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What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

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I’m putting together a list of the 10 worst jobs in IT. What job would you hate to have? This can be specific a job description like Backups Technician or a job role at a particular company, such as network administrator on a submarine (because you get motion sickness). Either way, please explain why the job is so unappealing to you. You can do this as a list of the jobs that you wouldn’t want or you can simply explain your least desirable job.

Also check out my post on the “10 best jobs in IT”:
http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-11181-0.html?forumID=6&threadID=185985&start=0

Topic

As my profile suggests

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

a Technician/pc support can mean a lot of things,but it boils down to when things go awol,myself,and a host of others,leave the comfy heated office,and head off towards system meltdown incorporated,occasionally to be met by a screaming banshee,seeking a little guidence,as to why the main IT guy is sitting in the corner with an axe in his head.Often this can only mean that Woody Allen is at the helm.I hate this because,one,noone remembers what exactly happened,except all the pc’s went down.Two,noone will own up as to who poured the coffee over a terminal in the first place.Three,no we can’t put the fire out,that is not my department.Therefore my worst job has to be attending “the place from hell”,as back-up support to awol corps.

Network Engineer

In reply to As my profile suggests

pc support job is headache , meeting with

different people , if something happen to

their sys , it ‘ll come our head .

K12 Tech Support

In reply to As my profile suggests

My first IT job was a 28000/year PC tech job for a K-12 School Distrct

Four of us supported 75 servers(Mac,Novell,Windoze), and 9000 users.

In the Middle Schools and High School we fought vandalism, and hackers constantly. In the lower grades, I would pick up virus’s off of the equipment and bring them home to my family.

After 3 years I got a job in the private sector. I missed the full health benefits, but not the irritation.

Amen

In reply to K12 Tech Support

I have worked for Districts off and on for over 5 years. They are up there with some of the worst spots. Low pay, teachers ( do not even want to get started ), and the constant illness. It is safer working in a hospital. Lets not forget about what it is like working in an environment where if you are not state “certified” you are pretty much dirt under the shoes of those who are.

Nail on the Head

In reply to K12 Tech Support

I’ve been in the Biz 22 years plus, I started working for a Community College and loved it! I got a good offer for a High School District 50 miles closer to home, should have kept driving! Don’t get me wrong, I would have left years ago (been here 4 years now) if it were not for the good I have been do for the kids (even though most of them have no clue) I would have. Teachers treat other non-teachers like scum, but then want their back-sides kissed. I also have to say we keep pretty understaffed as well. over 1000 PCs, 24 servers 12 T1s 250 staff and 2700 kids and one trch guy…me. Also if it plugs into a wall and draws current, I am suppose to fix it! Had to draw the line when I got to call to fix a teachers electric pencil shapener!

There are a lot of non-tech “techies” in the EDU support circles. The person I replaced had not a clue, one exapmle….”If one uplink between hubs is good then two or three are better”. LOL

But the perks are giving the kids a stable network and PCs so they can come in and learn and the teacher dont have to worry if the servers or networks are up.

You should try this!!!!

In reply to Nail on the Head

I work for a small company as a network administrators assistant. My boss is a 63 year old that doesnt know anything about networking.It is a constant fight to get any thing even a printer cartridge. I also do credit checks for new customers and inventory every month.

Try university support

In reply to K12 Tech Support

Other than the pay, it was probably the most enjoyable job. Got exercise running between building a mile apart while being paged by three different people, got to lug computer equipment up ancient staircases built in the 1850s because the elevator was for sudents, and the professors treated you like you were a part of the team, saying things like “why werent you hear 5 minutes ago?” and “are you a student or the tech?”…

And the professors…

In reply to Try university support

I worked support at a well known engineering university for a while. My favorite call was from an older professor who was having trouble installing MS Word (from 5-1/4″ floppies). It came down to this: He had actually opened the square plastic sleeve and taken the media out, then seeing that this was clearly wrong, put it back in the sleeve upside down. I only figured this out after seeing that of the various disks the first one had the reinforcing ring on the wrong side.

Yes, this was a while ago… but I will bet there are still professors that put the CD in upside down…

Verbal abuse and pesky buttons

In reply to And the professors…

I worked at a univeristy help desk for my 4 years as a student. I saw all sorts of fun stuff.

First, the verbal abuse: It was the spring of 1995…the time when 3.5″ floppy drives were quickly replacing the 5.25″ drives. The university had just purchased all new Pentium 90s from IBM. Real cutting edge stuff. A PHd candidate comes into the computer lab (co-located with the university’s help desk) and asked for a computer to print out his final copy of his dissertation. About 15 minutes later the guy comes up and tells me the disk drive doesn’t work. I asked him to bring the disk up to me and he stated that the disk was stuck in the drive. I walk over to the computer only to find a 5.25″ disk crisply folded and jammed into the 3.5″ drive! Well, I extracted the disk after completely dissasembling the computer and the drive and looked at the disk. When I say it was crisply folded…it was CRISPLY folded. I told the guy I’d try to fix it for him using Norton Disk Doctor and a couple of other utilities, but told him the disk was pretty much shot. Well, obviously I couldn’t get the disk repaired enought to read anything, and when I told the PHd candidate he’d have to get his backup copy and print from that, he told me that this was his only copy and he just needed it printed. Well, when I re-told him that the disk was not repairable by the university help desk, he called me just about every name under the sun, then left in tears.

And now the pesky buttons: The university had just implemented a new webmail application. A professor called up complaining that he couldn’t log into his mailbox. He was putting in his username and password, but nothing was happening. He just couldn’t find that pesky LOG IN button just below the username and password fields. The pesky button couldn’t be found because he didn’t know how to scroll down on the web page!

Ahh….university life….

Nothing compared to…

In reply to Verbal abuse and pesky buttons

my experience as a student assistant ina lab – I was called to a prof’s office as to why the computer would not work…He’d not plugged in the power cable at all. He thought since the monitor had been plugged in, and the monitor cable was connected to the PC, that was good enough…was way back in late 80’s.

and then there’s the staff…

In reply to Nothing compared to…

I’m the sole tech support for a small private college. When I first took the job, one of those been-here-for-a-million-years staffers who ran the Registrar office actively complained about my performance and felt I should be let go.
Then one day he called me in because his printer was not working and I discovered the PowerButton for him.
The next week he called and said it wasn’t working again and this time he’d checked the power. It was out of paper.
Needless to say, he stopped complaining.

at least he tried to do it himself

In reply to And the professors…

My professors think that touching their computers for
anything other e-mail, web, and using what is already
installed is beneath them. Virus and spyware scans? If they
weren’t automated, they’d never get done.

Prima donnas…

Working with Abestos and abusive teenagers

In reply to K12 Tech Support

Here is my nightmare IT job:

I worked as a traveling computer technician for a K-12 district for seven months, supporting nine schools. I sat in an open office in the high school, with the rudest and most disrepectful IT staff you could imagine. The IT Manager, who had his own office, acted like he was God and treated his IT staff with utmost disrespect. The Network Administrator was an old man with a bad heart who never wanted to hear me talk. The Database Administrator was a cranky lady who always complained about her job. The help desk support person thought I was an idiot when in actuality he was the dumbest IT person I have ever seen. He and the other traveling technicians would pretend to go to a call at another school and, instead, would sit in the Dunkin Donuts parking lot for over two hours while I went crazy trying to support over 1700 students, staff, and teachers.

The teachers blamed me on problems that they caused, some even freaked out openly in class. The students destroyed the computers (the gum in the CD rom drives drove me nuts). We never had the money to replace equipment, so the teachers would accuse me of not wanting to fix anything even after telling them the school district couldn’t afford it. Every time I walked down miles of hallways, I would hear students screaming at the teachers to Go *you know what* themselves (no respect!).

And the best part was running network cables in filthy ceilings. Kids would bump my ladder while I was on it. Particles from the fiberglas ceiling tiles would fall into my eyes (they would not provide me with safety equipment and the goggles I purchased did not work well enough) and I spent alot of time in the nurses offices getting my eyes rinsed. But that was nothing compared to almost touching the ABESTOS in the walls! Sometimes I had to drill the walls in order to run wires through different rooms and I found a weird substance in the walls. The janitor warned me about the ABSESTOS and I freaked! I refused to wire after that.

But my breaking point was when I had to remove Novell Client from workstations at an elementary school. This project was successful at a junior high school, but I had several problems (none that were my fault) doing this same project for the secretaries at this elementary school. One secretary flipped out so bad that I left. I dropped off my badge at the IT office, grabbed my belonging and said “I quit”. It was the best move that I ever made.

I am so happy to be working as a Network Administrator (and hopefully become the future IT Manager) of a successful Accounting firm.

A bad day in IT is better than a good day in construction

In reply to As my profile suggests

I spent 23 years working as an electrician, ten in construction (the worst!), 13 as a plant electrician. I began studying and learning IT on my own. Then, in 2000, I landed a job in my plant’s IT Dept. I have helpdesk one day a week, do network management, web development, intrusion detection, and server management. You know what? It’s ALL better than what I used to do!

Programmer.

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

Yes, not all are worst; depend on the environment or company you work at.

You got it wrong buddy its Support Technician

In reply to Programmer.

The support tech gets no thanks for the work she does and has to lug around sometimes heavy malfunctioning equipment.

At least for the programmer there is an intrinsic satisfaction in the work itself if you are the kind of person who gets a kick out of solving real world problems with the puter.

…Support Technician…

In reply to You got it wrong buddy its Support Technician

I agree that Support Technician is one of the worst jobs. Besides getting no thanks for being everything from a verbal punching bag, to furniture mover (to get at those badly-laid cables), you have to put up with some users who are somehow convinced that YOU “broke” their computer. Then, those same users want you to drop everything and fix their problem NOW.

Help Desk would be another one. You’re supposed to ‘know’ exactly what’s happening; even before it happens. And, woe be unto the Help Desk tech who doesn’t have the ability to reset passwords immediately. Stand by to get an earful about being ‘help-less’ in those situations.

Very well said

In reply to …Support Technician…

Excellent post. Couldn’t have said it better myself!

The only good user is a dead user

In reply to Very well said

I use this on my whiteboard behind me…If one of my users has a problem with me or my services, I invite them to my office and make sure they see my saying…..of course they don’t allow weapons on the site it sure grabs their attention but it makes them think about bitching to me about getting there email or the server being down!
GS

Signs

In reply to The only good user is a dead user

I’m a support tech too, and the sign on my door says… “PLEASE SOLVE YOUR PROBLEMS IN ADVANCE, SO I CAN HELP YOU MORE”. Sometimes I have to remind users that it may be problems with their attitude, not just their PC !!

Definition of User

In reply to The only good user is a dead user

We don’t use your saying, but we do this – “user is a four letter word.”

Users & Signs

In reply to Definition of User

I have one on my desk that reads,

Do not meddle in the affairs of Dragons if you are crunchy and good with hot sauce!

I.T. Technical Support ? The ?boys? for all the nasty works

In reply to Very well said

I work in the I.T. Department – Technical Section of a ?small? Airline company, where as I.T. Technicians we have to know and do everything, and we are always on the plug. User Training and Support, Technical Support, Network support, system development, telephone support and even office moving.

What ever happen, even though it is purely user luck of knowledge, you are the person to be blame.

Not to mention that any personal requests coming from the management should be treated as first priority.

are you people kidding me?

In reply to I.T. Technical Support ? The ?boys? for all the nasty works

I can’t believe some of the whining I’m reading here concerning the worst I.T. jobs. I started at the bottom after college, working on pc’s and printers for a small, local company, went on to servers, repairing on a 7×24 hour basis, meanwhile, I earned my MCSE along with some other certs and moves on(up) to a Lan Administator for a large firm, that’s where I’ve been for the last 6 years. I’ve seen alot, experienced alot,some awesome, some good, some bad but I consider everything I’ve done in the IT industry a learning experience of some sort. I came from a construction industry background before a went to school, I think many of you need to go spend a few years there then come back to IT. I’m sure it would be quite a humbling experience for most of you and would likely change your perspective in a hurry.

true

In reply to are you people kidding me?

Ok, I must agree with you Ksol. I nominated help desk as worse job. Not because I’ve done it, but becauase I just thought they had to have the worst.
But, your right. Im currently looking for another it job due to relocation cause of remarriage. And the jobs I’ve taken to pay the bills definatly are not IT. I’m mainframe, 22 years. Not a big demand anymore, least for someone that stayed with the same company for the full time. Don’t get me wrong. I actualy do enjoy any job I have, but not as much as my IT position I had.
Thanks for a realistic view.

are you people kidding me?

In reply to are you people kidding me?

It could be that I need to get some experience, just in case my 27 years in the field isn’t enough. I _still_ say that a bad manager makes even the best of jobs a living hell for those under her or him.

I’m with you Bro!!!

In reply to are you people kidding me?

I’m a Computer Operations Administrator, that is my job title which means if it has electricity it is my job to fix it. I too have been in the trenches and I’ll guarantee that a user complaining about his internet being slow is a alot better than having to deal with a guy complaining that you violated his rights or his hand cuffs are to tight. I have had the good and bad, having to deal with non tech managers and the ones that think they know more than you do. But you guys have to remember this, we are a reactionary force, we’re not needed until something goes wrong, and when it does it’s our fault. But if it wasn’t for those users that everyone is complaining about we would be out on the corner with our signs, “Will fix Computer for Food”.

I second that…

In reply to are you people kidding me?

I’ve been in IT for 3 and a half years, started as a Computer Technician and have worked my way up to a Second Level for a Billion Dollar International Company. As with most jobs, there are times when you might feel like a pleb, but most IT people have it far far easier than some.
I for one, think i have one of the cruisiest jobs around (and for a decent salaray i might add)…
Can anyone say the word “Whinger”…repeat after me “I’m a whinger”…

Bitbh, Bitch, Bitch

In reply to are you people kidding me?

I agree with Ksol. I also came from a construction background, 20 years as a service plumber. Problems are people calling at 0 dark 30 because their toilet is plugged and it must be fixed now even though they have 2 others in working condition.

Due to on the job injury I went from $65,000 per year to minimum wage and started working up from there. I’ve worked in almost every sector of IT from help-desk to my current position of Network Admin, and it is all a learning experience. I’ve been told I’ve had some of the worst bosses who were pussycats compared to my construction bosses. It also helps to work for a mid-sized company so I can diversify so depending on the minute of the day I may be help-desk, admin, trainer, network engineer,etc., ect, etc.

Sure, users can be stupid sometimes but it is our job to train them so the issue doesn’t reoccur and without exception my users are grateful for the help.

It all boils down to our attitude. The call can be as good or as bad as YOU want it to be.

Hear Hear

In reply to are you people kidding me?

I must say I agree very much, with a lot that has been said. I grew up on a small Dairy farm that raised and harvested its own feed for the cows. Then I worked in construction for a while, mostly with concrete work. I’m now in school and about to graduate into the IT field and currently work as a weekend operator for the University that I attend. Before working here I worked in fast food to pay for school. I’ve also worked in customer support call centers. As it is now I work weekends plus time during the week. I get maybe 2 days off a month. Since the helpdesk is closed on weekends I have a total of 7 phones all forwarded to mine. I love the job and wish I could keep it after graduation, but its a student job.

Bottom line, love what you do and it’ll make it that much better. I’ve had a spectrum of work and yes, the management makes a difference. But even if you don’t get along with the boss, is the boss the reason you have the job or is it that there are users that need the help?

If the satisfaction of helping someone with a problem isn’t good enough for you, go out and try scraping manure or throwing 100lb. bales of hay for a living. Its all in your perspective.

By far Help Desk is the WORST job

In reply to …Support Technician…

I had spent a year or so as a Help Desk Manager and I have to say the people in Help Desk get the short end of the stick. The pay SUCKS and yet they know more than most people in the company. It just doesn?t make sense. I left a company over a year ago because they wouldn’t pay me what I was worth.

To save money they used a ?Salary report? to justify paying me so little. Based on the report they stated that I was making more than an average Help Desk manager. What they didn?t take in to consideration, I had work three years with the company as a Senior Consultant and I had spent seven years in IT consultanting business. All they cared about was the bottom line and report. The kicker? all the other Senior Consultants would call me every day to help them address their issues and they made more money than me. That was when I decided to move on.

I would NEVER recommend anyone work in or even manage a Help Desk.

I disagree.

In reply to By far Help Desk is the WORST job

I love working at the help desk. It’s only a portion of my job, but I really enjoy helping people, giving them that small bit of info that makes their whole day easier. Most callers just want a tiny bit of sympathy and that couple of mouse clicks that solve the issue they’ve been fighting with for days. The “hero” part is nice too. The pay, for me, is the same no matter which hat I’m wearing, because I work for uncle sam. I’m glad that money isn’t an issue around here, it’s kind of wearing uniforms in highschool. Once you get past the heirarchy and social classes, we all appear more equal – more of a team.

what about system analyst?

In reply to I disagree.

i’m just entering into the work world, whats the situation of being a system analst?

You can get the blame

In reply to what about system analyst?

I was an an analyst between 1990 and 1995 before becoming a more or less full time project manager/consultant. In those days when new projects failed: (1) The managers blamed me for incorrect/late analysis (2) the programmers blamed me for incorrect specs (3) other analysts laughed at me. Even so
When things went right it felt great.

On maitenence teams the users loved me for fixing their problems – or for even for just understanding their systems

There are several career paths you can take from being a systems analyst

All in all it was one of the best times of my life. So in my opinion this job does not belong on this list.

Network Systems Analyst

In reply to what about system analyst?

Find out what the job entails. Systems Analyst seems to be the catch all above PC Tech. If it needs to be done but nobody wants to do it…Guess what.

This is good and bad. When you get it to work, it’s great but when you get it because everyone knows it wont work you stuck…

Systems Analyst is great

In reply to what about system analyst?

I agree with Bluerhino. You can get the blame for bad specs from the developers and management, so you must be a thorough person. But if you like problem solving and understading the big picture of a system, it’s a great job. I’ve been a Business Analyst for close to 7 years and now lead a team of 3 BAs. It’s a good job for people who like to work with people of all different levels, from developers to non-technical customers to management. It definitely is NOT a job that belongs on the “Worst” list.

system analyst ?

In reply to what about system analyst?

hum, u will have to keep urself updated like a newspaper. It is one of the worst job wherein u will find urself like a beggar most of the time. There is no field worst than IT with some dumb managers to make ur life worst than u can imagine.

What a beauty

In reply to I disagree.

Here a person who knows the real purpose of help. And actually enjoys helping people. It is not about technology, it’s about people. Well done my friend.

