IT Stress In The Workplace 191
peec writes: "Found this story in Information Week. It talks a great deal about IT stress. How to prevent it and what causes it in the workplace. Great for everyone in IT and their bosses."
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IT Stress in the Workplace
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Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings: (1) Gee, I wish we hadn't backed down on 'noalias'.
Re:Preventing Stress in the Workplace? (Score:1)
Of course, this only depends on if you think when you work. I didn't need to think at my last IT job (I was a button-pusher) but now that I'm trying to do some work for myself, I've found that I need my wits about me.
Re:presenting the latest in trolling technology (Score:1)
i like traffic lights
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i like traffic lights
but only when there green....
Re:ultimate stress reliever (Score:1)
Stress (Score:1)
Re:Stress? Try grad school (Score:1)
However, the sciences do face an ongoing challenge in that many entering grad students don't fully realize the limited number of job openings in academia. I was fortunate to enter the real-world job market just before the employment crunch hit. Many of my younger friends were not as fortunate.
From my crude set of observations of the real-world, it would seem that many in the IT industry are facing the same set of problems encountered in the sciences. Use, abuse, then toss away young talent.
amazing stress relief! (Score:2)
-=(V)0(V)0cr0(V)3=-
Grad Student's Guide to Automatic Weapons (Score:1)
It's common knowledge that whenever you get two or more CS grad students together, the conversation will inevitably drift to the same topic: automatic weapons. Lately, we've noticed that whenever we attend a CS party, picnic, or bullsession, we always hear the same questions and discussions, usually from the younger grad students:
When I switched from guncotton to standard ball powder on my
You haven't cleared an ejection port jam until you've cleared one in the Hill district at 4:00 AM on a Saturday morning.
I want to mount an M60 in front of the sun roof of my Tercel, but the mounting bracket wasn't drilled for import cars. How did Josh Bloch do his?
What exactly are those special 'conference rounds' that Newell hand loads before AAAI every year?
Some of my friends at the MIT AI Lab don't like M203's because the grenade launcher adds too much weight, but I wouldn't have gotten out of IJCAI-85 in one piece if it hadn't been for those 40mm flechette rounds. What do you think?
Do you have to be a god-damned tenured professor to get teflon rounds at this place?
Does the 'reasonable person principle' cover hosing down a member of the Soar project after he's used the phrase 'cognitively plausible' for the fifteenth time in a 20 minute conference talk?
Where did Prof. Vrsalovic get that Kalashnikov AK-47?
I used to use Dri-Slide to lube my M16. How come my advisor says Dri-Slide is for momma's boys and Stanford profs?
Does the way Jon Webb keeps flicking the safety of his Mac-10 on and off at thesis defenses make you nervous, too?
In short, there is a lot of concern in this department for the proper care, handling and etiquette of automatic weapons. So as a service to the department, we are starting a two week daily series on "The Care and Handling of Your M16A1." Every day for the next two weeks, we will post on the wall outside our office the day's helpful hint on care and maintenance of that good old departmental standby: the M16A1. Our thanks to the US Army, whose training manuals we have shamelessly cribbed for material.
We would like to encourage other knowledgeable members of the CS community to share their expertise in a similar fashion. There is a real need for this kind of dialogue in the department. The new students come in here every fall, and are totally unequipped to handle the realities of graduate student life at CMU. Computability theory and lexical scoping are fine things to know about, but they just don't cut the mustard when somebody from the Psych department opens up on you with an Ingram set to full auto.
-the friendly automatic weapons enthusiasts of SkyCave1, Olin, Derek, and Allan
Re:HUGE source of IT stress... (Score:1)
Peter Principle: People rise to the level of their own incompetence
Dilbert Principle: If the moron can't do the job, promote them to management, it gets them out of the way and it's easier than firing them. Keep a resume standing by.
Re:Yeah, but you drive for hours... (Score:2)
OTOH; There are many things here that detract from quality of life. Stupid people abound, but I think its like that anywhere. Going any sort of distance after work is frustrating due to traffic. Housing prices are high but then again the salaries here are also porportionally higher.
Of course the ideal would be to make silicon valley wages with a T1 uplink in the bahamas; now that would be quality of life!
-- Greg
Re:Question (Score:1)
Here in London a 35 hour week is quite common, at least on paper. And 5-6 weeks annual leave.
Re: For me it's showers. (Score:1)
Re:Stressoholic managers force stress on IT staff. (Score:2)
>were crew on a sailing vessel.
::blink::
Uh, did this guy use ``Hubbard Technology"?
[Note to the puzzled: L Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, had a thing for sailing. He gathered his most faithful culties onto a private navy, where he could be a Commodore of all he surveyed. Even though his most significant act while a commissioned officer during WW II was to shell an island belonging to Mexico, & thus cause an international incident.
[But I fear Nonesuch here may have actually worked for someone employing Scieno teachings. Which would explain why the company is on life support.]
Geoff
Re:ultimate stress reliever (Score:1)
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Re:Definition (Score:2)
I remember when I first took a programming class. We started with plain C, and I spent a lot of time cooking up my own projects because the ones we were assigned were too boring.
One morning, after getting about 5 hours of sleep because I coded too late, I had one of those half-asleep dreams where you know you're asleep but you can't wake up.
The alarm clock was blaring, but I couldn't turn it off because I was busy in my dream trying to get a pointer to it so I could access the snooze button...
"Free your mind and your ass will follow"
Re:Silicon Valley Sucks (Score:1)
Re:Stress? Try grad school (Score:1)
A few years ago I went back to attend a wedding and chatted with one of the more humorless strict faculty member. I was rather shocked when he said that he knew about some of rather wild behavior. He also said that he accepted this because he knew that the faculty were putting us under a great deal of stress, pushing us to our limits. As long as we performed, he and others were willing to look the other way.
But I don't think that he knew *everything* that we did. For instance, I don't think he knows that I once stuck an ax in his door. :)
Fun With Users (Score:2)
Re:Silicon Valley Sucks (Score:1)
Personally, I couldn't see living in California. I need a job where I can telecommute 90% of the time, so I can pick a state to live in distinct from picking the job I work at.
Anybody need a Solaris/OpenBSD/Cisco network security analyst? I won't need to ask for six figures if work will pay for my T1 line.
Send email for the URL to my resume...
Don't forget (Score:1)
http://cord.de/fun/bofh/ [cord.de]
What was your username again?
Re:ultimate stress reliever (Score:1)
Re:Stress relief (Score:2)
Now this is GREAT advice. Even if you are not stressed out by IT (everyone feels thier particular job/environment is stressful, I find) taking time to do this stuff can really help. If I am not in a tidy environment I find it hard to concentrate (I can but I feel distracted). I find the mindless act of tidying (or perhaps doing some cardio exercise or something) for twenty minutes or so can do wonders...
Have you ever had a flash of inspiration while doing this? It's the best.... :)
--8<--
Where is my stapler? (Score:2)
Peter Gibbons: I was sitting in my cubicle today, and I realized ever since I started working, every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it. So that means that every single day you see me, that's the worst day of my life.
Dr. Swanson: What about today? Is today the worst
day of your life?
Peter Gibbons: Yeah.
Dr. Swanson: Wow. That's messed up.
