks for what we've got now. Done, and... (About 99% of y'all know what coming next).

CEO cheerfully announces the synergies and what-all from the forthcoming merger (takeover) with *two* other companies. And no, neither of them had the staff to do their own workloads.

Pairing up people? Hah! Just let us have +1 or +2 people so we can rotate through the mental facilities!

Really, well what a surprise.

Overworked, stressed out and facing impossible demands from senior managers whose knowledge of IT is often confined to the angry birds icon on their iPad. Many drink too much and some do drugs, well who'd 'ave thought it? See icon.

It's not just IT. Mid-level technical professionals everywhere are getting screwed.

... try architecture.

Real architecture.

Like IT its only the guys at the very top who wear fancy glass & black skivvies; the rest of us are the untermenschen. Overtime? What's that? You give up your family / hobbies / life for the JOY OF CREATING ART (yah, right) while your black-skivvy wearing boss gets the credit, the magazine interviews, the cars and the bottles of scotch at Xmas.

Oh, and you attended uni for 6 years, took another 2-3 for registration; you aren't much good for anything else by then.

Hobo; because we are going to be there soon, I fear.

We should all strike

It is unbelievable how thankless is the IT profession nowadays. We ran all the shit they have. We can render useless every single company in this planet by simply not moving as fast as we usually do, and yet, many employers don't appreciate the hard work we put on their companies. Let's pull the plug, crush enemies and hear the lamentation of the women!

A huge strike all around the world. 24 hours without IT professionals in any areas, in any countries and the world will crumble like a castle of cards. We can ask for a 3000% raise next day and 6 months vacation and they will say: "Thank you for showing mercy IT DUDE!"

And someone please bring the Jack Daniels.

Flawed method?

Regardless of the actual situation, I think there might very well be a huge bias in the way the research was performed.

Small sample size: touched on in the article.

Lack of comparison with other industries or comparison with earlier surveys - i.e. in order to analyse trends (ok, it's the first run, so I understand why that happens): is the % quoted typical or not?

There's a slight ego boost in saying: "Yes, I'm overworked, my boss doesn't appreciate me, I have to solve everything myself, yadda, yadda, yadda"... so could there be a tiny chance that the results may... let us say... slightly exaggerated?

Note: there might very well be such problems in IT (Security), and I haven't bothered to check the actual slides presented in the link (yes, flame me) but the article doesn't convince me the survey says anything.

Almost all sectors of the IT industry suffer from the overwork and underpay scenario. The question is how to fix it A better research paper would have just highlighted the bleedin' obvious then concentrated on how to fix it.

Again it's not just IT Security folks.

They need to widen the field a bit more. I'm currently ex-IT (systems administrator), total burn out. It's because of work stress I was forced to seek psychiatric care, but unfortunately only after I walked out 5 years ago.

The problem is I really do like working on computer systems, I find it very enjoyable, challenging, and rewarding. It's all the other crap that goes with it, PHB's, unrealistic time tables, on call 24x7 (yea they say it's only X days, but it's really 24x7), and all the other shit that goes with it.

I still remember chatting with an ER doctor one night (don't ask how or why), we were comparing work hour, work load, stress, etc. Seriously, we both concluded he had better working conditions than I did.

FLAME ON!

I see it from both sides of the fence...IT and business and trust me you're as bad as each other. Currently, I've got to sort out a business going ape due to a bunch of cardigan wearing, biscuit munchers in IT support who I would happily "off" or bung into "Special Projects" and get some proper grafters in. There's a bunch of wack developers who think about their CV before starting every new project, or a project is completed when they've finished honing their C# skills or whatever groovy tech is the dish of the day (so insert EF, MongoDB, MEF etc) and who don't care about security because it's not cool (read: don't understand it).

I've a business, who see what they can do at home and can't understand why they can't do it at work. (work here means updating their facebook status) and so many layers of cardigan wearing, buscuit munching management that it takes years to do anything.

Luckily I'm a contractor, which means shedloads of money and the ability to go "f*ck that" when you know you are pissing in the wind. IMHO, the problem is that most people are so lazy, so department bound and so scared of redundency, that they'll spend all their time trying not to do something rather than just ****ing doing it in the first place. You deserve each other.

Nah all lies....

...my jobs a piece of piss, well if you ignore the lazy users, the impossibe workloads, the 300% reduction in staff, the 500% increase in work, the shorter SLA's, the more complex tasks, the tighter intergration with other departments, dealing with directors and manager who have no idea what they want but they want it, the 24/7 on call (well that's what they think the are getting), the "can you do it out of hours becuase we are busy" syndrome, the eating at you desk, the "oh while your here" attitude, the "phone him up instead of contacting the helpdesk" attitude.

Yup piece of piss.

Thank god for forums to vent out on.

There's an obvious problem with this statement:

'Management may also be the problem, not the IT worker. "As an experiment," Corman said, "explain to your children what it is you're trying to explain to your chief security officer. If they get it and he doesn't, then the problem isn't with you."'

Children are wired for learning. They're learning new things from birth.