Help Desk Support Technician – Consumers

In reply to By far Help Desk is the WORST job

You think managing a help desk for minimal pay sucks? Try being a subordinate to that manager … a help desk support technician for consumers. I worked for a large ISP a few years back, and it is by far THE worst job I ever had.

Despite having some very hands-on, over qualified technicians (albeit this is not always the case), the pay was absurd, technicians worked rotating shifts 24 hrs a day, and employees are micro-managed more tighly than a fat kid stuck in a doorway! Calls are monitored randomly, all aspects of your daily performance emailed to the whole department to force competition, and you are expected to maintain a certain sales quota while performing technical support to end users. In addition to this, you are constantly being “coached” on your call volume (no regard being given to the standard of technical support) and you must adhere to scheduled breaks (15 mins) to balance the ratio of support technicians to call volume. I took the position to go back to school, after coming from the government. I lasted 5 months — The best decision I ever made was to quit and become self employed. I’ve never looked back.

Amen to that!

In reply to Help Desk Support Technician – Consumers

I’m with Jeff 100% on this. I was a phone jockey for a large computer & printer company, and, although the team I worked with was good, the job was horrid. Pretty much everything Jeff said in his post applies to me: Overqualified floor staff, underqualified management, QA breathing down my neck to work on my sales pitch (which I repeatedly and openly refused to do. I was a support tech, not a salesman), breaks timed to the second (literally) making one feel like (s)he’s on a freakin’ leash, and insane new mandates from on high that made me hum the classical circus music (sometimes louder than anticipated) at our daily “team” meetings. The only difference was that my hours were decent; I worked 1200-2000hrs, Mon-Fri.

Fortunately, after realizing that the ratio of staff/IT was 200:1, literally, I knew that there wasn’t a chance to move in there anytime soon. Instead, I got out. I still hang out with some of the people from my old team, but I sure wouldn’t go back unless I absolutely HAD to.

Intranet Support of a Gov. branch

In reply to Help Desk Support Technician – Consumers

Think you have “the worse?”. Think Again. How about supporting a Web Site/Intranet (PHP/MySql/Apache/Linux) of a small government branch , and the person over you is the one who inputs data in a Excel worksheet( for reports and so) ? (And THAT is the most proficent person in the ENTIRE branch!!!) Shudder and weep.

I agree, it is a lousy job

In reply to Help Desk Support Technician – Consumers

especially after the holidays when everyone wants you to help them to get their new games working. I did tech support at NEC. Later I did it at SeaChange and Getronics. Getronics was the worst. Everything was totally micromanaged. If you were on the phone for more than 2 minutes with a user, one of the managers would give you a tap on the shoulder. I am so glad I am out of that rat race.

Full and Total agreement…

In reply to I agree, it is a lousy job

I did about 6 months of contract work for Getronics doing network installs and I have to agree with you. Their micromanagement techniques would take a 48 hour job and turn it into a 4 day nightmare. Man o Man I’m glad I’m not doin that anymore

Help Desk is a horrible job

In reply to Help Desk Support Technician – Consumers

Ive had to work on the help desk at a very large company, and I can honestly say that all of the jobs Ive had, including some rather low-paying non-IT jobs, that the help desk was the worst place to work by far.

bad management, youre given goals to complete that just about contradict each other(95% first call resolution with an average call time of less than 15 mins)and if you somehow manage to succeed in the goals they arbitrarily set for you, you get harassed by micro-managers slightly less than the others around you.

The customers are annoying, no doubt about that, but they were rarely the problem, it was the amount of responsibility heaped upon you with the low pay and low quality of co-workers(for the most part)… Anyone who stays on the help desk, where there is little to no chance for advancement, the pay sucks, and you end up working holidays and such w/o benefits is crazy…

I managed to stay there almost a year, and Ive never been happier than I was the day I found a better job…

De Ja Vu

In reply to Help Desk is a horrible job

Why do I get the feeling that I’m currently working at the Helpdesk for the same company?

Too True

In reply to Help Desk Support Technician – Consumers

The worst job I’ve had was by far working in a nearly exact situation. And this comes from someone that has shoveled manure. I worked at a call center for roughly 5 months. I loved the work, but management could really stand to pull their heads out of their backsides. The day after I put in my 2 weeks the 3rd guy down the chain of command called me in to his office to be fired. We went over my stats like you mentioned and I was allowed to stay the final 2 weeks. Heres the kicker: my stats for resolving the customers issues: 95% resolved (Well above the required 70%). My sales offering rate: 57% (they wanted 70%) and my overall sales were at 45% (they wanted 50%). That works out to 79% of my offers being sold.

I felt if I was going to get fired for caring more about customer service than making the company money then I didn’t want to work for them anyways. After a job like that, you never look back.

P.S. I went back to my job in fast food after working there and was much better off.

AmenAmen

In reply to Help Desk Support Technician – Consumers

Working at level one helpdesk is the worst IT job ever. The end user don’t know diddly squat and can’t follow directions. You tell them to reboot their pc and they turn the monitor off and on. You tell them to go to Start/Control Panel they say “where is start” NIC troubleshooting, you ask them to open a browser and they say “what is a browser” then once you explain that, you tell to type in a different web address other then their homepage and they say “where do I type it at” I mean come on, it takes a special person to do SPECIAL ED LEVEL ONE HELP DESK SUPPORT.

I’ll back that up

In reply to By far Help Desk is the WORST job

Six months ago I left a position as project manager for a small division of a large company to take a job as an application support supervisor in the main division of the company thinking this would mainstream me. My mistake. Application support means helpdesk from hell. My group is separated by area as well as attitude from the rest of the IT world. We support end users who are given applications that they don’t want, test new applications that fail our testing as if they never were QA’ed by the development staff, are treated as support by contract staff we’re supposed to replace and left to learn of project the CIO starts only because she involves the contract staff and we read their schedules and email. This was a serious career mistake on my part. I feel sorry for my staff because they were hired, not from IT backgrounds, but from “superuser” groups and told they were now IT personnel, given no training in development and testing but expected to do their job as described and more. PC or any support is the bastard child of IT and will always be such.

salary report

In reply to By far Help Desk is the WORST job

just did one from payscale.com. it says i am payed 22,000 less than the average for my area.

Salary Report …

In reply to salary report

My boss shows me the Salary Report for my job and tells me I’m overpayed 10-15 percent when compared to my peers. When I correct him by showing the job description that is also located in the report, he gets upset. I’m doing the job of a senior LAN Admin but being paid for a tech support position. Oh well, can’t complain, I’m still employed.

job descriptions….

In reply to Salary Report …

Yeah, most places (and managers) have woefully outdated, incomplete, or erroneous job descriptions. And of all their job descriptions, not just of the I.T. feilds.
My current job’s required duties actually would have me filling two different jobs: Biostatistician III and DBA I (hospital with 1500 employees). On the other hand, my previous job had me as an Oracle DBA, Help Desk Technician, and Network Manager (Quality Improvement Organization with 50 employees).

i know its bad

In reply to By far Help Desk is the WORST job

its true help desk is a crap job but someone has to do it – even seasoned professional such as my self need to call a help desk once in a while especially when dealing with ISPs
ATS

Help Desk Manager

In reply to By far Help Desk is the WORST job

I have to agree 100% that the help desk is the worst job in IT. You get paid crap, expect to work ton of hours and get looked down upon. I’ve been a Help Desk Manager for a year and have aged probably about 10 years. My staff doesn’t really care to do more than they have to.. and I understand why. I just have to figure my next steps in my career and how to avoid support all together!!

Helpdesk is the worst

In reply to Help Desk Manager

I worked at a Help Desk for a fairly large bank and everyone who has ever worked for a bank knows that the pay is crap especially for the help desk. Each and every day I dreaded going to work to listen to the dumbest of the dumb tell me how they broke their PCs by doing nothing, it just won’t work. We had users that were hard hard on equipement that we would have them send their PCs in only to find food jammed in parts of the PC I didn’t know the food could fit. You’re constantly on the phone trying to fix the problems of users who should be banned from using a PC and worse yet your company won’t let you fix anything. If it’s AD related it has to be sent on, if it takes more then 5 minutes to fix on the phone send it on. I was lucky enough to land a job in our QA department after 2 years as a tester, but after only 8 months our company was bought out. Since everyone in IT knew they were getting cut my manager in QA jumped ship and with no manager I was sent back to the help desk until my severance date.

Reply To: What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

In reply to Help Desk Manager

I’m sorry you don’t like your work. I expect much of what you say is more because of the organization. I love my support job, and our Manager is one of the happiest (and *very* well-paid) folks I know. In an earlier post I mentioned that I went “backwards” from a NetAdmin job back to my roots in support. I forgot to mention that I didn’t lose a single dollar in pay! Prestige? Our users send us food baskets and thank-you cards; they love us.
As I said, it’s in the “company” you keep. I work for a great one, and I count my blessings every day. Sure, I have opportunity to advance – been there, done that. No thanks!

Dream Job?

In reply to Reply To: What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

It was excellent to read that your customers love you. I got a magnum of champage from a customer this morning. It was hidden behind one of the oak barrels/planters at the front of the house.

Best of all there was a greetings card attached and this from someone who had never sent a card before? I love a challenge!

Margaret
http://wwww.careersnet.co.uk/

Half Right

In reply to Reply To: What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

I agree with you as far as the company, but the company has taken care of me as far as salary goes. It’s the people that don’t appreciate you, even the users.. If I had that, I would love my job!! I support 10 people and 1 said thank you for my hard work this year. Granted, he is the only one I can trust. Good for you for staying where you are happy!! Enjoy the holidays!

Well Said, Grammy

In reply to Reply To: What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

I have to agree with Grammy about support. I have been doing it for 20+ starting with a large insurance company and now doing front and back office support for a company that provides video lottery games for the tribal casinos all over the world. I love my job and would never change. I started as a helpdesk person, worked up to a senior then moved to PC/LAN support and from there I went to a company that supports the flying B with airplane parts where I was one of 2 support people that did it all from the desktop to the server room and I am know doing the casino support and I can honestly say, I have loved every minute of it. You that complain about the users, where would you be without them?
I am thankful for every bit of knowledge I have gained from this industry. I learned how to deal with difficult people while in the helpdesk and I learn new system stuff on a daily basis. If you don’t think I get hammered on when something breaks, think again, in my business, there are millions of dollars to be lost when the back office pukes. Believe me, I have heard it all from the USERS and I still love what I do.I guess there are some people who simply can’t be satisfied with what they have or what they had. By the way, one thing you guys with the attitude about the users have forgotten, every time you call a vendor for help, you yourself are the ‘USER’! Think about it

Darn right…helpdesk

In reply to By far Help Desk is the WORST job

Helpdesk is the bottom of the IT field. Everyone dumps on you and a lot of the end users do not think you know much. Your tied to a desktop with little flexibility in terms of hours and such.

Darn right…helpdesk

In reply to By far Help Desk is the WORST job

Helpdesk is the bottom of the IT field. Everyone dumps on you and a lot of the end users do not think you know much. Your tied to a desktop with little flexibility in terms of hours and such.

Darn right…helpdesk

In reply to By far Help Desk is the WORST job

Helpdesk is the bottom of the IT field. Everyone dumps on you and a lot of the end users do not think you know much. Your tied to a desktop with little flexibility in terms of hours and such.

……

In reply to …Support Technician…

AGreed…couldnt have said it better myself

Senior Systems Technician

In reply to …Support Technician…

… because not only do you have to know it all, and be able to fix it before you hang up the phone to drive over, you have to supervise all those “smart” techs someone hired fresh outta DeVry because they came cheap.

Support Technician

In reply to …Support Technician…

I aggree with Support Technician is a bad job, but it does have some satifacition. It is a great feeling when you solve a problem for a client. I think a common denominator on all bad IT jobs is two-fold…One, not having management support to back you up on tough decisions and two, to be overloaded with tasks that you cannot making any headway.

heavy load and no support

In reply to Support Technician

That definitely what makes the fix-it side of business a bummer. Management is not always bright enough to quantify then assets you carry and the load is usually too heavy for the technician to keep his head on straight.

Also not allowed

In reply to Support Technician

Yup, Support Tech is both good and bad. Especially with no support from immediate management. But how about being in the only Unionized IT dept out of 8 other IT depts. We’re not allowed to reset users’ passwords or even clear print queues. Upper management is afraid that if we are allowed to deal with anything AD, then we can claim the support for AD and take it away from another non-union dept.

The other issue with Support is the “know-it-all” user. This user will try to fix his/her problem, break something, let it sit for 1/2hr., come back and try to fix it again, then call and say that “all of a sudden my system/program won’t work”.

I think that anyone who has worked in a direct user support role for 2+ years should automatically quallify for a Psychology Degree from the closest University/College. Man, trying to keep a user from either bursting out in tears or completely destroying the workstation is no small feat.

Anyway that’s my 2 cents worth

Amen to that

In reply to …Support Technician…

I couldn’t agree more. Now try doing it for a medical facility, where the doctors think that the tech, and the computer that they are sitting at, should read their minds.

support tech? depends….

In reply to …Support Technician…

I would have to disagree on the support technician being the worst job in IT. I was a support tech for my company for 2 years. I supported approximately 500 pc/400 users–ALL BY MYSELF. Yeah, there are the 3 network guys, but they never helped me. I also did ALL pc setup, take down, most software installs and all general troubleshooting.

In my company, I was (and still am) held in very high regard. I ALWAYS remained very professional and courteous to all the users (even the ones who JUST DIDN’T GET IT!! AAAHHAHHHA). During the holiday season, I was “The Angel” or “The Saviour”. When you enjoy your job, and push that attitude on to the people, it’s infectous. People REALLY take to it. Now, it did get tedious over time, and when my promotion to our Oracle team (JR Oracle DBA- WOOHOO!) took effect, I had the best emails and congratulations sent over to me. Many people were very disappointed, but they were all happy for me. If you’re patient and willing to work with the users, it can be a VERY rewarding position.

Deliberate move “backwards”?

In reply to …Support Technician…

I strongly disagree with the bad review of the Help Desk or Tech Support jobs. I started out on help desk, moved into hardware support, on to network tech, got some certs and moved into Net Admin. After being respoinsible for every update, upgrade, crash and recovery, I was absolutely grateful when I got downsized out of my Net Admin job. Had awhile to think about it, and went “back” to Help Desk. I haven’t regretted a minute of it! I love the users, as frustrating as they can be at times. I love getting them back up and running, helping them feel empowered, and assisting them in getting back to being able to do their jobs. Yes, often they have caused their own problems, so I try to educate them without condemning them.
I don’t miss the stress of the “high tech” life. When our network crashes I’m glad I’m no longer one of the folks running around with my head on fire, spending long nights and weekends doing recovery. Backwards move? I don’t think so, chummy. Just call me “Happy in Helping”.

Thats whats the case over here

In reply to …Support Technician…

I agree a 100% with the above reply and have to state that if the System works you are not even glanced at and if it doesnt you are the most Hated Person after the user’s boss!!

Support Technician

In reply to …Support Technician…

Back when I was consulting I was onsite when the power went out. The user came to us to ask what we had done to kill the power to the entire office.

I agree 100%

In reply to …Support Technician…

I am in that environment right now and I have been busy on that call all day. I can’t wait for the day after Christmas when the “winners” all plug in there shinny new puters. Yea!?

I agree 100%

In reply to …Support Technician…

I am in that environment right now and I have been busy on that call all day. I can’t wait for the day after Christmas when the “winners” all plug in there shinny new puters. Yea!?

I agree 100%

In reply to …Support Technician…

I am in that environment right now. What I can’t wait for is the day after Christmas when all the “winners” plug in there new computers. That is going to better the working on Christmas. Yea!?

Ditto

In reply to …Support Technician…

After being a support tech for 15+ years in a small hospital, I finally had to have back surgery from moving 20lb monitors (thank heaven for flat panels) and 40 lb printers. But even worse was that they made us ‘cross train’ once a month on the Help Desk… Ugg.

I’m still at it though, but now I’m at a smaller private company with more people who appreciate what I know and plenty of men who don’t mind carrying things for a petite red-head.

Re: Ditto

In reply to Ditto

I feel for you karidly on the low back surgeries I had to have two completely different ones done in just over a year I’m only 24. I started out at the regional banking company working part time winter/summer breaks mostly for about 5 yrs helping out field techs with projects then to help desk full time coming up on 2 years (something interesting to note my surgeries didn’t start until after I started full time). Needless to say I don’t know if factors working part time moving around PC equipment or full time sitting in a chair all day.

Worked help desk for 4 years

In reply to …Support Technician…

I worked as a help desk tech for 4 years before finally moving on to being an admin.
You get users who call you, can’t explain what is happening, want it fixed now, and any question that you ask is met with ‘I don’t know, just fix it’.
To make things worse, I didn’t have the ability to connect to their system to see it with my own eyes, which meant I’d have to take their word for it. People calling for anything like ‘why is the power out?’ or ‘can you give this guy a message’ or working on a word document for 3 hours, not saving it once, and then it crashes. One of my ‘favourite’ calls would be from finance, working with a huge spreadsheet someone created 3 years ago, and that person is no longer there, and nobody knows anything about this spreadsheet, except that the macro is not working… and I have to fix it NOW….

LOL I even once got a call if I can hack someone’s password because they needed to retreive some files…

Despite my best effort to remain calm and courteous, there was several times where I was going to let the person have it.. and yes, you are expected to know how to fix everything that plugs into a wall too..

Deskside is hard work.

In reply to Worked help desk for 4 years

You need patience and a good personality to interact with others. It’s good place to start to get experince if you have no IT background, but you will get burned out very quickly. Congrats for lasting 4 yrs.

Former Support Tech/E-mail Admin/help desk

In reply to …Support Technician…

I had one of the worst jobs in IT…a combined job. You couldn’t pay me enough to be Support Tech/E-mail Admin/Help Desk idiot to a tiny company anymore. Those 5 years nearly killed me.

You think your job was bad…

In reply to Former Support Tech/E-mail Admin/help desk

I worked for a small non-profit housing program run by the county (Burlington County, New Jersey). I was replacing a Systems Administrator that left IT in shambles. I had to do every single IT task under the sun, which also includes running cables in the ceiling. I supported five sites and had to accomplish everything by 5pm because the building locks down for the night. There was no money to fix anything, so I had to improvise solutions to fixing very old printers, computers, and their accounting database (my supervisor refused to pay for technical support for the software used). I skipped lunch to try to straighten out the mess left by the former sys admin. My blood pressure was extremely high and I had heart pains (I was about 29 at the time).