Re:HUGE source of IT stress... (Score:1)
It may sound childish, but it's no more childish than your coworkers' behavior and sometimes it's the only way they will learn.
Re:HUGE source of IT stress... (Score:2)
Re:Amen - these guys are a bunch of lightweights (Score:1)
Re:Question (Score:1)
Compound Inflation Effects... (Score:1)
It amazes me how much the effects of compounded inflation on dollar amounts have fooled people into ignoring their real pay. $100,000 sure does sound like a lot!
Assuming 7-8% CAGR of prices since 1980, consumer products cost about 3.5 times what they did in 1980. (Housing in the Bay Area alone is another story; medical insurance and education are higher by percent growth than consumer goods;
In 2000 dollars, a salary in the 100K range is roughly equivalent to what a salary in the 30K range was 1980 dollars. (Ignoring that you get taxed more on the 100K).
My father, for instance, made 30K in 1980 working as a technician in a rural water plant, a job that required his attention about half of the forty hours he put in per week, and required only a high school education plus a good knowledge of chemistry. Costs of living in rural areas are MUCH less than, say, Silicon Valley; etc.
As an entrepreneur, I could hardly hope for a better labour market
Re:Where is my stapler? (Score:1)
Oh, and I'll need you to be here Saturday...
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Plenty to do (Score:1)
As a Valley native, I find that there is plenty to do in the area. I don't know what "fun stuff" constitutes for you, but: The area is packed with excellent restaurants serving a variety of different cuisines. San Francisco (and to a lesser extent, San Jose) has good cultural venues, including museums, symphony, ballet, and opera. The area's two most prestigious universities, Stanford and Berkeley, offer continuing education classes. There are a number of parks sprinkled throughout the area. Visit the beach at Half Moon Bay (quiet and nice drive up) or Santa Cruz (people watching). There are plenty of clubs and parties to go to on the weekends. The weather is nice all year.
If you want to escape, the Monterey aquarium is a must-see, Yosemite National Park is about 5 hours away, and you can make it down to LA in a day's drive.
I'm not sure why you think there aren't enough females. I'd say the general population is about 50/50, and there were more than a few women at the high tech company where I worked, even in engineering/programming positions.
Reality Check (Score:2)
Backlash
In today's fast-paced textiles economy, business demands more than ever from the labor force, and sweatshop professionals are feeling the heat. Is your company at risk of driving out its top talent?
By Marianne McGeeparvat, Diane Lee Ho, and Michelle Mbuto
Michael Millervasranjan is a seasoned sweatshop professional who thrives as lead assembler of soccar balls at Camp Jiva Spalding at Calcutta. His job is both challenging and rewarding, and it affords him the flexibility to ensure he has a few hours sleep -- something that's very important to him. But things weren't always so rosy. Like too many sweatshop professionals, Millervasranjan was once a walking zombie.
A few years ago, while employed at a government-run textiles factory, Millervasranjan was working on a sewing process to streamline the company's assembly line. "We were working six and seven days a week, 20 hours a day," he recalls. The overload not only taxed his waking hours, causing a mind-numbing fatigue, it led to a syndrome Millervasranjan dubbed "sleep stitching". "You wake up tired because you were so busy all night working on stitching together garments," he says.
The rollout of the sewing process coincided with Millervasranjan's hard-earned sick leave for hepititus. He was nervous about leaving, concerned that the factory might still be ridden with bugs. Millervasranjan feared the project was another example of ill-conceived planning by his boss, whom Millervasranjan say was out of touch with the working conditions. The boss' cluelessness, Millervasrangan says, typically led him to make promises to company honchos that left the sweatshop workers scrambling to meet impossible deadlines. Millervasranjan took his scheduled leave -- but, as he feared, bugs had prolificly spread in the assembly line. When he returned, he stayed at the job for only six more weeks. The causes of Millervasranjan's job frustration and exhoustion, commonly known as burnout, were unrealistic expactations and over-promises. The result: He quit.
Burnout is nothing new. But the backlash exemplified above may be growing.
Sweatshop work has always been stressful. Projects have short deadlines and implimentation schedules. Sweatshop operations support require 24-by-7 availability. And every new sweatshop paradigm shift brings with it the need for new skills.
What's different today is the acceleration and volume of sweatshop work, driven largely by the bourgeois in rich western countries. The race by multinational global corporate sweatshops and goverment run factories to compete for the textiles, shoes, and cottage industry market has hastened the demand for sweatshop-dependent labor. Also, the sweatshop-product floodgates have opened at many corporations that had products and budgets on hold while year 2000 work was completed.
Exacerbating the situation is an elite bourgeois culture spinning out of control, with wealth-induced psychological problems reaching an all-time high (see sidebar story, "My Gold-Plated SUV Doesn't Make Me Happy Any More"). Also the influx of refugees looking for any job they can find adds its own pressure: Many foreign refugees, accustomed to beatings and random murder, are willing to bear 120 or more hours a week, raising the bar even higher for local sweatshop workers (see sidebar story, "Foreign Refugees Add to the Pressure").
Cumulatively, this grind is fueling a backlash within sweatshop organizations -- at government run factories and, in particular, at corporate sweatshops -- that's manifested in the reduced productivity from sweatshop workers, abrupt career changes, even en masse deaths when an overworked employee bails out and takes along several collegues. Worse yet, disgrunted employees may sabotage products they are working on.
The good news is that companies are tuning in to the increasing stress levels of their sweatshop workers and taking steps to make things better. Of necessity, many sweatshops offer flexible schedules, seperate housing, and task sharing. Savvier ones seek to create a sweatshop culture that espouses mutual respect and shared values, open-curtain communications and mentoring, creativity and fun. Sweatshop workers are gettings savvier too. Many are seeking work situations that fit their lifestyles, such as respect for privacy when using the toilet. And some sweatshop workers who signed on for the breakneck pace and promised riches of sweatshop work, are returning with relief to fasting every other day.
In terms of job stress and stress-related problems, sweatshop workers have plenty of company. An estimated 1 million workers are absent on an average workday because of stress-related complaints, according to the Sweatshop Institute of Stress, a nonprofit organization in Lahore. Job stress is estimated to cost global corporations $300 billion annually, including absenteeism, diminished productivity, employee death, and medical, and postmortem fees.
But sweatshop workers may be contributing more than their share of that amount. At a remote coffee bean field in the Andes, "Hell Week" was the term used to describe the seven days that employees were overworked to get a 100 case shipment out. Boberouli, the field overseer, recalls what the eighty-member indentured servitude team faced as it was gearing up: the regional boss disregarded the reduction in productivity the last winter from 17 deaths due to starvation and extermination of native people by the government, and demanded instead that the sweatshop staff re-architect the system to accommodate 250,000 beans per worker the first day.
That fueled a whirl of 24-hour workdays, panicked psychotic episodes, dinners of stray dogs, and a 3-year-old girl taking the place of her mother who died due to exhaustion.
The upshot? The team made its deadline, but the price paid was both immediate and lasting. The fledgling gourmet coffee company and its slave labor went into the launch stressed and exhausted, damaged by broken field worker relationships and an extra $50,000 in expenses, the overseer said. Shortly thereafter, three workers died mysteriously, and the company was bought out by StarBucks.