50-year-old golfing granddads who work to live? Not so much. 30 years ago, when those managers were still young, fresh of face, and naïve, a "computer network" was expensive and difficult. Most PCs were standalone machines and sharing a file involved throwing floppy disks around.

The problem is that learning requires energy: if a new IT paradigm comes in, you have to literally unlearn all the old, outmoded stuff, and that means tearing down your old mental models of how shit works and rebuilding them from scratch. The younger you are, the easier that is as your mental models aren't going to have as much detail and dependencies on other mental models.

It doesn't help that our education systems are designed to train children for tasks that are often obsolete before they've even left college. We need to teach them to learn throughout their lives. To be prepared to keep up with whatever life throws at them. Life-long learning needs to be hammered into children from the beginning; we should be teaching them how to learn, not merely what to learn.

Even so, as we age, the energy we expend on the learning process will reach a point of diminishing returns and there will come a point when we're simply not willing to invest the time and energy needed to rebuild a particularly complex foundational mental model due to all the knock-on effects it would have. This is why people tend to become more conservative with age. Change becomes something to be feared; instead of trying to keep up, we'd rather slow everyone else down.

Worryingly, our population is ageing.

Not just IT security staff

Software testing can be hellish too, your stuck in the middle of a Customers , Management , Bean counters, and software devs. None of these parties understand or give a rats ass about testing or want to know about the results, until it all goes t*ts up and your left fending off a deluge of questions as to why it's gone wrong, but when things do go right every one else pats each other on the back.

So spare a thought for those of us that got lured onto the rocks of a testing career only to have our hopes, dreams, sanity and enthusiasm for life dashed on the rocks.

You say cynicism

I say repeatable testable predictions of what my idiot cow irkers are going to do next.

Which country is that?

It took me until the very bottom of the article to learn the results were presented in SF. Does this means the study was donein US, in California, in the world?

Looks like I picked the wrong day to quit sniffing glue.

Free will

If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

As I was told for over 20 years ....

... in the corporate world, if you don't like being paid for what you're doing, leave and find another job. Then for the last 12 years that's what I told people.

Nobody put a shotgun to anybody's head to make them work. Yeah, yeah ... grow and get with the program or leave if you can't do the work or feel your inner baby is being mistreated.

Cynicism

I prefer to call it realism, myself.

Can I fire senior managers?

every time I hear one saying "I don't do IT", and think it's a good thing.

Well as an IT manager I don't like doing the bean counting (budget management), but I damn well learned to do it to the corporate standards, and operate within the rules the CFO and auditors lay down.

Given the organisation would die quicker if it's IT is screwed up than if it's accounts are screwed up, which is more important, and would the senior manager still have a job, if he turned round to the CFO and Head of Audit and said "I don't do budgets".

so, no one seems to disagree, only point and wave at smaples...

I did nearly 3 years in a front line support role which nearly broke my mind...I came to the conclusion (after getting it put right) that managers are generally managers through being good at their own jobs, not necessarily being a good manager (or having IT skills). The whole learning shebang, yup, I'd agree about the process of learning, but whilst adult learning is still about pedagogy (leading children) there will be an ongoing issue...and yes we are all getting older, and business is using IT to reduce people input, but people make decisions - I know why the Unabomber wanted to destroy all computers. So be nicer to your IT guys people who *believe* in gnomes in the box making it all happen, because they SHOULD get off their collective arses and join a union, get their rights collectively. You contractors have it sorted.

Every IT Managers has an................

.........................IT Guy do delegate blame to.

And there me thinking that getting told weekly "You’re too young to be so cynical" was a character fault.

24 years old - IT Security Consultant

Cynicism is natural

IT is a field where Cynicism is natural and a part of what makes it work.

Cynicism is a response intended to help assuage the mind from the contradictions that arise in the eternal battle between logos and praxis.

IT is a field where ideals/ideas/logos say how something should be done but reality/experience/praxis say how something will be done. You get judged by how it should have been done but get reamed if you do not get it done within the constraints that were put to you in which things were done.

I anticipate two possible futures for me as I work cleaning off the mess that results when logo is drunk and stumbling and praxis doesn't give a shit: either leave for greener pastures using talents that I don't know that I have or I start improving IT in the best way possible...THE BOFH WAY!

What Do All The Negative Comments Mean ?

Some possibilities:

A) The days of the glass datacenter and the stupid green terminal were better. Centralized admin, centralized maintenance, real experts, awe for the datacenter specialists.

B) Too many people in IT; they can be treated like $hit because they are easy to replace.

C) Too many companies do stuff they should better leave to a service company and the people doing it are overworked and not really competent. For example, companies should hire Managed Security businesses to protect their intranets. Google Docs instead of MS Office. Salesforce instead of inhouse SAP installations.

D) IT is in general too complicated and fails in byzantine ways. IT people too submissive in accepting one more technology to maintain.

E) IT people simply don't know how to fend for themselves.

T, FTFY

"spending too long at a company is seen by some employers as a sign that a staff member has reached their intellectual limits"

should have been

"spending too long at a company is seen by some employers as a sign that a staff member has reached their top pay grade and need to start over elsewhere for less."