The final blow was when I had to run wires in the Human Services for Burlington County building (welfare, unemployment…). The State’s IT department, at the last minute, warned me that all users must have Internet access because they had to install Tivoli on their computers. There were three users without Internet, but they were on the same floor as the switch, so I figured that running wires would be a cinch. Unfortunetly, it was a nightmare because I had to run it through other people’s offices instead of around them. I got the users on the Internet, but I left an unintentional mess in the offices (dust, fiberglas from the ceiling tiles). The workers were furious with the mess. I offered to clean up the mess, but my supervisor made me return to the office.

Interesting footnote to this wiring disaster…the “network administrator” of the Human Services building (this guy is not even an IT person), was supposed to help me with the wiring and instead rudely directed me to the Novell file server that needed an upgrade. He expected me to do this right away, but there is always preparation done before upgrading anything (if he was a real IT person, he would have known that). And I did not know how to upgrade Novell in the first place (I told my supervisor that I am strictly Windows and he did not tell me he had Novell servers).

All in all I was fired from my job the next day, not because of what happened with the wiring project (which was not my fault), but because I DID NOT TAKE THE TIME TO TALK TO PEOPLE CASUALLY! How in the heck could I chit chat with anyone when I was up to my neck in work?!

Being the only IT person in a workplace really does suck!

hehehe

In reply to You got it wrong buddy its Support Technician

it’s not programmers?

I’m a senior programmer, and I’ve been down under desks running power cords, running Cat-5, lifting desks and office machinery and personal effects off a desk because the person didn’t take things off the computer we were moving (oh yes…furbees and California raisins included).

As the senior programmer where I work, I’m expected to know how to:

– Program
– Administrate databases
– reset/configure/troubleshoot wired and wireless networks
– Configure/fix PCs
– Teach other users how to use their software
– Administrate Unix servers
– Administrate Windows servers
– Administrate Novell client installations
– Provide tech support for all programs both COTS and proprietary
– Learn all the existing software
– Write/design/implement/maintain any new applications needed
– Configure/reset/program the Cisco phones
– Lift anything (yes, I’ve lifted things well over 100 lbs, even though my job description says 50)
– Answer any computer/software related question

etc. etc. etc….

Just a for-instance:

We have a new assests management software we got from a company. My most recent task I was given was to get to know the system…not so bad, right? Well, the boss wants me to learn all the database tables and their contents…all 200 plus tables. And, we go full steam with this package on January 1, 2006.

Luckily though, I do work with a lot of good people…most of which do say “thanks” when I do something for them…which after several years working in thankless corporate environments is a refreshing situation.

So, I think it’s more about environment than position. Because if I was doing this in a corporate setting like I’ve been in previously, I’d have already left.

The best can be worst, depending on whose in charge

In reply to hehehe

The thing that makes a job good or bad is the person in charge. I have worked help desk and onsite tech, and ebjoyed both…that is until I am asked to do a task about which I know nothing. Such as troubleshooting program code (I am not a programmer nor do I wish to be). One such case in point was early in my IT work, I had just completed MCSE training (I had only completed the first two exams Net Essentials and NT 4 Workstation), and the first thing I was told to do was to configure MS Outlook on all the company computers, individualized by user. When I told the boss that I had never worked on Outlook, he exploded and began a rant that included such comments as “Why the hell not, your Microsoft certified aren’t you!?!?!?”. Needless to say this was not a happy day. On the other hand, I now work in a place where I am given the task, if I know how to do it great, if not I learn it, and on the occasions where I know something the others don’t I get to be the hero. Like I said, it depends on who’s running the shop.

Absolutely – it’s _Who’s in charge_

In reply to The best can be worst, depending on whose in charge

Any job in I.T. can be a difficult or easy as the I.T. staffer cares to make it. It’s not the job nor the users that make a situation difficult, it is the supervisory person. In particular, the “manager” who knows absolutely nothing about I.T., computers, networking, or anything related but is a “manager” because of his/her MBA, seniority, or corporate contact list.
A case in point is the “manager” of the job that I just left whose overriding order was to make the user er, “customer”, feel good about the service call. It _did not matter_ if the equipment worked properly, only that the tech left the user with that warm and fuzzy feeling.
Her attitude was that people do not count (her staff, that is), it is a position-not a person and there is always another geek to fill that spot.
I’m out of there and very glad of it.

I agree, Who’s in charge can make a good job bad

In reply to Absolutely – it’s _Who’s in charge_

Several positions back I worked in Network Support for a major cookie manufacturer. Great job, horrible boss. This guy Rennie was a total tyrant. He went by RJ — Maybe it was the gay name that had him upset all the time — Not sure. But anyway the guy was a total jerk. He didnt get along with anyone and was the total opposite of a people person, but somehow he was the Network Manager.

I agree, Who’s in charge can make a good job bad

In reply to I agree, Who’s in charge can make a good job bad

I really do not know why the ‘powers of be’ remain to be so clueless. Given the facts that a particular IT group has the highest turnover rate, and this group is not even well respected in the Company!
I work in this group that requires a specific set of technical skills. I have beeen in this arena for a long time, and grew with it as well at other places. It is an exciting field with its share of ups and downs, but the rewards are just awesome and it encompasses so many areas inside the company as well as outside.
Well, my current project leader and manager has never ‘worked’ in IT. Their background is hmmmmm
‘Customer Service’. Well because of their lack of technical skills, they are turning a suppose to be technical fun-filled Group into customer services zombies! What a waste of talent.

I agree, Who’s in charge can make a good job bad

In reply to I agree, Who’s in charge can make a good job bad

I really do not know why the ‘powers of be’ remain to be so clueless. Given the facts that a particular IT group has the highest turnover rate, and this group is not even well respected in the Company!
I work in this group that requires a specific set of technical skills. I have beeen in this arena for a long time, and grew with it as well at other places. It is an exciting field with its share of ups and downs, but the rewards are just awesome and it encompasses so many areas inside the company as well as outside.
Well, my current project leader and manager has never ‘worked’ in IT. Their background is hmmmmm
‘Customer Service’. Well because of their lack of technical skills, they are turning a suppose to be technical fun-filled Group into customer services zombies! What a waste of talent.

My Boss Was the Dumbest!

In reply to Absolutely – it’s _Who’s in charge_

You are right on! My previous boss got his job because of who he knew, or more appropriately, who recommended him. He was the DUMBEST person, not just dumbest IT Manager! He held a contest once to see who amoung his staff could figure out why his mother-in-law’s PC wouldn’t boot. It was a Gateway Profile that had a USB keyboard. (1st and 2nd clues-didn’t BOOOT & USB keyboard. ANYONE?) He initiated the contest while I was out of the country doing a service call in the Caribbean. When I returned on day 7, they (all six in the IT Shop) lamented about what a shame it was that they would have to pitch the PC because it had a bad system board. I plugged in a PS2 keyboard and it booted right up. I kept the “thank you” note as proof of his stupidity and for insurance if I ever got fired. I did, but it wasn’t worth pointing out how stupid he was. He had surrounded himself with like-minded people. Anyway, the lesson I learned by dealing with him was that YES MEN earn more than competent troubleshooters….he was making at least $110,000 without a clue!

Working for a Manager who doesn’t get it.

In reply to Absolutely – it’s _Who’s in charge_

Over the past 18 years, I’ve worked as a help desk staff member, data entry clerk, programmer, PC tech, server administrator, supervisor, network tech, and firewall/security tech. Each job had its positives and negatives, but the worst jobs I had were working for a managers that did not understand technology.

I was counceled by one manager because an Air Conditioner failed in a building where we leased space. When I found out about the failure I called the building maintenance staff, but it was a weekend, and no one was available. He wanted to know why no one in IT couldn’t fix this device.

I once had a manager that called me into her office, and wanted me to give her a list of all future unplanned outages.

In an engineering meeting where a very technical discussion was taking place, the IT director told everyone in the room to “stop talking technical” because it was too confusing.

The worst jobs are made that way by the staff that manages us.

Or – What’s in Charge

In reply to Absolutely – it’s _Who’s in charge_

I left my then full time job as help-desk tech a month ago. The boss was very good in tech stuff, but expected me to be all levels (like himself). I was doing well with the users because I was not an “absolutist” like him. I listened to the user and accepted what they said as what they saw. They usually cussed when he had stopped by there office, as he would change things to they way they should be” rather than the way the user wanted them. For security, OK, but for desktop look? What a jerk…

Overpaid Consultant With a “My way or no way” Attitude

In reply to Or – What’s in Charge

Your former boss should get together with this absolutist consultant that I was forced to work with 🙂

I worked for a distributor for about a year. I was hired as a junior network administrator and supported about 80 stupid users. I enjoyed working with the ERP Specialist and AS400 programmer. But the company outsourced to a small consulting service that was buddy-buddy with the CEO and owner (family-owned business–yikes!). This consultant was contracted to come to our site once a week to fix major issues, issues that I could have fixed, but the CEO is friends with the owner of the consulting firm, so he granted them anything they wanted, including a ton of money (money that coudl have been used to hire a full-time network engineer). Everything this “absolutist” configured (desktops, servers, tape backups…) had to be HIS WAY and would not consider any alternate or better method. Users also bitched about how he configured their desktops. And everytime I set up a desktop for a user, he would re-do the desktop settings and icons position HIS WAY. Drove me nuts!

It got worse when after my IT manager quit (after 2 1/2 months), his company took over most of the IT duties and came in two days a week. If a major problem occurred, I would have to sit with him do nothing, watching him trying to figure it out (I did not learn much at this job). He always came in late (either oversleeping or trying to help too many customers at once). Therefore, I had to sit with him past my normal hours doing nothing but watching him do things HIS WAY.
If I could not touch anything, why was I hired in the first place?

He would re-organize everything in the IT office that I have already organized (stacked spared PCs, RAM, disks, computer equipment in the drawers, monitors on the shelves). Once again…HIS WAY or no way!

The worst moments with him was when he had to call tech support for a server issue and the tech did not give him the answer HE wanted to hear, he would rant on and on to the helpless tech about how lousy their support is (wasted an hour when that time could have been used for fixing the problem).

And his personality was pathetic. If I try to fix something and I made a mistake, he would reprimand me about how my making a mistake will make HIM and his company look bad. He was always kissing up to the CEO (who carried a gun in his desk!).

Interesting footnote: I have replaced the former junior network administrator who only stayed at this company for FIVE DAYS because he could not deal with this Holier-than-thou consultant. The IT Manager told me this after I was hired and asked me if I can get along with this kind of guy. I said yes because I needed the job. I should have said no!

I wasted a year being bored and defeated. Thank god I run the whole IT show at an accounting firm.

Job Titles – HA!

In reply to hehehe

Your job sounds identical to mine – except they don’t call me a programmer because then they’d have to pay to that scale. Istead I’m “Computer Support” – even though I’m the ONLY IT person in the entire company, and do everything from application and database development to security to help desk to changing toner in printers…

I feel for you!

In reply to Job Titles – HA!

I’m in a similiar boat — I’m called a System Administrator, but since I’m the only IT person in the company I do everything from programming, servers, changing toners, cleaning the glass on the photocopier…… I was sick one day and still had to come in because nobody else could cover for me.
Definately looking for a new job.

Top 6

In reply to You got it wrong buddy its Support Technician

I don’t think these are bad per se, as it always depends on a company, a person carying out the position and circumstances. But, if I had to make a list from my experiences listing either people that are helpless/ useless in their jobs, or just often full of non-sense – my TOP 6:

1. IT Middle Management Job
Often too small to achieve what is needed, often too “big” to understand what is going on. Some get higher and move to senior position, but most do this their all life. If they move to senior position, than they often already forgot all that is needed in IT.

2. Product Specific Consultant (e.g. CRM(R) Consultant)
Just borring, requires to fight the world all the times, often zealot attitude. No future in IT at least not one I would choose for myself.

3. IT Sales Manager
These peopel talk and talk and talk. Very often it it impossible to explain to them that there are requirements that need to be met before promising nearly “impossible solutions” ITSM feet usually did not touch the ground in a very long time.

4. IT Customer Relations Manager (brrrrrrr)
This is probably the most non-sence position. I think it was developed to please nr.1 and nr.3
It should be called IT Whore Officer.

5. Hardware Support (specific to hardware)
This is very borring, drive around and change hard drives…

6. IT Purchase Officer (yak….)
Costs 50 bucks an hour, often spends 10 hours consulting with his contacts to get 10 bucks discount on a videocard….

Now, that I have included my top 6 worst, my top 10 best (judging by my experience):

1. Senior Systems Administrator
One of very few people who really knows what is going on in a company. One of a few people who knows about insights of how computers actually works. Everyone listens because usually things get done. A true SSA can say no at highest levels and get his way – because he is right.

2. Senior IT Project Manager
Often works closely with SSA.

3. Senior UNIX systems administrator – UNIX admins have easier life than M$ Admins. This is because managers/ end users normally don’t have UNIX machine at home and don’t try to “outsmart” Administrators impress Sales Managers when it comes to solutions (“I did this at home and it worked” or “I have read this is PC Mag and they said it is the best solution”). No one screwes around with SUA.

4. CIO
If coming from nr.1,2,3 backgound this can be an interesting position as it permits to change how things are working accross the board. But so can nr.1,2,3 only the CIO normally gets the credit. (Having said that many todays CIO’s are worthless former Sales Managers)

5. Senior Windows Administrator/ Engineer
A good Windows Administrator/ Engineer who is not trying to convince the world that Microsoft products are the _best_ today and always were. Usually likes computers in general, has knowledge of other operating systems and if he does not know, he keeps his mouth shut.

6. IT Infrastructure consultant.
Shows up, sweeps the crap away and leaves. (Note – sometimes – shows up, drinks cofie and talks rubbish, leaves and leaves the crap behind.

So the general point here is – it does not matter what you do, if you do it well – any job in IT can be nice. My negative top 6 from above represents more an idea of people who can be intelligent and they can have serious IT knowldge, but their hands are often tight to make any difference. These might be worst jobs if you wish to make any difference yourself.

Top 6

In reply to You got it wrong buddy its Support Technician

I don’t think these are bad per se, as it always depends on a company, a person carying out the position and circumstances. But, if I had to make a list from my experiences listing either people that are helpless/ useless in their jobs, or just often full of non-sense – my TOP 6:

1. IT Middle Management Job
Often too small to achieve what is needed, often too “big” to understand what is going on. Some get higher and move to senior position, but most do this their all life. If they move to senior position, than they often already forgot all that is needed in IT.

2. Product Specific Consultant (e.g. CRM(R) Consultant)
Just borring, requires to fight the world all the times, often zealot attitude. No future in IT at least not one I would choose for myself.

3. IT Sales Manager
These peopel talk and talk and talk. Very often it it impossible to explain to them that there are requirements that need to be met before promising nearly “impossible solutions” ITSM feet usually did not touch the ground in a very long time.

4. IT Customer Relations Manager (brrrrrrr)
This is probably the most non-sence position. I think it was developed to please nr.1 and nr.3
It should be called IT Whore Officer.

5. Hardware Support (specific to hardware)
This is very borring, drive around and change hard drives…

6. IT Purchase Officer (yak….)
Costs 50 bucks an hour, often spends 10 hours consulting with his contacts to get 10 bucks discount on a videocard….

Now, that I have included my top 6 worst, my top 10 best (judging by my experience):

1. Senior Systems Administrator
One of very few people who really knows what is going on in a company. One of a few people who knows about insights of how computers actually works. Everyone listens because usually things get done. A true SSA can say no at highest levels and get his way – because he is right.

2. Senior IT Project Manager
Often works closely with SSA.

3. Senior UNIX systems administrator – UNIX admins have easier life than M$ Admins. This is because managers/ end users normally don’t have UNIX machine at home and don’t try to “outsmart” Administrators impress Sales Managers when it comes to solutions (“I did this at home and it worked” or “I have read this is PC Mag and they said it is the best solution”). No one screwes around with SUA.

4. CIO
If coming from nr.1,2,3 backgound this can be an interesting position as it permits to change how things are working accross the board. But so can nr.1,2,3 only the CIO normally gets the credit. (Having said that many todays CIO’s are worthless former Sales Managers)

5. Senior Windows Administrator/ Engineer
A good Windows Administrator/ Engineer who is not trying to convince the world that Microsoft products are the _best_ today and always were. Usually likes computers in general, has knowledge of other operating systems and if he does not know, he keeps his mouth shut.

6. IT Infrastructure consultant.
Shows up, sweeps the crap away and leaves. (Note – sometimes – shows up, drinks cofie and talks rubbish, leaves and leaves the crap behind.

So the general point here is – it does not matter what you do, if you do it well – any job in IT can be nice. My negative top 6 from above represents more an idea of people who can be intelligent and they can have serious IT knowldge, but their hands are often tight to make any difference. These might be worst jobs if you wish to make any difference yourself.

I agree… Almost

In reply to Top 6

Lardo, with the exception of putting a Front Line Help Desk position second on your “worst” list, I think you’re right on the mark. Number one on that list is my boss, and I’ve told him he has nothing to worry about from me trying to take his position (keep me on the techie track). Help desk would be next because I’m the one they call when they can’t fix the problem and I wouldn’t want the abuse they take from angry and confused users.

nothing wrong with helpdesk

In reply to I agree… Almost

there is nothing wrong with a helpdesk job really. I think majority of people here started at a helpdesk. Helpdesk is a good place to start in IT. An intelligent person can get a lot on insight into customer head by dealing indeed with the obuse, and gets to develop a thicker skin. Of course if a person remains 5 years in a helpdesk position, following solutions from a “knowledge database” than I don’t think we are talking about an “IT person”.