Calling sweatshop work a marathon that must be run at a sprinter's pace is both an understatement and faulty, says Elliott HerrMasie, director of the HerrMasie Center, a sweatshop training and indentured-servitude firm. Unlike a marathon, there's no finish line in sweatshops. Projects often come rolling in one after the other, leaving little or no time to regroup. Meanwhile, basic human necessities themselves have tethered sweatshop people to their jobs round-the-clock. "We've changed our definition of what busy is," Says HerrMasie. "Now it's hyper-busy. Everyone's got a needle and thread, a shovel, a jewelry detail."
For S-B Power Toys Co., a toy manufacturer in South East Asia, eight back-to-back projects cost the company three key sweatshop bosses to mutiny, says Mark ApplhansQueDong, director of labor development. The consequence of those "departures": more pressure on remaining bosses. "It puts a burden on everyone," ApplehansQueDong says. "The work still has to get done."
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Ok, well, you get the point. I hope I didn't offend anyone of any specific nationality, I certainly didn't intend to...I just wanted to make a little reality check here...as we sit in our polycarbonate, ergo-molded productivity environments with our Jolt and ThinkGeek chic, whining about how hard it is to type listen to music and type at keyboards for 10 hours a day, then go home to do the same thing until bedtime.
Re:Preventing Stress in the Workplace? (Score:3)
Read PeopleWare (Score:4)
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Re:coming to IT from other careers (Score:1)
And they pay overtime.
So if you get paid 8 dollars an hour with overtime you make the same money. Not bad for a position that only requires the ability to read.
Later
Erik Z
Follow the post office's lead (Score:3)
Re:Negative Productivity (Score:1)
Re:Simple Stress Relievers (Score:1)
Take 30 min lunch
3. Leave at 3:30. No more without extra pay at higher than normal rates. 40 hours a week solid. Any more and your high salary is an illusion. $75000 a year at 60 hours is equiv. to $50000 a year at 40. Anything beyond 40 hours should be paid as overtime.
4. Your 3 and 4 clash. If IT is not the be-all and end-all why are you only spending 3 hours per day awake and doing non-IT activities? Leave after 8 hours and ACTUALLY have a life. If you think 1 1/2 hours per day of non-IT is refreshing, try a few more. You might like it. Getting home at 4 gives you 6 hours awake and away from work. That's almost as much time as you're spending at work.
LetterJ
from one IT manager to another (Score:4)
One hour a day to read any O'Riley and Associtates book you want. - I've found that, this not only relaxes most of the team. At its worst gives them that much needed mid day nap, or some comapny time to brush up and polish their skill set. With this one hour I had a macintosh desktop guy teach himself unix in a year and get promoted to unix admin.
In a perfect situation I would give each employee 10 days training on any related technology every 90 days, though try getting a CEO or CFO to agree to this.
No days longer than 12 hours, NO MATTER WHAT! - after 12 hours at work, you are working at a negitive preformance ratio, and falling to sleep on keyboards does more damage than good. When the project is at risk of being fsck'ed by a sleepy worker, the project can wait. Yes this does piss off the MBA types, however, their job is at the expense of your technology.
Every 24 hours of overtime is rewarded with one complimentary day off. - In a perfect world this would fly at most companies.
Weekly Team Building events - dinner, movie, video games, whatever, just get out with the team and blow off some steam.
Open Door Policy - keep open desk hours, and nothing that you are doing is so important that you cant clear your desk for your team.
LISTEN TO YOUR STAFF - sometimes i myself have been so overworked that the sanity came from my team, sometimes it did not, however its all about perspective and as long as you and your team share a common perspective on things, you've done 50% of your work.
Be a minute manager - go get the book 'minute manager' and memorize it. Spend a minute giving the instruction. Check back with your employee when the deadline has come. Spend a minute praising or criticising their work. Your teammate should be encouraged to come to you if they have issues or a need, and give them that minute, and spend the other minute it takes to help them. ...and with reliable team mates, you'll have spent a whole three minutes per project.
Know your, and your team limits and never cross them, if you do it once, it will be expected from you every time thereon. Your team will feel that you sold them out.
Exercise! - there is no greater way to reduce stress than jumping rope, and punching the bag an hour a day.
..hope these small tidbits help, this is what I have done in the past, during my 0% voulentary atrrition rate management roles.
A good manager serves his staff as well as they both serve the company. (but dont be a pushover)
christopher
Prevent it? Hell... (Score:2)
Oh and it's cool to throw a couple of bots in, give them "customer" skins and set them to stupid so you can just blow them up and watch little customer gibs go everywhere.
Mike
"I would kill everyone in this room for a drop of sweet beer."
Re:ecstasy (Score:1)
The IT sector should invest in stress toys (Score:4)
Not much to do? (Score:2)
SF Bay is a great place for sailing (one of the best in the world) and on an IT salary a good ~22 foot sailboat is very affordable. There are lots of parks to see if you like outdoors, hiking, camping, etc.
If you are more into urban nightlife SF has more to do then alot of big cities. Oakland has lots of warehouse raves if thats your thing. Even San Jose has enough clubs and bars to keep most people satisfied.
You can do the touristy stuff; you can drive a few hours and go skiing or surfing; theres more deep-geek stuff to do than you can shake a stick at. The first step is to leave the house.
As far as housing/commuting goes; yeah housing is expensive. the trick is to get some friends together and rent a house. Much better (even cheaper given the room) then getting an apartment. Get a house near where you work and your commute will be much easier (and work off hours). Dono what to tell you about finding girls, but there are plenty if you look.
-- Greg
Negative Productivity (Score:5)
Not very long ago, I was just out of college, in my new job. We had to get this demo up and going quickly to win some business. The goals were unrealistically high, and we ended up working 90+ hour weeks for three months.
I am being completely serious when I say we would have got more and better quality work done if we had done 40 hour weeks.
Once you start working 12-hour-plus days you get into negative productivity. After a while we were all so freakin' tired that we would add more bugs than actual good code. Negative productivity. The trouble is, the negative productivity forces you to work even longer hours as deadlines are missed, leading to more negative productivity - a vicious circle. And manglement, sorry management, don't seem to understand this!
Just before one of our big demos, we were doing some last-minute stuff (like at 3 am). I made a really really dumb mistake due to tiredness - something simple like '=' instead of '==' in an if statement. Too tired to stay awake, I went home. Two guys were just finishing up when they ran into the resultant bug. They were so tired that it took them another three hours to find the problem - if they had been normally wakeful, it would have been something they found in five or ten minutes!
Well, at least we could have an ice cream break at 2:30 am when the CMVC server went down for a backup!
A recent study has also shown that lack of sleep actually has a greater effect than a couple or three beers on reaction times. When these exhausted IT workers drive home, they are effectively driving intoxicated.
What did I learn from this episode?
I will now take all my vacation in the vacation year. If management tell me I can't, I leave. I have told them this. My manager is actually very non-pointy haired, and accepts and agrees with this! I'm very lucky to have a good manager.
I refuse to work excessive overtime. Some overtime here and there is to be expected - but it shoudn't be a regular and/or excessive thing. If I'm getting too tired, the overtime gets cut back. If management whine, I look for a new job. My manager is an ex-developer who was forced into excessive overtime. She understands this too.
Stress isn't caused by situations (Score:2)
If the shit hits the fan, I just keep working and tell people, I can clean up all this shit, or I can do what I'm sposed to do and fix the fan.
