Why do American SysAdmins/IT workers seem more on edge & disillusioned?
Posted by Severin_@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 553 comments
A bit of weird post I know but hear me out...
I've been a long time, non-US lurker of this sub going back a decade now and one thing that stands out to me compared to my local IT industry in a fellow Western, first-world country is that the American IT industry and American IT workers in general are just.... manic, for lack for a better word.
Everything IT-related over there seems really pressure cooker, dog-eat-dog, balls-to-the-wall panic-inducing at all times, even way prior to 2020.
From what I gather from this sub and the other usual IT forums, US IT culture seems to induce a state of heightened paranoia and anxiety in American SysAdmins where they're constantly catastrophizing over everything that could go wrong at all times and dramatizing minor, trivial bullsh*t stuff into huge problems where they don't need to be.
They also seem to be a lot more "serious" and take on a ridiculous level of concern about cybersecurity over many other more pressing issues in their environments and worry about implausibly asinine threats/scenarios as if they're all working for the NSA and their little unheard-of MSP/SME needs to have military-grade security to stop nation state-backed cyberattacks or something.
Yes, it's good to take your job seriously and to be a dedicated employee but a lot of the US SysAdmins seem to have no concept of downtime, work/life balance or just not giving a sh*t about their job so much when most of them are underpaid, undervalued and easily replaceable by their employers.
Sure, these industry-specific problems exist in my country to some degree as well and it will exist in the IT industries of other countries I'm sure but it's very telling that this sub is completely US-dominated (the majority of users are US-based) and most of the posts on it I would argue are overwhelmingly negative, pessimistic, cynical and just plain angry.
Where I live, it's possible to work in IT and not go insane. It's possible to have a job that you can leave at 5PM and forget about every single day. It's possible to go many months without working on a weekend. It's definitely possible to work in the industry for decades, making a good living and not end up ridiculously burnt-out and mentally ill.
What is it that drives this mentality/mindset I see reflected in US IT workers where everything is so fatalistic, dark and all-consuming? The lack of labor protection laws? The competitive nature of the industry/higher population? The lower wages?
ms4720@reddit
Most US companies see IT and in many cases programming also as a large cost to be minimized, most IT people are salaried employees. This is easily abused by IT management and the business
AppIdentityGuy@reddit
This is my perception as well. They don't see to see IT as force multiplier at all. It's simply a cost well into which they begrudgingly pot money. I mean we went through COVID during which a lot of companies would have gone under if wasn't for the remote work capabilities that IT was able to provide. But as soon as the emergency was perceived as to be over they start slashing IT budgets and headcount.....
tsFenix@reddit
For over a year (possibly 2-3, it was happening before I started) a company refused to fix a roof leak due to price. IDK if it was only during bad storms or what. Their mitigation was a tarp over the entire server rack which ran a key part of the production of what this company produced. If those servers went down, the company would have been unable to produce anything until they were replaced...
forceofarms@reddit
The MBAification of American business might be the one thing that actually kills us. Everything is about pleasing dumb shareholders.
Dal90@reddit
Electricity is a force multiplier, but once everyone has electricity it is just an expense.
IT stopped providing competitive as advantage to most companies 2+ decades ago.
MungBeanWarrior@reddit
That's a weird take. So a company without IT is comparable to a company with IT? I'd love to see a pen and paper McDonalds go head to head with a regular McDonalds and see which store comes out ahead in 1 year.
Electricity is a force multiplier. It's also an expense. Two things can be true at the time. However, no reasonable business would stop paying their electricity bill just because it's an expense. They don't think electricity as "just an expense" because it literally allows the company to function.
IT absolutely provides a competitive advantage. It provides it in the way that if you don't have it, you're competitively disadvantaged. The better your IT dept is, the more efficient your business will run. A company running Windows XP on a HDD located in their basement isn't going to compete with Samsung.
Dal90@reddit
Point went completely over your and many other heads.
We're not comparing a McDonalds using computers to one using pen and paper -- every fast food restaurant franchise uses computers today. Every.single.one. We're not comparing computerized processes to manual ones, because the folks who use manual processes are either small niche players or out of business.
IT is just a cost of doing business today, because you can't exist at large scale without the automation. When you're force multiplying your workers just as much as your competitors are force multiplying theirs it ceases to be an advantage and becomes an expense to manage.
throw0101a@reddit
Harvard Business Review would disagree:
As do the restaurant folks:
MungBeanWarrior@reddit
No, we got the point. You just have a bad take or you're explaining it poorly. IT doesn't stop being a force multiplier just because everybody else is doing it.
IT will always be an advantage because everybody is always thinking about minimizing costs. At the same time companies are always looking to optimize SEO, having up to date tech, creating proprietary apps to one-up the competition, more efficient workflow, tighter security, etc.
Undermining IT (and any other force multipliers) and calling it "just an expense" makes no sense. Even if you are the only company in the world using IT, it is still an expense. Paying the CEO is "just an expense". Stocking office supplies is "just an expense".
throw0101a@reddit
Tell that to Delta (amongst others):
KnowledgeTransfer23@reddit
How much product could your company produce without electricity and IT? Bet you dollars to doughnuts it's not as much as it produces right now!
BlackLiger@reddit
Sure. Till the power goes out. Then it's value is proven.
Rentun@reddit
Err... IT is one of the few competitive advantages left in the modern economy.
If you want to examine how to deliver your services cheaper, faster, and higher quality than your competitors, technology is one of the few practical ways to actually accomplish that.
Amazon managed to demolish brick and mortar and other online retailers by having technology light years ahead of their competition, and that's how they maintain that competitive advantage.
You can see this replicated across virtually every industry. The companies that manage to implement technology to reduce workload, and thus workforce costs, and thus prices beat their competition. The ones that view IT as a cost to be slashed as thin as humanly possible eventually fail, either because they're not price competitive, they can no longer provide a competitive product, or unfortunately increasingly commonly, a cyberattack completely wipes them out and destroys their business.
If you're making, say, t-shirts, are you going to find some secret source of raw materials that are cheaper or better than anyone else? Probably not. Are you going to figure out some better way of making t-shirts, something that the industry has known how to do for hundreds of years? Unlikely. Can you have a really high quality website that's easy to find and navigate? Can you use a good ERP to keep a really tight reign on your business processes? Can you retain employees by making sure their computers aren't a nightmare to use, avoid downtime due to outages, and protect yourself from cyberattack? Yes absolutely, and it's something that many companies still aren't doing.
AppIdentityGuy@reddit
Absolutely wrong. IT when done right is a business enabler.
ms4720@reddit
To be fair in most places they are not far wrong, if at all wrong.
That it was paid to provide and that business was effectively forced to do as a budget busting surprise.
MaritimeStar@reddit
Bingo, not American but Canadian and this is it. Not all companies are bad, but the bad employers expect you to do multiple jobs, playing the "we all wear multiple hats" card, and then pay you for the least valuable job only, while constantly putting pressure on you to do more for less. The only way to advance or get a raise is to leave and find another job, which is common in most fields these days but it's part of the culture in IT in north America.
ms4720@reddit
The business of you, treat it like a business
MaritimeStar@reddit
Yeah, you have to. Otherwise you'll get screwed.
MihaLisicek@reddit
Sorry about my ignorance, but what does it mean if someone in US says they are salaried?
Ryokurin@reddit
They are not paid hourly. They are paid a specific periodic payment specified in a contract, no matter the hours worked. It's not that uncommon for some IT workers to have 50+ hour weeks. While more recently there was some legislation to force employers to pay overtime to salaried employees, they rarely apply to IT workers.
toyberg90@reddit
This sounds crazy. At least the expected hours should be in the contract. I do get my salary as well (in Germany) and overtime is already compensated by that, but the contract also includes what counts as "normal" weekly worktime (38 hours) and how many hours of overtime are covered by the salary at max (10h a week, got close to it during single weeks, but never for a whole month).
Giving the employers a blank cheque over your time (and therefore your personal life) just to be allowed to work for them is badshit crazy.
theHonkiforium@reddit
I'm in Canada. My full time salaried employment has always been $x for $y hours per day*days worked per year.
Anything outside the agreed working days/hours is not covered by the contract.
Dje4321@reddit
Expected hours is in the contract but there is always fine line about needing to provide coverage to ensure work is getting done.
From what I can tell, most people in the US want salary for the flexibility it provides as you can come & go as you generally please as long as the work is done. Come outside to a flat tire? Who cares, take it to the shop, change it out, and come into work when your done.
Also you only ever hear bad cases of salary work. 98% of places are actually fine with workers typically coming in under 40 hours overall. Some salary contracts even stipulate payout for "mandatory" overtime typically calculated in 15 minute increments.
Existential_Racoon@reddit
The what now? Almost no one here has a contract.
throw0101a@reddit
You signed something when you joined the organization you're at now:
ggcc1313@reddit
What you mean? How can you have a job without a contract?
corree@reddit
Our contracts say stuff like, “This is an at-will employment job, we can and will fire you if and when we please, subsequently starting the ticking time bomb that is losing your insurance. You can quit whenever too so it’s completely fair, sign below if you agree.”
dustojnikhummer@reddit
That is still a contract.
corree@reddit
I think the point was that we might HAVE contracts but they almost always never favor us in any meaningful or helpful ways, usually they are purely benefiting the company.
So in our eyes, it’s not as much of a mutual agreement but rather more of a legal gun to the head.
dustojnikhummer@reddit
I see. It's a Ferengi contract.
TahinWorks@reddit
I would say the employment offer (or change of position offer if switching titles) is the "job contract". That specifies hours worked goals and other "expectancies".
Zncon@reddit
The US doesn't really have anything like the formalized employment contracts that exist in EU countries.
For most positions, either party can terminate a working relationship at any time. It's considered pretty important because it allows business to control staff that are doing their jobs poorly, and allows people to quit if the business mistreats them.
"Giving two weeks notice" is what you do when you end a working relationship gracefully, but is not a requirement for most jobs.
Jobs that do have more controlled contracts tend to have issues with being unable to rid themselves of low performers, or people who behave badly. That's one issue behind the general problems with Police departments. They're almost always union under a strong contract, which makes them very hard to fire if they misbehave.
mrlinkwii@reddit
in the US you dont legally dont have to have a contract , a good number/ most emploees just have an agreeement , unless your in a union job ( where the union will enoforce the need for a contract ) theirs no legal law sayingyou have top have one
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnAmerican/comments/k76kzh/is_it_true_that_most_workers_in_the_us_have_no/ as context
Existential_Racoon@reddit
In my state, I can be fired at any time, they can lower my pay at any time, or give me 1 shift a week at any time. All this is legal, and there's no agreement saying they can't.
Doesn't sound much like a contract to me.
synthdrunk@reddit
Batshit, and yes, it really, really sucks. Unions/guilds have absolutely zero purchase in workers minds, it is unlikely to change in my lifetime.
sobrique@reddit
TBH I don't think unions are particularly 'sticky' in sysadmin roles anyway.
Collective bargaining doesn't work nearly so well when it's functionally just one department.
MaritimeStar@reddit
Are there even unionized IT workers in NA? I've never heard of that outside of government, although I've got a small sample size.
sobrique@reddit
I'd imagine if you're doing IT for a place that's already unionized, joining the existing union might make some sense.
Nemo_Barbarossa@reddit
In Germany many bigger companies, that aren't primarily IT companies, often either follow a contract negotiated by the union which covers most of their workers and their employers association (basically an employers union), this would be called a "Branchentarifvertrag", or they have negotiated their own agreement with a union which would be called a "Haustarifvertrag". Those usually encompass all workers up to a certain salary level.
You also don't need to be a union member for that to apply to you. If you are not a union member, you are not protected if you go on strike and you miss out on other union membership perks like union attorneys in case of a legal dispute with your employer.
I'd bet that the vast majority of IT people in Germany are not union members though. Membership is not exactly cheap either and many in IT don't value the benefits as we still have an employee driven market and you can negotiate good salaries on your own.
MihaLisicek@reddit
Here IT is only profession where we don't have a union, but due to chronic shortage of IT people, market is pretty good at regulating itself, so benefits are awesome and we are better off than any other industry.
And even though we are negotiating our own contracts, there are still legal frameworks company has to follow, meaning, they can't offer me less benefits than existing employees at that location, and if manage to negotiate for anything extra, everyone else will get that as well. Same goes for salaries, company has to have a pay scale for each position, and they have to follow it, and again, if newcomer negotiates a salary higher than he would get according to the established pay scale, the whole thing would be adjusted for everyone on that position.
_Hypox_@reddit
Damn which country is that?
MihaLisicek@reddit
Slovenia
altodor@reddit
It's some states, and ironically it's an anti-union measure: If people that aren't in the union benefit from it's negotiation, why would they join and contribute dues to it?
_Hypox_@reddit
You don’t really need a union if you get those kind of benefits imo
altodor@reddit
And there's the problem: the union negotiated those excellent benefits for it's members and you, a non-member, are legally required to benefit without contributing anything to the union or it's efforts to get you those benefits.
lost_signal@reddit
I've worked in several Union shops in the US and... The pay was terrrrrible, and there generally was a networking admin who was on ESPN.com all day. Sysadmins making 60K, while all the actual serious work was outsourced to consultants billing $250 an hour (What I was doing there). I did see some talented people, but it was a huge waste and they could have doubled their salary by waling across the street.
TahinWorks@reddit
People like to pontificate, but in a good company, salary is preferred over hourly. An hours-worked goal is established at hiring, something like 2000 hours a year. That gives you a lot of flexibility because if you want to work 25 hours one week, you can. If you want to work 55 hours a week, you can.
When salaries are negotiated with an employer, they're typically offered at a higher hourly rate than you would get if you were hourly. They do this to cover forecasted overtime you work during the year. So you're getting paid overtime, it's just a static rate. The process is this: You look at their offer, then do the math compared to what you'd make at hourly, then say something like "OK, so this salary equals (hourly rate)+(3 overtime hours/week). If you work your job at 43 hours a week, it's a wash. If you find yourself working over that, re-negotiate your salary the next year.
Bonuses also typically pay out salary positions better than hourly positions. Employers look at overtime worked and give larger bonuses to make up for the disparity between hours worked goal VS actual hours worked.
Fragrant-Hamster-325@reddit
If people aren’t aware, a salaried employee in the US should always be basing their salary on a 45hr work week.
So any overtime is already baked into your salary. If you don’t work overtime on some weeks/months, great! If you do happen to work overtime, your negotiated salary already includes your compensation.
I don’t specifically need to see those numbers broken out in line items. I make sure the negotiated salary matches what I feel is fair for the expected hours. If not I’ll find something better. Let’s not forget we have power in this transaction too.
captainstormy@reddit
We don't typically have employment contracts in the US if you are actually an employee of the company.
Only contractors would regularly have a contract and they literally get no benefits, just money. Those jobs are typically short term too. 3-6 months.
Dal90@reddit
You quit and move on, no waiting months for a contract to end, if you don't have hard feelings you give two weeks notice. The vast majority of IT workers are doing the normal 40 hour week and not acting like a drama queen addicted to an abusive relationship.
Then in the US you also have the silicon valley type very high salaries but very volatile employment that is more akin to being oil patch workers that work insane hours for insane money only to see things turn on a dime a mass layoffs ensue. Great work if you save your money instead of buying toys and meth.
toyberg90@reddit
There are no months of waiting, you quit with 4 weeks notice (if you didn't got screwed over when signing the contract). The employer needs to inform you a few months ahead (in my case it's 6 months if I get fired and 4 weeks if I quit on own terms)
Zncon@reddit
If your workplace start to turn sour, having to keep working there for a month due to contract would be deeply unacceptable to people familiar with the US model.
lost_signal@reddit
In general I've seen EU salary to be significantly lower than the equivalent job in the US (For us 1/2 to a 1/3rd depending the country), with 2/3rd the stock grants.
To be fair you can find the EU style work conditions at some companies in the US (It's not required but places will sometimes offer those working conditions). I went from a company who had super generous benefits, and 15 weeks of paternity leave and EU style work conditions to a "Deeply American" one and the pay jump was more than 2x.
Isord@reddit
My salaried jobs have always specified a 32 or 40 hour expected workload for what it's worth. If I stayed late for any reason I could leave early the next day etc.
It's definitely something abused by a lot of employers though.
11bulletcatcher@reddit
At one, very small MSP that I worked at, I regularly put in up to 70 hours for just 32K a year salary.
So glad I left that place
tankerkiller125real@reddit
The minimum working hours is in the contract, there is no max in the contract, and overtime is not paid (for most IT positions).
SayNoToStim@reddit
Some good news on that front in the US. There is a minimum salary they need to pay in order to consider an employee exempt, and that is going up next year, with a drastic increase in 2027 as well. It probably won't affect most posters in here but some of the poor fellas I see making 45k a year on salary-exempt roles are in for big raises in the next few years.
Cuive@reddit
Or they'll just make their salaried employees hourly. Seen it happen already.
540i6@reddit
That sounds amazing. No one salary can work less than 40 hours anyway at my org, so this is a win win. And now they can't use dystopian shit like badge swipe times as a pseudo timecard. "Why were you not here until 10am on date 3 months ago?!?!?!?" Then you spend an hour looking at security footage and find that you went in thru reception that day cuz you forgot your badge.
SayNoToStim@reddit
Hourly/salaried makes no difference. It's the exempt part that matters. So if they are hourly or salary, they are either getting raises or getting overtime, which in the context of dudes working 50 hours a week, that means they are actually better off being hourly.
GaiaFisher@reddit
While I know the old expression “a rising tide lifts all boats” is true in general and I’m stoked for this as a whole, I’ve been a little concerned about the upcoming wage change for my personal position (public sector making EXACTLY the current exemption limit, just about to complete my probationary year in December).
My role simply cannot be done without the on-call aspects of it, but there’s zero chance they’re going to just offer a 33% raise immediately after having paid a big consulting firm to do a study, pat us on the back and say our wages are “competitive for the field”. I don’t see them reclassifying it either, as there are weeks where we simply must work 50/60 hours easily and our budget controllers are well aware of how much time we spend here.
I’m still not 100% sure how the issue will play out given the last time this occurred I wasn’t in the public sector, but I’m not exactly brimming with confidence that my position is long for this world. Considering until December they can currently fire me without having to pay out any vacation, sick leave, or 401(k) vesting, it feels a bit like the writing is on the wall.
Cheomesh@reddit
We're also exempt from overtime laws as "computer workers". Way back I was an hourly wage sys admin and was, theoretically, not paid overtime by default.
BoredGiraffe010@reddit
I have in experience in both hourly pay and salary pay in IT. I actually prefer the salary pay.
In hourly pay jobs, there's usually a time clock system. Your timesheet is evaluated and questioned. Came into the office late? "Why were you late? That's truancy. That's a strike." Stayed late to work on a project? "Why did you stay late? "You didn't need to work on that, that's time theft. That's a strike."
With salary pay, I've noticed way more time flexibility. Sure, I work 50 hours some weeks. But I work 30-35 hours some other weeks and I don't get hassled about it and there's no time clock trail for some micro-managing asshole to jump down my throat about.
dustojnikhummer@reddit
My contract is 40 work hours per week. If I work anything over that, my company can get in trouble if they don't pay me overtime. Are Americans like "stay here for 3 more hours but go clock out now"?
SayNoToStim@reddit
Most salary exempt employees do not punch in/out. I get a set amount per paycheck if I work 20 hours or 60 hours. A good management team will generally try to give you time back with comp days if you are working over 40, but plenty of places just say "deal with it" and expect 50+ hours a week nonstop.
reni-chan@reddit
Here in the UK I am also salaried which means I work 40h week. That means 8am-4pm and I won't pick up the phone after hours even if the CEO himself was calling.