If support Tech is bad it is environment, not the job itself

In reply to You got it wrong buddy its Support Technician

I am coming from a broad base here, I have been in most of the roles of IT, Support tech, SW engineer, embedded systems programmer, helpdesk mgr and I can tell you that from a mental health perspective, machine control SW engineers/embedded programmers have it the worst. First of all, you are always on a tight schedule and budget for whatever project you are on. If that isn’t enough stress, when you complete the project, you have to support it as well. Most of the time you are doing “one off designs” and nobody else knows the project well enough to support it. you do the best to make it bullet proof but sawdust and molten metal are hard on computers. Not only that, the end users do not understand computers, all they know is the saw doesn’t move when I click on the set button. Added to that, your job depends on companies upgrading their equipment to increase throughput or reduce waste, or streamline processes etc. when the economy gets shaky, what do you think goes first? The upgrade on the lumber sorter. I lost my last development job at a wafer inspection company because after 9-11 semiconductor capacity utilization stayed below 80% for over two years. Companies do not increase capacity when they have too much. as good of a plan as the Co. had, it was unable to weather that storm without drastic cuts. Most other companies had long since stripped RD out of the budget and laid off the high end SW engineers. Now, I do PC support Heck, I support it all except the mail servers. Small organization, no stress, no deadlines, no feeble minded MGRs practicing MBYAP (management by yelling at people) My boss has no clue what I do and does not have to worry about it because I keep the network up and my customers happy. The guy in K12 support needs to learn to wash his hands. If you have customers that yell at you it could be how you treat your customers. I have also worked big corp with IT support as a SW engineer and the support techs were awful. they talked down to you about your setup, hamstrung you with constraints and refused to believe that a guy who could design a router and write the software in it was capable of operating one. treat your customers like they are stupid and they will lose their patience with you.
end of soap box.

The umbrella man is the worst

In reply to You got it wrong buddy its Support Technician

I work for a small shop where I am the administrator, pc tech, phone, audio video, anything that beeps or ticks repair, support, and maintenance guy. Helpdesk is a large part of the problem. Delaing with a virus outbreak while someone is nkocking on the door because you haven’t responded to their helpdesk ticket about their printer being jammed has to be one of the most difficult times to keep your cool. Also dealing with individuals who are hired without the proper skills to do their job, it gets frustrating when their supervisor thinks IT needs to train them and make up for their bad hiring decisions…. rambling. Understand basic processes and job functinos is necessary, but if I supposed to know how to do everyones job then I should be paid for knowing how to do everyones jobs. I deliver the application, thow to use them is not my problem. ahhhhhhhhhhhhh.. better

Umbrella Position or Job title

In reply to The umbrella man is the worst

It sounds like you work for a small school district. I have the same issue. Except I have 500 teachers that most of them can’t spell “IBM”
The technology department just got blamed by the Kindergarden teaches because the kids didn’t do good on a comprehension test. They said is was our fault because they couldn’t use a program. As it turned out the program was on the computer there wasn’t an icon on the desktop.
Yes if it has a knob or a cord or blinking light or they can’t spell it they say it’s a technology issue.
Hang in there Multiple skills will pay off in the long run.

Solution:Specailize

In reply to Umbrella Position or Job title

I’ve been in IT now for almost 8 years. Currently, I’m the jack of all trades. Netware Admin, Desktop Support, limited apps support, PBX Admin, etc…I have nothing new to say. Like most techs, I get calls to fix things that have nothing to do with IT (copiers, security system, Excel Apps written a decade ago that now fail to run, etc…)

It seems that there is only a few options. Specialize in some aspect of IT that will be in demand for years to come (Network Infrastructure, Server Admin, Project Management come to mind), and be prepared to work in a large Corporate IT enviorment. One of the reasons I’ve stayed as long as I have is the small biz enviorment. There are always positives to this, but the costs are lagging skill sets, lag in pay, and eventual boredom.

Working in a large IT Corp Group has advantages of decent training, cutting edge technology, and better pay. The downsides are more stress, office politics, less interaction with end users, and relocation (There are only about 20 or so metroplexis where most fortune 1000 Corps reside).

The last two choices are to switch careers or become self employed.

I can relate

In reply to The umbrella man is the worst

I have the same job! I take care of servers, PC’s, laptops, phone system, help desk, copiers / printers, routers, switches, utilities – gas and electric, office supplies and anything else that is “delegated” to me. I agree with it the traning issues! We tend to hire people who have been living in caves are haven’t ever used a PC before. There are some here that expect me to know all about all and should be able to teach them in (2) minutes how to use an app be it Office or other.

i share your pain

In reply to The umbrella man is the worst

the technical support aspect of my job grew out of a lack of employees who know how to do basic job functions. the people i work with are nice but overall, freakin stupid. some of them have no idea what their desktop is and they’re making thousands a week doing home loans. that’s when i realized i’m the stupid one. the most infuriating thing is when you help someone solve a problem…over and over again. the same problem. they don’t even feel obligated to learn what it is that needs to be done. simple things like changing printer toner, or sending email. if you think these things really are a tech’s duty you need to quit your membership to TR right now. millions of people are expected to do the same thing at home with no help, but magically when they step into the office they go into Stupid Mode and can’t seem to do a damn thing to save their life. ask them what you should do about the noise in your engine and they look at you like you’re stupid. i’m not a mechanic but i should know that squeeling is probably a belt and blue smoke is burning oil in the cylinder and always check transmission fluid while the car is idling. people read a message that says tray 2 out of paper and can’t seem to figure out what’s wrong. they have your email with detailed instructions right in front of them and ask you to repeat each detail over the phone. my company hires idiots at a breakneck pace, and each day i’m more inclined to think that there must not be any other kind of people out there to hire. if i charged for all the work i did for each individual, they would not be taking home thousands every week, i would.

Enjoy it could be worse

In reply to The umbrella man is the worst

Just think you have the opportunity to learn many facets of the IT realm. Granted you’ll never become an expert in any one realm, I know I am in the same boat, but at least it is not the same old boring stuff day in and day out. Plus think you could be one of those screaming end users who has no clue on what is happening. Now isn’t that a scary thought.

Software Implementation Consultant

In reply to You got it wrong buddy its Support Technician

How about 50 weeks per year on the road, customers running after you with scope creeping, your Boss telling you you have a bad attitude pressing you to bill more hours than 80 per week.
Then, when you are ready to roll a 6 month long project, Microsoft comes out with a patch that breaks your application.

Writing programs for industrial machinery control

In reply to Programmer.

Workplace is workshop or factory floor. Writing programs with a couple of guys doing this
http://www.talyllyn.co.uk/images/news/20031229203448-The+rail+disc+cutter+in+operation+Nov+2003.jpg
a couple of feet away is not terribly unusual.

Typical customer support:
“Nothing works, come quickly and fix it”
“How do you mean nothing works? Do displays show something? Which LEDs are on?”
“I don’t know anything about them displays & LEDs, and I dont care either. I just want that @#$%^ thing to work. Come and fix it, and I mean NOW!!!”
“Did you check the fuse?”
“Oh…”

Debugging sometimes involves means messing with, crawling into, or climbing on incorrectly working machinery. Doing this under deadline pressure sometimes results in serious blunders. Blunder here doesn’t mean infuriating your boss, or losing your job. It means losing your limb(s) or even life.

OK, I admit, it was nice when I was young, all the adrenaline going and and all. Lucky for me, most of the industry went south while I was still in one piece, and I landed in “classic” IT. It’s boring like hell, but it’s nice, clean, comfortable, and all you can lose is your job.

Developing…

In reply to Programmer.

I went to school for Network Administration…along the way i got my minor in Web Development. Being the job market sucked, i ended up settling for a Developer position for a small company…I hate coding…HATE IT. Its so boring. The only good thing is I work with a great bunch of guys. Its a trade off i guess.

Programmer.

In reply to Programmer.

I concur with ctfoo… Being a programmer in a small-shop environment where your superiors have no clue of what you do or are capable of has been my worst job.

Any?

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

Every IT role is bad if someone who is your superior has no idea what it is all about and always says “do everything from nothing with noone in nothing flat !”. I hate such people…

Absolutely… I agree.

In reply to Any?

I agree that management (e.g., your supervisor, etc.) either makes the job enjoyable or turns it into a living hell.

Too many bosses — everybody in management coming to you with their projects, and urgently telling you how they need it, “Right Now!” (regardless of your current priority schedule) — also makes life miserable.

help desk

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

I’ve never worked the help desk, I have always been an application programmer. But, the help desk is where the crap hits the fan first. Be an application bug in the system, or the network goes down. The help desk people are probably one of the lowest paid jobs also. So, basicatly. They hear the incoherent screams of the banshies(seen this in earlier post) that something is wrong, and then they have to deceipher it to pass on to the appropiate people. And god help these poor souls if they interpit the incoherent screamings incorrectly.
Shoot, they even get the. I can’t boot my computer. No power. Hmmmm, have you checked the plugs sir under the desk?
I don’t know, I just think this has to be the worst job. Poor pay, no training that I know of(least not in my old company) in soothing the souls of the suddenly possessed, little or no background in IT to start with and required to give detailed explanation of the problem to us suposid professionals.

Dan Miller

I wear all the hats

In reply to help desk

The worst job in IT is the “sole” IT person job. No one cares if your alive or dead until the system gets cramps. Then it’s “all eyes on you” until the system is backup. The worst part is “with the last guy we never had a system problems ever” remarks. Sure you never had problems, he got the new equipment and I have to band-aid 5 and 6 year old pc’s, servers and printers.

What I don’t like…

In reply to I wear all the hats

1. Messy/smelly co-workers who keep their PC’s under their desks.

2. 3:00 am wake-up calls because something went horribly wrong at work.

3. Running a restore from tape for one little file from 3 years ago that the user is unsure of what date he created it.

4. Tracking “lost” e-mail sent in from the outside.

5. “Dead computer” calls only to find out (after crawling under the desk of the aforementioned smelly/messy perrson) they kicked out the power cord.

6. Having to drive 2 hours out to a remote site because their internet connection is down (can’t remote in) only to find that the life-or-death problem was not only miscommunicated to you but was a minor issue only took 2 minutes (or less) to fix.

7. Being asked an obscure home-computer question when you’re either on lunch or extremely busy, or asked to come over to fix said home-computer.

8. “What’s better – Dell or Gateway?”

I have a meeting now… can’t think of 9 or 10…

very well said

In reply to What I don’t like…

It seems to be a global “dis-likes” list and I thought that only existed in my company.
Can I add 9 & 10? the most hated questions in my job

9. “My computer is too slow,please replace it with a new FLAT one” while all what the user wants is the LCD 17-inch monitor sitting on his co-worker’s desk in change of his CRT monitor.

10.”Why does it take that long for this website to load???????”

very well said

In reply to What I don’t like…

It seems to be a global “dis-likes” list and I thought that only existed in my company.
Can I add 9 & 10? the most hated questions in my job

9. “My computer is too slow,please replace it with a new FLAT one” while all what the user wants is the LCD 17-inch monitor sitting on his co-worker’s desk in change of his CRT monitor.

10.”Why does it take that long for this website to load???????”

11 and 12

In reply to very well said

“What’s wrong with the network?Everything seems sooooooooo slow?” Only to find out the file(s) they are working on is located on thier hard drive, and the anti virus software is running its weekly scan during the time of thier complaint.

Why can’t I connect to the internet?” I get this from remote users calling from hotel rooms. When I tell them that I cannot control how a hotel runs thier Wi-Fi, they get irrate, and demand I call the front desk manager to get it fixed. I once had a user who was in China complain about the Chinese broadband (he was lucky he got it in the 1st place), and demanded I do something about it.

Couldn’t have said it better…

In reply to I wear all the hats

Being a generalist is probably the biggest challenge in IT. I’m expected to intimately know every piece of legacy equipment and out-of-date software under the sun, and be the IT “visionary” at the same time. Most technology-impaired employers and end-users haven’t a clue how hard that can be. All they know is it has to work perfectly, and cost next to nothing. Moving mountains with a teaspoon is in the job description, my friends.

Good thing I signed up, because if I had been drafted, I would be AWOL by now….. 😉

Oooo! You read my mind!

In reply to I wear all the hats

When people ask me what I do, I tell them I am the IT department:

Them-“Oh, you work in an IT department? What part?”

Me-“No, I AM the entire department. If it has a plug and a screen, I am in charge of it.”
Them-“No one runs computer departments by themselves! Don’t you have assistants to help?”

Me-“Nope! It’s all me.”

Them-“Really? Oh, well, that must suck.” Then they wander off.

I am literally in charge of anything that might remotely have a chip in it. I get calls for calculators, the switchboard system, credit card machines–you name it. Like I said, if it has a plug and a screen….

I get calls at 3 AM because an overnight crew member forgot their password to an application. I get called because, despite the fact there are at least 75 workstations in just one of the locations I am responsible for, the person calling refuses to log onto any other station but the one on their desk. If a printer runs out of toner, I get called. Weekends, holidays, the same morning I had surgery–none of those are respected. I got a call this past Friday in the middle of my DD’s ballet performance because of a workstation issue as above!

I also had the ancient equipment inheritance problem (or, as management insists on calling it, CHALLENGE). My favorite thing now is that when our agency buys new equipment, they only want to pay for a one-year warranty and then expect me to keep it going for four or five years. (I spent most of this morning dealing with just such an item.)

So my vote is also for the “sole IT person”.

Read my mind also!

In reply to Oooo! You read my mind!

I have the same issues at my work. I am the only one administrating 90+ workstations including 8 servers.

I had Pneumonia last year and I was getting calls every hour asking for stupid things such as how do I change my password–something they do all by themselves prior to my leave. No respect for when I am sick or off on Vacation.

Users treat you they way you let them

In reply to Oooo! You read my mind!

I too am the IT department but somehow my users tend to respect the fact that I have a life. One thing, if you do not want to receive a call, turn off the bloody cell phone. Only give certain staff members your home number and make sure that they know that it is only to be used in *dire* emergencies. If they call and want a problem fixed right now, attempt to talk them through the fix. If they do not want to follow instructions, they will have to wait until your next working day for you.

If you let them walk all over you they will.

IT Manager for a 100 person firm

In reply to I wear all the hats

The IT guy for the smaller company, no matter what they say the title is, is the WORST.
– Responsible for all aspects
– Approached with requests for help on everything from the accounting database to the ELAVATOR
– Called regardless of time, all the time, and complained to when the calls not answered, even at 5:00 AM
– No future, because the bigger companies want to see implementations of 500 users at a minimum.

Ugh. Great topic. I think I’ll go hang myself now.

IT Manager for a 100 person firm with NO BUDGET

In reply to IT Manager for a 100 person firm

Ok, ditto to everything from the above. I would also include questions such as, why is my (personal) Blackberry not working? How can I get credit to buy myself an apple computer? The lights go out, and everyone turns and looks at me! Anyway, my added contribution is to be an IT Manager with no budget. So my assistant and I have to figure out ways to trick the CEO into a purchase. We actually have a 40 computers hooked up to an old NT Server. We still have old workstations and laptops that are so old we can’t upgrade them to even Windows 2000. The upside to this untenable situation is when sales people call, I tell them that we have an NT server and ?refurbished? workstations. They politely thank me for my time and quickly hang up.

Been there and I hear you

In reply to I wear all the hats

Ive been the night IT guy before where essentially if uses electricity I support because there is no one else here… 9 times out of 10 I sat around in a nearly empty building debating on whether or not I wanted something to go down in order to relieve my boredom… Then other days I would get handed the most obscure problems in the world, have no backup, no support to call(they were all asleep at home by then, and calling and waking them up is a bad idea except in the most dire of circumstances) and an impatient user who expects an immediate fix to his/her obscure issue that occurs in the middle of the night on a wednesday… I remember being asked everything from figuring out how to replace a lightbulb in the ceiling 30 feet high with no ladder(those were locked up and I was forbidden a key, since leaving me alone with millions of dollars of electronic equipment was fine, but I wasnt trustworthy enough to be given access to the storeroom) because facilities wouldnt be in until the morning and it was too dark to work(I found a lamp and brought it in) to teaching someone how to use software on their personal laptop Id never even heard of before… and thats on top of all the other work that the day shift hands down to you… stuff like inventorying every computer in the company to make sure it matches whats on their list, checking and verifying the phone numbers to every phone outlet in the building, and all the maintenance/backup type stuff…

I have to say though, that for all the headaches it caused, when you are the only guy there you tend to learn alot and the experience definitely taught me alot about problem solving and being self-reliant…

subcontracted Helpdesk work BITES

In reply to help desk

I served a 3-year sentence on helpdesk, and I can verify most of the comments I’ve read here. Helpdesk is expected to know everything that’s wrong from network outages to the latest IM that’s been downloaded. A helpdesk technician can troubleshoot a problem to death, only to find ultimately that the problem is end-user ineptitude, or more frequently end-user ignoring company policy. The pay is low-end, although helpdesk needs to know how to support a vast array of software suites (my own environment included Windows 95/98/NT/2000, Novell, Citrix, AS400, MACINTOSH, Linux, random versions of Office, and a host of medical applications from imaging to billing.)

My position was worsened because I was working for a company that had a contract with a major hospital system, and the client was often adversarial. For instance, the client had determined that although MetaFrame passwords and Desktop passwords needed to be reset every 30 days, they insisted the Novell password had to be reset every 4 weeks – a 2 day differential that built up incrementally. By the end of a year, a customer would have to remember a password from last month as well as the current month. Synchronizing passwords was impossible since helpdesk did not have the authority to change passwords in some environments.

Every aspect of my work was measured by some metric imposed by my company or the client, and although I had the highest first-call resolution rate on the team, it was one of those metrics that ultimately cost me my job – a measurment of call availability that didn’t account for the amount of time spent working with an end user.

All of this for under $15 an hour!

Take my advice on this one – don’t work helpdesk under subcontract with an adversarial client. It isn’t pleasant.

Whine Whine Whine!!

In reply to help desk

From reading this post I would think that most people here don’t have a personality. I started in the help desk supporting about 200 users. If you don’t think you can handle and user telling you the network or their PC are down without loosing your calm or taking it personally, you are in the wrong business. Develop your people skills, I have met many IT Pros who hide behind all the degrees and certs they possess but can’t carry a plain conversation with an end user. Turn off your PCs and get out more often.

DBA and DBE

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

Definitely it’s the DBA (Database Administrator) and DBE (Database Engineer). The database is critical yet due to its complexity prone to problems, so those guys get paged at all hours to debug problems.

Plus it’s the DBA/DBE types who have to support the database when the crappy stored procs written by the app engineers blow up. I can’t tell you how often a DBE has spent hours with me debugging what’s wrong with a database query I built.

DBA Job Description

In reply to DBA and DBE

DBA Job Description….

Ensure all systems are available, instantaneously to any user, no matter how big or complex the query

answer dumb questions from executives at 2 AM

Take blame for failure of crappy code written by programmers, dished out at meetings you will never be invited to

Troubleshoot poorly designed systems at 2AM Sunday, with problems not even related to the database, when the problem would never had occured if the DBA had helped with the design in the first place

Did I miss anything?

I hear ya brother!

In reply to DBA Job Description

You must work with me!! Wait…I am the only DBA here. 🙂

You forgot the part where you have to help programmers who have no idea what a relational database is. They call SQL Server, S-Q-L Server. Makes me want drink heavily.