I think I pushed that metaphor a little too far.
Re:Stressoholic managers force stress on IT staff. (Score:2)
Re:Some personal discoveries. (Score:2)
Re:Where is my stapler? (Score:2)
Having worked at Fry's electronics as a computer tech, that movie touched me deeply in a way that I can only describe as having a spiritual revelation. It is no coincidence that the night I saw it was exactly 2 weeks from last day I worked at Fry's.
From working at Fry's I went on to working at a locally owned bookstore. There I was the IT department. I reconfigured their LAN and moved it from Win31 and DOS on Lantastic to Win31 and 9x on netbeui/TCP. We had two servers, an NT box for the file and database server and a linux system for the NAT server and firewall. I would have used linux for both except the custom inventory database system which ran on the server wouldn't run on linux. The Linux NAT server meant that all 25 systems in the store were online from 7am to 11pm. To do this I got paid 6.50 an hour. But guess what, I was happy!
Now I work at Arizona State University babysitting one of our computer labs and getting paid more than I was at Fry's. Did I mention I get free tuition?
Lee
Re:coming to IT from other careers (Score:2)
That's all fine and dandy but a job that sucks is a job that sucks regardless of how much you're being paid. If you're new to the IT industry you'll learn this soon enough. High pay is great when you first start but you'll eventually find out that bullshit hours and no life isn't worth what you're getting in return.
Re:coming to IT from other careers (Score:2)
Look, your experience sucks more. Obviously I agree.
My response concerned time pressure and the fact that occasionally there are demands for per-client custom orders beyond the IT industry. In your case it sounds like your boss is a moron who doesn't know how to evaluate a project or communicate. Otherwise how could the development team not know they were going live (ready or not) in 24 hours. Sucks to be you.
And, just for all the over-worked scumbag wage slaves out there who would give thier thumbs to know how to program (so they could escape thier dead-end job with no possibility of a raise let alone advancement) it isn't one steak that's stressful, it's the 80th, and it's after three weeks working in a hot smoky little hell-hole for a guy who is convinced the WWII Germans were RIGHT and keeps "accidentally" dropping your knife on the floor, etc. Everybody's job sucks sometimes. My point was if my job is going to suck I want to be paid well. IT pays well. I hope I never have to go through what you did...
Thanks
--8<--
Quick check: Programming is not the same as IT. (Score:2)
Stress is when you and a couple of other 20 somethings are responsible for your companies sole way of reaching its customers and something drastic breaks. Thats the stress of hundreds of other people in the company suddenly becoming useless and waiting on you. Mix then in with constant bad decisions by upper management and you are well on your way to your first couple of ulcers. Fun!
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Solaris/FreeBSD/Openstep/NeXTSTEP/Linux/ultrix/OS
The "IT department" (Score:4)
The solution is to integrate, rather than separate, the IT functions into leadership, product planning, marketing, etc... Bring in the engineers early to planning and marketing lets them begin working on solutions sooner. Having more IT personnel work with leadership lets them pitch more creative and doable ideas to the CEO. This gives upper management a more realistic outlook on their companies capabilities, creates a broader sense of misson among all workers. Most importantly it yield intangible rewards such as a greater sense of accomplishment among all staffers, not just the geeks.
Re:Silicon Valley Sucks (Score:2)
Re:coming to IT from other careers (Score:2)
OK, point taken, but I spent a fair bit of time in swanky hotels, in some many cases working in open kitchens where the guests can see you, and talk to you, and are paying $60 for an entre. They get what they want.
For a while I had to prepare entres for about 80 people a night without any bills in front of me. The sous-chef would call out the orders (in German, this was Switzerland, and I am Canadian) and you just have to remember what is ordered. It's hard. And you better hope you ordered and prepared enough food for the night or it's your ass...
But essentially you are bang on. I left cooking because of monotony (and low pay, and the grease, etc!) and was attracted to computers because of problems solving (despite my complaints I am not in it for the dough). *pun* yeesh! :)
--8<--
Re:BIG buck == Big stress (Score:2)
Companies have learned to hire IT persons whose dedication to the profession extends beyond the 9-5 job. No longer do companies look for well rounded, diversified employees, with things like "hobbies" and "families." Oh no. Now they seek persons whose hobbies also happen to be computer-related. This offers not only some of the sharpest minds within the industry, but also a level of dedication well beyond what your typical sane, well adjusted, socially acclimated, etc. employee would ever offer. Couple this with the outrageous salaries that many of us are being paid, and the rampancy of non-compete agreements, and you have, you have.... A violation of Civil Rights!
We are in fact a sub-culture, of sorts, and we are being victimized. The ACLU ought to be made aware of this injustice. I've too many times had to go into my boss and ask for a pay-cut in an attempt to "buy back" a portion or my life and liberty, only to have him surreptitiously give me another promotion and a raise to return the balance to his favor.
I feel trapped by the situation. I feel as if I've sold my soul. I want to go back to a simpler existence. One with an abacus. I made my bed, and I can't get the hell out of it.
Re:coming to IT from other careers (Score:2)
--8<--
Re:Stress? Try grad school (Score:2)
Re:Preventing Stress in the Workplace? (Score:2)
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It's a
Re:ecstasy (Score:2)
That would be pretty tough to do with street acid, though, since you don't know the dosage. Take a little too much and you sure as hell won't get anything done
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Re:Simple Stress Relievers (Score:3)
1) Eat?
2) Go to the bathroom?
3) Bathe?
Geez, it takes me a half hour to have a dump and have a shower in the morning.... I think I've given up on breakfast myself, though a Nutrigain or Ensure can do the trick.
Robo-employee here works 60h per week and doesn't appear to have bodily functions.
I like the pager idea though...
Oh well, I work 37.5h/week at work then work another 80h/week taking care of my kids. Not in that priority, kids come first. So nyah.
Re:IT hell in silicon valley (formatted) (Score:2)
May the moderators moderate moderately
Ok so you all think you have it bad..
A condensed version of my 2 years spent at a now defunct pre-ipo startup.
Back in 1998 I decided to stop playing Descent on kali long enough to actually go out and look for a job. I found the secret to getting a job here in silicon valley a few years earlier, basically go to the mercury news web site and search the classifieds for "FAX (408)" and sort out what job you want from there. I faxed out to 100 companies looking for IT people saying to myself I'll take whoever bites first.
Bad Mistake.
I started working for a consulting group that worked for the now defunct startup for 36k@yr. Basically this consulting firm had been leeching money from the startup for the last 3 years to deliver a product that was limited to only 1 platform (we'll keep it nameless to stop o/s flame wars) and was leaps and bounds the worst piece of crap ever to be passed off as software. I guess I could tell you its function. Basically video transmission across the internet. But the thing required a t1 line to get 30fps on a 320x240 window. Something Real has been doing for a while.
I questioned the lead from the consulting group about his product choices and offered my advice which he took as a threat. He would constantly belittle me thinking somehow this was going to change my mind and make me see things with his "vision" I don't back down from bullshitters.