Nemo_Barbarossa@reddit
Yeah, on call is legally regulated as well, being on call in itself usually must be paid just because it limits what you can do in your free time. Actual work done counts against the legal limits of how many hours you are allowed to work as well and must be compensated in time off and/or additional money.
Of course there's cases skirting the lines either way and sometimes rules are ignored or bent based on verbal agreements but in the end you can not be forced to do stuff that is outside the scope of your contract or the legal minimums and maximums.
vemundveien@reddit
I find it so crazy that it's standard in the US. I am salaried too, but if I work overtime beyond my stated hours they calculate my hourly rate from my salary and pay me 50% overtime (100% after 4 hours of if it's a Sunday).
It's not unheard of to be salaried without overtime where I live either, but those are for independent positions like sales or leadership and usually has the benefit that you don't really have set hours either. Though there probably are abuses here as well, but they are by no means accepted standard.
_UsUrPeR_@reddit
It's on the individual worker to dictate how their days go from a salary perspective. There's no way that I would ever work 50+ hours a week. I have in the past under significant projects, but this was my decision, and not a mandate from leadership. Further, as a good sysadmin, I know the value of leaving well enough alone.
Constant knob twiddling and button pushing rarely make an environment function better.
ThatGermanFella@reddit
Salaried = Gets paid a set amount instead of per-hour (So can be set-up to have OT not be a thing with US labor laws)
finobi@reddit
Then I think I'm kinda salaried too, but Finland labor laws turn that into 7.5hrs/day - \~160hr/month. And overtime needs to be compensated with free time or money.
FarJeweler9798@reddit
Yeah in Finland its either flex time or overtime even if your salaried and work past the 7.5hrs/day - \~160hr/month.
KrazeeJ@reddit
Wait, so does that mean that your work days are actually 8 hours including lunch break, if you only work 7.5 hours a day?
FarJeweler9798@reddit
Yeah 7.5hours paid and 0.5 hours unpaid so you can do anything you want on that time, just a funny reference want to have fun with a hooker for 30mins while the network is down go ahead you might get called but you are not obligated to answer
KrazeeJ@reddit
In the US it's 8 hours of work with a 30 minute unpaid lunch. A work day is often colloquially referred to as "9-5" (the phrase originated before lunch breaks were legally mandated as unpaid so everyone had to take their lunch breaks while on the clock, and the phrase just stuck around through all these years), so one of the first things that people need to come to terms with when they enter the full-time workforce is that no, there's basically nobody that works a "9-5" job because that's not including a paid lunch break in the middle, so in reality you're going to be working more like a "9-5:30." So it's just a weird realization for me that in Finland you would actually work a 9-5.
FarJeweler9798@reddit
In Finland it's a right but yeah 8-4 and that's it, your not obligated to work on unpaid time netherless the situation, there's is also blue collar work that doesn't include unpaid 0.5hours so you are expected to be work ready at that time but you have to have possibility to eat / have time relax
MihaLisicek@reddit
Same here, and we can legally deny any OT requests coming from the employer.
beanmachine-23@reddit
The US has been making some changes to our federal labor law, and recently increased the minimum salary for exempt (no OT) workers from $35,568 to $43,888. It is supposed to increase again in January to $53k, but with elections, that could be overturned. It happened before with another change right after an election.
tankerkiller125real@reddit
So in the land of IT basically the help desk people might be able to get OT, and no one else.
FarJeweler9798@reddit
Yeah its the same here OT can´t be forced you have to approve to do it.
sobrique@reddit
Yeah. Here in the UK too - I'm salaried, but that functionally means a 40 hour week with a degree of freedom to manage my own working pattern.
424f42_424f42@reddit
Being salary vs hourly is irrelevant to exempt vs non exempt.
But people usually mean salary exempt when saying just salary, just to be confusing due to ignorance.
https://www.indeed.com/hire/c/info/exempt-vs-non-exempt-employee?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjw0Oq2BhCCARIsAA5hubWangHEmqB5SHGQqFo1HbutWyMQLSmbsM8F80w1R-x012kWAbSK8CsaAuZiEALw_wcB&aceid=&gclsrc=aw.ds
Proper-Obligation-97@reddit
Interesting working conditions...
Zncon@reddit
These jobs usually pay a substantial amount in exchange for these expectations. There are some places that exploit it though, and they need to be avoided.
The general idea is that most of the time they're doing 35-45 hours a week, but if shit hits the fan no one should be wasting time checking their hours and making sure they're not violating a contract, they can just get to work.
It's also much easier for people who work odd hours. An hourly employee who works a middle of the night maintenance window needs to document that work in order to avoid any concerns over time or wage theft, but a salaried worker can just count that among their bucket of hours for the week.
_UsUrPeR_@reddit
This overtime function is an interesting carve-out in US employment law which was instantiated in the 1990s. You can check out this website for details. Frankly, the cutoff for overtime is a poverty wage due to inflation in the last 30 years.
CARLEtheCamry@reddit
This is the answer to why the minimum salary is so low.
Also worth pointing out, any competitive employer will have an on-call/recall policy for "non-standard working hours" outside of 40 hours in a week. Mine is 4 hours minimum of comp time for any call received off-hours, and 1 hour for every 8 being available as on-call. So effectively when I am on-call once every 2 months, I earn 2 extra vacation days and if I get called, another half day for every call.
223454@reddit
Basically, it's up to each person to decide, on an on-going basis, if their compensation is enough for their effort.
IrquiM@reddit
We have those contracts in Norway as well. But they normally pay a lot better, and there is still a maximum amount of overtime you'd be able to work, above normal working hours (7.5 hours per day). But normal day-to-day employees won't get those - it's more management related.
ilkhan2016@reddit
I've worked salary non-exempt before in an IT role. It was strange but not bad.
MihaLisicek@reddit
WTF
So basically, you get your contractual salary, and then it doesn't matter how many hours you work :o
424f42_424f42@reddit
Yeah, and there is no contact
ms4720@reddit
There is a default labor contract, for example you can not lower someones pay without their consent, that doesn't mean you can't say take the cut or fired as an employer. But the employee must agree to it
Existential_Racoon@reddit
You can lower their pay, just not retroactively, and you can't take them below minimum wage. If you take them below exempt status, you have to pay overtime.
A few states have better labor protections, but not most. Hell, Florida doesn't even have their own department of labor to report companies to.
ms4720@reddit
You can take the cut or leave is my understanding of the matter, there is always or leave.
I_T_Gamer@reddit
Don't forget about this little gem. Our org does this and its disgusting.
https://www.monitask.com/en/blog/understanding-chinese-overtime-calculation-methods-and-legal-status-in-the-us
beanmachine-23@reddit
Some of us have contracts. I have a union and there less fear. They have to pay me out a year’s salary to layoff or fire me. Our union also gets us a lot of other job securities and benefits. There should be more IT unions.
ms4720@reddit
It depends on each place, good for you
erik_working@reddit
US work culture in general is toxic. We have health care tied to our job, so they can fuck us (and our family) over royally if we decide to have a backbone.
ms4720@reddit
Health care is a separate issue, it came about when there was some loyalty in the system as a way of paying for things with pretax income and lowering your gross income for taxes. Basically a tax scam and employment patterns changed and it became a huge problem. To fix medical insurance is a whole separate issue.
Electrical-Risk445@reddit
In most north-American jurisdiction IT workers are exempt from overtime, too. We can be worked to death, on call 24/7 with maybe 2-3 weeks off per year.
comcanada78@reddit
This is not true in Canada (or at least BC where i work), unless the employee specifically signs away their rights to overtime hours, and i dont know why you would do that.
It might be different in other provinces, but saying its a north-america wide issue is not correct in the case of Canada, i am not sure about Mexico.
Electrical-Risk445@reddit
I'm in Ontario and IT workers are exempt from OT as they're considered "essential", regardless of the role.
Gloomy_Stage@reddit
Could the lack of social safety net mean that employees are more inclined to stay in the job than quit due to the abose? From what I understand, most states are what they call at will meaning anyone can be fired for any non-discriminatory reason?
ms4720@reddit
Rent is a bitch, much worse with CC debt
-maphias-@reddit
This is the answer right here. Most companies see IT as an expense that needs to be minimized, like a utility.
ms4720@reddit
The question is are they right, a lot of places yes they are
ARobertNotABob@reddit
They call us saying "Team" but they see IT as service, and with that decided, IT staff are disrespected just as as Covid "non-beleivers" treated shop staff back in '20/'21.
"Team - my staff need new laptops all round. They'll all be in tomorrow. Thanks".
"Stop telling me what technical difficulties mean I can't have what I want - I'm not technical - just tell me when can I expect it done?"
etc
ms4720@reddit
Any support staff is a service, internal or contracted. IT is support
spetcnaz@reddit
It's the American corporate culture overall. It's a very toxic culture, with profits put ahead of everything and anything else. Also the lack of social safety nets and worker rights compared to the rest of the first world, makes losing a job or a client, because of a trivial mistake, a much more financially impacting thing.
Also, the US houses many of the world's top corporations, and the smaller companies that supply or deal with those corporations. So a cyber security breach at a small CAD shop could impact Raytheon, theoretically, and that's a national security level threat. In addition to that, the US business environment is very litigious. A small MSP might get sued for a trivial mistake, and that could cost them a lot of money. Imagine if a small MSP who maybe didn't patch something they should have, or they missed, and they "won the lottery" and their small client, who supplies stuff to a giant like Raytheon gets hacked, and that breach even slightly impacts Raytheon. It could start a very bad chain of events. Raytheon cuts their contract with the small supplier, till they can show a clean bill of health, which means loss of income, which means the MSP might be losing a client, which means the tech at the MSP, gets the blame for it, and could lose his/her job, this creating that stress.
However, it is also true that in the US business culture "victim theater" for a lack of a better term, is very popular. Nearly every profession sees themselves as these overwhelmed, underpaid, underappreciated, know it all's, that are always right, and the people they deal with are always dumb, and they are just too busy and tired. It's become a bandage of honor in the professions to appear constantly busy and overwhelmed, and then go online and complain about it, while making their situation sound even more colorful. Sort of a Munchausen syndrome.
Don't get me wrong, there are real world, legit reasons for this, but especially online, these things get hyped to a way higher level.
kerosene31@reddit
And not just profits, but short term profits. Nobody cares about long term success. Just make the next quarter look great and the stock price rise. Outsource all IT to make the numbers look good, even if it makes them worse in 2-3 quarters.
Companies exist to make a profit, that's what they do. The problem is that they ignore anything but the short term.
spetcnaz@reddit
Exactly
PandaBoyWonder@reddit
Yep. Its because the only value people see in America is what job they have, and how much money they make. Its their entire identity. People live to work.
spetcnaz@reddit
Plus the workaholism is fetishized instead of cautioned against.
G8racingfool@reddit
Was the first thing that struck my mind: "OP isn't describing IT, they're describing US corporate culture in general".
It didn't used to be this way. Even the large corporations took pride in the quality of the work, not just the raise of the bottom line (and lets face it, quality work is the most surefire way to increase the bottom line).
A few miles north of me is an old, abandoned TD2 facility owned by AT&T before the break up. The place is like a time capsule because they basically just closed the place and locked the door. There's all kinds of cool things in the 2 story underground bunker that housed all the switching equipment. But the one thing that always stuck out to me was the signage around the place emphasizing to do your job safely, do it well, and don't go speeding through it.
I guess my point is, even huge corpos like AT&T back in the day pushed to do the job right, not fast. Somewhere along the way that changed. I'm not sure how we go back to that but we desperately need to.
spetcnaz@reddit
Usually the decline for the middle class in the US started in the late 70's and then Reagan put it on light speed, and after that it continued to go down the hill.
theslats@reddit
Raytheon come to mind because of this? ;) https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/rtx-pay-200-million-fine-export-mistakes-state-department-says-2024-08-30/
spetcnaz@reddit
Hahaha actually no. I took another real world case and just changed one MIC for another.
wakko666@reddit
This response is very accurate.
In addition, because America has been in a "greed is good" mentality since the 1980s, the toxic corporate culture leads to several patterns of corporate political maneuvering that all serve needs other than the business'.
The bare minimum amount of time is allocated to every project, leaving no room in the schedule for anything to go wrong. Barely meeting requirements, distorting requirements just to tick a box, and malicious compliance are all strategies for being able to claim success to one's (often significantly less technical) management chain.
It's not uncommon to have one IT group participate in a project to build a "solution" for another part of the business, rush the project to completion taking on significant technical debt along the way, and then dumping this half-baked solution into the lap of some poor soul in the downstream business unit who's tasked with keeping the thing up and running or else getting blamed for its failure.
These kinds of "tech debt time bombs" are passed around between internal teams in a sick parody of musical chairs. Last one left supporting the thing when the pager goes off gets stuck fixing it. All the while the folks generating these bombs are long gone and already collecting their performance bonuses for having exemplary "project completion" KPIs.
Even worse, some consultancy firms make truckloads of cash doing this to all of their clients; some of them even have the gall to sell support to fix the problems their shoddy workmanship created.
spetcnaz@reddit
Yup, plus add to that the stress of the daily tasks that the management wants done, while also pushing the main project deadline. Which makes people "take work home". Again adding stress and resentment.
I love the French "no business emails after 5PM" type laws. It punishes the companies who try to squeeze every ounce of time from their employees' day.
sybrwookie@reddit
Bingo. This guy isn't seeing IT culture, he's seeing US work culture and in a whole lot of businesses, it's utterly fucked.
Maro1947@reddit
The irony is, you work for a major US company oversea, it's generally a clusterf,*CK where everything is dysfunctional compared to non-US companies
thelaughinghackerman@reddit
This is the answer.
C_isfor_Cookies@reddit
Love my job until they ask for nonsense shit!!!!!!
ArtSmass@reddit
People like to complain and I love to rant because it's fun. I wouldn't read too far onto all the Debby downers here.
C_pyne@reddit
I would imagine some of the issues would be down to other countries (UK, for me) having employment laws, stability, PTO etc.
igaper@reddit
Yeah I think it's this. If my company decided to let me go I'd need three months notice. They can't force me to overtime, and overtime must be paid for or I need to take out those hours max next month. Also 26 vacation days, free healthcare, sick leave and many more perks just because I work in civilised country with regards to labour law. Yes they earn more, but I have ease of mind.
darthnugget@reddit
US worker here, the primary issue is job insecurity perpetuated by a lack of essential basic services (healthcare) if you don’t have a job. Stress from living beyond their means adds to the pile from paying $8k per month on a 2 bedroom house in a technology center population. The liability of one wrong misstep in life could financial ruin you, look at the technology guy who recently exposed companies that were lying about their breached data sets. Or if you have an unexpected medical condition emergency you get a bill for $100k USD. Lastly, there are no protections for the IT worker and we have the heads of companies telling the industry their jobs will be obsolete from an AI within the next 5 years.
bitslammer@reddit
The #1 reason I never wanted to try and go out on my own and do consulting. I have people tell me all the time I'd be great at that and I probably would be great at the consulting side but not the marketing, sales and 'getting the work' side and I can't risk that as the holder of healthcare for the household.
This issue has to be holding back a ton of small business as well since they can't afford to offer it and so miss out on talent that needs it.
tankerkiller125real@reddit
My employer (20 something employees total), just had to change our insurance provider because the one we had been with for 10+ years raised the rates 40% last year, and this year wanted to raise it another 20%. Our new health insurance sucks in comparison (now I have co-insurance to deal with, while previously I didn't have to pay a dime after the deductible except for out of network) but it does cost apparently 30% less than our previous health insurance company or something, so I will have more take home pay.
Maro1947@reddit
I can't ever get my5nhead around trying health cover to your job
I take RA meds that are around US$ 5000 a month
I pay AU$30 out of pocket without needing insurance at all
I'd hate to be stuck in a job because I needed the insurance to survive
ErikTheEngineer@reddit
It's a weird system. From what I've read, it came out of a time during/right after WW2 where companies couldn't increase wages due to price controls, but could provide fringe benefits, and somehow this became the norm even after the restrictions went away. We tried fixing it in 2010 but wound up with a parallel system that not many find useful since it's still run by the same insurance companies and very expensive to get the same coverage a normal employer plan would get you.
Maro1947@reddit
Sadly, beyond a revolution, you're stuck with it
matthewstinar@reddit
My mom was stuck in a job that was literally killing her because losing her insurance would have killed her even faster.
Maro1947@reddit
Horrific
tankerkiller125real@reddit
Lol, most Americans can't get their head around it either, we're just stuck with it.
Maro1947@reddit
I feel for you
Any_Particular_Day@reddit
Haha. Funny Reddittor… government healthcare.
I’d offer anecdotes of how my sister and (retired) mother in the UK can’t get crap for healthcare, despite the NHS, but it would be too much of a thread derail.
matthewstinar@reddit
The NHS is failing as intended by neoliberals. Using the NHS as an example of how government healthcare can't ever work is like tying large sandbags to each of Michael Phelps' limbs and then arguing he could never swim.
tankerkiller125real@reddit
At least they don't have to yell at people not to call an ambulance because it's too expensive when they are dieing... Just a thought.
Any_Particular_Day@reddit
I know right. It may take 30 minutes or longer to get there, but at least you don’t get a bill.
catonic@reddit
viz, in technical sales you can come up with a solution that fits the customer, and you can come up with a solution that has the greatest margin for the salesman, but what you cannot do is come up with a solution that the back-end of the company can't support, e.g. the impossible or based on a feature not yet shipping. If the back-end support people can't get the product to do the thing, then you have not delivered a good solution and the whole contract may be threatened.
matthewstinar@reddit
Universal healthcare and an adequate social safety net would do so much for small businesses and entrepreneurship in the US. Not only would it help people start small businesses, but it would help them recruit talent because prospects wouldn't need to fear taking a chance on a small business.
bitslammer@reddit
Agreed. IMO it would be like rocket fuel for the economy. I'm not a tin foil hat person by any means, but I sometimes wonder where all the resistance comes from knowing that larger corps like having healthcare as a sort of a leash to keep people from leaving.
Big_Emu_Shield@reddit
Yep as someone who does consulting, I would say that early on, like 70-80 percent of what I did was just looking for contracts. Now that I have a couple of regulars and a reputation it's become a lot easier; but at the start it was hell.
bitslammer@reddit
I'm too close to retirement to take any significant risk, but on the other hand I wouldn't mind going into some form of "semi-retirement" where I do some consulting. I've looked at options and it looks like for even basic out of pocket healthcare it would be $11K/yr and that would be very basic with still a lot of out of pocket cost.
igaper@reddit
Yeah, thanks for confirming! In my country if I fuck up badly the most my company can charge me is 3 times my salary. And they have to prove it. In most cases they just fire people.
I was considering moving to US, but the more I read about it the more I became happy with my country 😊
matthewstinar@reddit
Yeah, stick to developed nations. As an American, I can see first-hand that the US is not a developed nation.
darthnugget@reddit
US Ethics has slid so low it’s almost a crime.
Insantiable@reddit
that "threat of ai" allows companies to use the alleged threat to keep salaries down. odd how something which doesn't exist can be used a a tangible "chess piece"
catonic@reddit
Absolutely
Smtxom@reddit
I did work for a DoD contractor previously. Got to visit other countries. The work ethic in other countries left me bewildered. Never on time to a meeting. Never at work during their scheduled hours. There were times when I would be relying on someone to be somewhere they said they’d be or do something they said they’d do. And my project and timeline relied on them completing these things when they said they would. And I’d get the run around or folks would just ghost me for days and say “oh I didn’t come to work cuz I was busy doing other things”. It was infuriating. The worst was UK and The Asian countries. I’m no company man, I just have pride in what I do and do what I say I’m going to do.
liftoff_oversteer@reddit
Those admins not experiencing this pressure won't complain here, so there may be some kind of bias involved.
