Discussion on:

10 reasons for quitting IT

IT is what makes the world go round

So far, IT is the only job I've tried that sustainably holds my attention and interest. Doesn't even seem like work sometimes. So, barring some sudden revelation to the contrary, this is my career.

For me, the main source of stress (but also enjoyment, perversely enough) is this: Everything Is Experimental.

Unlike say, carpentry, IT is a "moving target." Nothing stands still for more than a couple years at most.

There was that happy time (for Windows people) between about 2005 and 2008 when XP was mature, and firmly entrenched. But now we've got to make sure everything works in XP *and* 7. And someday, we'll have to make sure everything works in 7 *and* 8 (or whatever). Etc.

And there are certain ... delicate ... apps and hardware that are always one Windows Update away from being broken.

But hey, that's the challenge, which I must admit I enjoy. So it's a living. And for me, by now, clearly a career.

unappreciated

Real great to know there are lot of people who thought like me...my mom and wife used to laugh at me when i say..i need a farm land buy a smal herd of sheep..some chicken.. leeave aside all those IT stuffF
I love PEACE!

Even though its computers that keeps the business going. I find it amazing how the first thing that gets cut is IT. I have worked as a field tech for several years for a small company here in the Midwest and I have worked at several businesses and was always amazed when the maintenance guy would call to resolve a problem on the SBS server after he has tried to fix it himself. Or the office lady who was hired on as the Office Administrator who thinks that title falls under Systems Administrator and takes the IT on herself only to call you later because the slow computer problem she was fixing was now BSOD. And my favorite of all time is how that one employee knows someone who works on computers and can come and fix that problem cheaper than the Computer Guy can. Wow another unemployed person becomes a computer expert. basement divers cause more problems in the IT world then most end users. When the day is over and production has come to a stop because you let the cheap guy come and fix your IT problem and you got what you paid for, you will be more than happy to call your IT guy back up and you could not be happier with paying his hourly rate because it was fixed right the first time.
Stress in the IT world comes in many shapes and forms. But at the end of the day I still truly love this career. I guess its the passion that fuels the insanity that keeps me in the game!

I would be a King. That way, I could have everyone prepare my food, sow my clothes, and brew my beer. Hey, if we all live in this apocoliptic world after 2012, somebody needs to be a leader!

$2,000,000 a year, no-show. I'll be gone to Tahiti!

I'm in IT for now but being an all-in-one tech (Help Desk/PC Technician/Server Technician/Cell Phone Tech/Security System Tech) is beyond exhausting. I want to challenge my brain but not at the ridiculous pace the modern day IT person has to keep up with. I'd rather design engines, suspensions, and other mechanical parts than install yet more Adobe, Java and Microsoft updates. In the end if I could get a job where I could specialize on the network back end of things (servers or layer three) that might be a better option. I'm just not enough of a people person for the help desk side of things to not get to me on a daily basis.

But with the job outlook being as it is right now I'm just happy (for the most part...barely) to have my bills paid every month.

I would Like to frame pictures or homes...or enemies.

Just imagine a job where you start and finish and look at your work and say thats it done! No later upgrades, no other wee apps installed that ruin what you just did,,,, Ah the joy of it.

I started this and became an EMT and thought wait, all I'm doing now replacing computer problems by actually fixing the users .... Why do we have the urge to have to help others for no respect. In IT your only as good as the last thing you do. I'm now thinking of becoming a pilot

I'd rather be breeding dogs than explaining again why people doesn't need every program installed on their computer, specially those that you find on a porn website ad...

Sorry...we seem to be out of 16 penny nails...try next week.

So I could make a bundle and then kick the company to hell. After I have lined my offshore bank account with all the money I took by holding the company hostage I'll be happy to quit so you can start fresh.

I'd get rid of that sort real fast. If that hyper-negative attitude is pervasive where you live, fire them anyway and hire young smart ones instead (who haven't yet had their spirits crushed.) Life would be tough until you get them up to speed, though - but worth the wait.

1) We work with the client/user on us !
2) We work at weird hours !
3) We are more productive at night !
4) The client pays a lot but your boss takes more than you !
5) If you are good, you're never proud of what yo do!
6) We bill by hour but your time extends until you finish !

All this like the ****** !!

YOU HAVE A GOOD POINT, AND PRACTICAL ORIENTED POINTS, IF I WOULD CONSIDER MYSELF I WOULD OVERLOOK THOSE DISADVANTAGES BECAUSE, I AM INSTRICSTICALLY MOTIVATED TO BE IN THE CAREER FIELD, YOU KNOW THEREFORE THAT FOR ONE TO BE A CCIE IS NOTHING BUT THE ZEAL. THANK YOU FOR THAT COMPOSE IT IS GREAT.

