[menloparkbum]

I used to read the Joel On Software forums. The awful life of an IT drone was a common theme, it would show up about twice a week. The sad thing is that I recognize some of the posters' names and it's the same people who were posting the same complaints 6 years ago. If you're still complaining about your career after six years, the problem is you, not your job.

I would rather not draw that crowd over here, or have their stories reposted, or even links to that forum. That sort of negativity is boring at best and poisonous at worst.

[jerryji]

I voted you up.

But I don't fully agree with you. Maybe you didn't mean it but your tone sounds a bit too condescending to me -- like some Wall street rich guy saying if you were poor and still are poor, then it's your own problem, just get out of my sight -- not everybody has a dream job at a dream work place, in fact, I would argue most don't, regardless of industry. Should we care why many IT workers are not happy even if some individuals can't escape the blame? Shouldn't we be a bit more tolerant and listen more so that hopefully we will make the IT a better industry to work in?

Last but not the least, the Joel on Software crowd is not really drawn here with similar submissions, even though I will probably refrain from submitting similar moody articles here, wherever they are from.

[menloparkbum]

My comments are specific to the Joel on Software forums.

IT can be a crappy job and complaining from time to time is a good way to blow off steam. But consistently venting about the exact same thing for 6 years is pathological. It also set a pretty lame tone at the JoS forums. Certain people would show up in nearly every thread about anything to snipe it down and remind everyone that life sucks and then you die, that's just the way it is kiddo, you picked the wrong job and there ain't nothin' you can do about it now. We just don't get any respect! It was like a Rodney Dangerfield sketch on repeat, except it wasn't supposed to be funny.

One of my theories is that in addition to providing an alternative to sites like ExpertsExchange, Joel Spolsky joined up with Jeff Atwood to start Stack Overflow partially because his own forums got spoiled by a bunch of bad apples who wouldn't leave.

[reduxredacted]

Jerriji, I felt like I had to reply to this because I don't think your wrong, and in light of my last reply I think I may have come off the same way.

"If you were poor and still are poor, then it's your own problem, just get out of my sight"

I didn't take that away from the topic at hand. People unhappy in their IT jobs are employed and not poor in the Western world. So the unhappiness comes from something else. I've seen very well paid developers just fall off a cliff and suddenly hate their job.

I don't understand the reasons, but I don't doubt that they are all that different from the reasons the rest of the working world faces. Sometimes it's time to change careers. As human beings, change is feared (or family obligations come into play that make accepting risk less desirable than doing a job you hate).

I feel compassion for those individuals, but in as much as I have to work with them, my compassion is driven to finding ways to identify "great things" about the job they hate.

Negative attitudes are poison and there seems to be a lot of that in IT. I can't tell you how many meetings I attend where the various stakeholders in our organization are at eachothers throats and my boss or me are called in to mediate. It's not an exercise of mediation, it's an exercise of breaking a cycle of frustration, taking the emotion out of it and focusing on the problem as the thing that gets the brunt of the righteous anger (it's amazing what happens when you take three pissed off people and focus their anger at the problem rather than at one another).

Sometimes we're in departments that are only noticed when "nothing is broken" and are hammered on when some extraordinary circumstance causes something to fail. We resent the fact that the people doing the yelling don't understand how unpreventable that circumstance was. It's a tough roll to sit in and tolerate and breeds contempt.

But focusing on that element of the job IS poisonous.

[reduxredacted]

I have noticed this phenomenon.

I hate it. I've been working in IT for most of my life in one capacity or another. I LOVE my job. I'm not saying it's easy. I'm the sole income provider for my family of soon to be four and I put in well over 60 hours a week most weeks (salary, and up until now, likely below market value).

I am intellectually stimulated in my job. I have learned how to work with complicated personalities and have learned how not to be a complicated person. I've also learned that a good 20% of my job involves motivating those around me into realizing that the things they are doing are important and fantastic.

I don't get the bad attitudes...My job involves solving problems and building things. I enjoy seeing the result of my work get traffic. I enjoy solving complicated problems. I even enjoy documenting the solution because I know that a small percentage of the folks who have to read it will appreciate what was done.

I see a sense of entitlement amongst some of the folks I work with. They are very smart individuals and expect people around them to just recognize that despite their inability to practically apply their genius into something productive. They're like a jet engine sitting at idle. Lots of potential, lack of motion. I don't know what causes that.

It helps that I work for some of the best people I have ever known. I've seen the "it is what it is" attitude and it drives me crazy. I see a lot of folks in IT that learned how to write software very young, were treated badly for being a nerd and haven't matured into men of action. Perhaps I'm naval gazing a little, as it took me a while to get past that.

But "we build, we create, we solve, we are the great minds that conquer." "It is what it is" is a disease. It is what we choose to do with it.

I imagine that attitude that makes IT folks hate their jobs is the same attitude that will make them hate any job.

I'm really not trying to condemn those who are in a rough spot with technical managers who have no business managing human beings.

I'm just pleased with menloparkbum's assessment. "I would rather not draw that crowd over here, or have their stories reposted, or even links to that forum. That sort of negativity is boring at best and POISONOUS at worst."

[pie]

Yes! All types jobs have problems and unhappy employees and generalized complaints of dissatisfaction.

Consider the other, personally motivated side of this "IT dissatisfaction" scenario: specifically, that the type of people who work in IT fields are often fairly passive and sometimes choose not to stand up for themselves when they really wish they had.

Someone with this type of demeanor might tend to find themselves settling for the wrong job, as well as staying in a job that turns out not to be so great somewhere down the road.

Could it be?

I have experienced this personally and have seen others go through similar scenarios. Not quite Milton in "Office Space," but some have come close.