ImPattMan@reddit
Yep, I'm here, and love my job, so nothing to complain about most of the time.
Public sector is where it's at for me. The paycheck isn't as good, but the work life balance is usually outstanding.
ErikTheEngineer@reddit
I live near a large public university and hear this all the time. Jobs don't open up very often because in NY university staff are permanently appointed tenure-style after 7 years. The only time you see high turnover is when you get a department run by someone who's so bad that people are willing to give up their job security...getting lockstep-promoted with a horrible boss and working with them forever is a thing.
Public sector employment's definitely a bright spot in the landscape if you can learn to live with less money in return for lower stress and an easier retirement.
exccord@reddit
Hell yeh! Public Sector rocks. Granted...I make under 90k as a Sr Sys Admin but I get every federal holiday off with great benies. It also doesnt feel like my soul is being drained by the corporate gods.
nlaverde11@reddit
I make 6 figures as an IT manager in the public sector. Took a 15k paycut from when I was at my old MSP but the work life balance and lack of stress is well worth it.
SesameStreetFighter@reddit
I'm lucky in that I make a bit more as a jr sysadmin, but I'm also Bay Area. I love my work people, the department, and what I do.
And the benefits are amazing here. Had to take my kid to the ER. 8 hours, including multiple blood and urine tests, CT scan, IV, the works. $50.
BrandonNeider@reddit
Yep probably making 50% less then I could elsewhere with similar duties but 9-5 M-F, 40+ PTO off a year, pension and most important unionized.
jrcomputing@reddit
I'm tangential to you in academia (private university not public). Same rules generally apply. Pay could probably be better elsewhere but the benefits and work-life balance generally make up for that.
ImPattMan@reddit
I've often mused that academia would be where I'd head if things went south in my sphere. Glad to hear it's serving you well!
BornAgainSysadmin@reddit
"Personally, I liked the university. They gave us money and facilities, we didn't have to produce anything! You've never been out of college! You don't know what it's like out there! I've WORKED in the private sector. They expect results"
-Dr. Raymond Stantz
I work for a university, came from public sector. These words have been the best summary of what it is like to work for academia, in all the good and bad interpretations.
jrcomputing@reddit
That's definitely one of my favorite quotes.
Adderall-XL@reddit
My wife works in academia, just not in IT (Admissions and Recruiting). She says the amount of dick swinging and politics is ridiculous. Do you see a lot of that in your IT realm?
jrcomputing@reddit
Yes and no. I'm specifically in research computing, and we have plenty of professors that get their way to a point purely because of the money they bring in or the clout they have. But we have pretty good management that will generally push back on lots of things and flat out refuse others. Our biggest headache is when management tries to find bargain hardware for faculty with limited budgets. From a purely intellectual standpoint I get it, GPUs are the big thing right now, they're not cheap, and we want to support research, but as a sysadmin, some of those bargain boxes are a freaking pain in the ass to manage.
SkiingAway@reddit
If you're the kind of person who's going to be all upset about someone demanding (and getting) a special exception to rule X or Y that you don't think they deserve....you're going to have a bad time. It's going to happen.
If you can write up an explanation as to why it's a bad idea and do it anyway once your ass has been sufficiently covered (CIO/upper management sign off), it's fine.
Beyond that, if you have decent social skills you can just as easily make the politics work in your favor.
Academia generally means a lot of very long-tenured employees - both staff + faculty, and personal relationships count for much more than they do elsewhere. Which also means developing a positive reputation + name-recognition takes you much further/grants you even more job security.
And after some time, also grants you more power to push back on the worst requests, as your opinions now have more weight.
JohnGillnitz@reddit
That's the only thing keeping me where I am now. Right now I pretty much work when I want and go into the office whenever I feel the need to. Going back to fighting rush hour in the dark (both ways) and spending 12 hours at the office in pointless in person meetings doesn't appeal to me at any price point.
ImPattMan@reddit
Yep, used to drive an hour each way to go work for a huge FinTech company, bust my ass, and get the most lukewarm reviews with little opportunity to advance.
Been in public sector for 7 years now (as of last month 🎉), and I now drive 8 minutes to work, basically never have to work more than 40 hours, work with some of the kindest people I've ever met, get the best reviews of my life, have increased my salary by 50% in that time, get a month of leave every year, another month of sick leave every year that never expires, and probably the most collaborative team I've ever worked with.
This job is 100% why I'm still where I am. I'd love to move states for many reasons, but idk if I'd ever find such an amazing spot elsewhere. There are public sector jobs all over the place, but they definitely aren't all as rosy as mine.
badnamemaker@reddit
Yeah most definitely, my job is great so I spend my time making jokes at shittysysadmin instead
blue_canyon21@reddit
My participation in this sub has greatly diminished since I left my previous job due to having a stress induced heart attack.
My new job is great!
badnamemaker@reddit
Damn I am glad you’re doing better now and even more glad that you found a great job. Cheers!
mrbiggbrain@reddit
You should freshen up your resume and move on
Oops sorry. Reflex.
PandaBoyWonder@reddit
thats another thing OP couldve added: every single time someone dislikes their job, theres a bunch of people telling them to quit immediately 🤣
Proper_Cranberry_795@reddit
Same for relationship issues in other subs. Their always like dump that person, divorce your wife etc.
Caleth@reddit
True, but I think for many or at least most of us you're not fixing a broken work enivornment so moving on is what you've got.
Then you couple that with the fact that moving on can result in a 10-30% pay bump and it's not bad advice.
I've almost doubled my salary in 4 years by making 2 jumps from places where I didn't like the people or felt like we were drowning because management wouldn't pay for the level of support we needed. 4 people doing the work of 15 is not sustainable.
zvii@reddit
Thank you for this one :)
reol7x@reddit
My job is mostly great too. I just contribute to the occasional bitching about whatever Azure portal Microsoft has rebuilt this week
EditorAccomplished88@reddit
Same boat here. Every flippin weak there's something "new".
Nu-Hir@reddit
And what kind of pisses me off about that is that I took a Microsoft training course for Azure from Microsoft and they admitted in it that this may be different by the time you watch this. What's wrong with finding a UI that works and sticking with it?
GeneralKang@reddit
I think it's time we created a new buzzword: "UI Churn."
AllAboutEights@reddit
I, for one, will be using this with my team! Nice.
Nu-Hir@reddit
More like UI-Chum
Emotional_Garage_950@reddit
because if they didn’t change it every other week then the UI/UX people wouldn’t have jobs, they have to look for reasons to keep getting paid
WhereDidThatGo@reddit
Well then what would all their UI/UX Designers get paid for if they don't constantly tinker?
DanHalen_phd@reddit
Im convinced they're making these arbitrary changes so we'll need to re-certify every X years and they don't have enough real changes to actually justify a new exam.
boli99@reddit
the UI guys job wouldnt last very long if he got it right and stuck with it.
also marketing needs to change some shit because ... marketing
so UI churn a-go-go
badnamemaker@reddit
Lmao we were all just bitching about m365 outlook yesterday, I know the struggles. Don’t get me started on Webex Control Hub
Alert-Main7778@reddit
My job is stressfull but I just don't really care. That and I get to play video games all day.
scrambledhelix@reddit
Sounds like I've got a new sub to follow
Adderall-XL@reddit
The amount of times I’m over there and think I’m on the real SysAdmin page is astounding.
yaboiWillyNilly@reddit
Excuse me, but you have just made my morning. I did not know that sub existed.
mrjamjams66@reddit
My (new) job is also great so I just lurk and drink my coffee.
Sometimes I pour it out for the folks here (and definitely not because it's cold or anything)
HeligKo@reddit
Someone from our team works a couple of after business hours every week, but it's usually an hour to implement a well tested change, and it isn't really late. We have to schedule for an hour after the stock markets close. My job isn't on the line for every mistake. I like my co-workers, and we all bring a ton of experience to the table which allows us all to do the work. No single point of failure.
Now I used to feel the way so many express on here. I was the smartest person in the room (at least I thought so). With that came a ton of pressure that every failure was a failure on my part. I shouldered the whole teams responsibilities. I cared too much. I also inserted myself into the every process, which meant that I was treated as responsible for a lot of the failures. I didn't have a lot of safeguards. This is an early carreer problem that a lot of us techs have. We tend to be perfectionists, and we lack the soft skills that protect us in these situations. The good ones learn to care less like our life depends on it, and to rely on the process and orginizations structure to protect us more, and to guard our time better.
You rarely get ahead by being responsible for all the things. This makes you too integrated into a system. The company can't afford to promote or move you anymore. If they do, then things fail. You never want to be this person. It feels like job security until it doesn't, and when it doesn't it usually is without warning. You want to be good at what you do, and you want to raise those around you to be good at what you do to. This will create more value and less pressure. In the US we like to think things are more like a meritocricy, but the truth is people who are well liked are going to get promoted before those who are the best. When you are both the best and well liked, then you will do really well.
IllogicalShart@reddit
Your post really resonated with me. I'm relatively new to this industry and I think I've got a lot to learn.
I'm disillusioned. I generally get poor feedback from users, and spend my entire day apologising for the poor service and issues they've been dealing with for too long. My managers say they're happy with me, but the constant negativity is really getting me down. Some days I go in with a really positive attitude, ready to make a difference, and I leave feeling dejected and frustrated. I sleep poorly, and regularly work over the hours I'm contracted to work, just to get time-critial things done.
It feels like we don't have the staff to do what's needed for an org my size, and I've inherited so many things that 'aren't compliant', yet I spent so much time fighting fires and dealing with end-user issues that I struggle to do anything meaningful to improve the dozens of sites we manage. When I took this job over, I had zero notes or handover, and though I've been documenting things as I go, creating topologies, implementing a CRM and knowledgebase, I'd still feel deeply embarrassed to hand this over to someone else in its current state.
I feel like my junior colleagues are clawing for my job, or making slightly off-hand comments that imply that I'm inept, even though they don't want to put in the hours for training or learning new things. They overload me with basic escalations, I ping it back to them with fixes, and they just send it back to me expecting me to do it because they're 'too busy'. I feel an expectation to drop everything and deal with their issue, and I struggle to focus on more complex migrations or project work because of it. My performance suffers.
End users have a negative opinion of our service has a whole, and every time I go to sites, I'm treated poorly, despite the fact that it's I am powerless to change the fact they have been provisioned a 8 year old laptop, connected to a 8 year old AP, linked to a 10 year old failing switch, on a server that's just as old, and in some cases, literally falling to pieces. We don't have the money, we don't have the skills in the team to provide a consistent service level, and I feel like it's a losing fight daily.
When I worked in a more junior role, I was much happier. It's not the complexity of the work, or the scale of the projects. It's the expectation, lack of help, and lack of resource that's getting me.
I'm a people pleaser, and I take it personally when people think negatively. I sometimes think this industry just isn't for me.
HeligKo@reddit
Oh man. You need to find a place that values IT. Where you are now sounds miserable. There is no shame in walking away for a better gig. You don't have to fix the place before you leave.
Being a people pleaser is going to hurt you whatever you do, if you don't have appropriate boundaries in place and learn to not internalize how others feel about the current situation as being a reflection of your value.
thepottsy@reddit
It’s like everything else on the internet. Not many people post when the product they buy works great, but everyone post about it when it doesn’t.
50YearsofFailure@reddit
It's like everything in life. There's a saying in restaurant management that you need 10 good reviews to erase one bad one. People tend to focus on the bad because we're evolutionarily wired to avoid pain.
Likewise, when people are happy with something they may or may not leave a review depending on if they find the time. But if it's a bad experience, they're much more likely to blast it to the universe because they're pissed.
BigDataflex@reddit
Agreed. I really can't relate to most of the posts I read on here.
sroop1@reddit
Right? Last week we had free food trucks for lunch. Next week we're having a fair day with a carnival ride, games and shit in tents. There's usually a music festival around this time but not this year.
The fortune 50 and a biotech company that I worked at was also crazy good too. The worse were always the small family-owned/ran businesses - never fucking again.
discosoc@reddit
Also, lots of foreign people are just not used to seeing a population that can and does speak out or complain about things. A co-worker of mine from a while back noted that to me as a cultural shock he had to deal with, and that from the outside it makes Americans look unhappy and unsuccessful, etc. Reality sets in once they realize we simply have the ability to complain and overall affect change in ways they do not.
Sovey_@reddit
Agreed, just like product reviews, people rarely go online to share good opinions.
exccord@reddit
Agreed. We all float down here Georgie.
EchoPhi@reddit
I comment here all the time. I loved my job up until today and that is just because my team is doing the work of double what we are staffed for now and it is getting a little aggravating. Besides that , only only just very recent, it's great.
BlackSquirrel05@reddit
I think a lot of them are so SMB to MB. Because they all complain about 50-200 users doing X and they want Y...
h00ty@reddit
This 100%.. My company is a great place to work. My boss also has kids and is all about work-life balance. He wants a clear path to growth within the company. He provides the training and sandboxes to achieve the goal. Most importantly they pay according to ability as I have gotten 10% a year the three years I have been with the org... ya it will take something exceptional to get me to leave this gig.
typo180@reddit
Yep. I've generally worked for companies that provide a lot of autonomy, reasonable work expectations, and relatively functional management. Have I had frustrations or bad on-call shifts? Sure. But generally, I love this line of work. It's challenging, rewarding, and supports my lifestyle.
Lunn07@reddit
Parroting everyone else, company of 115,000 love my job. Pays good, we have a great budget, and our team is close. Politics aside which are in every company, is tolerable.
PacketAuditor@reddit
Yeah basically any internal position for a small to medium business is all good.
uncleskeleton@reddit
Yeah. OP sees a spectrum real people in their country. Reddit is going to have a higher percentage of unhinged weirdos… and also relatively normal people in a temporary tough spot so they appear more doom-and-gloom than they otherwise would be.
bruhle@reddit
This is the answer. It's like cable news in here. If it bleeds it leads.
Midiall@reddit
This is definitely the case. For many people this may be the only outlet they have to vent to people that would understand their situations so it just becomes an echo chamber of complaining between the occasional heads up and request for help posts.
HJForsythe@reddit
its the users, man.
FyrStrike@reddit
I worked there for 10 years in IT and never had that at all in any team. All the IT teams I worked with were really cool, and just getting shit done. So I dunno man. I think what you are seeing here is what you are seeing?
Burnsidhe@reddit
IT in US companies is typically treated as an ongoing cost with no financial returns. As a result, in most companies, it is understaffed, underpaid, and overworked relative to the workload. The C-suite doesn't understand or care about the fact IT is what's keeping the company alive, they would really prefer a one-time outlay to buy the minimum necessary and then ignore the maintenance, security, update, and replacement needs.
DayFinancial8206@reddit
When IT is an expense that takes away from shareholder profits, it always becomes a target to some extent. This can often manifest in laying off staff and overworking a few employees
I don't know the validity of this claim and this is more recent, but I overheard some execs talking about doing a push from the trend setting corporations to get IT back in line budget wise after covid. The big dogs did mass layoffs at the same time making the job market saturated and then many other companies followed suit. Skilled IT workers have been out of a job for months and are holding out but starting to come down in salary negotiations or title
Needless to say, that's the kind of environment that breeds these types of attitudes and mental health problems
SmoothSailing1111@reddit
America runs IT. The USA invented the Internet. Someone has to take this stuff serious.
Let's see, which country did these companies start in:
Microsoft. Apple. Google. Oracle. Cisco. HP. Dell. IBM. NVIDIA. Amazon. Meta. Reddit. Tesla. Broadcom. Netflix. Adobe.
Big Tech is America.
Destructive-Angel@reddit
Allow me to share a glimpse into a fairly average life of a US worker…
Average US income for a person hovers around $60k/yr of late. Average US rent is about $1700/mo or $20k/yr. Average US resident debt is $100k (this is loans, credit cards, etc). Average car insurance in the US is $2.5k/yr. Average medical insurance in the US is $7.2k/yr.
When the average American is paying half their income just for housing and insurance, then coping with the never vanishing debt as well as some of the record breaking inflation of late, I’d expect an negative and vocal response.
Combine the often poisonous American Corporate culture and the special place on “first to layoff” list that IT gets relegated to as THE fall guys… yea.
Also, this is Reddit. Enough said.
Japjer@reddit
We all live paycheck to paycheck, and losing a job means we lose everything. This fills us with fear
IT, in the US, is generally considered an annoyance and a cost no one wants to pay. Owners love to cut corners and avoid investing in good techs and infrastructure
This leads to a vicious cycle where we're underpaid, overworked, and perpetually afraid of becoming homeless.
CacheM3ifYouCan@reddit
From my time as an admin, it was the effort and quality of work relative to the pay.
CacheM3ifYouCan@reddit
From my time as an admin, it was the effort and quality of work I relative to the pay.
Gubzs@reddit
America is the land of shitty know-nothing bosses.
That pressure is put ON us by leadership who can't/won't listen to the people they hire to be subject matter experts.
Workloads are absolutely insane for most IT departments, to the point where important stuff often literally never gets done. Want to expand your team though? Too bad. That's too expensive. Company needs to budget that for something useless and stupid instead.
Master_Ad7267@reddit
This is correct 14 years in IT and the number of competent bosses was 2. Most were not qualified or had no experience in IT. Some won't fight for you most are spineless.
Every company I worked at was short staffed in some way. Never had enough to support operations and make meaningful progress on projects. But it's fine to have a huge security team and tons of red tape and more pms than sysadmins
MrCertainly@reddit
Well, it's our culture. Nearly every position is like this. That's what happens when you have zero social safety nets in a late-stage Capitalistic hellscape.
In AWA: At-Will America (99.7% of the population), you can be terminated at any time, for almost any (or no) reason, without notice, without compensation, and full loss of you and your family's healthcare.
You're expected to be available 168 hours a week in most positions.
Proper_Cranberry_795@reddit
Sup, I’m a German guy who lives in the US doing IT. I don’t feel the way you’re describing. I don’t monitor the sub a lot so not sure. My job is super slow and chill since I only handle the servers/network environment.
It’s soooo boring and chill I’m actually looking to leave to find a more challenging IT work that’s harder and more rewarding..
wild-hectare@reddit
I've been doing this for 30+ years and have spent most of that time as the outside consultant fixing stupid shit that should never been done to begin with...Reddit is purely for entertainment purposes when I'm bored
Lost_Ad_6278@reddit
I think a lot of the pressure and disillusionment you're noticing among American IT workers could come from a mix of factors. The US work culture is notoriously fast-paced, often glorifying "hustle" and long hours as signs of dedication. Couple that with high expectations around cybersecurity in a country where data breaches can lead to massive legal and financial consequences, and it starts to make sense why so many IT professionals might feel like they’re constantly in crisis mode
Indifferentchildren@reddit
The U.S. has another aggravating factor: hypercapitalism. Look at what the MBAs did to Boeing. That is happening all over the U.S. CxOs are chasing next quarter's earnings numbers, and things like IT are a "cost center" (necessary evil) to be shortchanged at every opportunity, leading to fragile mission-critical systems.
There are shockingly large companies that won't buy decent backup solutions, invest in security, refresh equipment, etc. American sysadmins are juggling like mad to provide quality infrastructure and services to make up for outright sabotage from the C-suite.