As sympathetic as I am to the points that Jack makes, in today's economy and job market, there are few jobs that don't have more than their fair share of stress. If you're a minimum wage earner, the stress comes from just trying to make ends meet. If you're an independent contractor, the stress comes from trying to get paid, not getting stiffed, not being defrauded, etc., etc. If you're a mid-level employee, the stress can come from wondering if your company is going to keep you on the payroll, or even if it's going to stay in business. Stress is endemic in the world today, and no place (in my experience) is without it.

On the other hand, when has there ever been a job situation that didn't have some level of stress? It's part and parcel of daily life. Ultimately, when you really examine life, the only respite from stress is in the grave, and I don't see a lot of people rushing headlong to that destination.

The first time, back in the early '80s, I got into the asbestos abatement field; the money was better and most of the people were "real". The second time, ten years ago, again fed up with corporate jerks, I tried my hand at being a trucker ??? a ???tanker-yanker???. Then that slowed down and a 90-day IT contract evolved into the gig I???m currently in. I guess IT is my destiny even if I???m not always that happy with it (For all the reasons stated in the article.).

Well, My grandfather farmed.
Back then they did not believe in borrowing money, always bought only what they could afford, etc.
Well, during the depression, they never worried about eating, they had their own food, never worried about a job either, everyone else had to eat
A very modest life, hard work but they were happy and never a worry (well sometimes with the weather).
Was hard work, I helped out some summers when a kid, not fun.
However I find myself liking growing some stuff in a small garden.
At least I know I can live off the land and always have food if comes to that.

Farming is not for everyone! Grow vegetables than what?

I don't think of leaving ICT per se. Once working it becomes an addiction like people drink, gamble and/or smoke.

Working for a company not being my own is finished by lack of respect by former manager, not by a client as is suggested in the last item of the list '10 reasons...'. They had to ask hundreds of employees for "economic" reason (read: the crise) to find another job. Oh well, I love being freelancer and wait for customers with more respect than said manager(s) who more think of their own good and less of the goals of the people who pay their salary.

Think about it. Why was Cray Research located in Chippewa Falls, WI?

I've had to actually walk out of one job at a major semi plant. I think doing it ONCE can be a good idea, but do't make a habit of it.

The years I spent at Cray were the best of a long carrer in computers.

That is why I won't get back into the industry unless it is under MY terms.

That includes NO Electronic Leash, NO 24/7 on call. No " keep me in touch ".

I had a life. Seymour had a life. And it was good.

From my perspective the reasons are spot-on (at least 8 of 10). I have been at this for 25 years, 15 in IT departments and 10 as a consultant/service provider for small businesses. I used to enjoy it and technology used to motivate me. But now with all the bloated software (mostly Microsoft products) and rapidly changing hardware I find it next to impossible and not enjoyable to keep up. You can rarely get the same blend of software and hardware to install or operate the same way and it sucks to end up owning the issues until they're fixed (if they are). Vendor support these days is nearly extinct if you're a reseller. I'd prefer to help my customers build their business on IT vs. providing what really amounts to an administrative support role, but even if that were the case I think I'm plain burnt out and ready for a career change. Hard to make a decent living at something else though in your mid-40s when you've already been at something this long.

The reason IT is hard and stressfull is few have the combined skills of managing the people relationships and the technical aptitude to keep up with the technology so that you can not get confused by the hype. I have been a programmer, a consultant, a CIO, a VP of Sales and Marketing, a CTO and a CEO and I can think of few other professions that would have allowed me this latitude.

years in I.T. has got me longing to work for a charity. something which helps underpriveleged or nature. probably because in I.T. i see the worst of the capitalist world we've built up. people are selfish, uptight, stressed, and instill huge meaning in rather trivial things.

amen brother

mgmt wants to to keep fixing the broken junk , patching outdated code to keep up with security standards and putting up with their budget bs. Their favorite areas get the money. Only time these types get caught is when you give the funding structure to your users who then expose these mgmt people. My attitude is find a new place to work. I'm 6 months from vesting so i'll wait a little while probably. In my 20+ years, I've only vested one other time. When i was a consultant in my own company, I paid into my own 401K and left when times where i worked were down. I going back to that , this corporate life is for the birds.

