I agree that how people respond will be heavily influenced by the specific situations in which they find themselves. I have worked in public education support environments for about 5 years. I started in a public school district, then ended up at a large public university. The amount of stress I feel might well be related to working in an underfunded and unappreciated "industry" in a state that is fairly hostile to that industry (Arizona). My colleagues and I are miserable all of the time. When we are hired, we come in optimistic and thinking things will be great. Within six months, those feelings are long gone. Burn-out is quick and brutal here. We are poorly compensated, expected to know everything about everything, and have to master more and more (without any change in compensation). Despite the fact that there are degrees, not to mention years of support and development experience, held by most members of our staff, we are treated like idiots by most of our IT "colleagues" in systems and development. We might learn about a new system we're supposed to support a couple of weeks before it rolls out. So, we scramble to find out what the system even looks like in order to support our clients. We are the face of central IT during a time of rapid and widespread IT change on campus, so we are distrusted by the campus community. So, we catch it from both sides. It's truly a miserable job, and most of us are desperate to get out.