So began his abuse of power. He would go into rants about how I didn't order this or I didn't order that. Well duh! I'm not about to charge 6k to my plastic so I can buy his lame ass team new computers. I wasn't about to charge that money then have to sit there with the accounting department trying to justify my re-imbursement. Not to mention it takes time to get all that processed which would have gone into interest charges. He would constantly go around telling people I didn't have my finances in order. I would try and do things the normal way, you know, submitting a credit app/resellers license to a vendor and get net 30 terms. He wouldn't go for that either, we had to do all our purchases through fry's with his sales rep.
In retaliation to me trying to do things right he started to strip me of my power and access. He ordered one of his toadies to remove my access from all machines on the network including mail and file servers. Told everyone to no longer include me in meetings because I was counterproductive to his "Vision" Basically he was making it impossible for me to do my own job. I couldn't create new accounts, I couldn't troubleshoot the servers when they went poof, nothing. He made his toadies take over my former responsibilities and reduced my job to basically just sitting at a desk surfing the web. Because the toadies started getting the extra workload they began resenting me (to this day I can still feel it)
One day my CEO comes by with some potential investors. I was working in the lab on our prototype (herein will be referred to as "POS") when the lead from the consulting group walked by, checked to see if I was in there, then walked over to the CEO and the investors and started bringing them down my way. When they got to the door he came in and started talking about our product. Then he proceeds to tell the investors, "The prototyped would have been finished if "me" had ordered the parts which he can't do because he doesn't have his personal finances in order. He'll get it right eventually because I'm going to repeat to "me" over and over again until he gets it in his head". The words stung me pretty hard. I looked up at the CEO and investors. The investors looked shocked and the CEO, well lets just say he had a look which let me know he felt my pain. After they left I scribbled a note saying I quit and taped that with my key to the door and left.
Later that night I got a phone call from the lead begging me to come back. Well not quite begging, but he was being apologetic in a "well I'm just saying I'm sorry, doesn't mean I mean it" way. Turned out the CEO went back to the lab to talk to me and found the note, went back and chewed this guy out. I agreed to go back (you'd think I learned my lesson)
2 weeks later I got a call from the CEO's office. They had some weird network problem that needed fixing so I went down there. Problem got fixed in like 5 minutes and a reboot. So I decided I'd do some more to get the whole office running smoothly. I found a extra machine, put some server software on it, started getting rid of all the peer network sharing ect, ect. I happened upon the CEO's desk and noticed he was paying almost 10k@month to the consulting firm for me of which %40 went back to the lead. This explains why I wasn't hired on permanent yet. About 8pm I got a call from the CEO asking me to come to his house, his home PC needed some doctoring. So I packed up and went on over.
There was no sick PC when I arrived. He poured me some wine and started telling me about the sorted past him and the lead had had for the last 3 years. Turned out this guy had his fingers into everything and it was either all going back to him or his church in some way or another. The sales guy at fry's was a member of his church, the ISP we used he held stock in and was getting a referral bonus, and myself, sheesh I was his kids college fund. The platform we used he had stock in, the software we used belonged to him and if the IPO was to market it they would have to pay a royalty fee to him. Basically this guy was out to screw this IPO 7 ways to Sunday out of investors money. Well after that we talked about fishing, next day he rented a boat and we went out for bass.
I'm going to condense a bunch of stuff here. Basically it gets worse. I get hired after having to sit through a personal review where this guy tries to rip me apart with lies. Um also he starts to hire all these glass eyed religious fanatics from his church which on a daily basis remind me that I'm going to hell for not being in their religion. Oh yeah that and constantly dropping off their religious books anonymously on my desk. We hire a new dev team, the lead gets fired, the company moves to alameda because the CEO doesn't like the drive from SJC to Sunnyvale.
So by this time I am really caught in the middle of a huge stinkin pile of excrement. I have the dev team from the consulting group resenting me thinking I got their boss fired because I was "buddy buddy" with the CEO. The religious fanatics resent me thinking I ruined this man. The new dev team in Sacramento is uncertain of me because they think I did this single handedly to the ex lead. People start rumors about me just to be mean. It really got weird.
The CEO got what he wanted out of me. A scapegoat for everyone to resent and focus on instead of him. It was pretty fucked.
Then came time for the move. They wouldn't pay for a mover no matter how many quotes I got. I must have received at least 10 quotes from 10 movers. They told me it was my responsibility to get the equipment moved since there wasn't any acceptable quotes. Something told me they were trying to get me to quit but my macho said to show these guys what I was made of. The day of the move nobody offered to help me, they just threw trash all around the space. The sales guys were ripping the local phone books in half and leaving them on the floor. It took 3 U-haul (biggest truck) loads and 18 hour days for a weekend to get all the crap moved (think crap for 30 people). Only a few casualties here and there. Big gouge in the conference room table. In my tired stupor I smashed the U-haul into the basketball hoop at our old office and left it bent at a 45% angle. Other than that the move went smoothly.
Monday came and I called in to say I wasn't about to come in. I was totally sore and hurting but supposedly the CEO was there screaming and yelling that I hadn't unpacked anything. I got him on the phone and told him he can have the lazy sob's that didn't pack their own shit unpack it and sort it out themselves. I hung up and went to sleep.
Next day I went in, this time the CEO was ranting even worse than ever. Our new office was right next to the Oakland raiders HQ. Some drunken raider fan plowed into a ma-bell box that had all the copper for the entire business park. Our website, DNS, everything was all depending on that connection. It took pacbell a month to get it straightened out.
Comment if anyone has this happen to them... You wake up, 15 minutes your dressed and drivin to work, 1.5 hours later your at work, completely oblivious to what happened during your commute. Repeat the mental shutdown on the way home. It started to wear on me to the point where I started saying to myself I should deduct my commute time from my work time. 3 hours a day of commuting sucks for anyone who's ever had to do it. So I started working 5 hour days with a day off here and there.
HR started threatening to make me a hourly employee if I didn't put in my full 8 at the specified times. I told them I'd quit if they did. They did, I quit.
Well after I left the company kept spiraling downward. The Sacramento team all got pink slips. In fact most everyone got pink slips. But by that time I was already at my new job, where I got respect for what I knew and was allowed to implement it.
I got a call from my Old CEO recently. He needed help with some home computer problems again. I told him I was working, no time to call him. Two weeks later I got served papers. The CEO decided he would sue the lead from the consulting firm as a last ditch effort to keep his company afloat. The lead named me personally in the counter suite saying I conspired to slander him, and I gave out his source code and secrets which I didn't. Those wacky religious fanatics go figure.
Lesson I learned from all this.. If it smells like trouble then it probably is. Get out fast. Turn your back and never look back. I hope this can help someone else who is a stressed out IT worker.
--t0qer
May the bridges I burn behind me light my way ahead--bmbr
Re:coming to IT from other careers (Score:2)
Oh man, I have done time in both a pastry kitchen and as a breakfast cook (I've done many other positions these are just ones that required being up early) and you have a point there. Fresh bread (and a massive baking sheet covered in BACON!) can really start your morning off. Party all night, two hours of sleep, and a coffee and cig out back by the dumpster... Wait a minute! Maybe I SHOULD go back to cooking! :)
Thanks for the reminder. It wasn't all bad...
--8<--
IT hell in silicon valley (Score:2)
Re:Simple Stress Relievers (Score:2)
Depends on your partner. Dealing with my left hand is a stress reliever, dealing with my alleged girlfriend isn't.