ExcitingTabletop@reddit
McDonald-Douglas killed Boeing. Yes, MBA's did the actual work of gutting the company. But MD execs and their culture drove the MBA's. Until Boeing management is purged, it's going to continue.
thortgot@reddit
Hypercapitalism isn't a uniquely American problem and you would be shocked at how badly funded the majority of the world's IT is.
I've seen a decent chunk of world as part of my career. On average US environments are better funded (in terms of labor, licensing and hardware) than others. Running EOL hardware is the norm in the world (I'm not arguing it should be, just a comparison to how the US operates)
Americans are vastly more likely to be targeted in an attack.
tankerkiller125real@reddit
IMO this is what happens when MBAs take over any company, and it's why I don't invest in companies with MBAs/Accountants running the show (unless it's an accounting firm). Engineering companies NEED to be run by engineers. When they aren't they fail.
smjsmok@reddit
For us non-americans, it's often downright terrifying to see people (often Americans) "flexing" with how many hours they work, having two jobs etc. We want to pity them, but they expect to be praised.
Zncon@reddit
And from the US perspective it's pretty unappealing to see how much space people have to live in Europe, and how little hobby/discretionary spending they have money for.
There's also the matter of retirement. People working these jobs can usually save enough to be totally independent when they retire, and not become beholden to their government check.
smjsmok@reddit
What did you mean by this? What kind of space?
Zncon@reddit
Average home size in the US is quite a bit bigger, which I feel is important when people have remote/work from home jobs. It's also nice to have dedicated spaces for hobby activities.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/house-size-by-country
Cheomesh@reddit
Meanwhile those nations largely slip into irrelevance.
Valencia_Mariana@reddit
There's a reason the wages and standard of living is so high over there I guess
ruggles_bottombush@reddit
I hate hustle culture. There's an MSP near me that uses "embrace the hustle" as a catchphrase on their career page and job listings, and they put it as a hashtag on all their social media stuff. At least I know immediately not to even consider them.
catonic@reddit
This is a great comic re: the grind, hustle, etc.: https://poorlydrawnlines.com/comic/hustle-culture/
tranoidnoki@reddit
That red flag must be the size of three football fields holy shit.
Especially coming from an MSP? You just KNOW you're getting fired the moment you have a week where your 95% KPI target drops to 94%.
catonic@reddit
they are and now the "cut 10% of people" is being used in a carefully orchestrated way to eliminate people with productivity that does not meet what other people are achieving, and that impacts older workers first. All deadlines and standards are arbitrary.
NobleRuin6@reddit
Also, most civilized countries outside the US have wildly better labor laws, benefits and firing protection. As an American Expat, I am routinely surprised by how awesome some of the host nation's policies are. Just a simple example is paternal leave - 24 months FOR EACH parent, paid, and applies to adoption as well. Lol, find a US company that offers this...
_UsUrPeR_@reddit
24 months?!?
Honestly, that seems irresponsible from a GDP perspective. I'm all for parental leave, but I mean... If I took two years off, I would be absolutely useless to my team upon my return.
Two years? That can't feel good. Like... I need to be mentally stimulated and challenged to feel fully actualized. I feel like staying home for a full two years would induce a significant amount of stress for me.
Versety1@reddit
Brother, you are not just staying home for two years, you are raising your child. There would also be plenty of challenges and stimulations, haha.
I think you are also underestimating how quick you would be able to pick up from where you have left upon a return.
And what good GDP is for, if people in the country cannot spend time with their families, you know?
Zncon@reddit
Two years in tech is basically a decade though in other fields. You'd need to spend the first three months back at work just leaning all the new names Microsoft invented for their products.
KnowledgeTransfer23@reddit
I would say to use your parental leave to, you know, parent your newborn. That ought to be stimulating and challenging enough, if you're an active and involved parent.
FarJeweler9798@reddit
Raising a kid has plenty of stimulus 🤣
dillbilly@reddit
you are allowed two years; you aren't required to take them. if you have an itch that needs to be scratched you can return to work at any time.
liefbread@reddit
Also all of that starts to feel really precarious when you have health conditions and your only access to healthcare is tied directly to your employment where you're at-will employed and seen as a cost not a value.
NobleRuin6@reddit
Yeah, I guess that would have been a better example I could have made. The health care system here is pretty impressive, and a basic right at no cost to the citizens.
plain_simple_garak_@reddit
I had to look at a service that crashed while my wife was in labor with our son. Apparently I was the only one in the world that could fix it. I'm not proud of it but I was in fear of losing my job over it if I didn't respond, last thing you want when you have a kid on the way.
yurk23@reddit
Mine? lol
isuxirl@reddit
It was 20 years ago, but I was back at work the next day after my kids were born. it's getting better in pockets in the US but there is still a long way to go.
motorik@reddit
https://philosophybreak.com/articles/byung-chul-han-burnout-society-our-only-imperative-is-to-achieve/
ErikTheEngineer@reddit
This got way worse during the last bubble. Of course you have to keep learning and growing, but people have basically been told that if they're not doing this during their nights and weekends, they're not "passionate enough" about the field and should go do something else. That's crazy; no other real profession makes their members cobble together their own training program.
antomaa12@reddit
The feeling around the work experience in US is just a reflection of the American relation to work and it's culture. A do agree with you also on cyberattacks which seems to happen way more often in US than in western Europe (where I leave at least)
Zestyclose_Mall1728@reddit
I live in a small non English speaking country and in the last year quite a few companies in 20 km radius from the company I work for were hit. You just don't hear of those events.
Snakebyte130@reddit
Nailed it
ComputahMassage@reddit
Everyone is engaged in one giant pissing contest. If you're not pissing as far as someone else, eventually, all that pissin will be for nuthin.
No_Carob5@reddit
That's American work culture....
Don't see it as often in Europe.
We had a HQ guy in Europe, tell us he can't help with our site outage as he hit his overtime limit. The factory didn't have phones for weeks because they're just different panic over there...
iofhua@reddit
Because if you are working in the IT department at a place that gets hacked your IT career is over. No employer who is looking for an IT person will hire an IT guy who worked at a place that got hacked. They will immediately question your competence and hold it against you. You will be like a pariah. They don't want to get hacked either.
My workplace is pushing hard on MFA and is strictly enforcing periodic password changes for all users. It's annoying as hell but I understand they're terrified of a potential data breach and this gives them a sense of security.
Also the fatalistic mindset is because wages are stagnant. 25 years ago when the dotcom boom was a thing, IT paid really well. But not now. The IT industry is saturated with applicants and wages for IT jobs have been dropping. My department has been short a person for years and they can't get someone in because the pay is so low.
I work in IT at a school and I'm a NY state employee who gets contractual raises every year. I've been at my job over 10 years and this year will be the first year I earn 40k. I am below the median salary for the USA and far below the median salary for NY. Think about that. That's terrible. Yes life is hard but I am able to do the job and sadly it's one of the better jobs in my area. I get a desk in an air conditioned office. I have a health insurance. I live in a dilapidated trailer and walk to work and can't afford anything nice, but at least my job isn't back-breaking labor and pays better than flipping burgers at McDonald's.
Am I happy? No. I have that fatalistic mindset and I am worried about the worst case scenarios and I do take everything seriously. All the joy has been drained from my life. That's what working in IT for 10 years will do to you.
IronBe4rd@reddit
I don’t see this at all. We always ask why every time something needs done in Northern Europe they have to take a poll on whose feelings might get hurt. Or it will take 15 days of reviews or they are off for 4 weeks of their 18 week PTO. At least our company isn’t like this.
prodsec@reddit
Because work culture in the US is bad at many places and IT is blamed for everything bad.
Individual_Ad_5333@reddit
I don't live in the US, but part of my team is located there. I get the impression its one of the most costly places on earth to live so it makes them expensive members of staff who are replaced with cheaper labour at the first sniff of a possibility also I get the impression the work place laws are kinda lacking there compared to the uk
I don't think there is a massive cultural difference from UK and the US. I think it's just that their conditions suck.
MATCA_Phillies@reddit
Zealousideal_Ad_3150@reddit
I’m in Australia - been a pretty cruisy 3 years since I have become a sys admin, I work for a huge corporation too.
I see what you’re sayin about a lot of people in the sub, I don’t think it will be the whole of America. Just like I don’t think it would be the whole of Australia in my position.
I feel bad for the people working at E corp fr fr
pm_something_u_love@reddit
I live in NZ and my job is relaxed AF and I earn heaps of money.
USA sounds like a nightmare in all respects.
TheOne_living@reddit
whats the salary range like in NZ?
iama_bad_person@reddit
Anywhere from 60 to 90K USD.
tankerkiller125real@reddit
What your making is about the same as a good IT person in a LCOL area. Those massive 200K salaries you see all the time are from people who live in areas where 200K gets you a nice apartment at best because a closet sized house costs 1.2 Million to buy.
iama_bad_person@reddit
A starter home with 3 bedrooms 1 bathroom here averages 650k, 1 million might get you a 4 bedroom 2 bathroom that you don't have to do up much, the current place I am renting is 5 bedroom 3 bathroom and is valued at 1.3 million.
bigredone15@reddit
A starter 3/2 in the safe part of a LCOL city in America can often be found for $150-$200k and can be purchased with 3% down on a 30 year note with a locked in interest rate.
iama_bad_person@reddit
Jesus Christ. I think the only places you can buy a house for $200kUSD here are on the West Coast, 4 hour drive from any major population center over 100k, and the nearest town has a population of 8,000. Our current interest rates are 8% floating, but you can fix at 6%, but only up to 5 years.
9jmp@reddit
System Engineers in Detroit are around 150k with LCOL as well.
As for the OPs question, I think IT guys are EXTREMELY dramatic as well that hugely contributes to the perception. That combined with America's work force in general, I can see what he means for sure. It took me a while to find a job where I was happy with the pace, benefits, culture, etc... but I certainly have it now and love my job. My 1st 8 years were at an MSP that I learned immensely from and kept growing, until I capped out and moved on.
bigredone15@reddit
Also notoriously undisciplined at creating low maintenance, reliable processes. Most everywhere that has chaos in IT is because somewhere in the process an engineer let's a 75% complete, temporary solution be permanent. IT engineers pride themselves on duct tape and bubblegum solutions they can engineer. No other field respects this magic out of a hat work.
uhdoy@reddit
There are unicorns out there. I live in a LCOL area and w/ my annual bonus I'm probably around 200k.
Any-Formal2300@reddit
The trick is to live in HCOL in your 20s, max out your 401k+roth IRA while you don't need to buy a house/take care of kids then move to a LCOL.
dillbilly@reddit
note to self. do that 20 years ago...
pm_something_u_love@reddit
I'm actually in cyber sec, and according to the Hayes (giant recruitment company) salary guide it's not too far off Aussie. I'm earning a bit over 160k NZD.
iama_bad_person@reddit
Looking at getting some cyber certs soon. At 110k right now with 9 years sysadmin experience. Hoping to jump some pay bands with how much shit costs these days lmao
Affectionate_Ad_3722@reddit
Enough to live in a beautiful country with worker protections and shit.
Not enough for their housing crisis.
iama_bad_person@reddit
Helped my mum buy her house in 2016. Now it's more than doubled in value and there is no way in fucking hell I'm ever affording my own 😂😭
iama_bad_person@reddit
As a Kiwi I look at the aussie pay scales and super percentages etc and can't help but feel jealous 😂
toolology@reddit
That reminds of that line in the new Deadpool movie where he's like "ahhhhh sure you'll never see a Danish flag on the moon but they sure are happy over there"
grouchy-woodcock@reddit
Yes. And we like it that way. But to be fair, American corporations are pretty juicy targets.
I'm not sure that's SysAdmin specific; it is probably an American thing.
However, when I'm not on call, I don't think about work.
Comunisto@reddit
I think you correctly and almost completely answered all your questions, by yourself, at the end of the post. But whatever im not north american.
Rocknbob69@reddit
The IT landscape is a giant shit show to be honest and moving to a different gig isn't going to change that. Especially being the lone IT person at any business.
SP92216@reddit
This is like comparing a US and UK truck driver. It’s like thousands more variables when you have a bigger infrastructure than a tiny country. Not to mention smaller companies that work with bigger companies so even working somewhere that not many people know about can affect larger companies at a minor scale.
dlongwing@reddit
You call out our security as paranoia... but I think a big part of the issue here is you're not admining for a US company.
I admin for a small business. Sub 100 employees. We are under constant attack. And no, I'm not talking spam emails. I'm talking targeted phishing attempts using employee names, titles, corporate structure, and logos. My company has been the victim of multiple scam/fraud attempts which we were lucky to have limited in scope. I've seen other businesses at my size and in my industry completely crippled by ransomware attacks, or have their customer DBs stolen.
It's not complicated. US Companies have money. Criminals want money. We're paranoid because they're out to get us.
FarJeweler9798@reddit
yeah have been getting the same picture, not really jealous about their work/life balance but man their salaries are something that could get me to do their work....
Not-Sure112@reddit
I don't know how we got here as a whole but you aren't wrong. The work culture here is bleak. We need a drastic change over here badly. I'm nearly at the end of my career and over the past decade have become more and more convinced we are beyond repair at this point.
EchoPhi@reddit
Speak as a individual please, not for all.
Not-Sure112@reddit
40 year work history, I think I have enough exposure to generalize.
joeytwobastards@reddit
I mean, the salaries look great till you realise they have to pay $1000 for a doctor's note to take a week off sick and then they only have a certain amount of time they're allowed to be off sick and after that it comes out of vacation time, which they also don't get any of...
Zncon@reddit
Since salaried jobs tend to pay well and attract skilled workers, in most cases there's nothing even close to this. Workers are trusted.
If I'm sick when I wake up, I send a message to the team slack channel, everyone tells me to get better, and I go back to bed. If it stretches on for multiple days then I'd have a quick chat with management about any time sensitive work they should be aware of.
Any sick leave long enough to start raising concerns is enough that it likely needs a doctors attention anyway.
Bane8080@reddit
Where did you get that idea?
Without insurance, a dr office visit is about $115. With insurance it's either free, or less than $35.
If someone is paying $1000 for a dr note, it's because they went to the hospital emergency room for a non-emergency.
Cheomesh@reddit
Nah last time I had to pay for an uninsured doctor's office visit it was around 700USD - hourly rate alone is about 250 here. Under my last insurance (previous job) it was still around 280 or so for a visit.
Dangerous-Mobile-587@reddit
Vacation and sick time come out of the same bucket of PTO.
Zena-Xina@reddit
Not always, depends on your company.
I get 5 sick days, and 5 personal days.
I can always use personal days as sick time but I can't use sick time for personal stuff.
aere1985@reddit
5 personal days... is that effectively a holiday (aka vacation) allowance?
Here in the UK we get 20 statutory + 8 days (aka 5.6 weeks) which are national holidays. Everyone gets this, no exceptions.
My union got us an extra day 2 years ago so 21.
My employer gives +5 days after 5 years employment, a threshold I've just crossed into.
So I'm sat at 34 days annual leave.
Sick leave is handled entirely separately to this. I'm not sure at what point my employer stops paying if I'm off sick... never got that far.
noOneCaresOnTheWeb@reddit
It always seems to be different depending on where you are.
It's usually 5 days you can use that wouldn't qualify for sick time and aren't planned in advanced. They usually don't count as PTO either so they don't pay out if you leave.
223454@reddit
10 days of sick and 10 days of vacation per year is kind of the baseline here in the US for office jobs.
SenTedStevens@reddit
You're getting screwed. At the company I work for, we get 4 weeks of PTO/yr, all federal holidays, plus 2 floating holidays which we can take whenever.
noOneCaresOnTheWeb@reddit
It always seems to be different depending on where you are.
It's usually 5 days you can use that wouldn't qualify for sick time and aren't planned in advanced. They usually don't count as PTO either so they don't pay out if you leave.
Bl3xy@reddit
Wait, per year? What the fuck? We have at least 20 times of paid, personal time off by law, while 30 days is the industry standard by now. All while having unlimited sick days if approved by a doctor. How the fuck do you manage with only 5 free days a year?
Conlaeb@reddit
Even the five days is totally optional. US government does not mandate any paid time off, either vacation or sick leave. The best we have is a law that, with proper documentation, prevents us from getting fired for taking unpaid time off in cases of medical need.
Indifferentchildren@reddit
The U.S. government also does not mandate that employees get off for any holidays. It is pretty standard for non-service employees to get off for 5 of the 11 federal holidays. Government workers, banks, and some very "corporate" corporations get all 11 holidays.
Floh4ever@reddit
Iam from germany and over here law requires 24days PTO/year but most IT or office contracts give 30 (rarely more).
If you are sick your employer has to pay you for the first 6 weeks of any given sickness situation and beyond that you will be covered by health insurance (although not at 100% of your salary iirc).
In addition we have pretty strict labour laws and regulations for working time that strictly forbid you from working more than 10hr/day in ordinary fields. And this is only allowed if your average time does not go over 8hr/day in the span of 4 weeks and 6 months.
It is also really difficult do get fired - especially in special cases like trainees. They are basically un-fire-able as long as they don't do crazy stuff.
The drawback is a comparatively low salary as my take home is about 2.3k euro/dollar per month as a sysadmin in SMB environments. This is roughly the average pay for my job and slightly above average in my area. After rent, power, etc. I usually end up with 1k for groceries, saving and stuff like that.
How much monthly "pocket money" does someone in the US have left, if they get around 100k/year?
Indifferentchildren@reddit
That depends on where they live: rent/mortgage could be $500/month in a really cheap town, or $4000/month in an expensive city.
It also depends on whether their spouse works and how much they make, how many kids they have, etc.
Major costs: rent, taxes (~20%, including Social Security a very minimal retirement plan), 401(k) (~10%, an investment account for their retirement), health insurance (~$600/month for employee only), so $100k per year, $8333/month, means a take-home of about $5399/month. Take out rent ($500-$4000/month). If there are kids in private school (average $10k/year each in Florida) and/or needing childcare ($250+ per child, per week). If you need health insurance for you spouse and kids, figure about $2k/month, instead of $600/month.
Set aside more money for healthcare because the insurance doesn't cover nearly everything; I have an HSA - Health Savings Account from my employer where ~8% of my salary goes to cover non-covered expenses. That is fine in the normal case, but a serious accident, heart attack, or cancer, and I am screwed.
Floh4ever@reddit
Thx for the detailed answer. So...long story short we end up with about the same but your numbers are just higher.
Indifferentchildren@reddit
There is a pair of videos on YouTube made by an American family who live in Germany now, comparing the salaries and costs for a couple of different situations. I didn't touch on transportation (each adult in America needs a car, car insurance, etc., except in a few major cities with really good public transit). There are other factors that they compared well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWJja2U7oCw
SoonerMedic72@reddit
I work at a financial institution. You only get the 11 days if they all fall during the work week. Had several that fell on Saturday or Sunday. I think Sunday holidays usually get Monday off, but Saturdays you're SOL.
awnawkareninah@reddit
I work at a relatively chill startup and get all 11, 20 PTO days, 3 flex days, and 4 other days for volunteer work if I want to.
Silent_Forgotten_Jay@reddit
I got sick while working for Dell. Ended up staying in tge hospital for 6/7 weeks. I was let go because because I couldn't return after a weekend. They said we can't wait for you to return.
Conlaeb@reddit
I'm sorry to hear that. I have never had to use FMLA so I am not familiar with the workings. It doesn't surprise me that a major employer acted against either the letter or the spirit of the law.
