I concur, at least for the IT specialist positions
I agree with your points about surveys; truly there's not enough information here and the results are almost certainly biased. One example is IT audit; having been on both ends of an IT audit auditors find it tedious to complete and the people being audited find it annoying. Still, the IT comments are spot on.
The main complaint I hear from my colleagues in IT centers around how little respect IT tech support gets from business areas. We're seen as a necessary evil, an expensive group who should be cut, a group who is just supposed to do as we're told. We're not involved in decisions regarding how to write applications ("This is what the customer wants, just make it happen by next week"); data security is considered an afterthought ("Let's build the application and worry about security later"); and most galling, if something bad happens it's our fault but when we do something good it's just business as usual. This is particularly bad in tech support, not so bad in application support but still there.
I've never been an IT director so I can't speak for that, but it seems reasonable to assume this goes up the ladder. Many IT directors worked their way up within the department, and when they get to the top and can't change the status quo it must be very frustrating.