What about the database analysts?

In reply to I hear ya brother!

We get to fix all of the one off data errors made by the bad procs!!! We also get to know every business rule ever written and why the 1988 version of custom software calculated daily interest “that way” and who changed it and when and can we please perform a datafix on the 11 million records that were processed since? And can we do it at 11:30 PM on Friday?

poor management

In reply to DBA Job Description

I agree about the DBA troubles. The problem gets worse either when people think that they know so much it when it is misunderstanding on their part or when they expect so much without giving any support or even more likely scapegoating you so that they can get some benefit.
Historically, management did not care to understand the values and the cost of computing and frankly most that I have run across simply do not.

Re: DBA Job Description

In reply to DBA Job Description

DBA for about 20 years now, starting with Oracle V5, I can understand your perspective having had all those things happen to me time and again. The only thing that keeps me coming back day after day is the 100k+ paycheck that most other technical IT workers can’t command. That’s what sets DBAs apart and makes all the pain worthwhile. I will retire at 55 with no worries and no regrets.

Working in IT

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

Working in IT is kind of like being in the engine room of the Titanic.
Their is a lot of heat, workers are busy keeping the ship moving but nobody notices them (as long as the ship is moving). The ship is steered by people who slam into icebergs.

We have a saying is support:
Support is like the newspaper at the bottom of a bird cage. It’s spread thin and catches a lot of sh*t.

Even with all the problems their are reasons why people do these jobs, besides just money. They are challenging, you get to learn new things, you can be the hero, you get to work on different things (not boring), etc.

Like the analogy of the Titanic

In reply to Working in IT

I once heard someone say that Tech Support people are the air traffic controllers of the 21st century.

I think they are both accurate (esp. for people who work at places like Getronics).

Renee

The absolute worst IT job ever.

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

Is the one you hate doing. I mean really, how do you define worst? Tech Support, Network Engineer, Management? It’s a matter of perception and personal experience.

IMHO – If you are unhappy doing what you do, that is the worst job you can have. In reality, maybe the worst jobs are the most dangerous ones, life threatening. Are there such positions in IT? I’m sure there must be at places like NASA or something along those lines.

For the most part, your job is what you make of it. If you say it’s the worst job, it’s probably because of the politics involved or poor management. Or both. The possibilities are endless.

*Shrug* I remember when I was just a tech support person, being sent on all kinds of calls. I loved it for several reasons, one, something different all the time, two, got to meet so many different people, and three, I enjoy teaching and learning. If it were (and a lot are) user error, I take the time to explain what happened and how to avoid it in the futre, while I am doing the owrk, because usually the end user is sitting there waiting for me to finish. If it were something I never saw before, it was great to research and learn how to fix it.

Typically, a bad day was a user without a clue who would humiliate with rage and then complain to my boss about my performance or what ever. Mostly due to their perception or mental illness. Those were the days I hated my job and thought it the worst job in the world.

If I had to quantify the worst IT jobs, I’d have to evaluate things like how much do you get paid for how many hours of actual work, on call 24/7 etc…

Anyway, that’s my blurb.

We have the worst job ever!

In reply to The absolute worst IT job ever.

We work for a moron who pays us nothing and expects everything! This sucks! Help us please.

I think I understand

In reply to We have the worst job ever!

It sux to be self employed, doesn’t it?

I used to work for him…

In reply to We have the worst job ever!

Could it be the same moron? The guy I worked for had a saying every day: “Help me understand….” He was so stupid, there was nothing I could say that would help him understand anything technical. He was afraid to talk to our customers because he knew his limitations. The only thing that he ever said that made sense was “you guys are here to make me look good. Keep it up!.” I doubt he knew how to change a tire, much less troubleshoot anything IT related.

Cable Dogs

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

The worst part of IT work is running cable and conduit, for me anyhow. I hate ladders, dust, floorboards, crap falling on my head, in my hair, in my eyes. Wireless everything is my dream come true!

No doubt, it’s nasty.

In reply to Cable Dogs

As a private computer consultant (read: Roving Admin), my experience runs from planning, building, installing, supporting and fixing small business networks and computers, public, private and government.

Telephone support and onsite work does not bother me, but a couple things do:
1) Users who verbally have no respect for your services. (these people can go fly a kite.)
2) Installing premise wiring in either an old dirty building or in a brand new commercial building.

The old building has flaky, dirty, crap (read: nails, fiberglass, wire nuts, loads of dust, plaster, peeled paint, etc) strewn above the ceiling tiles which you cannot see until it aims for your tender head below. In one building, I found an ENTIRE set of old inter-office communication telephones (with cords attached) hidden above the ceiling tiles in each office. I immediately began looking for old sandwiches, yea, sandwiches… from the bum that must of been living up there and making calls out. 🙂

The new commercial building was planned and built with a server room whereupon after the furniture and medical equipment was permanently installed, the client wanted to put an imaging computer inside the server room (against my vocal disagreement). With 18ft high steel and lead lined walls and 14-15ft high ceiling tiles, among electrical avoidance problems and trying not to crush the unmovable furniture, it took 3 hours to hardwire the imaging computer into the existing bundle of server wires on the OTHER SIDE OF THE ROOM not more than 15-20ft away.

I told the client: DON’T EVER ASK ME TO DO THIS AGAIN!! Remember when I told you that making unplanned changes to your setup would be a nightmare??

Anyways, I think cabling isn’t the worst, but it’s definitely on my top 5 list.

Don’t forget the ASBESTOS exposure while you are wiring!

In reply to Cable Dogs

Worse than the fiberglas and dust falling in the eyes and hair, breathing in 5 inch layers of dust, almost falling off of a 10-foot ladder, and trying to drill into a cement wall to feed a cable through rooms is being exposed to ASBESTOS! I never touched it, but I certainly saw it! I refused to run cables near ASBESTOS, so I get a maintenance man or janitor to do it for me.

Let’s hear it for Wireless…HIP HIP HOORAY!

The one you don’t get paid for . . .

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

If you’ve ever worked for a company that was sliding into bankruptcy or insolvency you know what I mean.

Amen!

In reply to The one you don’t get paid for . . .

Yes, the accidental probono job.. that stinks!

But you know what else stinks? Truck drivers. I put up a network for a trucking company, and all of the admin staff were injured truckers, and the strong smell of yesterday’s beer, this morning’s strong coffee, and too many cigars was not very pleasant at all. Some of them needed more bathing and more tictacs than most people require. The first time I heard (and yes, I heard it more than once) “Hey sweetie, can you come over and sit in my lap and teach me how to work this dang puter?” I nearly barfed. They made good friends in the long run, but that was surely hard to warm up to that IT job. I’d do it again though, so it wasn’t the worst job I ever had.

Advice of an Inacom Employee

In reply to The one you don’t get paid for . . .

Run. Do not walk. RUN NOW!

Absolutely DO NOT stay with a firm sliding into bankruptcy.

Get a new job.

If you stay and they file bankruptcy, you will probably never see a dime in pay, as you are a class B creditor. Vacation time…Poof! Bonus….Poof! Retirement…Poof!

Best of luck.

Reply To: What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

In reply to The one you don’t get paid for . . .

You design a system that helps a bank make trasanctions of over ?5 billon a day. All working fine, and one morning a director losses is email connection and all hell break loss for what he is responsible for. No thank you for 99.9% of up time they get day in day out.
Also transport system, as bad as bank if you work as an Architect.

System Architect

In reply to The one you don’t get paid for . . .

You design a system that helps a bank make trasanctions of over ?5 billon a day. All working fine, and one morning a director losses is email connection and all hell break loss for what he is responsible for. No thank you for 99.9% of up time they get day in day out.
Also transport system, as bad as bank if you work as an Architect.

Question

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

Does data-entry count? I started out in computers doing that… (Hey, it’s money…) and quit after about 2 weeks. I couldn’t handle the monotony. Day in, day out, type the same things over… and over… and over… and being hounded on by 1 simple mis-classification (which actually wasn’t my fault, someone wrote in the classification and I didn’t have rights to add one.)

Honestly, I’ll take my current job of “Solo IT Department”, implementing 16 new computers (and wiping the old ones to be sold to employees), investigating a breaking Novell mail server, putting out fires and dealing with obtuse users and management (which is practically non-existant, as the only people above me are the actual partners…) over data entry….

Insecure boss

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

My worst job was straight out of college at a large aerospace company. I got hired by the out-going supervisor, who I liked. The next week, the new one started. I didn’t know about the huge amount of but-kissing she required.

I’m sure it didn’t help that my husband worked in the same building with her husband (a few miles away in another plant). My hubby would pick me up for lunch at least twice a week, and hers NEVER did.

Meow. Pffft. Now I sound catty…

any bad environment

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

Worst usually involves working for a non-technical and highly political manager who is interested only in covering their own back. Not where you want to spend your 60 hours per week…

Microsoft Sales Rep

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

‘Nuff said.

Microsoft Integrator

In reply to Microsoft Sales Rep

… because guaranteed you are going to run onto at least one “Screamin’ Penguin” at your next rollout.

(Where the flock was he during the initial phase of the project?)

Responsibility without authority OR contradictory direction.

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

ANY job where you are responsible to accomplish an end result without the actual political authority (or system permissions to do so) to do so is the WORST job.

EXAMPLE:
Boss: “I need you to reset my password”
You: “I don’t have admin rights to do account management, I’m the DBA”
Boss: “What do we pay you for, then!?!”

Another WORST job is getting contradictory direction from a non-technical supervisor who won’t/cant/doesn’t understand the contradiction:

Boss: “I don’t want anyone in accounting or anyone in the secretarial pool to be able to send email outside of the company”
You: “No external email?”
Boss: “Right.”
NEXT DAY:
Boss: “Why can’t any of the accountants email their reports to the bank?”
You: “Because the bank’s addresses are EXTERNAL email addresses”
Boss: “So?”
You: ” You didn’t want them to be able to send to external email addresses. The bank’s addresses are EXTERNAL.”
Boss: “They’re OUR bank, that’s not ‘external’ email.”
… etc.

worst IT job is looking for an IT job!

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

I have worked with legacy systems, i.e. COBOL for the past 30 years, but also have spent time working with DOS 1.x-6.0, NT 3.5, NT 4.0, Win2k,
Win2k3, Exchange, SQL, and ISA Server. I only have an old AAB degree, and am midway to getting an MCSE 2K3. All that I hear is, you don’t have a Bachelor’s, you don’t have an MCSE plus CCNP, CCDP, CCIP, CCVP, CCIE, CISSP, RHCT, RHCE, Citrix, Lotus Notes certifications etc, etc, etc. You have not worked for a large company. Nothing but rejections for over 2 years after my last employer went bankrupt. That is why I feel, the worst job in IT is looking for a job in IT, if you don’t have “stellar qualifications”.

Support role

In reply to worst IT job is looking for an IT job!

Like most of the posts, it’s the support roles that suck. I’m a network admin but do a lot of end user support too. People being thick is just about bearable. It’s the lazy ones that annoy me. Why bother looking thru a help file when u can ring the admin. Sure he’s never busy.
We have some incredibly thick people here. Sales & Marketing anyone? Managers too! Support roles have taken so much of my time that I miss out on the “good stuff”.

We recently upgraded our mail to an Ex Cluster and we ended up getting a contractor to do most of it bc I didn’t have the time to do it. Would have been one of the most interesting projects since I started with this company and I missed out mostly.

Still I wouldn’t want to work in the call centre. Shit pay and abuse on the phones. Bugger that!

amen to that

In reply to worst IT job is looking for an IT job!

I am a main frame programmer(cics/ims/vsam) of 22 years, with oracle and pl/sql experience in the last 5. Relocated due to remarriage and even though I gave my supervisors as my references with their permission. And I do know from various interviews, they are giving stellar references. It’s like pulling teeth in getting a job.
I know that main frames are still used, and by alot of people. But, ya know. They look at my resume and see I was with the same company for 22 years, and say. Your experience is not varied enough. Shoot, I thought loyality was spouse to mean something. I constantly read tech news letters(this being just one), and always forwarded anything I found to my employer. One of the reason I am getting good references. But, eh. Not enough.
Took a part time selling, and made the top 100 sellers of out of 200 franchies. Seriously wondering if I should just move on to a different profession. Least I wouldnt have to worry about idiot ceo’s that don’t know how to follow a prioritized list of requests that are laid out in a project plan.

dan miller

The problem is..

In reply to amen to that

With all due respect, I don’t think you understand the issue. If you had 2 years experience with 11 different companies, what do you think the response would be?
“Sorry we’re looking for somebody with a more stable background”.

Its age! You’re too old! You must be, with CICS etc. and, no doubt, heavy COBOL. Cos requiring those legacy skills are usually pretty big and have those needs filled elsewhere. Bangalore ring a bell????

Looking…

In reply to worst IT job is looking for an IT job!

If you don’t know it already, your (our) problem finding an IT job isn’t lack of qualification! You’ll never have the right alphabet soup on your resume as long as you’re over 50. How many interviews have you had where the interviewer’s expression of surprise says it all ‘Oh gees, its granpa’?
You (and me) are old!!! Its that simple. I don’t care how certified you are. I was IT director for a co. whose name you’d recognize immediately, until mgt said they couldn’t afford me (code for ‘we want somebody younger).

Shouldda been an accountant!

Systems Administrator In Hell!!!!

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

I would say Systems Administrator is the worst. At least it is when you are the one and only IT person working for a company that uses many third-party software applications. It is a network utilizing thin clients over three states to communicate to one of the servers at home base. Designing apps to perform routine maintenance and looking around for dirt cheap solutions to problems is also a part of it. Most of the time, I am “encouraged” to develop my own solutions and workarounds as they pinch pennies.

If anything goes wrong with anything even remotely electronic in nature, who gets the call? Who is expected to know how to fix every single possible electronic problem? Who performs web development, program development, network maintenance, online advertising, Email, etc.? Now I understand why two of the previous people in my position privately told me that I would learn quite a bit in this job and closed the conversations by saying “Better you than me.”

The only thing keeping me here is that they are being lenient with me for my pregnant fiancee (getting her to and from the doctors) and letting me work from home to take care of a majority of the daily network and system needs several times a week. My pay is severely low compared for what I am doing. I am contemplating putting me resume together and shopping for a job elsewhere. LOL

Bad job??

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

It’s really a matter of perception and whether it was working on 12KV switch gear and surveying
power lines in a man hole. I hated being a fireman and wanted a YOYO painted on my truck
I felt I was getting jerked around. Starting a day at 3am to realign a 9 foot dish on a frosty
roof…I don’t care, I waited for the sun to rise
and melt the ice. Cleaned a filthy backplane
and called the uplink. Get a cleanup call 50
miles away at 8am to smooth feathers of a customer and relieve the tech now on site—
He don’t know I’m coming. This call sucked so
bad it drew me in from 50 miles. I can still here that incredible sound…we’ve all heard it.
RUN RUN At noon I double back the 50 miles
and succeed in 3 quick laptop display replacements and a terminal replacement of
a counter mounted LCD touch screen. About the
same time I spotted rat$h1t in the PC driving
the display the waitress asks if I want a drink-
—The sucking sound started again and I ran
screaming from the building never seen again in
the daylight or near dayshift workers. I really
began at the very start where the revelation
of mixed elements could create a semi-conductor.
prior it was VACCUM TUBES. Try that theory on
you noodle. I hear no nor sounds and feel that
maybe it maybe in remission. Best to all

Worst Jobs of ANY kind, ever….

In reply to Bad job??

Speaking of bad jobs, I saw a thread last night on a site that was hilarious…on the worst jobs of any sort you’ve ever had. It’s a matter of perspective, one might add.

http://www.culturecloud.com/Topics/00001339/worst_jobs.aspx

Any Underpaying IT Job

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

Most supervisors will allow an employee to do more than thier job description – A Desktop Support doing Net Admin stuff;a helpdesk yech doing some programming etc… Before you know it, management expects the employee to do those added tasks. But when it’s time for raises the supervisor uses the salary report for the employees orginal job description. I’ve known some supervisors who would even say that person is overpaid. Most employers will allow a desktop person do the job of a net admin until that person demands to be paid as a net admin.

The other worst job is being in a job where there is no upward mobility. Some IT shops refuse to promote from within.

running a company that you do not own

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

I work in a small IT shop, just 3 of us. there is the owner, his wife, and me. this is the first job i have ever had where i know more than anyone else. that in itself is a headache. the owner was going to become mcse after taking a class geared for the certs. after failing the first exam 3 times, he quit. they are very lazy. they hardly ever show up to work on time, and sometimes, not at all. so, i sit here day after day, answering phones and making a list for all the clients that need me onsite. when the owners finally show up to the office, the list is huge. then they tell me that they will not be in the office for the rest of the week after today or that his wife, who does the secretarial work when she is here, will not be in the office for the rest of the week. so i have just today to take care of the list. this list is usually about 15 to 20 clients long. and if both the owner and myself go out in the field to take care of the list, i spend most of my time teaching him how to do things so that he can pawn it off as his own work. and i am underpaid. does anyone out there have a boss that claims to be “almost completely broke” every time you mention that they are not paying even 5% of the money that you bring into the business ? and in the same breath they will tell me that they are going to vegas for a week. this is the worst job i have ever had…

Here’s an idea

In reply to running a company that you do not own

Dave,
Do you know what he charges his clients per hour? Prehaps you should sign a contract with him which allows you at least 50 percent of the billable hours you are responsible for.

If you bill let’s say 30 hours a week at 120/hour, his company gets 3600 dollars for your work. If he must pay out 1800 of that per week to you, he may re-think his work ethic.

If you don’t have a non-compete clause, you could take a portion of his clients and work for your self.

Thats a no no

In reply to Here’s an idea

Leaving and taking clients that you made while working for that company will get you sued faster than you can $(*^#…

It falls in-line with stealing trade secrets and is a tort.

Even if..

In reply to Thats a no no

they just follow you? It doesn’t sound like he would have to solicit them at all… Even if he didn’t tell them he was leaving, they would find out when another person came by and they asked where he was. Then they have a choice. Personally, I’d rather go with my POC person that I always saw rather than the person that will “get to me” eventually.

thank you

In reply to Even if..

thanks for the support ! these ideas are being hashed between myself and his competitor.

