Good article.
Burnout is expected when you have bright, hard-working, dedicated employees tasked with keeping information technology up-to-speed and secure while they support end-users who have unrealistic expectations.
The reality is often your IT department cares more about your business than many other employees do but they are a very easy scapegoat. Let's face it, when the "big boss" doesn't know tcp/ip from a Word document, you can't REALLY defend yourself.
Politically, if you're one of the many people who survive at a job because you are in tight with the right person, it's a very wise political strategy to marginalize IT workers, or even the entire IT department. One more on your list of people to blame.
IT is an invisible thing to most upper management. Money spent on information technology is money management and business owners don't want to spend. That's true whether it's in the form of personnel, equipment, software, network deployments, consulting fees.....any of it.
Even as an independent, I still deal with it. I do have the power to decide if I want to work with certain clients, give discounts to certain clients, etc, etc. But I still haven't escaped the "I should just think it and it's so" attitude and after being in the business for near 15 years, I no longer expect to.
