The age of austerity bites - this will get worse before it gets better
Most of our economies are hovering around the toilet rim threatening to fall in. Everyone is cutting back and companies are no exception. This is certainly leading to IT teams having to do a lot more with less and our IT colleagues are picking up responsibilities b the bushel without the tech, training or experience to deal with them effectively. Companies feel they can't afford the tech, training or people to get stuff done and IT teams don't feel they have enough tech, training or people to do the job properly. Ne'er the twain shall meet.
This is leading to stress all around. Company management stress about how they can get stuff done and worry about how hard they push their tech teams. Tech teams worry about how far they'll get stretched before people and systems snap and break. We need to lower our expectations a bit and eliminate some of the pressure by being more realistic given the current economic atmosphere. There's only so much we can do with the resources at hand and the quicker we all realise this the less stressed our IT teams (and their managers and stakeholders) will be.
I predict this will only get worse though. IT is usually a place that gets squeezed - after all, if a tech can manage and maintain technology X then why not get him/her to do technology Y (and Z. And A, B and C) at the same time? (And E) It's all the same anyway, right? (And F and G)
Far too often misunderstandings about how the job actually works and the effort really required for smooth operations leads to management teams assuming that you can stretch IT teams that little bit thinner to find the coverage you need.
Think of IT as the rubber band that holds your newspaper bundle together in the morning. Try to get it to cover too much info and.....SNAP! Page three all over your lawn. And you don't want your neighbours seeing that you've got a copy of 'The Sun' hidden inside your 'Guardian' or 'FT' now, do you?
(Personal note. I'm living the dream myself. Recently I pulled an very unusual 31 hour shift thanks to serious failures offsite and yesterday there was another more typical 14.5 hour shift for an solo installation. Last month I pulled over 44 hours in overtime and I wasn't even able to claim for all the hours I actually did. Stretched thin? Yep, indeed. Until expectations lower or resources are increased this situation will continue for us all)