Well…

In reply to thank you

Please don’t take this as legal advice, I definately think that if you told the competitor the names and addresses of your boss’s clients, that will DEFINITLY get you into trouble. If your boss turns around and says “Oh, he works at ____ now” next time he goes to see a client, that’s one thing. To send out invitations to switch, is quite another. Check with an actual lawyer for much clearer “can’s” and “don’ts”…

Non-Compete Clause

In reply to Well…

Legally, you can leave your employer and take his clients with you unless you sign a non-compete clause. That dosen’t mean your employer won’t take you to court, but a judge will rule in your favor. Most service companies, however, will not hire you unless you sign a non-compete clause (usually for 12 months after you termiate).

The easiest way to solve this problem is to convince your boss of your value and negociate a new compensation package. If he dosen’t respond, and you believe you could better serve his customers, jump ship. I’ve seen this done a few times. It is usually unhappy customers and not the employees who instigate it.

trade secret

In reply to Well…

I beleive customer lists fall under trade secrets when it comes to the law and if you leave and take your list of customers with you, I believe you can be sued for theft of trade secrets. Now if you boss or soon to be old boss tells them where you left, game on.

I beleive by law you are not allowed to tell these customers that you are leaving, or it may just be that you are going to xzy company…

Here is a link. I guess it all depends on how much additional non public information is in the customer list that will determin if it is a trade secret or not.

http://www.ivanhoffman.com/secrets.html

re : trade secrets

In reply to Well…

since i am friends with most of my customers, this will not apply. and if my friends tell there friends where i went and why, i am not to blame:) right ??

Working for Morons is the Worst

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

I don’t mind doing whatever needs doing, because that’s the deal between me and the company. But I REALLY HATE working for morons. I’ve just been told that our company is going to change its software. There’s a ridiculously small budget with a deadline that waaaay too short. I need to get all the data ported to new software that isn’t even written yet, much less tested, and train a staff of 100+ users by the end of next year. It’s my responsibility even though I was never consulted about the budget or timeline, and planning sessions have been set up that don’t involve me. If I shed too many more tears, I’m outta here!

I wish you the best.

In reply to Working for Morons is the Worst

I feel for you.
This is a truly crappy situation.
I hope in this project, you kick ass, leave them wondering and then go find a much better job to which you deserve.

yeah i am with you there.

In reply to I wish you the best.

I gotta agree that any project or large IT task (like upgrades of software etc) that are decided and planned and budgetted for without any consultation with the IT folk (you and me).

Whats worse is that by our nature as IT people we love a challenge and sometimes, just sometimes we do the impossible and deliver against the odds…. then next time round the business people say ‘well you/the other it guy, manged it last time’.

I see Dumb People

In reply to Working for Morons is the Worst

I hear you man, you don’t work for Schreiber Foods do you?

Anyway I used to work for a City government and the IT Director could not comprehend why when she connected back in over dial-up that a telnet session was faster to respond then opening a word document on the file server.

And she was the one making 80k a year!

I second that

In reply to Working for Morons is the Worst

Everyone is consulted regardig the change execpt the keep players.

ISP Tech Support

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

I’ve spoken with and supported the entire spectrum of users. From those who have no busniess owning a computer (what’s an arrow to those that are “proficient” and are more dangerous than anything else. Although there are some users that are truly proficient, they are few and far between.

Point of Sale Support

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

Far and away the worst job in IT is Point of Sale support for the restaurant industry. Especially on your on call rotation week. The calls can come in at ANY time and they are ALL id10t calls. ie… paper jams at 3am etc etc.

Here here

In reply to Point of Sale Support

Working in Retail sucks especially at this time of year as is all hands on deck.

Supporting Retail stores that are open late on xmas eve and boxing day + new years is a pain.

Even better at the 3am paper jam is when they call at the same time to order more recipt printer rolls.

Reply To: What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

I would sum up most of the previous postings by the following:
worst job in the IT field is being IT specialist(tech support,network admin,help desk,DBA, etc..) in a NON-IT organization.When the company is not in the IT business your role is simply to facilitate their jobs and make their life easier to increase productivity and time saving.
And that is what I hate most, being in the shadows of the company’s main stream business.

Hit the nail on the head.

In reply to Reply To: What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

It was so much better when IT drove business, instead of the other way around.

Money was better too.

WHY JASON POSTED A NON-CONTENT BLOG ??

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

Jason, why you posted a non-content blog ??

I am very disappointed when someone just send few lines, and we have to click on it, and see that there’s nothing on it, just to make you traffic ?

It’s like I go to a concert rock and I am invited to sing myself instead of listening the singer !!!

Could be the singer so lazy to do that to me ??? Why then did I paid my ticket to come in the hall ??? Only to see his face ??

It is supposed that this website is an authoritative website, with full-content, not only some mock that tells you something like:

“Welcome to Google ! From now, just please search yourself in the web, with your owns methods: we just invited here to tell you that !! ”

Where is the list of those 10 jobs, then ??????

If you have nothing to say, just say nothing !!

Worst Job in IT

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

As far as I’m concern, there is no any bad job in the IT. The kind of job one picks up depends on his education and experince. Anybody that wants a better jon should get more more qualifications and experience.

Worst Job? How about NO job?

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

The only ‘taste’ of IT I have been able to have is ‘break-fix.’ I was laid of in February and the only contract jobs available in my area seem to be one or two day assignments. I am out of unemployment.

A+, Network+, Security+, MCSE on Windows 200

second the motion!

In reply to Worst Job? How about NO job?

In reading a majority of the posts, I would be glad to take any one of those jobs compared to not working at all! You might not like your job, but with the IT jobs climate the way that it is, people who have a job should count their blessings! It is quite apparent that IT has become a “mature” field, and that the number of jobs will continue to diminish.

Reply To: What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

In reply to second the motion!

PC Tech is the worst job in IT. If you fix the problem, ‘big deal its your job’ is the reaction. If you can’t fix it in 10 minutes you’re an idiot. ‘Can’t we get somebody else’.
To your boss, you’re just a commodity that can be replaced by lunchtime with a just-MS-certified know-it-all punk geek who lives with his mommy and will work for nothing just to play with the computers.
Crawling around on a dirty dusty factory floor under the desk of some old hag A/P clerk who has finally found somebody she can dominate is no fun either! Especially when you tell her she kicked off the power strip. ‘No I didn’t, its these stupid computers, they never work, they’re always so slow and they always make mistakes!’
This is before ‘business casual’ which means suit and tie.
Does that suck or what?

Re: PC Tech is the worst job in IT. If you fix the

In reply to Reply To: What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

I would have to agree with you on the before ‘business casual’ which means suit and tie. In our dept whether your help desk or field tech all ‘dress’ and tie is required even when you’re crawling around the floor or rip a hole on your ‘mouse elbow’ side clicking around for 8 hrs. Theory here is if casual dress goes for one dept it should go for all others in the Co which I’m sure works across almost all industries.

Have you tried…

In reply to Worst Job? How about NO job?

Creating your own IT Support Company? I agree with you…being unemployed is the worst. When I was unemployed the lowly PC Tech position at Best Buy seemed very very appealing.

HTML Monkey

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

Second worst job is by far the most boring thing on the face of the planet – coupled with producing spam for a living and you are in utter hell.
The worst job is having to maintain the above.

There are many factors to job dissatisfaction

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

I would tend to agree that support-based jobs are worse than development jobs, because at least a developer gets the satisfaction of creating something new. The support technician, on the other hand, is always working with yesterday?s technology or having to find a way to make yesterday?s technology work with today?s technology.

That being said, I think the answer to the job satisfaction question is more a case of the ?position your employer puts you in? rather than the ?position you have?. If your employer consistently puts you in a position that makes it difficult to do your job, I guarantee you won?t be satisfied no matter what kind of IT position you have.

Some of the key factors in job dissatisfaction are:
1) Skill differentials between IT departments that need to work together, especially if the employer makes no effort to correct the differential.

For example, my previous employer had a help desk staffed with people who by and large had little or no technical expertise. The help desk could do little more than reset passwords and open problem tickets in our ticket tracking software. No effort was made to teach them troubleshooting skills. Instead, the help desk would pass the ticket along to whatever they felt was the appropriate IT department. They often sent it to the WRONG department, which meant that a lot of time was spent sending tickets back and forth until the tickets ended up where they were supposed to be.

2) Risk tolerance differences between IT departments that need to work together

I am a SQL Server DBA. My previous employer had an important application that utilized a SQL Server database. At the time the application was written, the current edition of SQL Server was 6.5. For years, we tried to convince them to upgrade the database to SQL Server 7.0, forget about SQL Server 2000. (This was in 2005, mind you.) They kept refusing, on the grounds that the application?s function would eventually be taken over by an Oracle application. Their refusal to upgrade meant that we had to keep maintaining a NT 4.0 server that dated back to 1997. This server was taking up the room of 4 modern servers, and needed to be restarted on a monthly basis as it kept running out of memory and other resources. We also had limited ability to recover this server from a catastrophic failure since Microsoft stopped supporting SQL Server 6.5 years ago.

3) Refusal to invest in the employer?s own personnel

I am not totally against seeking the advice of consultants or outsourcing certain IT functions, but I think there are more than a few employers who don?t even consider the option of developing the skills of their own staff. Consulting money would be far better spent in teaching your existing personnel new skills than it is to hire consultants from the outside to do the job.

I think most of these factors affect support personnel more than developers, which is why I think support personnel have it worse.

Help Desk

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

Help Desk has to be the most horrable job in the industry. This job has no practical hands on, all you do is sit by the telephone and listen to peoples complaints all day. This will send you cazy or insane.Nothing worst than being couped up a telephone all day.

ANY job as a contractor.

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

Contract nation is a joke anyway. If the job is worth doing, its worth putting a full time man on it.

ANY job?

In reply to ANY job as a contractor.

i’m a contractor for the military. it’s actually quite nice.

Data Entry / Data Processing baby!

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

The thing that bugs me most about the IT line of jobs is that even though you might have a million certifications and at least a bachelor’s degree, somehow, somewhere along the line one of the powers-that-be demands that you do data entry. Hello? Scanners?

Of course the whole reason I’m not in the biz (at least officially – once someone in the office sees any sort of technical prowess, watch out…) anymore can be summed up by a comic strip I saw a few Sundays back.

(You can find it on the Washington Post site at http://www.uclick.com/client/wpc/wpopu/2005/11/20/index.html )

point of view

In reply to Data Entry / Data Processing baby!

Try being out of work for almost two years! It really changes your perspectives. I would love working with “moronic users”, and doing data entry in emergency situations, as I had to fill-in at times for sick clerical workers in my last job. Sure beats sending out hundreds of resumes, and hearing “Oh we’re sorry, we’ve had over 100 people apply for the job”. Count your blessings if you have a job! It is quite apparent that the job pool in IT is rapidly shrinking. Why else would employers require multiple high level certs, and a BS plus 3-5 years experience for a Help Desk I position paying < $15k per year!

Is IT Skills Becoming a Commodity?

In reply to point of view

You bring up very good points. I don’t know what part of the country you live in, but it appears in the more depressed economic areas IT isn’t immune to the same downsizing that manufacturing jobs are prone to.

Where I’m from there are literally hundreds of expirenced and licensed Tool and Die makers fighting for jobs that pay 10 dollars an hour less than they earned 10 years ago.

Let’s face it: The gravytrain days of the 90s are gone forever. Buisnesses now outsource thier websites, email, and print and file services. Why pay an email admin 65,000 dollars a year when you can pay a 20,000 dollar fee to have another company host you email server? All the hardware, back ups, and software headaches are gone, and its one less expensive employee on the payroll.

Small buisnesses can now manage thier SOHO networks themselves (an additional duty for a tech savy engineer or accoutant), and call in a network tech or consultant when there are problems.

You can blame Windows for much of the problems. Their OSs are fairly easy to manage when compared to Netware, Unix, or Linux. The mystery of networking is gone thanks to Windows.

Corpotations knowing that there are a glut of IT workers per job available have ridiculously raised thier standards on hiring. They want the degree, plus the certs, plus the expirence. I saw a local posting recently that required a BS degree, MCSE, CCIE, and 5-8 years expirience for a 40,000 dollar a year job for a LAN Admin. Even in my city where there is high manufacturing unemployment, I can count all the CCIEs on one hand, and they are all employed making over 120k a year.

I have been tempted myself to start up my own buisness. As I progress to my 50th bday, the chances of age discrimination goes up. Ironically, a company thinks that older employees aren’t valuable, but they have no problem paying them 100 dollars an hour as a contractor,

Are IT Skills Becoming a Commodity?

In reply to point of view

You bring up very good points. I don’t know what part of the country you live in, but it appears in the more depressed economic areas IT isn’t immune to the same downsizing that manufacturing jobs are prone to.

Where I’m from there are literally hundreds of expirenced and licensed Tool and Die makers fighting for jobs that pay 10 dollars an hour less than they earned 10 years ago.

Let’s face it: The gravytrain days of the 90s are gone forever. Buisnesses now outsource thier websites, email, and print and file services. Why pay an email admin 65,000 dollars a year when you can pay a 20,000 dollar fee to have another company host you email server? All the hardware, back ups, and software headaches are gone, and its one less expensive employee on the payroll.

Small buisnesses can now manage thier SOHO networks themselves (an additional duty for a tech savy engineer or accoutant), and call in a network tech or consultant when there are problems.

You can blame Windows for much of the problems. Their OSs are fairly easy to manage when compared to Netware, Unix, or Linux. The mystery of networking is gone thanks to Windows.

Corpotations knowing that there are a glut of IT workers per job available have ridiculously raised thier standards on hiring. They want the degree, plus the certs, plus the expirence. I saw a local posting recently that required a BS degree, MCSE, CCIE, and 5-8 years expirience for a 40,000 dollar a year job for a LAN Admin. Even in my city where there is high manufacturing unemployment, I can count all the CCIEs on one hand, and they are all employed making over 120k a year.

I have been tempted myself to start up my own buisness. As I progress to my 50th bday, the chances of age discrimination goes up. Ironically, a company thinks that older employees aren’t valuable, but they have no problem paying them 100 dollars an hour as a contractor,

right

In reply to Are IT Skills Becoming a Commodity?

Good post. I was talking to a friend the other day and he was telling me about the company he works for. It’s a parts manufacturer and they outsource their web development and networking. They used to have an IT guy but laid him after after the dot com boom. A couple of the supervisors deal with the simple IT tasks and they outsource the rest to IT companies. I think more small businesses are going in this direction as networks ARE easier to manage these days. It is not economical for a small company to employ a full time IT guy unless he has other duties (which may not be IT).

Network Cabling Installer

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

Installing networking cabling in the roof/floor etc where there are live electrical wires, hot water pipers. Its dark, its dirty, nobody appreciates the cabling and when they do want to plug a pc in, the point is never in the right place

bit worse then the installation

In reply to Network Cabling Installer

One phase worse than installation is sorting out some one elses excuse for cabling when cables are more like heinz spaghetti than neat parrellel rows and neither end is marked to indicate it’s source…

bit worse then the installation

In reply to Network Cabling Installer

One phase worse than installation is sorting out some one elses excuse for cabling when cables are more like heinz spaghetti than neat parrellel rows and neither end is marked to indicate it’s source…

Network Cabling a school with ASBESTOS

In reply to Network Cabling Installer

Did you ever install cable with ASBESTOS in the building? I had to run network cables and coaxial cables in the ceilings of a high school. Fiberglas would fall into my eyes. My hands were filthy black. I breathed in a ton of dust (and I am an asthmatic). But the worst was getting exposed to the ASBESTOS in the walls and underneath the tiles on the floor. Thank god I did not touch it. I had a janitor feed cables through the walls that had the ASBESTOS. This poisonous crap was illegalized in 1979 and it was still present in this school around 2004 (and was probably in the other old schools in the district).

Telephone Support

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

For me the worst job is that one when you must support by phone anyone. For me it’s boring and I like to see what I must repare!

PC Support – when you have to venture under the desk

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

You know when you have to go under the desk to get the PC and theres all sorts of crap under there. And the PC is sat next to the bin / ashtray which is overflowing with cigarette butts and orange peel. And why oh why do people peel the stickers off fruit and stick them around their monitors ?

It problems

In reply to PC Support – when you have to venture under the desk

I have worked in mechanical engineering and it. It seems to me that over the years of working.
top management are a bit more understanding about problems and if a good case is presented to them they are reasonable.
Upper middle are looking after there budget and are more like beancounters.
middle are the hardest to deal with.Usually no management skills except dont spend any money and dont know what you are doing anyway.young ,straight from varsity.
Supervisory is the worse job,no money no teeth and depending on upper level budgets to get things done,kicked from the top and hated from the floor.Always having to make honey out of dog turd,with not enough dogs

Helpdesk Hands down

In reply to PC Support – when you have to venture under the desk

What can be worst then talking to someone on the phone who calls to let you know their computer is not working, but forgot to tell you that lights aren’t either!

RE: PC Support – when you have to venture under the desk

In reply to PC Support – when you have to venture under the desk

Well I guess it would depend on who’s desk you have to venture under. Other than the “Bare Foot” smell, it could be worse…

blah.. dirty cables stay away

In reply to PC Support – when you have to venture under the desk

Get this.. my company had to move to a new building, I’m the programmer for the company, yes I had to break down 50+ client systems, organize them all, and reconnect, reassemble them all in 2 days, by myself, and someone else gets the credit for “ensuring that the move went properly” over the weekend (of which i rarely ever saw this person).

So, the next day after working almost non-stop through the night for 18 hours, doing the dirtiest job while ppl are talking and drinking coffee. Someone comes in and sees me leaving and gets upset that I’m leaving.

HelpDesk

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

If the kettle’s blown it’s got to be related with the network going down yesterday ‘call the IT helpdesk’

Helpdesk

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

If the kettle is blown it’s got to be related to the network been down yesterday ‘ Call the IT HelpDesk ,

Desktop Tech.

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

PC Tech is the worst job in IT. If you fix the problem, ‘big deal its your job’ is the reaction. If you can’t fix it in 10 minutes you’re an idiot. ‘Can’t we get somebody else’.
To your boss, you’re just a commodity that can be replaced by lunchtime with a just-MS-certified know-it-all punk geek who lives with his mommy and will work for nothing just to play with the computers.
Crawling around on a dirty dusty factory floor under the desk of some old hag A/P clerk with open-toed sandals who has finally found somebody she can dominate is no fun either! Especially when you tell her she kicked off the power strip. ‘No I didn’t, its these stupid computers, they never work, they’re always so slow and they always make mistakes!’
This is before ‘business casual’ which means suit and tie.
Probably working for a body shop, so forget raises, promotions etc. with multi-multi-MS-Certified punks 1/2 your age that can’t spell ‘the’ or really speak any Western language. Nevermind the stench of what they bring for lunch.
Fridays are the worst. That’s when they tell you not to come back on Monday.