Silent_Forgotten_Jay@reddit
Thanks. Now that I'm listed as disabled. It seems like landing an interview has become the new problem in my life.
Zena-Xina@reddit
Most of us don't manage well.
You just have to come to work evern when not feeling good usually. Which is part of the reason stuff spreads so easily.
I had a coworker that just had COVID, then got pneumonia. He was really sick, out two weeks, and had to force himself back cause he'd used all his time. Poor guy was still out of it another week or so.
He had been trying to save some time for when his kid was born last week but only took one day 🙃
We work K12 so our days had just been reset for the year as well.
223454@reddit
I had a boomer coworker tell me years ago that sick time was only if you couldn't drag yourself into the office. If you were in the hospital or so sick you literally couldn't get out of bed and crawl into work, then you took a sick day. Other than that, you were expected to come in. That was before Covid.
medlina26@reddit
It again depends on the company. I at one point had almost 2 months of PTO waiting to be used. Depending on time with my company you can get around 30 days per year, on our old system + holidays. The new one is "unlimited PTO" but I always see those as a scheme to not pay people if they leave the company.
FarJeweler9798@reddit
Yeah that sucks we have unlimited sick days paid up-to 90days from company then you would drop to nations budged but 89 days and 1 day at work would start the 90 days again if i remember right. PTO (paid) i think is somewhere around 40-60days have actually never counted how many there is a year. Flextime & Overtime compensation so yeah truly work/life balance and healthcare does comp the salaries a lot.
-_G__-@reddit
That sucks for you guys.
Australian standard is 10 sick days and 20 snjusl leave days per year.
Some employers even offer extra weeks of leave as a bonus. Or an option of taking leave at half pay for more time, or the option to get paid less for more time off.
RigourousMortimus@reddit
Two months Long Service Leave after 10 years is a legal requirement in most cases for Australia. That's a one off but can generally spread out taking it.
godlyfrog@reddit
My company works this way. It is technically possible for my employer to require that I take PTO for being out sick on a Monday, and still have to work a 40+ hour work week.
BlackSquirrel05@reddit
Depends on the company or state. Some states have mandated sick time not be including in PTO.
joeytwobastards@reddit
Ah ok, that's even worse then.
ThemesOfMurderBears@reddit
Sorry, what? Who is paying for a doctor’s note?
Ewalk@reddit
Gotta pay for a dr visit to get a dr not usually.
But shit, I had t had to give a note since college, and at this point I can just send them a message about my anxiety and I get a note in an hour.
The posts overall point about being fucked either way is spot on though. I don’t even get “sick” time at my job, just vacation. On the tail end of a major surgery recovery with no more vacation, a dr visit means taking the day off and paying for the visit. So I’m losing my salary, then paying to be told I’m fucked.
Insantiable@reddit
no
BuoyantBear@reddit
99% of sysadmins in the US are going to have health insurance through their job. It’s only people who don’t get insurance through work who have those issues.
Given it’s anecdotal, but my health costs and amounts of paid time off working in this industry are on par with any other western nation while making 2x as much money.
awnawkareninah@reddit
My insurance is like $80 a month and seeing the doctor costs $20. I also don't really have doctors notes.
The sad truth is the lower your salary in the US the more your Healthcare costs unless you make low enough to get a government subsidized silver plan.
neminat@reddit
Entirely false.
i0datamonster@reddit
Yeah, but here's the thing those salaries have actually been shrinking. Average IT salary in 1980 ranged from $40k-$70k with average 6% annual COL raises. That'd be a $119k salary.
Now go look at companies hiring IT and what they pay. This situation isn't unique to IT. We're just screaming in our echo chamber. I'm sure if we went to other subs, you'd find something similar.
The difference is that wherever you live, it is still in the phase between an industrial economy and capital/services economy. It's that sweet spot of economic growth increasing market capacity, money printer go brr.
For the US, this sweet spot was the 80s/90s. 30 years later, here we are.
FarJeweler9798@reddit
Yeah here the salary ranges from 40k-70k currently so there's still quite a bumb compared to US salary
i0datamonster@reddit
Where are you from?
FarJeweler9798@reddit
Finland so land of the taxations gods
i0datamonster@reddit
Oh wtf I was way off. Yeah, don't give up your labor rights to lower those taxes though. I worked with a guy who moved from Melbourne to the middle of nowhere, illinois, to do IT. He did IT in Australia. I could not wrap my head around this guy leaving the place I want to vacation at to be in the place where I take vacations to leave.
FarJeweler9798@reddit
Yeah we are currently on down spiral of unemployment vs jobs available for all industries so taxes not gonna come down and like said land of taxations gods there's always things to get taxed we just pumped one of our tax 1.5% more
Bobjohndud@reddit
Yeah and then lose all of it to rent
FarJeweler9798@reddit
Can't say anything about renting as I bought beated up apartment from middle of nowhere town when I was 18, but we do have big rent / housing price bubble also here, if you want to live on the main cities you have to pray the premium for that
schwaaaaaaaa@reddit
A couple things:
For some reason, non-IT folk don't understand that we have to troubleshoot before we can start fixing something. We have to look through logs, we have to do research, we have to figure things out that aren't always obvious.
A good analogy is, imagine dropping your car off at the mechanic, then interrupting them every 15 minutes asking them "is it fixed yet?" "How long do you think until it's fixed?"
All it takes is one little mistake to bring the ship down, which is why DR is such a big deal.
Remember Colonial Pipeline? All it took was one old VPN account that someone forgot to disable.
Fact is, we're human, and we make mistakes. But it's like pulling teeth to get companies to invest in vulnerability scanners, packet forensics appliances, etc to help us flawed humans catch those mistakes.
VirtuaFighter6@reddit
no nationalized health care
_UsUrPeR_@reddit
I read this subreddit for the perspective. I'm a sysadmin in the US, mostly work on virtualized architecture, and absolutely love my job. Full-time wfh, adequate work-life balance, the pay is decent, i really like my co-workers, my boss is great, and the appointed leadership above him is great too! Even our projects are properly funded! I just implemented a real backup solution (cohesity), and it's incredible.
I just don't want to brag. It seems like a lot of people are getting their asses whupped in here :/
redyellowblue5031@reddit
I think sharing positive perspectives/experiences is a good thing. Can go a long way toward fostering discussion and hope rather than just “everything will always suck forever and always”.
Chosen_UserName217@reddit
because we work 7 days a week. Overworked and underpaid. Underappreciated until something goes wrong, then blamed for it.
RevLoveJoy@reddit
American labor protections are trash. IT are seen as a cost center. A cost center EVERY business must have. A cost center that can be the difference between thrilling and disappointing investors. So turn the thumb screws on those cost center employees. It's not like the law protects them and they've convinced themselves (with our help, haha!) they don't need a labor union.
toph2223@reddit
The most over panicked and manic US based sysadmins tend to post A LOT on this subreddit.
Drewlane97@reddit
I've seen both sides of the coin, really just comes down to your work ethic and of course, place of employment. Where I am now I completely love my job, I'd categorize it as a "Dream" job, but the place I came from, while it was very similar work, was completely awful for its own reasons. Just need to love the work and find a place you belong.
Generico300@reddit
This is because you're not getting a real perspective. You're getting a "news" perspective. Nobody is coming to this forum to post things like "Just letting you all know that today was another regular day, nothing went wrong, my boss was fine, we're not being audited, etc" People come to places like this specifically to address their problems and air their grievances. So you of course it has a negative bias.
This may be legitimate. I doubt it's unique to the US, but there are a lot of people who just blindly follow whatever they've been convinced is "best practice". It gives them an excuse to avoid the world of analyzing and understanding their own situation and the problem space as a whole. What's more likely unique to the US is the glut of "cybersecurity professionals" who just got into the field because someone told them it's good money, and they don't really understand anything, they just passed a couple cert tests and use fear mongering to justify their job's continued existence. Not to say there aren't competent cybersecurity guys. Just that there are a lot of incompetent ones, and non-technical executive types are very susceptible to their fear mongering.
I don't know that it's most people, but yes, the US does have a different work culture than most countries. We do tend to place a higher value on work productivity than most cultures. Which is good and bad. It's part of the reason we're such a wealthy powerful nation. It's also part of the reason we have a lower life expectancy than most developed nations.
I've been working IT in the US for 15+ years and I am neither burned out or insane (at least not any more than I was before entering the field). I work 8 hours a day and almost never work weekends or overtime unless there's a legitimate emergency. So this is plenty possible in the US. People just don't get on internet forums to vent about how tolerable their job is. They're only active here when things are going wrong.
narcissisadmin@reddit
You should keep lurking, friend.
ipnetor9000@reddit
i dont think it's that bad over in usa. it's just that reddit is an echo chamber and we get these waves of posts here.
poop_magoo@reddit
99% of people in the industry never post or comment here. Of the 1% that do, only the ones promoting a high drama narrative of some kind get highly upvoted. Coming in here and posting that your job has reasonable expectations, and is relatively calm overall, won't sell here.
TechMeOut21@reddit
I think there is also a stigma about the field that makes people with those characteristics gravitate to it and end up reinforcing it as well.
rdldr1@reddit
Being on edge and disillusioned is quite common for American jobs in general.
Sysadmins are more likely to post in this sub when they need to complain about their job. People don't really post about 'really loving their sysadmin job.'
DramaticErraticism@reddit
IT is full of misfits. We are the only white collar career that is filled with every weirdo from every background on the planet. I have worked with networking guys who grew up in trailer parks and every other type of person, under the son.
We're also expected to be anti-social and outcasts, so that allows people in IT to get away with being a bit more odd than the rest of the org.
We also like technology and other nerdy things, which means we are already a bit on the counter culture side.
Combine all those things and we feel like most people do, when they are on the outside of society, looking in. We're the nerds and the weirdos, we aren't the sales guys who used to play football in college and have a wonderful supportive family that we vacation with.
We're the nerds who often grew up without much support or guidance and have a hard time making friends and deep connections. That takes a toll on the mind.
Maximum_Todd@reddit
People with MBAs and inheritance force everyone to work far harder than them to help pile money. Not new problems lol
maggmaster@reddit
So when I joined my Team we had 13 engineers, we support a fairly large service and we were fine. We lost our lead but we had two other guys plus me who were solid with powershell and knew the service. Then we lost the two other guys and t was just me and new people. So we now have 9 engineers, and I am the lead and sometimes I am drowning.
SethLight@reddit
You laugh at it, but when a disaster actually strikes, and you're looking at hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars of damage it's a lot less funny.
FarJeweler9798@reddit
Never funny but here it would not still make you loose your job unless they could show that you were asked to do something (patching example) and you didn't do it but even then they would need to pay you depending how long you've been at the company from anything 1-6month of salary + any holiday days you haven't yet have time to use
SethLight@reddit
I'm sorry man, but you're assuming people are rational when they are upset. Things get especially bad when money is lost and insurance companies weasel their way out of paying and your company is out a ton of money.
I've been the scapegoat for things completely beyond my control. It's why 'CYA' is so important in IT.
I'm a system admin, I run my site. Those servers are mine and no 'asks' me to do anything. I just need to 'figure it out' and 'make it work.' And while I'm doing that it's way too easily to accidently not follow some modern new best practice and accidently create some vulnerability, that I might get slammed for 2-3 years down the raid for. Or maybe I have some server that's spitting out errors that I haven't seen in 6 months and I get dinged for that instead.
There are tons of ways things can go wrong and it be all your fault. As a sys admin I'm constantly terrified of 'hidden blades in the dark.'
And as for finding a new job? Ya maybe. Good luck finding a new job when your name is attached to a massive data breach.
FarJeweler9798@reddit
No I was more like saying what it is on our country, we did get ransomed not really anyone's fault so no we just continued work as normal, sure we increased our environment etc but no one got laid of because of it also from our US department
SethLight@reddit
Ah I see. That's one major difference. Most people in the US have 'at will' employment. Meaning your employer doesn't need a reason to fire you.
Hence the concern about being fired over something that has nothing to do with me.
FarJeweler9798@reddit
Yeah its night and day compared here
TEverettReynolds@reddit
It's easy to explain. It's poor leadership and bad management. So, the Sysadmin takes on more responsibility than they should, thinking that if they don't "save the day," they will get in trouble.
viva101@reddit
I had a stroke at work when I was employed by a FAANG corporation. I decided that the stress wasn't worth it for me, and went to work in higher ed. I'm very happy in my job now, the pay is less, but the work/life balance is great.
Commentator-X@reddit
Because American business culture and right wing ideology encourages slave labor, would prefer actual slaves but settles for shit pay, shit benefits and tight deadlines.
keitheii@reddit
There are quite a bit of incorrect statements and assumptions in this thread. I'm not sure where OP and some of the responses are getting their assumptions from but many of them are way off base.
I've been in IT for over 30 years in the US. I have never had the doom and gloom described in this thread, and there is no standard PTO / Vacation policy that applies to all of these assumed doom and groomers. Some companies have vacation and sick time, some have PTO which you use for either, some even have both. It doesn't cost $1000 to see a doctor. I think this thread is taking off with a bunch of I'll informed people and incorrect facts. I've worked for many different industries and while some employers are just bad employers, that doesn't represent the IT industry here by a long shot.
Are there people who take their role too seriously? Absolutely, and it doesn't just happen in IT, but if your job is to manage and respond to security threats, administer IT technologies, or even manage it, that's the job. You either do it, and do it well, or fail, and that's when you'll probably feel a lot of negative pressure... but that isn't just IT, that's any job.
MyNameUhSteve@reddit
I have some flexibility at my job, although after hours/weekend work is a real thing. It does happen, but not all the time.
And yeah, I don't spend 1000 dollars per doctor's visit. Maybe 100-200.
lrdmelchett@reddit
While useful insight can be found in these forums, negativity attracts negativity. Individual situations need to be evaluated individually, which is hard to remember in an echo chamber.
therealrickdalton@reddit
In my experience ownership views the IT department as an expense, so IT leadership has to prove their value (and by extension the value of the entire department) to the company by demonstrating how we’re saving the company money. Since IT is viewed as an expense, they’re provided a limited budget which leads IT manager’s to have to do more with less and handcuffs them from hiring the expertise and personnel they need. That leads to them make shitty management decisions with the IT professionals that report up to them. This manifests itself in a number of ways, but the main problem is that the lines get extremely blurry when it comes to employee roles and responsibilities. In my mind this isn’t just an IT problem but a problem facing a lot of American workers.
Management is trying to squeeze out as much as they can from every employee which means they’re asking them to perform tasks and be responsible for things they weren’t hired to do, and is outside their area of expertise. And THAT is the primary source of frustration from IT employees and American workers. Ownership is asking managers to do more with less, so instead of being able to hire another person qualified to fill a position they’re forced to use someone else already on the team or payroll. Now that person is stressed because they’re being asked to do work they weren’t hired to do, and is outside their area of expertise, and if the shit hits the fan, then they’re responsible. Instead of spending business hours focusing on the work that they were hired to do, they’re trying to juggle that with a bunch of other responsibilities that got piled onto them. It’s a recipe for overworked, stressed out, and unhappy employees.
Foosec@reddit
Im always concurned about their obsession with vendor certs
GuinansEyebrows@reddit
vendor certs exist largely because we don't have unions that enforce standardized core competencies
Stenz_W@reddit
I'm from the US and never understood this either. I feel like the obsession is mainly MSPs (managed service providers) so they can show companies their working for that they're "qualified". You can have all the certs in the world and not have a single clue how to implement and/or maintain a solution or product. They only go so far.
Ihavefourknees@reddit
My job is fantastic, but that's why I don't really ever post on here.
Bad_Idea_Hat@reddit
In America, someone higher than you, but not in your chain of command, could easily get you fired because they don't like your stupid face.
(I saw this happen. Supervisor goes on vacation. Person gets fired because some suit didn't personally like them, and supervisor wasn't there to stand up for them. Person was very competent. Bad luck I guess)
It fucking sucks. It also makes me happy that my boss thinks the world of me. Granted, my boss also keeps around a guy who actively and openly hates the company (and does a lot of questionable shit as a result). So you have to take the good with the bad.
aries1500@reddit
Because most of the jobs in the US, you are the only line of defense, you are the only solution, no one is helping you, you are not getting the support you need. So, if you want to remain employed and moving forward you have to put forth a LOT of time and energy.
zzmorg82@reddit
I always did find that odd how this industry (IT) is the main one like that. It doesn’t help that you’re expected, and are expected to know everything tech related, or at the very least become a SME on whatever ends up on your desk by the end of the business day.
At least it’s “somewhat” better if you’re working in a good team at a bigger company. Us IT folks working for SMBs get the short end of the stick.
GuinansEyebrows@reddit
"Salary Exempt" (no overtime pay, expectation of high-availability) and no right to disconnect outside of standard work hours basically means many of us are on-call 24/7, especially at smaller shops/teams that lack on-call rotation.
vondur@reddit
You are only seeing a small subset of IT workers on this forum.
myutnybrtve@reddit
The average non-technical person uses all of this tech everyday and depends pretty deeply on it in many ways. It fails sometimes but for the most part can be relied on. It viewed as a strong black box that their jobs and livlyhood rest on. Sysadmins are much closer to seeing the fragility of these systems. In a lot of ways it's surprising that some much has worked so well for so long. That knowledge can be stressful. And mathematically, half of everyone is below average stupid. That's hard to deal with as well.
d00ber@reddit
I've worked in a few countries including the US and it's just the way American corporate culture is. It's not limited to IT, it's just a very toxic environment. It's pretty normal to be worked (especially early career) for 40+ hour weeks salaries (no overtime or additional compensation) and honestly, I've worked 12 hour days Monday to Friday in a US job. The salary is often static for the year, so the more hours you work, the less the pay seems but the salaries are often much higher than in other countries. It's not like this all over the US, and the places where it is like this, the cost of living is pretty insane, but you can find really cheap accommodations if you're willing to take a step down in lifestyle to make a ton of money, though in these area you will never afford a house even in a 300,000$ a year salary, but if you move back to wherever you're from like I did.
One of the reasons that I left where I was living was massive layoffs were happening everywhere around me and hit me. I went from getting constant recruiting calls daily to nothing, and positions that were hiring started offering 1/2 the salary that they offered before and at that rate, I might as well stop living in bad situations and get cheaper rent for better accommodations where I'm from and make the same money. Anyway, the market seems pretty volatile over there. I left after 10 years experience living in the US.
My_Big_Black_Hawk@reddit
Hot take: I’ve worked with several international IT team members and something is just…different about them. They don’t have the same drive and passion to be innovative, implement new technologies, evolve, etc. If a manual or google can’t answer the question, then the answer doesn’t exist. Same can be said for IT in America, but generally we hustle because we know we HAVE to.
Beautiful-Check-778@reddit
American companies usually build products used by millions. European companies build products used by thousands, if at all.
iwoketoanightmare@reddit
Overworked and understaffed.
For instance, I already have a full workload, and in the coming weeks I also have a govt IT compliance audit to complete, and some asshole decided they wanted to schedule a DR exercise right afterward at 7am - 8pm on a Saturday - Sunday. Then im on 24/7 oncall the following week "because it's my turn" again.
There are only 3 people on my team when there used to be 7. Four left through attrition due to this bullshit and we really don't see management attempting to backfill. The two other guys can retire if they really wanted to.
It's a bad situation all around. So fucking burned out so they can save a few bucks in headcount.
xpxp2002@reddit
Bingo. This isn't much different than where I work, where I worked before my current role, and pretty much the story I hear from everyone I know in this field.
The people acting like this is a rare situation are very lucky or burying their heads in the sand. It's practically ubiquitous.
