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IT Job Satisfaction in a Rut

August 17, 2010/0 Comments/in IT, IT Department, IT Employees, IT Field, IT Hiring, IT Job Growth, IT Job News, IT Job Satisfaction, IT Professionals, IT Staff, IT Staff Augmentation, IT Staffing, IT talent, IT Workers/by admin

It’s getting tough out there for IT employees facing long workdays, short tempers and limited career options. Computerworld — The Jet Blue flight attendant’s dramatic de-planing last week says a lot about workplace frustration, a problem that may be increasing in IT. A few days before flight attendant Steven Slater released a rear chute and […]

IT Departments: Bridging the IT Generation Gap

August 15, 2010/0 Comments/in Information Technology, Information Technology Field, Information Technology Organizations, Information Technology Staffing, IT, IT Careers, IT Department, IT Employees, IT Field, IT Hiring, IT Industry, IT Professionals, IT Staff, IT talent, IT Workers, Technology/by admin

Older generations learned tech. The younger generation lives it. Organizations that want to succeed need the skills of both. InfoWorld — IT pros who grew up in the Baby Boom are dinosaurs who just don’t get it. Generation Y is full of Facebook-happy slackers with an exaggerated sense of entitlement. But beyond these broad generalizations […]

IT Job Satisfaction in a Rut

IT Departments: Bridging the IT Generation Gap

It’s getting tough out there for IT employees facing long workdays, short tempers and limited career options.

Computerworld — The Jet Blue flight attendant’s dramatic de-planing last week says a lot about workplace frustration, a problem that may be increasing in IT.

A few days before flight attendant Steven Slater released a rear chute and exited his career with a couple of cans of beer in hand, an organization of IBM users meeting at the Share conference in Boston held an informal discussion entitled “The Mythical 40-Hour Week.”

It wasn’t a gripe session as much as a chance to share notes about what’s going in IT workplaces since the Great Recession. What emerged was an insider’s view of the frustrations building among tech workers as work days lengthen, pay remains stagnant and career growth appears thwarted.

Those taking part in the discussion asked that their names not be used so they could speak frankly.

“You don’t know how many hours you work – it’s all about getting the job done,” said one IT worker. “There are lots, lots of people in IT who are expected to work far more than a 40-hour week,” said another. Sixty hour weeks are common.

Yet another worker described bosses who expect their employees to work late into the night if need be to fix problems and then be on the job the next day at the usual time. Even vacation time is no longer sacrosanct: one person said he expects to be contacted “more than a half dozen times” during his time off.

Even if companies are getting more unpaid hours from their workers in today’s climate, the companies themselves may be getting hurt in other ways, according to the Corporate Executive Board (CEB) in Washington, D.C. The CEB conducts ongoing behavioral surveys of employee attitudes, and many of its clients are Fortune 500 firms.

The willingness of employees to “exert high levels of discretionary effort” — or put in the extra effort to get a job done — remains at low levels, the CEB found in its most recent survey, completed in the second quarter.

This willingness to put in extra effort fell from about 12% of workers in 2007 to about 4% last year. It was the lowest level in 10 years. The latest CEB survey of nearly 20,000 IT workers said that percentage had changed little and is now at 4.6%.

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IT Job Satisfaction in a Rut

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Older generations learned tech. The younger generation lives it. Organizations that want to succeed need the skills of both.

InfoWorld — IT pros who grew up in the Baby Boom are dinosaurs who just don’t get it. Generation Y is full of Facebook-happy slackers with an exaggerated sense of entitlement. But beyond these broad generalizations lie some real differences between the generations of geeks who do tech for a living, from Boomers to Generations X, Y, and the Millennials.

“Today’s generation was born into a world where technology is about interaction, whether it’s playing video games or using social media,” says Larry Johnson, age 62, co-author with daughter Meagan (age 40) of “Generations, Inc.: From Boomers to Linksters — Managing the Friction Between Generations at Work” (Amacom, 2010). “They spent hours at it, the way I spent hours watching ‘Rin Tin Tin.’ So their brains are structured to interact with technology in an entirely different way.”

[ Looking to get the most out of your IT investments, see InfoWorld’s “20 more IT mistakes to avoid” and “16 ways IT can do less with less” | Find out which of InfoWorld’s IT personality types best fits your tech temperament. ]

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It’s getting tough out there for IT employees facing long workdays, short tempers and limited career options.

Integrity in Recruiting 972-200-7171 IT Job Satisfaction in a Rut

Older generations learned tech. The younger generation lives it. Organizations that want to succeed need the skills of both.

Integrity in Recruiting
972-200-7171
IT Job Satisfaction in a Rut