Re:Preventing Stress in the Workplace? (Score:2)
I have to disagree, although I love the weed, I was smoking it regularly while in a high-stress job (computer games start-up - it doesn't get higher-stress than that). It drove me insane. Being stoned when you're mellowing out and coding is great; being stoned when some emergency comes up is a total bummer.
I ended up not smoking during hours. But now, I have the odd smoke during hours and I do find my day is far more productive. But I feel it's a balance.
.88 magnum -- it goes through schools.
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It's a
Re:ecstasy (Score:2)
I don't like E. It just gives me wierd headrushes and shit, and I don't enjoy it. And I figure that if I'm going to do something that's that bad for me, I damn well better enjoy it. Which is why I'd try heroin before I do E again.
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Re:ecstasy (Score:2)
Do you actually take enough to start tripping? I read a study somewhere which showed that taking tiny amounts of acid (about half of what is necessary to trip) will increase your attention span and let you focus on a single task for up to 12 hours (they recommended it for long-haul truck drivers and jobs like that, but of course this was before it was made illegal).
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Re:How to prevent it? Easy. Don't take your job ho (Score:2)
Some personal discoveries. (Score:5)
I don't mean you are supposed to be a BOFH to everyone... but...
DO NOT work those extra hours, unless it is really an emergency. And being in a 'continued state of emergency' is no excuse. If you can't do the ordinary day-to-day job in 8 hours, you aren't doing your job right. Server failures and disasters can be an aside.
IF THEY want or expect you to be on call, make SURE they pay extra for it. SIGNIFICANTLY extra, to discourage abusing you. If they can't or won't, make yourself unavailable.
Make certain things clear, in writing, when you are hired about hours worked, who you report to, etc. I know it's common for some manager, or VP, from some other department to come in and start 'demanding' things of the IT department. Those can usually be handled with 'can you please run that through the IT manager, or the IT Directory, or whoever?. What I've found is they will, more often than not, suddenly realize that it's not really THAT important. If it's not important enough for them to follow a simple procedure, it's not important enough for me to waste my time with. Of course, you have to use discretion. Some things really ARE emergencies.
Know who can fire you and who can't. Learn the politics of your company. Go out for lunch with your boss. I don't mean brownnose and suck up and stuff, but you have to know where you stand. Know when to say NO!
I can recall my conversation. The VP of something or other calls up and says 'I want you to do this, right now, today. It's very important.'. I say 'Sure. just call Mr. So-and-so (my boss) who's in his office RIGHT NOW, I'll even put you through, and run it by him. tell him I said I can do it immediately if he says it's okay'. "Oh.. well can't you just do it? "Sure, if you call him and explain to him why I'm disobeying his instructions not to do anything for anyone without his say-so". Catch 22. He says 'okay, it's not that important anyway'.
Get sleep, like others said. Sleep IS very important. The best way to go to bed on time is make a habit of doing your computing on weekends, and get this, IN THE MORNING. Even your personal stuff. Nothing keeps you up at night like a computer.
EXERCISE. I'm bad for this, but get exercise. It makes a HUGE difference.
Don't eat too much pasta. Use those IT skills to do up a spreadsheet of the crap you eat, and rationalize it.
Know where you are going. Always have a plan. Know why you are at the job you are at.
And most of all..
If you don't like something in life, CHANGE IT!
Re:Prevent it? Hell... (Score:2)
Quakeworld sucked, can't stand it. Played it once, uninstalled it, never messed with it again. Also, I never really liked ctf in Quake. Tribes is a different story.
Have I actually played quake? What kind of question is that? I was on IRC in #quake waiting for id to release the quake test. I almost nutted my pants whenever I started it up. I have logged more hours of quake than any other game. I remember playing it for as many as 20 hours on end at a friend's house during the weekends. There were three of us, we'd rotate every level and we'd take 10 minute power naps and consume 2 cases of sundrop (if you even know what that is).
As a matter of fact, I just finished playing quake at the office, we played for about an hour and a half.
Rune (or artifact) quake is one of the best mods for Quake ever. And this is coming from me, a guy that doesn't like to play mods, a guy that prefers the vanilla side of quake.
Mike
"I would kill everyone in this room for a drop of sweet beer."
Re:ultimate stress reliever (Score:2)
I'm not the original poster, but I've put several thousand rounds through an AK-47 (specifically a Poly-Tech Legend).
Or are you just looking for a sexy-sounding weapon, and couldn't remember how tospell Kalishnikov? Or that they're even the same?
I ask, because lots of people on slashdot are just talking out of their asses.
And a lot of people on here aren't.
That, and anyone with any real weapons experience would know that 12-gauges make for much more AOL-cd-blasting fun.
Now that is a matter of opinion. While I'm sure that AOL CD's pretty much immediately disintegrate when hit by a 12 guage, there isn't nearly so much challenge to that as there would be to be able to hit them with a rifle. Well, unless you were using slugs in the 12 guage.
Who cares whether you can put little holes through them at great distances, when you can instead blow them into little bits, and they make for interesting clay-substitutes on the range.
Now you've got my curiosity up... I may just have to go out and try both and see which one really is more fun.
While I'm at it, I might just have to do some comparisons as to different rounds...
Actually, of anything I have access to, the
BIG buck == Big stress (Score:2)
Is it any wonder that these people who hire us and set our salaries don't come to expect theses kind of insane hours? Really I think (no I pretty much know) that they resent the compensation levels that they have to fork out for us. Im not saying that they are correct in their beleifs, but I am absolutley sure I am accurate.
Nice title. (Score:4)
Wow, that's much worse than IT Stress at home, on the weekends!
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Silicon Valley Sucks (Score:3)
Preventing Stress (Score:3)
Re:Negative Productivity (Score:2)
Exactly! A friend of mine works at Microsoft here in the Netherlands as a developer. He's also spent some time working for Microsoft in the US, working those notoriously crazy hours. He gets more work with his team here, all working a strict 40 hours a week, than with the larger team he had in the US, each working 60+ hours a week.
Stress and deprivation of life are in most cases counterproductive. There are a few people who work better under stress, but those are the notable exceptions that confirm the rule. If you spend more than a few hours on a problem, your mind begins to wonder. Trying to force it back to the job is less productive in the long run than taking a break, like getting a cup of coffee and having a relaxed chat with a few collegues, or playing a little frag match.
Also, I've found that if I don't drink much coffee I'll generally have my mind sorted more clearly. Coffee is great to get through the day after you've had a bad night's sleep for whatever reason, but it's not a structural solution... I much prefer (herbal || decaf) tea.
Now please don't mod this down because the word "Microsoft" is in it. That's basically irrelevant. Besides, the Penguin's got my soul, so there
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
Preventing Stress in the Workplace? (Score:5)
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HUGE source of IT stress... (Score:5)
Re:This is not so surprising (Score:2)
When this happened I had to resolve the problem ASAP. My collegues were not as hot at solving these type of problems, often making the problem worse. I'd get pressured by the customer and management to get the problem fixed. I could escalate to the software supplier, but they were often usesless in responding under pressure, or just too slow to respond. I had no-one to really help me, except perhaps a couple of our consultants.