Diarrhetos@reddit
Objectively false. Americans are paid more than any other nation. That's why there's so much incentive to outsource to countries like yours.
We are working under an extremely demanding and unforgiving economy and culture. It really seems like no one cares about anyone anymore and the overwhelming majority of interactions anywhere are comprised of either apathy or manipulation and maneuvering. Virtually all social structures and support systems have collapsed. Almost everything that can be sold is more expensive than ever. Even making more money than all of you we have been wrung dry. Trump sold this country to big business and finished what Reagan started and we are feeling it. We are not having a good time. It was unfathomable to me 10 years ago that one person could damage a society this much.
Also at some point in the last 20 years global cyber crime absolutely exploded and sysadmin went from a 9-5 job to a round-the-clock emergency response position without government benefits.
xpxp2002@reddit
This is the big one I've noticed since I started 23 years ago. IT used to be a 9-5 job like any other white collar job. You worked in the office along side your corporate accounting and finance teams, your marketing department, etc. And when the clock hit 5, everybody went home and stopped worrying about work until the next business day. It was rare, maybe once a year that something was going on that actually required you to work overnight. Now I have to do it at least once a month on top of my regular daytime M-F.
Now, you've got other employees choosing to work all hours of the day and night and business leaders want email, internal apps/VPN, and other technology up 24/7. You have customers who expect your public facing website/apps to be available 24/7. And while these might be reasonable expectations in today's world, IT roles haven't been adjusted to compensate for the change in expectations and availability. You've got upgrades that the business will only tolerate at nights and on weekends, so there goes half your weekend and at least several days to get back onto a healthy sleep schedule. On call duties that interrupt or outright prevent you from living your life or enjoying your limited free time because you have to be within 10 minutes of being able to get online at any time of day from any location. Forget going on a weekend trip because you might have to pull over and lose 2 hours of planned driving time to troubleshoot some stupid problem that probably could have and should have just waited until Monday anyway.
Doctors and nurses who are on call get paid just for being on call, and usually paid even more when they are paged. Manufacturing workers generally get real overtime pay for every hour past 40 and higher pay for nights, weekends, and holidays worked. IT workers in the US, broadly speaking, get all of those responsibilities with none of that compensation.
The role and expectations of the IT worker have dramatically changed in the past two decades. But outside of a few unicorn companies, compensation for time worked and respect for work-life balance has declined substantially.
223454@reddit
One big reason I see for "no one cares" in IT is lack of promotion and raises, so you need to change jobs (Also, being fired, outsourced, laid off, etc.). Then all that work you did means nothing. After doing that a few times you just kind of stop caring and do the minimum to get the pay check so you can move on to the next job in a few years. There's not much incentive to stay and "care" anymore. On top of that is the micromanagement. I don't know if it's a generational thing or not, but the worst micromanagers I've had have been boomers. My parents are boomers and have always had serious control issues (in their personal lives).
Darkace911@reddit
Cybersecurity is a huge part of the job these days, you are patching every week now. Ransomware and Bank Wire Fraud attempts are an everyday thing in most bigger environments.
sweeeeeezy@reddit
I started working for a UK based company and will say it is night and day from a lot of US groups I worked for. My current job gets mad at me if I work too much. I worked for an MSP for 9 months and it was the worst choice I have ever made. The US (generally) wants high input low paying workers. I do think people complain more than they should, but the US has a bit of a labor problem.
hotfistdotcom@reddit
A lot of the bunker mentality just comes from the work environment. Never enough money and getting tugged in both directions - save money, do a perfect job, no that costs to much but we NEED it to work that way anyhow for free, etc. Yes you work 40 hours but you are always on call and need to always answer, or you will not have a job.
This is working in the US pretty generally, too. a lot of skilled labor is spread really thin. Folks I know in engineering, electrical mfg are also experiencing this same kind of work environment.
I feel like being a sysadmin in another country would be super good for my mental health, but don't know where to start.
ispoiler@reddit
Because the work culture in the US kinda sucks.
RCTID1975@reddit
I think as a whole, workers in general, not just IT, are more disillusioned in the US.
We have far less protections, and so much more rides on employment. Ie Healthcare.
It's also important to note that there is a disproportionate number of US based people here, so any complaints are going to appear in higher number.
itguy9013@reddit
I live in Canada, but the company I worked for at the time got bought out in 2014 and was based in Chicago. For the most part, very nice, competent folks who I enjoyed working with.
But I will say the idea of work-life balance was foreign to many of them. Where I live we have a total of 11 paid holidays (which is actually low for Canada) and my supervisor in Chicago remarked it was too many.
Many of them would work 50-60 hours a week with no overtime or comp time. Some of them viewed taking time off for things outside work ti show a lack of commitment to the company. Looking back, it was a pretty toxic environment from that perspective.
That being said, I enjoyed my time there. It was overall a good experience, but the culture is definitely different.
Wild__Card__Bitches@reddit
Happy people don't go online and complain about the job. For every one of those stories you read online there are 100 other people just enjoying life.
CeC-P@reddit
Because every dumbass CEO in the USA thinks they can get "just as good" service from an IT solutions provider or overseas. They are wrong. But that doesn't stop them from firing us all.
evantom34@reddit
Workers protections are significantly less as compared to some EU counterparts. COL and consumerism is extremely high. USA has an entrenched "live to work" mentality, which is unfortunate.
I think there are have been some changes to maintain a healthy WLB, but that's definitely not in every company.
ReaperofFish@reddit
I am currently involved in a QA/QC project instead of Admin work. We are converting an old mainframe application to C#. It is going about as well as you might expect. But my role is to just document bugs, so I do my work in my 8 hours then sign out for the day. I don't worry about the bigger ramifications because I am not paid to worry about that. Even if the project fails, that is not on me, so whatever. I still get paid.
People need to remember that after you have made your warnings to upper management, just let them do whatever.
Emergency_Wolf_5764@reddit
To the OP:
There is an over-saturation of IT workers in the United States, especially as more corporate IT infrastructure has been increasingly migrated to the cloud, and no one wants to lose their job.
glueall215@reddit
Most of us don’t have contracts. At will work culture.
DarthJarJar242@reddit
Fixed it for yah.
In all honesty this is a problem across the board in America. My theory is that it's largely due to the absolute insecurity people feel in their jobs. Since most employers in the US don't make much of an effort to make us feel valued or particularly at ease about our job security. We compensate by making ourselves feel important by overblowing our issues so that when we solve them we feel valued.
Anxiety_As_A_Service@reddit
It’s the American culture. Teach people to hate their jobs, their customers, etc and they’ll ignore that they can’t afford to buy food not loaded with great value chemicals.
justofit@reddit
as an american IT worker this is obviously a psyop so I will let my guard down and you can steal all of my employer's gold dubloons. /s
Smooth_Plate_9234@reddit
I think is part of the American corporate work culture in general.
GinormousHippo458@reddit
Because working in IT, is often a passion. But you're working under the realm of sociopathic C-Suite pencil pushers. They will cut you loose in one heartbeat if they think they can ditch the overpaid nerd for a white box MSP or overseas outsource firm. Often they will willfully endure pain and inefficiency of it satisfies some MBA consultant's direction.
Apply your time and life passions appropriately fellow traveler.
tristanIT@reddit
All of that work/life balance is possible and very available in the U.S. too. I think you are onto something pointing out the U.S. corporate culture. Online recounts are by nature going to be mostly negative. People just don't feel the need to tell everybody when things are going well. The industry is definitely getting more competitive and older IT workers are especially feeling squeezed out in this country. I personally am not worried. This country is going to remain a service economy for the remainder of my lifetime, and there's always a new resumé tweak that can be done to draw eyes to yours.
FiredFox@reddit
An uncomfortable topic that needs to be addressed is that one of the 'dirty little secrets' of the American IT industry is that a large proportion of Sys Admins have little to no formal college or university education in the trade and got into the business by 'being good at computers' and eventually working their way up.
I can say this because this applies to myself and a good chunk of the many dozens of Admins I've worked with over the last 20+ years.
Because the bar of entry can be very low for a an entry level generalist IT position, a couple of things end up happening:
The first point is somewhat true, since again, hiring a Level 1-2 Help Desk guy can literally be done by giving a kid who is 'good at computers' a shot
The second point is due to the fact that in the US, IT in general is one of the last meritocracies where actually applying what you know is usually more important than having a piece of paper that says you know it, but this also means that IT pros needs to continuously prove their worth to every new generation of managers and heavily rely on word of mouth to get that next career-building job outside of their current employment.
The last point is mostly due to the prevalent trend to mix IT and Facilities in American industries outside of the Fortune 1000, which leads to the 'Sys Admin' being tasked with dealing with everything from the Firewall to the Coffee Maker.
Ssakaa@reddit
You know, waiters/waitresses, baertenders, and the like are all in "customer service" roles. They despise the vast majority of customers. The only difference there that keeps the BS and smiles flowing is, in the US, those people have to keep up the song and dance, or they don't make tips. Their pay is directly influenced by whether the customer is happy. Look at any service/support role, and you'll find the vast majority hate a decent subset of their customers. There's just a large enough subset of customers that are loud, obnoxious, pricks with a huge sense of entitlement and no sense of reality that it sours the whole role for everyone else. I'd hazard about 80% of their customers come and go and don't leave a mark either way, the door opens, they exist, they get what they need, say thanks, and back out the door to non-existence they go. A few percent are the fuel for r/iiiiiiitttttttttttt and r/talesfromtechsupport or the other industry equivalent "customers suck" echo chambers. And then the rest are the folks that get to hang out and hear all the crazy stories about those in person, and commiserate over "humans suck".
ImaginationFlashy290@reddit
Wish I had an answer for you..compared to the jobs I had in my college days - being a sysadmin is not very stressful or dramatic comparably.
Sure, some days suck - that is how life goes. But I've had higher pressure jobs/bad bosses/bad clients/etc. before, and working IT has been nowhere near as chaotic.
Most of the time it is pretty chill, if you are decent at the job and have people skills, you will be able to think/communicate your way out and fix critical issues that pop up.
zer04ll@reddit
might be the quarter of a million IT job alone in the past 2 years that have been terminated
Gaunerking@reddit
LOL.
Other first world countries have something called employee protection. And therefore even major fuck ups, downtimes and security breaches won’t lead to immediate termination (especially in Germany, which is a big grp on Reddit).
It s not self induced paranoia. It’s systematic pressure by design of unregulated job market.
Nonservium@reddit
Well from 28 years of it: If it works, its your fault. It it's broken, its your fault. Plugs into a wall? Has nothing to do with IT? It's your responsibility for "reasons". Rinse & repeat at every different place of employment. I've been screamed at for shit like not being able to fix a 30 year old typewriter to not being able to salvage my VP's wife's pictures on her precious 10 years old piece of shit laptop.
LOL @ work life balance in the US.
SupportWorkersAtWork@reddit
TLDR. IT is what you make of it.
Few_Tart_7348@reddit
It could stem from the customer centered work methodologies. Get things done fast, sort it out later. Fairly common for users to cc everyone under the sun to get leverage. Meanwhile, companies outside North America usually have layers of procedures that prevents that. Either ISO or other known standard. That's implemented to make them stand out as a reliable or reputable company.
captainstormy@reddit
That is all very possible here. I work 40 hours a week. Meaning I'm at my work PC at home 40 hours per week. I probably work 20 of those and have meetings for 10 more and goof around the rest.
I can't remember the last time I worked a weekend or got called after hours.
Largely it's upper management that has no actual concept of IT, or how things work.
For example I work in IT for an apparel company. We sell clothes and footwear. Nothing crazy, nothing of national security level importance.
That said, A few weeks ago upper management wanted to know what our plan was if AWS vanished from the face of the earth overnight. My boss was foolish enough to choose me to go to that meeting with him. I damn near got fired when I told our company president that it was a ridiculous question. That if something so huge happened that AWS was gone overnight never to be to recovered than our world as a whole is over.
icansmellcolors@reddit
Because we are seen, described, and treated as digital janitors. The people who approve budgets don't know anything about computers, but they think they do, which is worse than just being ignorant. So we are always behind the 8-ball.
Because Congress and the government are full of old people who never touched a computer until after they were 50 years old and they make the laws and regulations about the infrastructure in this country and do so from a completely ignorant position.
Because normies don't understand that software and hardware work how it's designed, and not how every low-level manager thinks it should work... and you know how people are... they have to take it out on someone, so since it's a computer that's giving them problems, naturally it has to be the IT guy's fault that it doesn't work how they think it should work.
We are constantly blamed, chastised, and outsourced.
Work/Life balance? lol... what is this guy smoking? I'm expected to answer every call, not miss any emails, and anytime anything goes wrong it's on me to fix it... regardless of the fact that they've been warned about this issue for years.
Try working an IT sysadmin job in this country and NOT be a psychopath after a couple years.
n3rv@reddit
A lot of times IT is not seen as an asset they’re seen as the maintenance workers of technology
mikew1008@reddit
overworked, underpaid, unappreciated. I do enjoy my job, but even at my job, working for government and with a great team, I feel this way at least weekly
Ssakaa@reddit
While that's a little exaggerated, companies in the US, big to tiny, like 3 person medical practice/doctor's office tiny, are constantly targetted for, at the least, things like ransomware. There's a lot of collaborative work that goes on, and a lot of those tiny practices are VPNed into the nearest big hospital network, but not under that hospital's IT. Pop them, and you maybe get a foot in the door for a million dollar ransom prize... and you're not even getting a single full time IT person in that business.
If your business does any work with internal data for just about any federal government agency (even 'mundane' sounding ones, and this includes academic research, and even research tasked to a bunch of foreign students), all of that is getting more strict. In a previous role, I read NIST 800-171 not because I'm crazy and just like reading such things (maybe a little), but because my name was on the "personal legal liability" list for multiple things. Had I blown off security and caused an incident, I would have been held personally liable for it.
There's a balance to be struck, with security, but it's not a "back burner" topic. A big part of the noisy side of it, though, is the asinine push in the academia side to flood the market with "entry level" cybersecurity people that have zero experience with business needs or meaningful technology experience. All they have is a cursory "this is what a risk is" and "this is a list of major, world ending, events caused by people neglecting security". The result of that is a whole pile of chicken littles that can't read a vulnerability scan and actually understand that the "vulnerable" libraries. with a privilege escalation vuln, they're seeing are in a root-only section of storage with the rest of the container image layers, and are superceded by higher layers any time that container is used. And youth and exuberance are noisy... so they come along ranting that their organization doesn't take security seriously, and doesn't listen to them when they cry wolf every 30 seconds. It's a mess.
Unfair_Audience5743@reddit
To me, there is a scope issue with IT departments in the US.
I have only really been in the SysAdmin role for about 2 years, mostly helpdesk before that. However, I can see that in many instances anything that literally plugs into the wall or could connect to the internet is an IT problem. This leads to instances of being blindsided by tech people purchased with no oversite, being asked to consult on plans that are way out of your scope of knowledge/work, and having to worry about whatever management decides to do with their own uninformed ideas. Sometimes the department is 1-2 people for a couple hundred employees, you can't honestly expect those people to be SysAdmins, Consultants, Network Engineers, Database Admins and IT Directors all without getting paid enough for it.
Also worth noting, vacations in America are god Awful. Definitely need more vacation time for a job like this, but that is an American problem in general.
Conundrum129@reddit
From what I see, the issue is two-fold:
Companies that have run up a lot of tech debt and the sys admins being forced to keep systems going that should have been dead 5-10 years prior. This is a direct result of issue 2.
Older members of management don't see IT in general as the specialists we are. They tend to see that if we don't look busy we aren't doing anything and that IT is a bunch of glorified box movers and a cost center to be cut. They don't see the actual value that IT brings in with efficency and time saved on tasks.
Because of these we get stuck in a loop of fixing out of date technology while at the same time having the axe of outsourcing to an MSP hanging over our heads which just creates a never ending circle of stress and FUD.
AlonzoSchmegma@reddit
Tired of being wage slaves and being treated like indentured servants
netrixtardis@reddit
American culture has shifted to basically be abusive to it's workers. In some industries, the abuse is the norm. We hear about chefs'/sous-chefs and the lunacy in a kitchen of a high end restaurents/popular restaurants. We hear about the abuse in call centers to meet metrics. We hear about the factories pushing it's workers to work faster. Well, now it's the IT field - we are pressured from all levels of management, and the (l)users. American culture has turned us all into modern slaves.
Cheomesh@reddit
There's too much to do and too much to know to take it slow. Upskill or get left behind. Even if my organization doesn't use Tool XYZ, what if I job hop in six months into a company that does?
Crazy-Scarcity8977@reddit
IT attracts people with personality disorders in the US. Usually power hungry egotistical morons, and it doesn't help they are always promoted to management. That's why if you're not, people LOVE you and will intentionally subvert ticketing systems just to get you because all they have ever known are dickhead IT people.
Physical_Second8915@reddit
I work at a big multinational and its almost always Americans acting in an antisocial manner. I find them as often in management as in the field (tech folks). Though I understand having to dance like a monkey to not lose your job can lead to frustration over time.
It all clicked for me when I found this subreddit some years ago. Even found a colleague here when he accidentally outed his reddit account on the company slack. Le epic bastard operator from hell is so overplayed...
FreefallGeek@reddit
I've been the guy you describe for almost 20 years. The problems roll to me, stop there, and pile up. Sometimes visibly as I tend to be the blocker resolver, so Im frequently shelving my improvements and my projects to help with the problem of the day. The scope of my responsibilities, due to "other duties as required", is almost infinite. The number and variety of systems im responsible for only slightly smaller. After working a full day I may very well work a full night if an alarm goes off. If Crowdstrike decides to fuck a config file, maybe work 36 hours straight. I've realized there's no help coming. Every executive brings fresh pain. No frequent vacations because every team in every organization gets pared to the smallest possible skeleton crew and the work doesn't stop piling up when I'm not here to deal with it. Anxious and overworked, I hit burnout so long ago that Im clearly an underground coal vein. I fail open and just carry on. I will keep treading water until the sharks come to take me.
motorik@reddit
It's not just IT. We're currently taking a (rare) vacation in Canada and a big plus is getting away from the 24/7 gladiatorial cage-match to see who can deep-throat the ruling class the best. We rented a car to drive from Montreal to Quebec, so nice to get away from the 6-ton armored troop-transports festooned with Punisher skulls and 'fuck your feelings' stickers.
THEoMADoPROPHET@reddit
Interesting observation! I've noticed a similar trend where American sysadmins seem to focus more on work-life balance and personal development. Maybe it's due to the higher demand for skilled IT professionals here, which encourages better working conditions and perks?
sluzi26@reddit
Because the role is demanding and work / life balance in the US, generally, is already significantly worse than our European counterparts.
I’ve lived both sides of the coin. It was demonstrably worse working in the US than where I am now in Europe.
Having meaningful worker protections and 5-6 weeks of vacation time alone is a massive differentiation.
cashMoney5150@reddit
Think of the sample you’re getting from reddit. It’s biased towards non-lurkers. Those that feed off drama and victimization. The lurkers here just lol on their own and won’t post anything ‘cause things are fine and they don’t need validation from some forum post.
Ihaveasmallwang@reddit
It seems like a large percentage of people in this sub aren't actually sysadmins and are instead help desk and so get very frustrated with users who think that everything is an emergency.
There is also the simple fact that a lot of the time, people only talk if they have problems. People who have good experiences rarely say anything, statistically speaking.