There is life after Computers... I just know it. I'd happily close up shop and run away to Scotland or the coast of Spain and perhaps start up an Artist's collective, or maybe start a boutique "Meadery". The possibilities are inticingly endless (and just out of reach till I sell this place). I don't suppose any Techies out there want to buy a very profitable Computer store in Western Australia?

When you get to the age when you CAN retire and most of that list of 10 are beginning to or have become a reality, it's time to hang it up. The management keeps getting dumber and dumber and has no appreciation for what we do. I retired a little over a year and a half ago (for a number of the first 10 reasons and a few more).

Actually, I grew up on a farm and have missed it for the last 40+ years.......however, in these times, the financial rewards of "farming" might be marginal at best.

There's an old joke about a farmer who won $10 million in the lottery. When someone asked him what he was going to do with all that money, he said he'd just keep farming till it was all gone........

Farming: Lots & lots of hard work and potentially bad earning. Bees & honey, purple sprouting brocolli, oilseed rape, maize / corn , poultry. Large (ok - huge) undercover with tomatoes, cucumber, peppers and squashes. How satisfying would this be compared to being a high-tech handyman?

I just got out for many of these reasons. IT has gotten more and more stressful and not what i had hoped after 10 years. I luckily got another offer to do something completely different not IT. I don't miss it, well maybe a little... but I don't want to look back.

These are the exact points that I experience in and out of work! Thanks for putting a smile on my face!

I am tired of all you guys finding reasons for quitting IT. We do it because it is fun. It is what we like to do. I had an option to end up in Finance dept in a big company. I said No to the offer because I like to code. All jobs have challenges, learn to manage the stress, work life balance, and please stop taking things personally. It is just a job, be a professional. If you don't like people or if some manager is giving you a hard time, find another job. If you are good and capable, there are still plenty of jobs for you out there in the market. A lot of IT folks struggle because they don't care for people. People are the main variable in any equation. All isms and systems fail or thrive due to people. Be a people person, find fault within and continue to improve. If you can't do that, you might as well quit and spend your days in front of a computer at home.

Manager !!

Did you creep into my world and spend a day with me?:) I spent 4 years as a vendor engineer onsite at a customer's site taking care of some mainframes as the sole person managing and maintaining the site. There was only 1 other person that had access to the equipment and he had other duties and was seldom available. In addition to my normal work hours I spent 4 years of being oncall 7x24 365 days/year and I was burned out. Maintenance could only be done at night and usually only on Sat night. Many times I worked all day, went home and got 2-3 hours of sleep before returning to the site and working all night and then the next day. If I got finished earlythe only place to get some rest would be to lay down on the floor and take a nap. The unofficial oncall time was never reimbursed; it was just expected.
I left the IT field and attempted to make a go of the medical community but it did not work out. In the IT field you can focus on tech items and the people you work with do the same. In the medical field everyone had feelings and egos. As a male in an almost all female environment you could not say anything without getting someone upset with you. I returned to the IT field and now at the age of 54 have no intentions of moving anywhere else.

Great article. you forgot to mention the cliques within an I.T. team and how they dont include other team members in the loop on projects . Or further more how some team members withhold information to seem smarter .
then again I guess you did cover this under " Competition" .
thanks look forward to reading more .

That includes clients if you do private work. Four days a week I work for this specific outfit. There is a woman here who knows everything - yes, everything, just ask her. She did not finish school, she dislikes reading and cannot pay attention beyond five seconds. Despite that, whatever we all collectively know about IT, she knows more. She practices aggressive stupidity enthusiastically. There is no such thing for her as the opinion on a subject of someone who doesn't know about that subject being valueless. And she is not alone. Stupid people with too much (any?) power are the cause of so many problems. And that is not only in IT.

Every occupation has its own problems.

Farming, especially when one farms with animals, is a 24/7 job. No, thanks. One of my friends, a dentist, said the ideal occupation would be managing a large inheritance.

If I were to leave the IT field, (which I'm heavily thinking about it) I think I would become a Police Officer. So instead of dealing with these I-D-10-Ts on their computers, I can deal with them on the road, and ticket them or take them to jail.

IT is a great despite its deficiencies (like any other field). Its the challenge that should motivate you---!!!

The subject is my mantra and what is on all of my social networking sites and where ever I can post it. After thirty years in the IT business in all sorts of positions (often the bent over one) I can say this article is so, so true. I currently run my own company doing web development as an Independent Consultant. I never thought these things (well some I did, especially the part about managers) until having run my own company for five years. Now I agree with all of them, especially the ones about Getting Paid, People (in general), Competition, Lack of Standards and Respect. Being a Freelancer, I deal with all kinds of people and also many off shore.