On numerous occasions I was known to spend all day working in the same room, particularly if more than one system had failed at the same time. I could spend 10-12 hours a day doing this work. The posistion was made more stressful by the contact at the customer site not co-operating properly (such as being able to describe what they had done, or read lines out of log files correctly). I'd sometimes waste hours looking in the wrong place due to the symptoms being incorrectly described.
When the problem was finally resolved, I'd receive no thanks for all the effort I'd applied, even if the problem was the customer's own fault - such as not applying critical OS patches.
The turning point for me was when we had a management change. The PHB in charge of my department was hopeless. He caused too much damage to our existing customers, causing contracts to be cancelled, without signing up anyone worthwhile to replace them. There was one incident that was really stresful.
I had one site report a serious performance problem with their system. I knew that the competance of this site was fairly low (I had problems guiding them through a vi session a week previously), so to determine the fault I had to connect to the system myself remotely via a modem, then poke around log files and monitoring tools as root until I could find a pointer to the cause. The PHB didn't want me to do this, and instead instructed me to produce a list of what I proposed to do, and then have the customer do it themselves. (I think the PHB wanted me to concentrate on his customers instead). As thin involved running diagnostics which if mis-used could smash filesystems, I didn't want to do that. I progressed as normal, resolving the issue eventually. (It was an obscure configuration issue IIRC, and I only found the root cause by accident - if I'd followed the PHB it would never have got resolved.).
Another issue concerned a 3rd party piece of software we had sold a customer. I received a telephone call after 6pm, stating that I must have it running by the end of the day. The manufacturers of this software were not too hot, and releases were often broken. In this case the process start-up script distributed with the media was incorrect, and the process didn't want to run. The manufacturers were also closed that day for a public holiday in their country, and there was nothing on this problem on their web-site.
I spent the next 2 hours second-guessing the startup parameters for the binary, hacking the script until it ran properly, whilst hacking it over a slow dial-up link without any direct access to an editor on the host system. Got no thanks for that, either!
Re:IT Unions? (Score:3)
Because it's already impossible for two geeks to agree the best way to open a car door, let alone formulate a collective bargaining process across so many disparate companies and industrial sectors.
That's why.
Tim
Re:Preventing Stress in the Workplace? (Score:2)
Yeah, finally
being stoned when some emergency comes up is a total bummer.
I don't agree - if I have something that needs to be done right away, I'll have an easier time doing it stoned. I have an easier time sitting and doing one thing for a long time if I'm stoned (provided I have more weed to smoke). But if I start sobering up a bit I'll want to go do something else instead, but if I keep on puffing, I can keep on coding.
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Re:Best way to avoid stress: stay positive (Score:2)
That post should be moderated up. There's much self-induced stress among geek techs. Not only do you have a job to do, but you have to defend 3dfx from NVidia advocates, be on the lookout for slanderous comments about Linux, advocate your pet software design methodology, and make sure that annoying fringe groups like Mac owners and Java programmers don't gain any ground. Life is much easier if you do what you enjoy, and live and let live.
time pressure (Score:4)
The boss' cluelessness, Miller says, typically led him to make promises to company honchos that left the IT staff scrambling to meet impossible deadlines.
Often the difference between a successful project and a stressful disaster is simply whether the schedule was realistic in the first place. So a year-long project can actually "fail" on its very first day, if the person in charge decides to call it a six month project instead.
Yeah, but you drive for hours... (Score:2)
As for clubs and bars, I don't do'em, so I don't care how many of them San Jose has. All I know is that everything I see about living in the Silicon Valley says it sucks. The politics here in Arizona are bizarre, and the sprawl is no fun either, but if you choose where you live carefully, it's a helluva lot more livable than the Silicon Valley as it currently stands.
SF doesn't suck as far as livability goes, but that's a different world from the Silicon Valley, even if it IS only a couple hours away from San Jose (if the traffic is light :-).
-E
Re:ultimate stress reliever (Score:2)
Are you kidding? I've seen 6 to 9 year olds firing an AK-47. The younger ones only had a little trouble holding onto it. Your average 12 year old wouldn't have problems controlling one -- ask Vietnam vets, a lot of the VC were that young, and in general southeast asians are smaller than people of northern european or african american ancestry like most american GIs were.
Most geeks probably couldn;t fire a Shotgun (moreless pick it up)
WTF? How freaking heavy do you think a shotgun is? A Remington 870 weighs a lot less than a 17" monitor, and I've seen plenty of geeks pick one of those up.
Contrary to the myths purveyed by the media, AK-47's are neither particularly large, nor particularly powerful. The thing that makes them such a classic design is they are simple, reliable and easy to manufacture.
Coming to IT from hell (Score:4)
RIGHT ON!! I may be losing hair and sleep, but damn is that pay check nice. The best part about these "high stress techno jobs" is you can go to a bar (get into a fight if your an animal) in your work cloths, try that working at McDonald!!!
lol! I should know, I slavied away at that hell hole for 10 hours at time, for that PHAT $4.25 an hour. Nothing better then spend 10 hours smelling like shit, tossing patties, slipping and sliding on da floor, spitting in people food, spilling "the waste product" all over yourself, making 600 big macs in one night while your friends are having fun, then missing halloween 'cuase gotz to work 'cuase else is working and you're promised dinner which the bitch tried to make you pay for so you steal a whole case of nuggets and fires but this doesn't counter react hearing your friends talk about that night for the rest of your frigging life, and burning da hands so many damn time you lose the feeling of heat, BUT what joy is to remember that was your best damn job in the world of all shit jobs.
Oh yeah, gotta love them shirts and pants, dare you where blue jeans, you would spend weeks short shafted running the grill by ya own damn self. Of course you're to stupid to quit so you live with it until you piss in the freeze by mistake and fail to come the next day after you founding yourself high as hell in your 1980 pontic green lemon with your head in a haft eating hamburger from god knows then after moving your stoned ass inside, having the wierdest experince in your life with some girl on the telephone cause you praticed wicca who now now you can't get out of your head and having you parent yell and screem at you becuase how are you going to pay for the P90 that you bought for 4 grand and learned UNIX on which gave you your job today, but I be damn, IF WORKING AT McDonald DOESN'T MOVATE YOU, NOTHING WILL!!
Every one should work at mcdonalds for at least 6 months to know what a shitty job really means!! Maybe less people would bitch, naw, we would just have more teenage smelling like shit, pissing in our food and being beyond atomic at what ever made them get a job in the first place! Damn goverment.
But heck, if you ever get tried of your geekdom job, McDonald will allways hire you, even if you stole, pissed in the food, and still smell like shit.
Did someone say McDonald? I got a 9. I didn't think anyone said anything. We're going to Taco Hell.
Not all that surprising... (Score:2)
Even more, I believe this article completely forsakes a major demographic of the IT industry - the hordes of masochistic geeks such as myself that actually ENJOY the long hours, tight deadlines, and impossible objectives. If I wanted a boring, 9 to 5 job I would have become a banker. Rather, I chose the ever-evolving, fast paced, IT world in which to make my "millions". I work an average of 60+ hours a week and to be honest I wouldn't know what to do with my self if I didn't. Don't get me wrong, I have a girlfriend, a dog, some might even say a life...the simple fact is that I love the challenge of computers. Generally speaking, if I am not doing something on a computer for work then I am on the same computer doing something for "fun" (Linux!!!).