I have none of the negative things you mentioned in your post. Those jobs do exist. I'm also not 20 fresh out of college and have a lot of experience so I don't try to overcomplicate things.
jimlahey420@reddit
That's kinda most careers in the US right now. You pay all this money to go to school and then get out and even making 6 figures doesn't really cut it anymore. Wages have been flat for middle class workers for 20+ years now. Changing jobs and thrusting yourself into uncertainty at a new place in a new network with new people is jarring and not what most people would prefer. Upward mobility is hard to find without changing jobs and that just leads to constant discomfort and chasing $ at the expense of mental health and work/life balance in alot of cases. Gone are the days where most people can dedicate themselves to a single place of employment for most of their career and know they will be taken care of with promotions and more pay/recognition.
PC509@reddit
For me personally, yea it can get pretty stressful and some things can get major. Maybe 1-2% of the time. Those are the posts you'll see. The other 98% of the time is smooth sailing, configs, documentation, training, whatever. 8am-4:30pm, no overtime unless it's an emergency or a preplanned afterhours change. I'm not really going to make a post about "Dang, guys. Just sitting here chillin', drinking a Coke, doing some labbing with Sailpoint and some training. Getting kind of bored, what kind of music would you recommend to help push through?" (although that sounds like a good post... I do like some good music recommendations!).
We post about the big things, not the little things, and that doesn't seem to be location specific, either. MSP's are probably the exception due to their nature, but most other IT people I know are very lax and just have a normal routine with very little doom and gloom. It's just those few stressful "Oh shit" moments are the ones we remember and talk about. And, a big reason we're paid what we are. We can handle the emergencies with as little downtime as possible.
But, I can see where you're coming from. But, it's also without a lot of real knowledge, just online stories. Reading the stories here is like a compilation of short stories of IT horror. Same with the hacking Hollywood movies. They're showing you the exciting parts, not the hours and hours and days and days of boredom with just the normal routine duties where the highlight of the day was decomming the last Server 2012 machine in your environment.
idiopathicpain@reddit
On edge? I'm not on edge.
Don't look at my post history.
And ignore that Ted Kaczynski manifesto on my desk.
0RGASMIK@reddit
It’s the US. Not all companies are pressured by the large investors but a majority are even if they don’t have investors.
I have worked many different jobs wearing many different hats sometimes working exclusively with executives.
The goal of modern capitalism is to increase profits at all costs. They might have less toxic periods of growth but will eventually be forced to enter into a toxic overworked period of reduction.
It comes down to growth curves and expectations set by investors. Investors want exponential returns and the only way to do that is to keep internal growth linear but most companies don’t take the time to figure out how to do that properly. What they should be doing is minimizing busy work through automation instead what they do is grow in spurts. They hire a bunch of people, grow, then fire a bunch of people and see where the dust settles. What that leaves you with is a group of overworked people who suddenly have the work of 2-3 people.
IT is seen as a cost center by most so we typically face the brunt of this. It’s one of the reasons there are so many tools to automate our workload.
This_guy_works@reddit
We're in a world now where businesses need to run 100% during business hours and end users cannot handle any downtime. A lot of sysadmin work requires the occasional downtime, and that makes it stressful. Plus we typically wear a lot of hats. I know I am dealing with networking, phones, faxes, scanning, desktop support, backups, workflow, printers, vendors, budgets, security, servers, updates, emails, etc. - Need to basically run a full IT support envrionment with just a couple of people.
The Sys Admin jobs I know and have worked aren't seperated either. There's no clearly defined role and things we don't do. We're expected to know and touch everything from level 1 to level 3 support, and coordinate projects and work with company leaders. It's fun a lot of times, but there's also a lot of pressure to be "world class" and not screw up, and expectations that we know everything when fit hits the shan. That's what makes it stressful.
Also with larger companies such as hospitals on-call support is a nightmare, becuase there are people working at all hours and they call for the worst issues. Nothing beats having a call at 3AM that a printer in the ER isn't working and you have to trek 40 minutes away in the dark winter morning to swap out a giant printer with a giant printer that is stored on the other side of the building and set it up temporarily becuase the printer company doesnt' start support until 8AM. (Then you have some entitled doctor looking at the printer and wanting double-sided and color options set up because it doesn't look like what she's used to and she can't be bothered to manually select the options when printing for a couple hours).
Intravix@reddit
American IT workers are still Americans.
bwax687@reddit
New to working in IT (but not new to working with computers) and I've noticed this myself.
MasterIntegrator@reddit
Because of how IT is viewed, instructed and measured as a cost center not a value multiplier. Not just a US thing but our privacy and data laws almost do not exist and when they do the penalties are “cost of doing business”
So you have this friction between the SME and the “decision makers” that force “solutions” ignoring requirements and it makes this bitter that have to hold the bag…clean up the mess…while decision maker gets an eye watering bonus.
“Its IT just numbers and shit right? Clairvoyance and magic! Also cheap!”
DocDerry@reddit
Most US States don't have the worker protections that our European colleagues have. IT isn't viewed as a value add but more as a necessary/evil expense. So when cuts come - IT is usually one of the first hit.
Catmilk-HorseyFace@reddit
All the while management has unrealistic expectations of IT workers in general, while not allocating sufficient resources and personnel, and threatening consequences for failure to meet those expectations. That and companies that had been good to work for now find ways to get rid of experienced workers who have been there years, to avoid paying retirement benefits. That results in a workforce less capable all around.
wickedang3l@reddit
Work culture in the United States has never been great but it has dramatically worsened over the 40~50 years by the broader prevailing expectations of shareholders and the endless propagation of vacuous truisms that sound good in abstraction but do not address the problems that modern workplace policies create.
"Lean IT", "doing more with less", and more recently "extreme ownership" are all excuses to do one thing; reduce staffing overhead to boost short-term profit margins regardless of long-term harm, pitting remaining employees against each other to compete for a shrinking pool of resources.
When I started in IT, it was not uncommon to see graybeards that had literally specialized in a niche for the back half of their careers. Perhaps they had focused on directory services like Novell and transitioned to Active Directory. Others had specialized in network administration, security, or some other subject domain. There was stress, of course, but the expectations they faced compared to now are just night and day.
Now? In addition to my overt role in systems engineering, I am also expected to be a software engineer, automation engineer, project manager, public speaker, technical writer, mentor, hiring manager, and assistant manager. The sum total of hours saved by my automation accomplishes more in a month than the entire orgs of my first couple of roles could have accomplished in a year.
Routinely, objectively demonstrate analytics that save the firm millions of dollars in licensing / productivity costs and you'll still be lucky to see a ~5% salary bump.
websterhamster@reddit
Funny thing: MSPs have been used as vectors to attack government agencies. This isn't as implausible as you think, depending on who the MSP's clients are.
tristand666@reddit
I would say it is the result of so many employers lack of the concept of downtime, work/life balance, and employee's future health/longevity.
OkOutside4975@reddit
You move up you get depended on more. The situation is not unique to just information technology.
A good portion of IT is more than what you will find in a book. Some people stick to the easy stuff and others feel a calling to resolve what other's cannot. No magic, no force, just straight will try try & expect failure. Some issues are challenging and buried into layers of configuration within a house of cards.
If you can take your house of cards completely apart and put it back together again, then have someone smack your house randomly with their hand. You'll feel the pressure arrive quickly.
There are many friends of mine who got themselves out of the support trenches into other less stressful places. They still excelled.
Lastly, people are always going to reject what they do not understand more than accept it. You'll find the higher you go the less people you have to talk to from a point of understanding to experiences. The silence isn't awful, it just means you did your job right (no tickets).
ilkhan2016@reddit
I basically forget about my job at 4pm every day and haven't worked a weekend since starting.
Theres a big difference between IT when you make a product and IT when IT IS the product, and the largest XaaS companies are US based.
immortalsteve@reddit
That is most jobs in the US due to our kind of a shitshow of employment practices and less about the actual work you're doing.
bobmlord1@reddit
I work in a small library of only 200 people. We had an 'incident' before I was officially the sysadmin that resulted in our entire network being encrypted by ransomware. Per the discovery from external agencies most of the stuff happened automatically and it wasn't until our network had been actually compromised did a live person come in to do lateral movement.
Tools have only become more sophisticated since then and 8+ severity critical security vulnerabilities that can be triggered on unpatched systems are being reported on what feels like a monthly basis.
I have 1 externally exposed server that has everything blocked except what is absolutely necessary for the features of the server to work (it hosts a single page website) and multiple layers of security monitoring on said server. I get malicious connections blocked on said server on a nearly hourly basis.
lost_signal@reddit
They also seem to be a lot more "serious" and take on a ridiculous level of concern about cybersecurity or business continuity/disaster recovery over many other more pressing issues in their environments and worry about implausibly asinine threats/scenarios as if they're all working for the NSA and their little unheard-of MSP/SME needs to have military-grade security to stop nation state-backed cyberattacks and earthquake/flood/bomb-proof server racks.
Hi, I work in technical marketing for a company that has a ransomware protection product, and previously was a sysadmin and worked for a MSP...
99% of ransomware attacks fall apart if you do really boring things like don't join your management plane/hosts to the same Active Directory as "Bob" in marketing.
While nation state targets still do need to do additional hardening, drive by attacks from ransomware as a service (RaaS) are hitting the mom and pops and mid sized enterprises hard. A lot of them are discovering their data domain that time forgot is going to take 4 weeks to restore all their data. I spoke with one customers who had a heart attack 30 hours into the recovery process and tried to quiet. (Not making this up, was sobering), so I can kinda respect why people have an almost PTSD level response to preventing it. I agree with you there's a lot of overly enthusiastic kids who got an associates in cyber security and have a Security+ and want to lecture everyone why they need to disable LLDP, and 2FA the office microwave, but ransomware and crypto have made attacks viable against smaller customers than before and a lot more common. The over enthusiasm for DR preparedness is driven partly by vendor FUD/marketing but also having survived 3 tropical storm/hurricane eyeball strikes, and remotely recovered DR services for people hit by Sandy I kinda respect a good well tested DR plan.
What is it that drives this bunker/siege mentality
It's a blend of:
People in bad small businesses and MSPs often blame IT (wrongly) when the company isn't prepared for 7 sigma events, that, yes the cost to protect insure didn't make sense.
IT people often have VERY little finance/accounting experience and are unable to process why spending 4 million dollars for a pair of VSPs in GAD running a FT cluster on top of a stretched cluster, or a 4 way redundant Z Series isn't a good use of capital. You need to learn some accounting/finance (Net Present Value of money!) to justify investments. I had a conference talk where we actually tried to do some "how to speak enough accounting to get your project approved" last week (in the context of storage purchasing).
The lack of labor protection laws?
I rarely see it in later career professionals, so I think it's a blend of youthful exuberance and culture. It tends to simmer down after you've been through enough "Fire, Flood and Blood". Also the worker protections here are all over the place. Larger companies have fairly generous severance policies (I think I'm owed about 6 weeks + COBRA if I get told to scram), and I see it the same in large and small companies.
4. Where I live, it's possible to work in IT and not go insane. It's possible to have a job that you can leave at 5PM and forget about every single day.
The counterpoint is I did MSP work for countries that ran IT this way and they offshored entire segments of IT to places that would work after hours, and carry call pagers. We also had far higher salaries, where SREs can make $200-300K here, the "more chill country" was paying 1/2 to a 1/3 that. Was I jealous of my Swedish peers who just "Stoped working" at 32 hours 3 days into the week? Sure. One positive to working 60+ hour weeks, with weekend and after hour projects and call in my younger 20's, was I "got 20 years of experience in 5 years". Early career consulting exposed me to lifetimes of different storage arrays, configurations, and unique environments. In general I've seen better promotions and upward mobility in the US offices vs. the overseas offices of places I worked and consulted at, and I suspect it may partly have been driven by the ability to just "learn more" because of the admittedly sometimes bad work/life balance.
The competitive nature of the industry/higher population?
Only entry level IT is highly competitive. The more señor your get the harder it is to recruit anyone talented. with anything that isn't giant piles of TC.
The lower wages?
I consistently see US sysadmins, SREs, Architects etc with far more take home total compensation than the EU. Curious why you think the US has lower pay? The people complaining on here tend to be extreme outliers, go look on levels.fyi or something to get a better picture of salaries.
redyellowblue5031@reddit
You spend too much time consuming algorithmically fed content.
At the very least, you're not seeing/seeking the perspectives from the millions of people in IT who are [mostly] satisfied with their jobs and aren't at the end of their ropes. This sub has for some time been a sort of support group for people and that's ok. It's ok to be stressed and reach out.
There are still more technical discussions and it's easy to find browsing the sub directly as opposed to what's fed via Reddit's algorithm. Like any other platform it's designed for engagement and a post about drama (like this one) simply gets more engagement than a technical discussion that might only have a few comments and upvotes.
The other thing to consider is that US companies are simply more likely to be targets of things like Ransomware. Understandably, that places stress on the people who manage those networks.
shouldreadcomics@reddit
"At will employment" is a hell of a thing.
Senior-Dimension2332@reddit
As someone that has transplanted from a completely different line of work into IT in the US it seems insane to me as well. Sure, things need to be secure but some people seem to take this line of thought home as well. Some people seem to think their own HOME needs an air gap, apps that never connect to the internet, Iphones are bad (but somehow Macbooks are fantastic) and if you aren't changing your password for every account you own on a bi-weekly based on some sort of cipher you've made then you're going to have major issues. Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying what I'm doing. I am just a little confused about the exaggerated perceived impending threat that is coming for us all.
ToughHardware@reddit
hello, welcome to the internet. glad you joined us. be warned, most things are fake
GullibleDetective@reddit
Like others said, the comfy ones won't be the ones yelling. This can be a sounding board
Additionally... the seeming lack of OT for salary employees unlike what many of us in Canada get.
robotbeatrally@reddit
For me it's just the money. I think most of us are underpaid. A lot of my friends that are PM's or engineers or whatever else are making as much as 2-3x more than me. They are dealing with the same kinds of problems and coming up with the same knids of solutions...working in the same environments with the same amount of experience or schooling (often less). its kind of a bummer
homesnatch@reddit
Definitely a level of selection bias and negativity bias... The posts on this board are not a representative sample of the full population of sysadmins.
MrSanford@reddit
It's not just sysadmins, it's most working people in America.
AccurateBandicoot494@reddit
It's because the current state of IT work in the US is legitimately pretty bleak.
Karfedix_of_Pain@reddit
I don't want to sound too political... But the capitalist hellscape we've built here in the US kind of sucks.
I guess I'm not sure where you're posting from. But some other countries have better worker protection. They've got guaranteed paid time off, parental leave, unions, or something of the sort. Here in the US we're largely on our own, individually. Labor is very weak. Actually being able to take time off when you're sick is considered a "benefit".
IT, specifically, can be very competitive and cut-throat. It's not unusual to see IT departments that are seriously understaffed or underfunded. It's not unusual for 60+ hour work weeks to be considered "normal". It's not unusual to see folks putting in lots of overtime, late nights, weekends, on-call, whatever - all without compensation. And this isn't typically done because we love our job... It's because if we don't do it they'll find somebody who will.
Same_Bat_Channel@reddit
Business executives demand zero down time and are unwilling to pay for it, so like teachers in the US who are just trying to do their best with no resources, sysadmins do the most they can with the resources they have. Executives have drank the "toyota way" coolade in MBA school.
At the end of the day, sysadmins and it leadership just don't want to be the reason the business goes down for even a few hours resulting in outsourcing or in the case of MSP, lost revenue by customers switching.
IT is already blamed by many Frontline workers as a barrier to getting their work done, truthfully or not. Executives see this as needing to tighten their grip on tech.
Executives will make irrational decisions thinking IT is the problem when in reality its the culture that surrounds ITs place in the business is rotten and the CIO doesn't have the influence that's needed.
Fallingdamage@reddit
Im burned out and stretched thin.
Its not my job, its the quantity of work that's expected of me and the amount of bullshit hoops I have to jump through constantly.
I work in healthcare IT, and the amount of red tape you have to navigate and the number of compliance-related tasks you have to perform is overwhelming. 'Consultants' (spreadsheet warriors) will come in every 12 months and do risk analysis for insurance companies and it doesn't matter how good you do your job, they will find anything that justifies the need to continue those audits, put all their findings on your to correct and make your managers feel like you're slipping. You spend all your time chasing ghosts and standing up faux security and paperwork to keep them happy and then when you need to actually do needful work or upgrades, you get told there isnt any budget to do that.
The last auditors that came in just delivered their report. In a meeting with the COO and Administrator and myself.. after a 4 hour meeting with us about our IT posture, the auditor told my admin that we're actually doing a great job and ahead of most other smaller clinics - then 4 months later eviscerated me and my role in their report.
Its like having to drive across town while a raged out 8 year told is screaming at you from the backseat, trying to tell you how to drive as if they know better.
1Sluttymcslutface@reddit
Everything in the US is that way seemingly. You’re seeing the sysadmin part of it.
DandaIf@reddit
Omg thank you OP! I thought it was just me thinking this! London based sysadmin here!
RoxoRoxo@reddit
yes the lack of labor protection is apart of it, we are oversaturated with people so employers can just be like "ill find a replacement" wages are lower for that reason also, theres a lot of people willing to do your job cheaper since theyre jobless and employers will take advantage of that so job security isnt to high. but i think the corporate work culture is the biggest contributor, in general american business owners dont understand downtime, theres a lot of IT sysad environments where its reactionary and not proactive so like we dont know your psu is about to give out so how can we replace it to prevent you from coming into work to a nonfunctional pc and because of that ignorance takes over people and theyll think "why am i paying you and still having these issues" we are typically not seen unless theres an issue and then we become the bearer of bad news
drunkenitninja@reddit
I can't speak for others, but here's my take on this.
No matter how well you do at your job you will, at some point, get outsourced/offshored. Or, if you don't get outsourced/offshored, most of your team will, and you'll be left to train the new folks.
You're constantly reminded that you're replaceable.
Management will trust vendors over their SME's.
Almost every state is "at will" employment, so there's no way you can speak your mind without getting labeled and blacklisted.
You're expected to work no less than 50 hours and be on-call.
nascentt@reddit
Cause this is a sysadmin subreddit.
If it were a bartending or waitressing subresdit the American bartenders and waitresses would be complaining the most too.
It's a mix of sampling bias because it's an English speaking sub Reddit and there are a lot of Americans, and also because America has pretty bad workers rights so they tend to have the worst experience in the working environment.
Int-Merc805@reddit
It’s probably because we are techies that we are on Reddit. It’s more of a dystopian American dream issue where we are all cogs in a soul crushing machine.
Hard not to be on edge when Debby in accounting’s rant about upgrading her outlook from 2003 to 2010 can potentially get you fired if she knows the right people. Our cars, gas, food, housing are all outrageously priced so we’re on edge about anything that could lose us our jobs.
My mortgage is $4600 a month and I’d be hard pressed to find a job paying half what I make right now. So every. Single. Thing. Is a threat to my livelihood.
It’s pervasive though, I don’t know anyone not impacted by it except the rich who don’t have to play by the rules because they will be ok if they lose their job.
This country really is a nightmare.
tacotacotacorock@reddit
US system admins have no sense of work-life balance? Lol Don't blame the system admins. Blame our work culture and our corporations. We'd all love to get 6 weeks of PTO or whatever a lot of Europe gets.
You're comparing apples to oranges in a lot of ways. Plain and simple companies just operate a little bit differently here.
BlackSquirrel05@reddit
This sub is just mostly a therapy sub.
There are more Americans and as such...