Competition from off shore is incredibly fierce on the many freelancer job boards I troll on for customers, and the US is responsible for a lot of it as is the European Union. Hiring people who work for $5 an hour because they pay $200 a month for rent is just one example. Turning around and seeking a domestic IT professional to clean up the mess that is created by their hacks and having the nerve to want the same rate is another. I spend a considerable amount of time collecting from people who are just outright thieves.

Here is a recent example. A plastic surgeon (yes they make more on one consultation than I do in a month) out on the West Coast has an Office Manager, and instead of hiring a professional, do most of it themselves and the Office Manager convinces her boss she can do it all. NOT! They get a professional proposal from me, and after a phone consultation, agree up front to pay a rather low consultation fee for the one hour phone conversation. The proposal I then write, has all the specifics as to what will be done to fulfill their initial requirements, and getting her to tell me what she wanted, as the old saying goes, was like pulling teeth out of a lion. Well, lioness in this case. After doing the R&D to find the "best-of-breed" solutions for their CMS and replace the junk their twenty-something Office Manager, self-proclaimed IT expert installed, I wind up clocking in twenty hours. Then, what I call the "Proposal Tennis Match" starts, and the volleying begins.

The requirements start getting pared down to not much of anything. It ends up installing and configuring the newsletter component I select, and providing consultation so she can learn how to modify an HTML template provided with the newsletter extension, to match their printed version, which they don't provide, so I haven't a clue what it will really entail. I bill for four hours out of the twenty one (phone call was one hour) at a ridiculous price of $15 an hour as I am told (this is the game they all play) future business will be forthcoming. A minute after I send the electronic invoice from the CRM site I provide my clients an account on, free of charge as part of my service offering, I receive a dispute notice with inflammatory remarks about how out of scope I have gone and the client refuses to pay it. I have learned to quickly drop these types of clients as they never pay, always complain, and feel they are the IT experts with their degree in Business Administration, Marketing, etc. (my college years were spent in Engineering: Computer Science and Business Administration: MIS).

So, I cancel their account and send an email saying I am canceling the project and prefer not doing business with them. I am on the job board the next day trying to find some way to make up for my losses and what do I find? A posting by the Office Manager using my recommendation concerning the newsletter to have some cheap offshore freelancer do it using my proposal details I am sure. Twenty hours of time that I send an invoice to this plastic surgeon and his Office Manager from hell to, that has only four hours on it at $15 an hour for $60 and I get stiffed! I wind up eating the $315 cash equivalent, not to mention over twenty hours of my valuable time, I could be spending on paying clients, that is now lost.

So my point? This article is completely right on! Why did I start this with Born to IT? Because I love it. I love computing, I love my clients who stay with me and pay me what they consider are good rates, without arguments. I love the life-long learning and constant change, I love the challenges, I love the art and science of computing, I even love the stress and long hours as I like to work any way and the stress has taught me how to be patient and also endure. I love to think like a machine when I am developing and trouble shooting.

But I will close this with I hate the cheap, no-nothings who think they know everything, are nothing but thieves, and also are ruining the business with their hiring of individuals who think hacking is computing and charge next to nothing just to get the business. The worst part is, the people from the same country I live in and dearly love, turn around and plead for help to get them out of the mess they create themselves and their self-procalimed expertise in IT, or from someone who hacks their system until it is no longer useable. They are killing this business and their arrogance towards trained IT professionals is obvious when they offer rates that are commensurate with incomes at the poverty level, refuse to pay, lie about what they really want, change everything as they finally have the assistance to realize what they needed in the first place, and have the arrogance to feel we should not have the same Standard of Living they do.

Will I quit? At 59 years of age I think not and also, remember my mantra "Born to IT". But I do think now at times - Maybe I am dumber than I look - LOL.

yeah... IT isn't the right thing for me... i feel stuck in it

I did my best in physics, calculus, hydraulics, surveying, during college just to end up doing computer programming when I finished school (Please consider programming as part of IT).

Programming becomes tough when all the support people are lazy, always escalate issues directly to developers when the log file is very clear that the problem is in the configuration that they maintain.

Well, if I were to leave programming (Yes it is IT!!!), id be back to holding a calculator and a huge sheet of tracing paper on a big drawing table equiped with T-square and Triangles...

I guess i owe you guyz,...........
finally i get the reasons!!!!!!!!!!!!!!