Now, does that suck or what?

Spyware and Anti-Virus remover

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

I hate breaking the news and billing time for removal of spyware and viruses.

The recipient of the spyware didn’t ask for it (at least not without being conned into accepting it) and certainly didn’t ask for the virus.

It is particularly bad for the person who doesn’t surf dubious sites in their offtime and have bang up to date A/V software – that scans daily. But who sometimes just make a mistake or get beaten by the virus ahead of new definitions.

Total waste of both our times and for the recipient who I have to break the bad news to – of their money….

The intellectual exercise of wrinklinig out the latest twist to spyware is of marginal interest while doing the job.

For those who surf porn nightly and play “free” poker – I have no sympathy except to note that there is still “one born every minute”

Agree

In reply to Spyware and Anti-Virus remover

Although this is just part of my job, this has got to be the worst. With over 150 PC to support, you can just imagine how often I have to deal with this. I still say that if I ever got my hands on one of the jerks that create this stuff, they would be on the floor in great pain when I was through with them.

motion sickness?

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

I’ve been a network administrator on a submarine. When submerged there is very little motion…no wave action at depth. Losses of air conditioning and vital electrical buses are more of a concern. It also wouldn’t be a primary job, it’s a secondary assignment for after hours for someone who is generally working a 6 on 12 off shift rotation. But since there are only about 150 users, a couple of dozen workstations, and perhaps 6 printers, the job is hardly arduous.

Not having a Job in IT

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

Being laid off and having to work at Walmart while looking for a job in IT.

I have been there,

In reply to Not having a Job in IT

I have done that,
And of course your supervisor is an uneducated idiot with a bad attitude.

More of us are probably headed to Walmart too!

In reply to I have been there,

In reading a majority of the posts, it seems that people who HAVE IT jobs, don’t appreciate what they have! I’ve been looking for nearly two years, and would gladly accept any of the positions that have been moaned about! Fact is, the number of jobs in IT is steadily dwindling. I’ve seen ads from several companies listing a BS, CCIE, along with a raftload of other certs and 5 yrs exp. as prerequisites for a Help Desk I position paying < $15k/yr. Since when does a first level help desk job need THAT level of expertise? And would a person who has spent over $20,000 in certs alone, and countless hours in training want a job paying under $20k/yr? I know that it is an employer's market, but that is totally absurd!

You’re correct about Walmart.

In reply to More of us are probably headed to Walmart too!

After reading your post, I have to agree with you and say that we all moan about our jobs because we are human. All humans have to complain about something. But, you are absolutly correct in your assumption about trying to get into IT. I have been in IT for 5+ years now and I sort of stumbled into it. I would never go back to an hourly job or a production job.

After dealing with all the users, CEO’s, bosses who complain and say they know more than you, it’s all worth it in the end.

Currently, I have my A+, networking+, MCP certs behind me and I am finishing up my MCSE and starting my CCNE. In the end, it’s all worth it because no one can take that knowlege away from you.

Worst Job????

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

One of my jobs is being a spammer. Yes, that is the worst IT job imaginable.

Worse than PC Tech!!!!!

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

I recently chatted up a Dell tech at my home to see what his job was like.
$23 a call, that’s it!!! Five minutes or five hours. His car, no mileage, no gas money. No benefits at all, none!
I felt so bad, I sent him on his way and swapped out the drive myself.

The Direct-TV installer came to install service. He didn’t weigh much more than his ladder and was by himself. Poor guy had to install 3 boxes on the 2nd floor, and a dish on my roof. It was pouring, he was soaked. All for $18/call. No benefits but he did have a co truck. I wanted to give him dry clothes and a sandwich.

5 worst jobs

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

1. Being the person who has to think up all these discussion threads for TechRepublic.
2. Microwave link installer in the Sunni Triangle in Iraq (yes, I actually know this guy)
3. ATM technician (you’d be amazed what you find in ATM’s .. my favorite trouble ticket: “Dead rat in dispenser”)
4. The guy who wrote the DR plan for any company in areas affected by Hurricanes in the South-East US this year.
5. NCR NEAT/3 Programmer .. because you’ll never find another job.

Field Service Engineer

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

Driving around in traffic all day, moving from crisis to crisis, shlepping heavy parts and equipment, angry customers everywhere you go, and just try and find a parking space when you get to your next call!!! The worst.

Cable Jockey!! Data-Center Patching!!

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

THeres nothign worse then traceing an unknown patch cable through thousands of tightly packed bundles of cat 5 cabling in a large datacenter. Also telephone patching sucks too!

My top 3

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

Helpdesk All levels
Computer Operations
CIO

support tech for mobile med imaging

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

Mobile medical imaging support. 12 trucks, 15 states, 2 sights a day, 7 days a week 1 support guy. Oh, yeah, plus 25 users at the corporate office. Sys admin was related to CEO, didn’t know crap about what we did and why we did it.
CFO told me he could put an ad in the paper and get 5000 resumes for my job when I asked him for a raise. So I let him.

Not the worst, but bad enough…

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

Not necessarily the worst job, but bad enough when it needs to be done. Removing the years of old cabling from under the floor of the computer room without bringing down the rest of the network. When we moved from our old computer room to our new one, we had so much cabling under the floor that we hooked a truck and a long rope onto the mess and pulled it out. One poor sap who was standaing in the wrong place got yanked into the mess and broke his leg… 🙂

At least

In reply to Not the worst, but bad enough…

When I got a new computer room, it was in a completely new building. A bulldozer took care of the cabling mess.

Outsourced Consultant

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

1. Being brought in to help the new MCSE Certified IT Manager learn the proprietary software I installed only to find the new MCSE does not have a clue about how to manage a mixed network with a Novell Server Back-up, M$ SBS and obsolete Micro$oft Workstaions.

Plus, some of the hardware which needed to be upgraded came from a competitor and were Ollie’s overstock/clearance items, that are 3 years past their expirarion date, for $5 and have compatibility issues.

2. To be hired by a Temp Accountant to write an M$ Access Database, the IT Manager wanted Access for the reports it could generate and the Accountant wanted Excel because he could export the information to QuickBooks, to act as a bridge between an Oracle Database and Excel Spreadsheets. Only to be told the Temp did not have written approval, I had received the go ahead from the President and IT Manager, to have me do the programming.

IT Tester

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

Testers show up at all times of the week to verify the code thrown together at the last minute.

Soldier Support

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

Sometimes my job can be the pits. I support a lot of soldiers, and when inprocess with laptops full of sand – no amount of cleaning will get them back to normal. Cracked screens, cd rom drives that churn like a clothes drier, and really dirty keyboards, are just a few of the problems they bring to me daily. But supporting soldiers is so rewarding, knowing them personally and hearing their stories, not just the war stories, but the stories of their families, the support they got by mail and by phone calls, well – bring on the sandy laptops. Nevermind – I love this job.

It came from the top

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

This covers a lot of jobs, so hold on!
My bigest problem and what steers me away from a job, is the administration or corperation that think the have an understanding of their inferstructure and network,but all they realy know, is how to screw things up and blame it on the techs.I have many examples but I will give this one.A company has asked me to help intergrate their inferstructure, however they did not develop one when they upgraded from NT to 2000 and active directory, oh and they thought it was a good idea to switch everything to native mode knowing they had a couple of unix servers that should be part of the inferstructure as they are mission critical (I.E. Payroll).Oh did I mention that 30% of their network clients are working on Macintosh computers.But that is said and done,Now they think they may need to upgrade their clients. (Yah Think???)Oh did I mention that I asked them in the begining to see their plans for the upgrades and inferstructure.Their reply, (What plans it’s just an upgrade.)I tried to explain the process to them, But all I got where dumb looks.I walk away from this type job and it only takes about three months for them to call me back, asking what I said about how to make things work.I always tell them I would be glad to help them out, at twice my initial rate.
Let me know if you hate that; (Can you fix it if we argue with you and give you little or no support, attitude.)

Contract Worker

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

You can make any job worse simply by outsourcing it. I work as a contract employee for a very large company. I have seen reductions in pay over the past two years because the company is slashing workforce and decided that they aren’t willing to pay contractors what they are worth. I manage a critical product development database (clustered Oracle), yet my job classification and pay are that of a technician. On top of that, because of my contractor’s status, I am treated like dirt by some of the company employees.

Top that one.

CIO’s that wave their arms around expecting immediate action

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

Working in a “corporate” environment, CIO’s that have no idea what their decisions actually mean and the knock on impact of what they are demanding. Expecting their commands to be expidited without any debate about the pro’s and cons when every techie knows that disaster is looming.
What a bunch of high paid T*****’s

It must be management…

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

I have been it IT since 1963 and with few exceptions the people that are the hardest to work with are in management.
Although my true dislike falls to the “absolutists” out there (there is only one way to do something and nobody can show me otherwise), it is management support of this concept that wipes out any advances in work.
I recently left a job where I would report a user’s description of an event, only to be told that it couldn’t happen. When it was demonstrated, it was never acknowledged!
C’est la guerre!

It’s not about the job, but about the Environment

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

When there is a problem that can be fixed by me, as an IT engineer, Yes that is my job. But when the environment is bad, such as a hierarchical structure, or bosses that tell you “I will send you the instructions and you will follow them to the letter…” that’s when I hate the job. It just shows that alas!, the managers, even in this 21st century have not gotten out of their 18th century caves. They do not know that Technology has not got there yet, where somebody gives line-by-line instructions and when the IT guy follows them through to the letter, they will work.
When programmers with several years of sitting as programmers, are promoted to managers, with out any knowledge of management, that’s what happens.

micromanager=job from hell

In reply to It’s not about the job, but about the Environment

Any job with someone constantly telling you how to do your job is my nightmare job.

I agree 100%

In reply to micromanager=job from hell

I am in a situation now where I like what I do but I am being made to hate it because of a micromanaging control freak. I’m a programmer in a situation where my supervisor has never written a program in her life. I don’t know how companies can make non-technical people the boss or supervisor for technical people. She micromanages because she doesn’t understand what’s going on. The smallest problem is becomes “the-sky-is-falling” for her because she’s technically inadept and has no interest in learning.

All time worst IT job

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

Mine.

responsible for images & deployments

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

Much has been said about what I call desktop upport
I found my particular support role overlapped into what people call lead systems designer/engineer/analyst/Quality/project manager control as pertaining to desktops – but note a companies culture can make all of these excellent positions.

What made deployments [HW & SW] hell was the Eunuch’s problem – responsibilty without ability or authority to implement due diligence testing and remedial change. The typical deployment was we’re doing this next week because Jane/Joe said so although it won’t be used for six months and it’s critical it work the first time out, you have 4 hours of prep & burn in time.

During what they are pleased to call the planning process I’d note a foreseeable issue and be patronized as Chicken little forseeing the fall of the sky:

Our Project Managers did not manage projects they issued arbitrary timelines that had nothing to do with logistics or the lack of human and technical resources.

The little testing involved pristine heretofore unused in the real world systems.

Everytime things went south due to lack of testing or known issues Chicken Little identified to his betters, it’s Chicken Little’s fault or failure to impovise. When it worked the CIO would praise the management team in print for making it happen and noting we couldn’t have done it without them.

If management actually employed the buzzwords they spout [empowerment for one] none for the problems would exist and support would be a fun, challenging position.

Lead Keyboard De-Kruker / Admin of Cooling fan hairball remover/

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

heh

My worst IT job involved being so green and being the ONLY employee of sketchy company doing network support and installs. I would also refurbish machines I later found out would be resold as new. sketchy stuff.

How about Secretary, Chauffeur, IT Guy…

In reply to Lead Keyboard De-Kruker / Admin of Cooling fan hairball remover/

One hour, I’m the secretary. The next I’m the chauffeur. The next I’m a courier. The next I’m IT guy. The next I’m getting a crash course in Linux. The next I’m getting a crash course in SIP & IP Telephony. The next I’m disassembling & reassembling a blade server within five minutes so that the damn thing can be reshipped while the FedEx guy is there (which IS NOT going to happen!). Yes, it’s loads of fun to be me…

I know how you feel

In reply to How about Secretary, Chauffeur, IT Guy…

I’m wondering if you are working for the same company. LOL Same here…I feel your pain.

Network Administraror

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

Justifying expenses to a CIO who is clueless of modern technology

Network Administrator is not a bad IT job

In reply to Network Administraror

In fact, it is one of the better IT jobs. As a Network Administrator, I learn different technologies and participate in many projects. It’s a heck of alot better than being a travelling PC technician or Help Desk Support.

The Best and Worst can be the same

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

‘Worste or best?
‘As a contractor programmer coming into any position I learned the drill. They tell you their problem and you come back with a prototype that is a screen showing what features and controls you envisage. They are ecstatic. Two weeks later they want to see it. in four weeks they really want to see it. “It was complete. They saw it.” You reply that it was just a pretty picture you created. Now it will take a little longer to give it life. Six weeks is when they start to hate you. They’re not going to say anything, but it’s clear. They hate you. You have dashed their dreams. The stress is enormous. You scramble to make the thing work. You will not be able to show progress until you have a design that correctly models the problem. Re-designs happen and you had better be able to re-configure your code fast. Did you design well enough for the program to be adapted? You will know.
‘Now at any time this can change to the best job. You have it working. It’s not done, but it’s working enough to make your bosses confident and secure again. They love you. They really really love you. It’s a cruise then. Almost no stress. If you did a good design further development is a controlled additive process. You can take the job where ever you want.
‘My job is a thrash. An OS and database conversion. Absolutely no documentation in system or code. Management cannot communicate and has little desire to.
‘I work for a boss who is paranoid and rages uncontrollably. Family company. When he walks in in the morning, you know. You know from the sound of the footsteps how angry he is.
‘This is a bad thing. He brooks no arguement and can twist anything into any shape. I’m here because I wanted to learn the technology, but my reason makes it no less painful. He tolerates no defence.
‘I learned the technology and got an offer from another company. I give notice, but I had misgivings. The new company would want a lot of time. This system here was a breeze to maintain after the first year or so of panic. I have reason to consider, so does my boss. We talk. I say I want the basics any other company would give me. “OK”. “We will call it an anger problem, not madness”. I say OK. We will avoid psychological theatrics and communicate. OK. I know and he knows that the anger will not go away. We will deal with it when it happens.
‘I add that I have projects I want to do and finish. I want to finish my book. Development and maintenence will not take all my time. “Your company needs will come first, but I want to study, write and read undisturbed”. Strange words, but he knew he wanted/needed to keep me so he said to tell him when I was on my own work. I refused, but that’s how these things go. Oh, a raise too. I’ve got a lot done already in a short time. We’ll see how the anger thing plays out.

Not by job title, by actual task

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

Okay, I agree, the person in charge can make or ruin the job, and job title doesn’t dictate job duties. I have worked in IT for 15 years, and here is a list of my least favorite jobs/tasks:
1. Printer repair
2. upgrading anything for an engineer
3. remote support for a salesman who is connected via dialup through a lamp in his Shanghai hotel, trying to synchronize his notes database that has bloated to unbelievable proportions
4. Shutting down user accounts during layoffs
5. Calling any tech support in India for assistance.
6. Meetings with executives who insist they need some technology in their new facility that they neither understand nor have any need of, but they read about or saw a cool commercial.
7. Supporting poorly developed custom code
8. Having an excellent solution to a problem, but not successful in “selling” the solution to management ( particularly hate this one)
9. Executives who think it is my job to repair their home computers
10. bad programmers 🙂 Love good programmers, just have met a few well documented losers that have wasted lots of time and $

All that being said – I LOVE working in IT – it is the best field ever. You just have to find a good place to shine, and shine you will!

Repetitive work

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

My job is different everyday and I thrive on change. Most people in IT do. I would find the worst jobs to be anything that does not offer daily opportunities for challenge and growth. I have done helpdesk, programming, development, sales and most recently technical project management ? integration and all around SME. I still answer questions for the helpdesk and the LOB and sometimes the same question to the same person. I feel for the support group that lifts those 70lb monitors that show a two person lift on the box and they lift it alone, so I try to give them a break when I need something. I love my job and f or the few whiners I need to work with, I kill them with kindness or just ignore them.

Monitor Calibration

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

Monitor calibration is the lowest ebb of human existence.

not the worst job just the worst company

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

Having worked in the IT industry for 16 years, mostly in a support role, I would say that I find it very rewarding to have worked with some great people, supporting some great “customers” for some great companies and some not so great companies.

My all time worst was for a large R&D company that is trying to creat fuel cell engines.

I spent 3 yrs there and during that time the company grew from 700 people to 1400 while at the same time hiring no extra support staff.

We were constantly bombarded every Monday morning by flocks of new employees looking for a “their” PC on their first day, when in fact no one had even put in the paper work to the IT department asking for network accts to be setup, PC’s to be purchased etc.

On top of that, the IT manager was just a puppet with no spine of his own. Some higher-up would come screaming down because nothing was setup for the new employee, and we would of course take blame and drop everything to accomidate this diot.

After 2 yrs the company started downsizing again and the history was that pretty much whoever had been there in the IT dept the longest got laid off.

I am now self employeed with 4 employees of my own.

Thank God that “hell” is over.

Be thankful for your position in life.

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

I say that because every job has it?s share of problems. IT is no different but let?s put this in perspective, there are a whole lot worse lots in life. Anyone who works in the retail trade. Anyone who works in the construction trade an has to be outside this time of year. People who work in banking. Those are just a few examples. You want a high pressure, no respect job? How about a support tech who works with copiers? Those guys are universally treated like dog do do. As far as IT goes, working as a support tech in a Hospital. Political mine field. I had a friend who worked in that job for the better part of a year. He hated the place so bad he quit even though he didn?t have another job. My son was hired out of the military and worked as a civilian contractor at a military base. Found the military people almost impossible to work with. They resented the fact that he left the military and made so much more money. He finally had to get away from that. I have another friend who does support for a couple of nursing homes. The people he works for do not understand IT. He is micromanaged to a degree that I would find intolerable. (They berated him for reading a software manual for a new program he was installing). Any IT job where the people you work for look at you as an unnecessary expense will quickly turn in to the worst job in IT.
If you are working in IT, consider yourself lucky. Be happy that God gave you the intelligence to perform your job. There are worse things to do.

Retail PC Technician

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

I worked for almost 2 years at compusa as a technician. While there I was overworked 50+ hrs/week. Under paid $9.72/hr when I quit. And Under appreciated. My dick of a boss never once said good job, even when I fixed his screwups. Plus they expect you to sell more than you fix. By far that job was the absolute worst IT experience I have ever worked.

try Best Buy!!!