All in all, I guess it just comes down to the old saying "each unto their own...". Certainly my lifestyle is not for everyone, if fact it is probably for very few.
- j
Re:IT Workplace Cure (Score:2)
You know, many of us chose IT careers because we do find computers and technology personally interesting.
Personally, I've always been a geek. Even as a little kid I always took things apart to find out how they worked. I enjoy using my brain and solving problems, and yes, a lot of the extra work I do is because I enjoy doing it or am obsessed with solving a problem I'm working on (taught myself customized Solaris jumpstart trees and custom Solaris packages over a weekend last month over just such a problem). That doesn't mean I think we shouldn't be compensated for the time we put into the job, or get taken advantage of because we happen to enjoy most of what we do. I also see the engineers that I support working ungodly hours to meet insane schedules as well.. seems to be the norm for most technical work today, not just IT.
In any case, just because you (I assume) got into IT for the money, doesn't mean we all did. Many of us love working with the latest and greatest hardware that cost more than we could ever afford. We also love having toys to play with... I mean test.
Some of us are also smart enough to not dig a hole we can't get out of by only learning one OS and/or platform. Personally, I touch Windows as little as possible, perferring the control I have over unix boxes much more (mostly Solaris but some HP, and more and more Linux as time passes). But I still make sure I know the basics in every OS I might have to touch, and I'm always willing to learn new skills.
Oh, and yes, I do get enjoyment out of figuring out some obscure hardware/software error, building a new massive farm of servers, etc. The fact that you never did clearly shows (to me anyway) why you don't miss working in IT, and likely never did belong there in the first place.
Re:Simple Stress Relievers (Score:2)
ultimate stress reliever (Score:4)
Best way to avoid stress: stay positive (Score:2)
Enviroment is Key (Score:3)
Stressoholic managers force stress on IT staff. (Score:4)
In reality, everybody in IT was directly commanded by the CTO, who craved stress. He would intentionally delay taking actions on small problems until they turned into a crisis. Network Operations staff would end up working an unscheduled sixteen hour day at least once a week, due to avoidable crisis situations. Come in an hour late the next morning after working 8AM-Midnight, get yelled at.
This same guy raced sailboats on the weekend, and treated all of 'his' (regardless of who they reported to) employees as if we were crew on a sailing vessel.
Insubordination, any hint that you were looking at other positions at a less insane company, and you would be forced to 'walk the plank' (resign), gone by lunch time, never to be spoken of again.
So yes, stress is sometimes very much a direct result of bad management. In this case, Mr. Stressoholic is still the CTO, their stock is still rotting at a quarter of the IPO price, and nobody in management understands why they cannot hire (or retain) good people in our field.
Already there is one wonderful solution..... (Score:2)
some of it on some people that annoy you
health
And you don't even need to hate users
goes'
( moderate this - sociophatic -10 )...
Simple Stress Relievers (Score:5)
1. Get to work early. I take the 6:30 ferry and walk in at 7am, alongwith a few early birds. We get the management crap ( email, timecards ) out of the way & get a headstart before the crowd walks in.
2. Throw away personal contact devices. I threw away my Pager and complained it was lost. I was given a second pager. I then threw it overboard and said it got stolen on the ferry. I then "lost" my third pager on the elevator. Now they've stopped giving me pagers.
3. Get out at 7pm sharp. That's 12 hours a day. No more no less. 60 hours a week solid. Any more is unethical.
4. Do something else with your life. IT is not the be-all and end-all of civilization. The greatest languages ( Lisp, Smalltalk, ML ) are behind us. The fun is over. What you have now is nonsensical crap ( C++, Java, ugh! ) Don't waste your time with such COBOL-for-the-90s-type-languages. Get out and get a life. I love movies. So I've signed up for a course in Acting, a course in Direction, a course in Post Production.
They're from 7:30 to 9 pm, that's an hour and a half on non-IT per day! Its so refreshing to walk into the New School and do something artsy.
5. Stress is all in the mind. Don't take yourself so seriously. Loosen up. Play foosball. Life goes on.
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A sad story with a happy ending (Score:2)
My case was exactly the same as the first case in the article:
The happy ending:
- Mg: "How much time do you think this will take?"
- Me: "One month"
- Mg: "This is a simple enough thing, surelly it won't take that much time..."
- Me: "It will take one month!"
- Mg: "This is a really important thing, we're expected to release this in three weeks"
- Me: "It will take one month no matter what, it cannot be done in less than that."
- Mg: "Look, i'll put it down in planning as taking 3 weeks, and we'll try to do it"
- Me: "You can put down whatever you want, it will still take one month. If anybody asks me i will say that i think it will take one month, if [Mg. manager name here] asks me i will say that it will take one month, and that task WILL take one month"
)P.S.It did took one month
Re:Coming to IT from hell (Score:2)
"Every one should work at mcdonalds for at least 6 months to know what a shitty job really means!! "
Marnuke, I wish I had moderator points, because I'd spend them all on modding that post up. Truer words have selcom been spoken. :)
WTF Stress? (Score:2)
Re:Preventing Stress in the Workplace? (Score:2)
Glad Smokedot's back ... see you there!
.88 magnum -- it goes through schools.
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It's a
Re:Simple Stress Relievers (Score:2)
Hell, take dessert to bed with you right after supper. The dishes will keep to the next day.
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coming to IT from other careers (Score:5)
I was a chef before attending a comp. sci. program. I don't have extensive industry experience yet (so what I am about to should be disregarded by everyone, right?) but from what I have seen it seems like there is stress in IT but we are relatively well paid for our trouble.
As a chef I often worked for weeks on end without a day off or overtime pay. 14 hour days were frequently the norm and the time pressures are immeadiate. There is always someone yelling at you (sometimes that is just "how it is done") and you frequently burn yourself, get cut, fall, etc.
Okay, it's way better than digging ditches (!). I got to eat well, I lived in a bunch of places and met some great people. I also am now a wicked cook. My point is I did all that for about $10 an hour (Canadian) as my peak wage. Now that's pretty crappy money considering the training and experience I had...
Anyway, the next time you are stressed at work take three deep breaths, hold in the last one and imagine you are behind the counter at McDonalds or perhaps your job is cleaning the porta-pottys at construction site. Next haul out your last paystub (or whatever) and exhale while reading it. If you still don't feel better, start shopping around for an organization that will treat you better...
Okay, flame away! :)
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This is not so surprising (Score:5)
When a server goes down(in smaller operations), everyone stops working until we get it fixed. This is a serious problem for the company.
With the projects management puts on us, it is generally due to unrealistic goals that we burn ourselves out over it. There are two basic situations:
1. Management says this has to be done by this date. They dont' realize it is not realisticly possible becouse we don't tell them. We just say okay, no problem. Then we take it as a personal challenge to meet thier unrealistic goal.
2. Management says get this done by this date and we do becouse we have a family to take care of.
What we have to do is make a stand when they get out of control. We did this at my work not too long ago. While it has not been a long time since, we have seen them pulling us in and listening when they make decisions. Also, they have been "forcing" us out the door at reasonable times to have time with our family and friends. I have already heard comments that we don't seem as disgruntled now as we did before. Also they are commenting that we are doing better work in the time that we are there.
It's amazing what happens when you find that there is life outside of the cubicles that wall you in during the day...