Dissenting view

I don't think the current generation of IT staff knows what stress is. The "me" generation thinks that putting in a full 8 hours is cruel and unusual punishment. Suck it up and do the job, or quit and go work for the government if you want a cushy ride and a nice pension.

Cor, you think you've got problems..

OK, my current 'work experience' is to 1) design a video capture system (done), and 2) create an internal network to turn the old building into a cultural powerhouse, with an internal network, webserver, and several computers.

If I can't finish the task to the PHB's satisfaction, I could lose my dole for 90 "werkin daze'" As it's "work experience" I get an extra €9 per "werkin' day".

Now, I am to IT as a ballet-dancer is to hod-carrying. I'm a radio engineer, FFS.

Windows Server 2008 R2? Never played with it.

Anyway, I arrive duly every morning at 09:00 and struggle. Struggle? OK, the 'office' (OK, desk) is in an "Asukastupa" (Citizen's house) - a place in each subdistrict that anyone can go to, to use Internet, do sewing, take some strange course like "Psychic Writing", learn a language, eat cheap food, chat, etc. The area is populated by many immigrants. Somalians, mainly, who take advantage of the facilities. Great, that's what they're for! (asukastpa's, not somalians)

BUT, we have limited bandwidth.

So, when someone wants to watch their fave Arabic movie, I haven't a chance of getting a page on the internet. Boss is no help, spending most of his time in a remote "office" (=home). In fact, when he buys the Dell R510 - 2xquad-cores, 12 raid-6 disks he's been convinced to buy, I cannot imagine in the 2 months left I can work out how to deal ANYTHING about it. (God knows why he needs such computing power on the first shot...expand as you grow, surely?)

If I hit him over the head with the Dell, he wouldn't know that was the server I'm supposed to setup.

You guys earn reasonable money. I'm kept awake for the price of a couple of beers per night (werkin daze Only!)

Yep

Seen it. Fired people for it. On the other hand, at some point we need to realize that business units will always treat IT as a lowly service department within the company (like janitors) if IT lets them. "IT is an expense." "IT has to do what they're told." "IT has to be kept under control." "IT can be abused because they SERVE us."

If IT wants things to change then IT needs to speak up in the professional environment and make it clear that the abuse needs to end. The idea that everyone else is a professional and IT are the "geeks" and "nerds" who don't do anything "important" is a self-fulfilling prophecy unless IT stands up and demonstrates that they're a hell of a lot more important than the company is giving them credit for.

So, put down the beer. Toss the reefer. Put on a decent shirt. Quit feeling bad for yourself. Get up and make a professional stand.

Mental Reboots

Small sample size or not, the study is seems spot on. Not 2 months into starting into the security field, I'll be talking to the GF about personal stuff, while thinking about work, and have a mental reboot.

That lovely blank expression, with "What were you saying again?"

Oh dear

The IT staff are stressed out and cynical.

Hey welcome to the world of industrial robot programming where everything is wanted yesterday, fek all is planned, and the customers changes drawing issues/part deliveries at 5 second notice, then expect to get their bits 6 seconds later.

Couple that with enough robots for 8 programmers and only having 4 employed, and a manager whose main motivation technique is to run around flapping, then deny everyone a payrise because we've failed to hit profit targets this year, dispite turning over more work than we've ever done before.

Its common to nearly everywhere now because of the 'you can be outsourced' attitude from senior managers and customers resulting in lots of places not hiring enough skilled staff to do the work.

But hey ho, its easy to replace people with 5 yrs higher education and 10 yrs+ experience.... must be.... its what I get told every time I ask for a raise

Boris

BB... because the internal CCTV camera just switched on and is pointing in my direction

"Other professions know that this is a problem and have strategies to deal with it, but there's no recognition of this in IT," Daniel told The Register. "In part it's because we're a very young profession that's constantly changing."

Daniel is missing the point, with no disrespect intended on my part.

Management isn't just unaware (though that's sometimes the case). In many cases, management just doesn't care. Plenty of them don't identify with IT(just a bunch of geeks, probably have social development issues, we don't understand what they're saying so it's probably not important). Further, while most of us know that in IT, the best departments make things go so smoothly it seems easy, that means management assumes it IS easy, not that we're working hard so that it is for our user base. And when it comes to funding IT vs. funding their own salary, benefits, or pet projects, IT will always take a back seat, even though expectations will still be high no matter how little IT is given to build on.

When you don't feel listened to, trusted, or appreciated, the results are lousy. I just left a job where my director took most of the credit (though I'll acknowledge he was owed some), but never told the IT staff they were appreciated, only what they did wrong. He didn't have our backs when a user took it out on us unfairly, and was more interested in showing how much he cut from the budget to justify his salary, rather than ensuring his people got funds for training, or fair compensation, and he wasn't open to issues that took more than thirty seconds to explain, nor constructive criticism.

I'm paid a little less, and my position is a little more entry-level; but I'm now part of a team where we don't have time for politics, and everyone understands IT, so we all understand its value and the amount of work it takes.