In reply to Retail PC Technician

I was referred to Best Buy for a PC Tech/Sales clerk position. The pay was $7.50/hr for a 40 hr. week. NO benefits!! That’s right NO benefits. Think that was bad, try this one @ another Mega Office store: 8am-9pm Mon-Fri plus alternate Saturday & Sunday every other week for the full day. Position was salary-exempt and NO commission $15k/yr, 1 wk vac after 1 yr. Top pay after 5 yrs was $25k.

Still saying help desk

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

I have been going through the replies to this and after my years in IT, I still have to say help desk, especially with a large corporation. This job is the type where the number of incoming calls you take are counted, the average time spent per call is tracked and you have a pumped up team leader screeching at you to take another call. This is the type of position where you sit at a desk all day, recording what you told a customer, listening to them put you or your company down. Even when you get to a senior position and are finally able to talk one-on-one with the developers, they say, yes that does need to be fixed and then take years to fix that glitch that constantly causes customers to call.

This is the type of position where health problems like carpal tunnel, depression, and stress run rampant. Oh, by the way, don’t bother to attempt a transfer to another department because your manager does not want to let you move ahead and will do anything not to let the other manager hire you into their group.

Been there, done that.

I have moved on and I can honestly say that I would much rather crawl under desks, lug equipment (although I can usually smile sweetly and get assistance), or help out that person who has no business with a PC. I can get away from my desk and get out. When I have to visit one of my locations, it is always just a few minutes drive. My problems with carpal tunnel have been drastically reduced because I am no longer expected to type 8 hours daily at full tilt. Oh, I can even take some time to put my 2 cents worth into a discussion like this.

I Guess this would be IT…

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

In the summer of ’04 I was hired to do a cash register upgrade project for a large chain of doughnut shops in the Northeast. OKay, yeah, it was Dunkin’ Donuts. Anyway, not only did I have to carry a 50+ pound cash register into all the sites, but I was on my hands and knees all day under the counters.

I have to say that I was somewhat impressed that when I crawled under the counters they were not the chamber of horrors they could have been. Still, it was dusty, nasty and do you know how much coffee was under there? The nastiest time was when there were old coffee beans and and a leaky sink.

On the other hand, I did get a fair amount of exercise on that project.

Exporting a Database and having to manually edit it for a New Database

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

Exporting a Database and having to manually edit it for a New Database.

You might know this one – You purchase a new Database and have to export the Data into flat files – as you need to edit it – So that you can import the records into a new one.

Some times Marco editing of flat files doesnot work

Exporting a Database and having to manually edit it for a New Database

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

Exporting a Database and having to manually edit it for a New Database

You might know this one you get a new Database and you have to export the data into flat files and manually edit before importing it into the new one.

Sometimes macro editing of incompatible data is not possible

Support when the delivery is so so.

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

Management skimps on a budget, the project manager does not know how to plan or the development and QA team had a collective bad hair day for a 3 month period.

There is no worse job in IT. You carry the pager and get calls at 7.30pm, 11.45pm, 2am and 5.30am night after night after night.

Can anyone relate? If so try throwing the pager against a brick wall. It is a real stress relief and the calls cease 🙂

HAHA – Merry Christmas.

Compliance Auditing

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

This is the worst consulting assignment I get, simply because it’s always easy to find problems, resolving them is usually difficult, often becuse of systems and attitudes fostered by management, and the problems found are usually used to blame the very person / department who brought me in for the audit.

MIS Director

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

For a small non-profit that had absolutly no clue as to what they wanted as far as technology is concerned. They had me draw up policies and proceedures that the CEO never signed or implemnted. Then after we got hit with a major virus infection, had a team of people come in and remove the viruses, they fire me for incompetence. At that moment I knew I should have never given up being self employed. Well I’m back freelancing and loving it.

Incompetence

In reply to MIS Director

Why would a small non-profit have a clue to what they wanted for technology? That’s why they hired you. They also hired you to protect them from viruses. Sounds like you failed miserably on both counts. Your sorry ass deserved to be fired.

Helpdesk Telemarketer

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

They exist in most large companies: users who consider themselves too important to talk to the help desk flunkies. They call the IT director who calls you as says, “Jane in accounting has a problem, call her.” Then you have to call the user who hurls insults at you like you are a telemarketer who has interrupted her supper: “I am right in the middle of a meeting/conference call/important game of solitaire.” and “Why didn’t you #*$&% call sooner.” You dearly wish you could hand her off to the second-level support team of Smith & Wesson.

Testicular Fortitude

In reply to Helpdesk Telemarketer

This is a user trick to bring immediate attention to themselves and get a little status. ‘See how important I am, I get those IT clowns up here right away’. To each user his/her problem is always the MOST important one.
The problem is, obviously, the IT director, who lacks the above-titled virtue. He should have advised Jane from Accounting or Hector from the mailroom or Spurgeon the VP to ‘refer to the procedure and start by calling the HelpDesk. If the Service Level Agreement isn’t met, then follow the escalation procedure. Procedures have been negotiated with and signed off by top mgt, printed and distributed to every employee.’

My last job

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

I worked as an Application Developer for a small (5 person) company that was subcontracted by another company. That was the worst because my coworker / manager graduated college with me, and I know how much she struggled finishing. Additionally, it was working on a project for the DoD, and I was the only one of the project with military experience. And, to top it all off, they wanted a release every week, the project head had never done anything but prototyping, and said that “Documentation and keeping track of changes I make slows us down and makes us less competitive.” Now THAT is bad.

IIS and carry a beeper

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

does anyone really need this explained?

The WORST IT job

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

Absolutely, no contest, the very worst IT job if it qualifies as such, is phone tech support to the actually senile. Been there, done that.

“Sir, Windows NT does not have native support of USB ports. Well, that was nice of your son to give you that computer…yes, Sir, but…, SIR, if I might interrupt…Well, I’m just going to have hang up, Sir.” [Muted: Hey Frank, we gotta’ find this guy donating his NT machines to the nursing home and hurt him.]

“Sir, you must tell me what operating system you are using. Really, I needs to know.”

“Sir, you must be at your computer in order for me to continue this phone call.”

“Sir, dropping your camera in the toilet is very unfortunate, but that is not covered by this warranty. [Muted: Hey Frank, got your Sponge Bob on the line again.]

“Sir, unfortunately, you have what we call a gray market (device) and I do not speak Portuguese either.” [Muted: Hey Frank, got your Lisbon Terror on the line again.]

True story or urban myth? Merry Christmas!

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

(short version)
Good morning, Wordperfect support.

My Wordperfect won’t work.

Ma’m can you tell me what you see on your screen?

Nothing, its blank.

When was the last time you used Wordperfect?

I use it every day but it won’t work today.

Ma’m can you reach behind your computer and tell me if you feel any vibration or airflow?.

I didn’t feel anything at all.

Ma’m can you check and be sure that your computer is connected to a wall outlet or a powerstrip?

I can’t see back there behind my desk, we’re having a power outage here right now and all the lights are out.

Madam, do you still have the box your computer was shipped in?

Yes.

Madam, please repack it and return it to the vendor. You, madam, are way too f’n stupid to ever use a computer!

The tech was, of course, fired!!!

disaster recovery planning

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

nobody wants to do it or help you do it
it will never happen
there is no budget for it (and so you are wasting company money)
BUT if a disaster occurs………

DR Planning is Great

In reply to disaster recovery planning

Couldn’t disagree more. Every responsible DBA and SE, every Exec and CIO knows and wants DR (AKA geo-diverse high availability. And of course nobody wants to to pay for it. Would you? In the last year I have got to tell the CIO of a Fortune 50 Company that he needs to spend over twice his total annual capital budget for DR or rearchitect his core applications for continuous availability. I have gotten to define a data replication network with multiple GBits of aggregate bandwidth, I have helped rearchitect multiple enterprise applications, and build several business cases. All because a very bright person once told me “The easiest way to influence Enterpise Architecture is through DR Planning” and I believed her. Oh, forgot to mention, have no budget, so the trick is showing that DR can save money via risk reduction, but by also avoiding silly moves by others, simplifying implementations, improving project success rates. Now we have projects demanding we be part of the core team.

omg man

In reply to disaster recovery planning

LOL thats funny man, no one wants to prepare for it, but when it happends, everyones looking at you or pointing fingers lol

Outsourcing service manager

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

Being among the less fortunete few who remained in the old organisation and now has to accept the cost cutting measures the new service provider dictrates, I would rate the above job as being the “worst”. You have to live with results that somebody else was foced to agree with. And you have zero control of operations that are worse than before the agreement! And they cost more !

By the way – SLA don’t mean a thing. Very few suppliers achive their SLA and thoise who fail get away by issuing reports on what they will do to correct their “processes”.! DO NOT OUTSOURCE !

I’ve done nearly all of it and here are my 2 cents worth

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

I’ve been a PC Computer Technician for a small consultant shop, a Senior Systems Analyst for a large hospitality company, a Systems Engineer for a company that rhymes with Hell and am now working as a Network Administrator for an insurance company, mostly designing the network infrastructure and maintenance of the same and I have to say that, with the exception of the consultant company where the owner was a liar, extremely unethical and generally a pain in the rear to deal with, each has been good. I’ve always been able to place myself in the shoes of the end-user, when I had to deal with them, and they realize that I am there to help and not hinder. It’s no wonder that there are people posting here that have difficulties when they take the attitude that only a dead user is a good user. A lack of people skills certainly would put a blight on any job that has to deal with people! That being said, I’d have to say that the one job I would least like to have would be phone support as I know my limitations and that is one (lack of patience in trying to help a person ‘see’ the problem – I just want to drive the computer.) But that’s from my end and NOT because I think all users are morons.

Is it IT or catch up maintenance?

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

Our company http://www.itassistonline.com proactively provides networks and data so IT professionals can do their job.

Any IT job in an automotive company

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

I have been able to work in companies that manufacture products for different types of business. Invariably, the teams that produce automotive parts are the most demanding (I need this fixed NOW…), arrogant (…or the whole company will shut down and you won’t get paid…), self-serving (…because the whole company is being sustained by this product…), etc.
Obviously, quality standards have to be much higher for an automotive part than for a writing pen, but that doesn’t mean that everyone should drop all their current work to solve an urgent printer problem, which then turns out to be a lack of toner or something equally ridiculous.
But it has always been my observation that people in the automotive field are convinced that they take precedence over everyone and everything else.

I was so happy with my current employer, and then last year they brought in an automotive line. It’s been downhill ever since. Oh well. That’s my 2 cents.

Software Tester

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

I know this is subjective, since I’ve met people who really like software testing. They like breaking things. I’m glad they’re out there, because it’s not my cup of tea. Being a software developer, I have to do some testing. I understand that. Usually the kind of testing I do, no problem, is unit testing. Integration testing is mind-numbingly boring for me. I don’t think it would matter what management was like at the company I work for. I’m just not made for that kind of repetitive work.

Me, I’m the kind of guy who enjoys tinkering with software, and solving technical puzzles.

testing is fun

In reply to Software Tester

testing is fun dude. especially if you are a sadist by nature, you can break the application in infinite number of ways. that sometimes makes the programmers swear and curse.

i have been both programmer and tester and i would rather be the tester than the programmer

testing is fun

In reply to Software Tester

testing is fun dude. especially if you are a sadist by nature, you can break the application in infinite number of ways. that sometimes makes the programmers swear and curse.

i have been both programmer and tester and i would rather be the tester than the programmer

An IT job that goes offshore

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

The worst job in IT or any other industry is when you have to train your replacement so that you can be laid off! That is truely the worst job in IT to have.

The job itself is neither good nor bad

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

The job in it is, or rather _should be_, dealing with computers and their associated issues.
The problem arises when I.T. manglement is so disconnected from the world that the user’s feelings are more important that the working state of the equipment.
This sad state seems to have developed from the idea that “management is management” and that the manager has no need to know anything about his department beyond its name.
Case in point, a newly hired ‘manager’ immediately disrupted our I.T. division by severing communication between networking admin and PC support. We were not allowed to talk to each other, no e-mail, etc., then she instituted a system in which our users became ‘customers’ (like they had a competing I.T. department to access). I can understand and support user feedback as a valuable management tool, but this one crossed the line with questions like “how did you feel about the technician?” and “would you contact the I.T. department again?”, etc.
As has been previously stated, asshole managers make otherwise good situations very bad, no matter what the tech’s attitude, experience, education, etc.

Working for Getronics doing phone support

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

They micro-managed everything and if I spent more than 2 minutes with a customer, a micro-manager would come over and want to know why I was spending so much time on the phone with them.

Unisys was also pretty bad, but at least I did field work for them so I wasn’t micro-managed.

A developer and not allowed to touch the code??!!

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

Try being hired as a developer but told you cannot touch the code unless there is a production problem. Only then could any changes be made which of course where under the gun!

Any other type of change had to be documented by exactly what lines of which files were to be updated and the replacement lines in an email to VP’s. This lead to a wait of up to two or more days, only to be denied.

Now there was version control in place, so anything changes could be rolled back. There were tests in place for emergency changes but these needed the use of PRODUTION equipment and personnel, thus frowned upon (read not allowed). And any suggestions to use mock objects and or old equipment brought shudders from the other developers.

The final straw was when I was told to familiarize myself with an application and to be prepared to lead training. This routine asked three questions of the user, the first two HAD to be answered the same all the time (in fact the responses where hard coded thus anything would work but we were not “allowed” tell the users). When I found out the users I were to train were new to the application and the “old” users were gone, I suggested removing the useless questions and was met with threats of dismissal.

Needless to say I moved on!!

No Pencils!!!

In reply to A developer and not allowed to touch the code??!!

On my first day as Systems Programming Manager for a major network I was ushered into my new office. Twelfth floor, three wide windows and a breathtaking view of the area. Plush chair, big desk and a conference desk with four more leather chairs. After meeting the staff and some of the other mgrs I strolled out to the secretary and aske her if she would kindly put together a set of supplies, stapler, writing pads, box or two of pens, same for pencils etc.

“I can only give you one pencil, you’re on your own for the rest”.

“I don’t understand”.

“And I can only give you that pencil if you give me one that has been sharpened down to a stub”.

“Are you serious? I’m a manager reporting to the Corporate MIS Director”.

“Same goes for him!”.

It was all downhill from there.

hehe

In reply to No Pencils!!!

hey i bring in my own pens becuase the ones they buy at work bite.tape and staples,what are those?oh yea i forgot we live in the stone age and use sharpen bones to hold paper together.

Non-Oracle DBA for Oracle CIO

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

Being the non-oracle DBA for a company who has a great ERP system (not on Oracle) that was acquired by a corporation whose CIO has friends on the Oracle Sales team….

Start learning java/oracle

In reply to Non-Oracle DBA for Oracle CIO

Is it JDE on an AS400? If you are running Peoplesoft or JD Edwards better start looking at Oracle fusion. The direct upgrade for those is Oracle fusion (on an Oracle backend). Your situation sounds difficult to survive without learning some Oracle.

Calling an OEM for support

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

The worst job is trying to call a manufacturer for support for their product. Especially when you get to talk to someone who speaks in broken English and you can’t understand them. I have at times told them I understand just so I could get off the line and maybe call back later and get someone I can understand. It takes a lot to do this because you know your going to have to go on hold for another hour or so just to get through. I seen a special on TV from India on how smart the Indians were who were graduating from their Universities. This may be so but what good is it if you can’t understand them on the phone.

The worst job…

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

The absolute worst one has to be where you work for a company that refuses to spend any money on IT. Uses 12 year old technologies because management doesn’t want to spend a dime, and doesnt even use Active Directory because the main server is NT 4. AND runs the entire business of of said obsolete technology, which means that there’s absolutely NO chance of getting them to upgrade since it would mean having to essentially redo the entire company’s business processes.

Contract Supervisor is Rough!

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

If you think that the front line support sucks, try being the Contract On-Site Supervisor. I came from the front line, so I try to help my employees as much as I can. The big issue is $$. I’m fighting for raises for these folks, and our ‘customer’ refuses to even consider a monetary increase. (Even though we are making them record profits) That and the stress of trying to juggle 9 accounts and 70 agents at the same time. Iraq is looking better as a posted assignment at this point. At least there I know I’m going to be shot at.

Onsite Offshore Coordination.

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

This job takes all the juice out of you. You have to stay awake late nights and be on the receiving end of both: the development team and the business users. Both have their own time-table in motion and they usually try their best to keep you as frustrated as possible.

And a question for you

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

How many jobs in IT can you name?

Jobs???

In reply to And a question for you

I thought we were all ‘the computer guy/gal’? ?:|

The worst

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

TASK, at least for me, is this stupid helpdesk software. I’m almost to the point where I document what I do more than I [b]do[/b] what I do.

Convention installs

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

Try running all over a convention center complex that covers over 3 million square feet of exhibit space on foot doing telephone & Cat5 drops, all the time while dodging vengeful forklift drivers (who seem to just have the knack of running over the patch cables you laid out and tearing them up) and trying to stay on top of customer expectations.
I enjoyed it while it lasted, but management issues and the sheer physical stress of working 50-60 hour weeks with no benefits just got too much.

Move!!

In reply to Convention installs

You should relocate to a heavy union town like NYC or Detroit!!
I had one of those guys run 3 lines, each a few hundred feet, of Ethernet and test it. Took him a day and a half, when he could be found. And he just ran it along the baseboard; no ceilings or conduit!!!

IT Vendor SE

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

Your’e alway’s one sales exec’s lie away from the unemployment line.

Your’e always responsible for anything that goes wrong with a client sale or re-roll, see above.

Your’e always one manager’s “vision” away from the unemployment line.

Your’e always one re-org away from the UE line.

Once in the UE line, your vendor skills and 2 bucks will get you coffee at McD’s.

Try Working in Middle-east

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

Anything with a display and buttons is supposed to be “IT” here…commonly referred as ITwala(IT person) I was once even called to fix an AC, rather start is ! someone one asked me what is cost of an electronic toothbrush, wonder how he got that idea!

Never ending personal requests for softwares, laptops & cellphones. Can you pls transfer this phonebook to my new phone!

I even get to handle handycams & Ipod’s belonging to top management.

Providing telephonic support to mother of a top management individual, I wonder if anyone can match that!

All in all never a dull moment in my life.!

IT field itself is the worst

In reply to What are the 10 worst jobs in IT?

System engineer, network engineer, desktop engineer are some of the worst job

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