This tracks with the Euro mentality i've seen. Euros care about "privacy" in regards to themselves... Or data collection but not actual ways of guarding or enforcing it. It's a very "How dare you! but don't you dare ask me to take measures that people don't steal things."
I've seen far more out of date things in European environments than US ones. (Just my experience.)
Also people's interpretation of GDPR is nuts... Like go read the law guys... It's pretty straight forward.
OkArm9295@reddit
People who complain are the loudest.
Never ever use reddit as your sample size to judge reality.
Transresister@reddit
Many US companies underfund IT, see it only as a cost center and treat staff as fungible. What you observe is real and structural to the wider US economy. Oh and the nasty nasty legal principle of at will employment makes it very toxic for many people.
Overall_Finding_586@reddit
The ones that post are the ones you see. They also, more often than not… work MSPs which are usually revolving doors.
snoobie@reddit
Can you reboot your papyrus?
qwertypotato32@reddit
you ever have a computer illiterate frat boy looking motherfucker download 9tb of Fortnite memes? I still don't know how the fick he did it n
pancakeman2018@reddit
The common problem I have seen, as a sysadmin, is the expectations are very high, but resources are limited. If a delivery truck breaks down every day, the company will spend in excess of $100,000 for a new one. But, if a server breaks down, it brings the company to a screeching halt. No one can work, customers are bitching, and your boss is omnipresent during the entire process of recovery. You tell your boss "I told you so" in the most lighthearted way possible because for the previous year you have been mentioning the equipment is about to fail, but that means nothing, you have a job to do, you were called to duty, so stop talking and get it working. Stay up all night and fix the problem, and now that it is working "we don't need servers, it's working now"
This cycle goes on hundreds of times per year. So, you, as a sysadmin go to work every day thinking - something bad is going to happen. You mention it to your boss at least monthly, but your words are weightless unless something is broken.
It is a tricky field to be in. A lot of stress. Some days are calm, others are insane, and everything in between. I have always compared it to being a doctor in the ER - you have no idea what you are getting into each day. I used to enjoy that aspect, but I have changed after being through ransomware, server failures, firewall failures. It just does not add up. Then, other requirements pop up like "I need this report by yesterday, how do I do it?" and you somehow have to find time to help with that on top of keeping the company's systems in top shape.
It's a weird field because it seems like the more specialized you become, the less BS you have to deal with. I'd rather work on 8 large projects in a year than deal with the petty "my mouse stopped working." If you don't fix it within 10 minutes, your boss is informed and the cycle begins "Why isn't this fixed? I thought you fixed this last week" - yes, but the computer is 15 years old and needs replaced, as I previously mentioned. And then, following the same concept, lower tiered sysadmins are typically underpaid for what they do, and they have to go home and work on a car or whatever so they can make it to work the next day.
Oh, and if you discount cybersecurity enough, you too will experience the process of ransomware and its long lasting mental effects. I will do everything in my power to prevent a ransomware attack. I'll take a paycut. I'll give up my vacations. I will sell my soul. I NEVER want to go through that again. If a company is not on par with taking preventative measures, I will find another job. There is no exception. I don't care if Sally has a windows XP machine from 2006, if that means we can afford a good EDR/XDR and have good firewalls in place.
Hangikjot@reddit
I'm European but i lived and worked in UK/ Scandinavia/ Canada but mostly USA.
In the US the vast majority IT workers are Salaried Exempt and work in At-Will areas. Meaning they make a flat salary each with with no over time, and can be fired any time for any legal* reason.
The Min pay for salary exempt is about $44,000 a year. Health insurance is tied to your job and your job tied to the company running 24/7. Most business owners work all sorts of crazy hours, which mean so does IT.
So for the IT Staff to have money and health insurance they are constantly working for the business wants.
there is actually a special exemption in US labor laws for "computer operators" lol https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/17e-overtime-computer#:~:text=However%2C%20Section%2013(a)(,duties%20and%20who%20are%20paid
Pelatov@reddit
Definitely confirmation bias. But also work in the US vs other countries is way different. Like I’m around 20ish years in to my IT career. New company only gave me 15 vacation days, and I had to fight for that. I’m fighting for more atm, but in any job things are like this in the US. Our HR system blows chunks and employees are treated like dirt by the system. Worker protections are nearly non-existent and many companies see employees as a liability, not a resource or asset. So when something goes wrong we’re yelled at and treated like it was our fault, even on Day0 crap. Combine that with a rough job market that is even affecting tech, and you get a recipe for stress and admins being on edge more than they should.
The list could go on, but basically all workers compare to other countries, especially EU, are treated like shit and there’s 0 writer protections.
RadiantWhole2119@reddit
People who are happy with life don’t generally come to Reddit to bitch. You’re experience with the overwhelming consistency of negativity in this sub isn’t different that most Reddit subs, or hell any social media site for that matter. Folks don’t go wanting to post to Reddit and bragging when life’s great. Especially when a large majority of folks will just bring them down.
It’s a reality of social media/internet. Not that US is doom and gloom.
In terms of cyber, the US is obviously a significantly larger target for cyber crime than most countries. A few years ago the company I work for was hacked by another country and held ransom. So even if you have a less than 200 employee business, you’re still a potential target. Arguably more of a target than a large corporation as they know you’re likely skimping on security as a whole.
sigma914@reddit
Relevant XKCD
Irythros@reddit
You question why they're like that in the first half, and then give the answer in the second half.
RandoReddit16@reddit
I've been in this career for almost 9 years. It's like any other job, a healthy place to work is healthy and an unhealthy place is unhealthy. The US has tons of unhealthy places to work, but also many great places to work. Where I currently am, we have employees pushing 15,20,30,40+ years. Guess what, it is a healthy place to work.... My coworkers and I all have healthy work-life balances. I'm currently off for a 3 day weekend and I know I can completely ignore my work phone and email, knowing my coworkers truly have me covered and everything will be okay.... Other places I have worked, I never was truly off :/
FinancialBottle3045@reddit
Except we do, because if you want to do business with the US government, or anyone who does business with them, CMMC is now just the price of entry.
badaz06@reddit
I'd also say that for the most part, work is viewed differently here in the US than overseas. Here in the US it's not uncommon to have the company expect it's employees to work additional hours to get something done, whether it's in IT, Accounting, being a mechanic or anything else, and especially in an emergency when something is down. Most (not all) of Europe isn't like that. I've had to reach out to partner companies in the UK, France, Spain, and if it's outside their normal working hours...forget it...it's not happening.
irohr@reddit
Really you could remove the "IT" and it still applies to most workers in the US. Work culture in the US is oppressive and crappy across the board.
Send_heartfelt_PMs@reddit
What you're seeing isn't IT specific, but a symptom of rampant unchecked capitalism. It's our society in general
Tech_support_Warrior@reddit
I think at least part of it is that in the US, IT managers aren't exactly IT people, the are just people who have been with the Org for a long time and "know computers." This leads to them making decisions that IT professional think are dumb/irresponsible/out of touch, this makes the IT staff frustrated.
My first IT Manager got his job because he owned a farm that used software to track crops in the late 90s. He was recruited via a friend and then ended up as the manager after a few years. He was a great guy, was fairly knowledgeable in PCs, but no where near enough to be making decisions on network equipment, servers, software etc. "
A lot of IT departments are understaffed. I know IT people that are in departments that have end user to tech ratios that are insane. When I moved on from my last job we had 1 Manager/tech, 1 tech, and a secretary for 1700 users and about 4000 devices. From what I heard they now have 1 manager, 2 techs, and secretary.
On top of all that, we don't have protections like other places and our boomer generation upper management thinks that $25 per hour is a fair price for being on call 24/7/365.
Teguri@reddit
It's normal actually here. Literal Russian backed groups attack our sector (education) constantly to ransomware schools. So while some of it may be paranoia, there is a real reason a small po-dunk ISD needs good intrusion protection.
r3ptarr@reddit
This sub is cheaper than therapy.
981flacht6@reddit
I work 40 hours a week for my whole career. Rarely have I ever had to work longer. There have been some high pressure times though.
bythepowerofboobs@reddit
25 Years in the industry here. I work a lot, but I still love my job and am not burnt out. There are a lot of people like me that are very disillusioned with the general attitude of the people who post on this sub, and the younger generation in general. Work is a part of life. You can either accept that, embrace it, and enjoy it or you can whine about it and be unhappy your entire life.
Kyp2010@reddit
Simple, most states are practicing "at-will" employment, and you can literally be fired for no reason. Most European countries don't have these worries.
That is to say, business rights > people rights, because they're people too, or some such.
dogcmp6@reddit
Ah, I call this Trickle Down Fear Mongering.
Bane8080@reddit
I can only speak for myself in this regards.
1 Word. Incompetence.
I work at a software development company. Our customer support team is great. I have no complaints about them. They do amazing.
I have to protect our company and customers from our developers doing dumb things.
I also have to fill in for our customer's IT personnel being completely incompetent.
Me: Yes, our software is crashing. But it's crashing because your network is broke.
Them: It's working fine.
Me: Your ping time from client pc to server is over a full second! It's not working.
TBH, you just get tired of the bullshit.
PappaFrost@reddit
If it bleeds it leads. Just like the local news, on Reddit the drama rises to the top. So it's hard to know anecdotally what the truth on the ground is.
random-user-8938@reddit
it's mostly hero complex babies that aren't getting enough validation in their real life and they know they can't come and post "tell me what a good smart boy i am" here, so instead they come with their victim narrative so that others will give them sympathy compliments.
brokenmcnugget@reddit
my job was mostly great, until the non technical money first people from the adjacent c suite got involved.
beaucoup_dinky_dau@reddit
So many auditors for cybersecurity it’s insane, Microsoft is constantly changing and there is always massive change like “AI” in everything and the data security. Things grow and change crazy fast and your good people get giant wads of money thrown at them to leave. We are underfunded and overworked due to a lack of resources and vision of what IT brings to an org. Don’t even get me started on my secure score and security scorecard need to be at least 85% and we are still supporting 15 year old machine running special equipment. At this point I just want to mow lawns.
Phatkez@reddit
I don't think this is specific to IT either, and maybe it's just a reddit thing but americans seem to get very weird about anything to do with work, especially when giving others advice.
Someone said hello to you without making eye contact? Take it up with HR. Company provided toilet paper isn't thick enough? Find a new job. Boss daring to call you out of hours? Don't answer and report to the police.
They really do strike me as a workforce that lives to work rather than the other way around. Maybe spend a Friday lunchtime down at the pub or something and have a laugh for once, might enjoy life more.
zenmatrix83@reddit
Depends where they are, I work in education and not commerical because in comparision its way less stress, I probably make 50-75% of what I should, but the stress reductation and flexiability is worth it.
darcon12@reddit
The first year of admin work was difficult for me anxiety wise, but that got better as I got a handle of the job. I have a very cushy job, but still have all of the responsibilities a typical admin has. I just know that if I screw up it's not a big deal, mostly because I get along with the people I work with. If this weren't the case and I worked at a pressure cooker there's no way I could do this job. Not sleeping/eating and being anxiety ridden all the time is not sustainable. I do have an anxiety disorder though, I just figured most other admins don't have that problem and can handle high-stress environments better than I can.
kerosene31@reddit
My anecdotal observations as an American - there's definitely a major difference in work culture in America vs Europe and other parts of the world. When people ask advice about work situations, they need to specify where they are, because the advice is very different.
There was a thread about a boss denying vacation, and clearly there's a difference US vs Europe. (Heck, that might not even happen outside the US)
I don't know what goes on elsewhere, but here, we have a few "rights". We can quit. They can't chain us to our desks of course. If we are wronged, we can sue in court. Of course most large companies have a team of lawyers on hand, while we have to hire someone out of pocket. Lawyers can bog down things for years easily, and basically just wear you down. Ultimately, you have to go find a new job, you can't pay to fight long legal battles. It isn't that our courts are rigged, but quite simply, too expensive and too time consuming to go up against a big company.
Here, it isn't paranoia. Big companies will screw you over to make another dollar without a moment's hesitation, even if it is at their own long term detriment. The problem isn't greed, but short term greed. Corporations care about the stock price today and the numbers at the end of the quarter. Beyond that? Who cares. Of course behind it all there's tons of venture capital. Lots of buying, gutting and getting out.
People get fired for trying to unionize here. It makes the news.. and nothing happens. When workers do strike, the news highlights the workers demands, without telling how much the company makes in profits. The rich own the media and slant it accordingly. If airlines strike, the news will cover the chaos impacting travel, as if the workers are the problem.
HR is the enemy. They will document everything against you. Bosses will talk to you in person so there's no paper trail. Good luck winning a court battle when there's no e-mail trail.
It isn't paranoia over here. We're one big drought away from some Mad Max type stuff. (although unlike Mad Max, we'll burn through all our gas in the first day).
SoonerMedic72@reddit
I think this is a bit of Survivor Bias. Most of the admins that aren't under pressure or work in non-critical industries aren't going to bother posting about the awesomeness of their jobs.
As far as cybersecurity focused, I have two titles: Information Security Officer and SysAdmin (small shop). So yeah I am certainly guilty of that.
If it makes anyone feel better, I switched to IT after a decade in medicine for a better work life balance. This isn't nearly as all-consuming as working as a paramedic. I haven't had any 50+ day streaks of 12 hour shifts in IT. 🤷♂️
bindermichi@reddit
I do get a similar impression of companies not investing anything into IT because they think it can‘t improve business. Piss poor risk management making everyone paranoid mostly cause by the knowledge of underinvesting into security.
This combined by what some of my colleges call "sheltered workshop" workplaces that are waking up to the reality of IT workplaces of the past 20 years and re igniting they have become helplessly outskilled over time.
But hey, they are the genius sysadmin keeping this company alive and are way underpaid.
Wonder_Weenis@reddit
Solar Winds gets a slap on the wrist for getting the country pwnd, and the burden just falls further down the ladder, with less funds, because fu<[ it, nothing bad happened the first time.
Special_Luck7537@reddit
I think a lot of it has to do with requirements. There are a lot of small companies, and all require some type of IT, and usually it's one guy that does networking, DBA, sysadmin, and dev work... Been there a few times, and much prefer a knowledge lane to being an IT god.... Imagine gleaning all of that in on prem, and then your boss says go to azure... Or, the NOC gets flooded, and your provider won't tell you that it will be months before it's back on line, and now it's Friday afternoon, and the boss wants a new provider, complete with new wan ip's, up by Monday. Or, "Hey, we need you to pick up some NETSUITE development as well as your IT stuff... Too many times being Gandalf at the bridge in Moria....
klauskinski79@reddit
Sysadmins who are concerned about security and take their job seriously.
SAY IT ISNT SO.
LOL
Superb_Raccoon@reddit
Outsourcing.
djc_tech@reddit
Because there is massive layoffs and they’re replacing American workers with cheap H1B visa holders who work for 1/4 of the salary . People being forced to train their replacements and in the US we can’t make ends meet with a bad economy
ErikTheEngineer@reddit
Correct. For years, the MBAs seemed to have learned their lesson about offshore outsourcers like Wipro/Tata/Infosys and similar. But now there's huge pressure to reduce costs, and of course we couldn't think of touching the CEO's compensation...so the offshore houses are getting a lot of large companies signed up for another round.
thegonzojoe@reddit
Well, the problem is in your first paragraph. I’d wager over 90% or more of the US IT industry has never touched this subreddit. If you’re drawing conclusions about the disposition of a group from a subset of that group consisting entirely of Reddit posters, then those conclusions are obviously going to skew towards depression.
khantroll1@reddit
20+ IT veteran across the spectrum. A lot of what you describe comes from our user base or our bosses.
Our users tend to believe that THEIR jobs are both “dog eat dog”, and the most important function. As a result, every single problem is critical as far as they are concerned. In many situations, IT can’t push back for a number of reasons, so we have to abide.
Security has been the watchword of our industry for 3 decades now. My boss sends me stuff every day saying, “We must patch this!”, and it’s for products we have never used. I’m currently doing a security upgrade that makes little since for most of our users, and my personal favorite were security cameras we had to turn off or turn outward so that anyone who gained access wouldn’t be able to spy on people in the yard…the very yardstick those cameras were supposed to secure!
Those same bosses make OUR jobs dog eat dog because IT is a loss center to most accounting departments. We are often shifted to the “do more with less” group when times get lean, and that means the guy with the complaints gets fired. Between that and being the SME for things…we wind up putting in 12-18 hour days because someone asked us to…
Which leads to the burnout and overall attitude
ShockedNChagrinned@reddit
It sounds like you're describing what many Americans would consider the work culture of America, at least the one promoted. "Work as much as you have to, improve yourself, show your skills, do more!"
Musk promotes this and based on his public persona, expects it. Several of the faang companies have promoted it over the past decade, and many other industries before then; hell the "top guys" in most police stories, lawyer shows, or even 1960s marketing shows, work all hours.
IT is just another industry. It's also critical infrastructure. It's also a cost center. The goal of most public shops seems to be maximize profits, and make the street happy, vs any particular goal for the technology aspects: those are driven by the first two. With that in mind, IT is nearly always understaffed for its deliverables, and always asked to do more, every year. This is all very subjective to the shop, size, etc and there's pros and cons in nearly every workplace (whereas some have only cons).
Let's itemize the things that give people hope in their job, as that is a good marker for retention and happiness: - clear career prospects, fostered and supported by the company - clear and transparent decision making, so you can understand the why something is needed, and they treat you like a person and not a cog. - time to work on either education and advancement, or using your existing knowledge base on something novel. - a salary competitive with the industry wise markers for the position, experience and demand
I think many people don't have some of those things, and very few have all. If you feel like you have all of those, don't leave.
TheLostITGuy@reddit
Buddy, this is every working American.
ThirstyOne@reddit
Because American work culture is exploitative by nature. There are very few companies that emphasize work life balance and many of them overwork their employees to the point of burn-out and beyond. Because healthcare is bundled with employment in the US many who have families are afraid to quit so they don’t lose it as well.
Environmental_Pin95@reddit
Because you are flooded with some people who know the IT role very well who are not part of IT and they have used IT as lil teddy bear and part of their OCD routine at work for any little thing just to get your attention. It is people like that who prefer to be handheld when everything is actually ok and IT people suffer from burn out and the amount of faces they see per day makes them suffer from burn out because some of those people never call the helpdesk which is usually mandated and they skip calling the helpdesk and call the IT person directly thus trying to get faster services when the helpdesk is used to track their work and people just say no to the helpdesk who tracks the IT persons job so fixes are tracked and put into some pie chart. The right to disconnect is real in IT.
Have a problem call the helpdesk first and foremost and do not try to bypass this system.
Calling the helpdesk helps IT prevent burnout.
MisterHairball@reddit
Is it because there's less jobs, and the wages stagnant/lowering?
ANGRYSNORLAX@reddit
One time I got fired for installing a program on a server that the IT manager approved. Because my direct supervisor did not approve and "if it had been malicious, it could have shut the whole company down". struggled for four months to get work, nearly lost my house and my wife has threatened to leave me if this ever happens again. And getting fired for nonsense is a very common story I hear about from my peers.
If I was any good at anything else I'd be doing something else.
JustInflation1@reddit
pressure cooker, dog-eat-dog, balls-to-the-wall panic-inducing Is just regular capitalism! Everything in the US is like that and it benefits our most important people: the rich!
jfreak53@reddit
Its just a US mentality. I'm from the US originally but lived half of my adult life overseas in IT, then came back to US IT. Different mentality, its the people not the job. Most US IT guys are their own downfall, I'm an owner and hire these guys, its not the industry, its the people. Most of them are high strung, and the most minor things pee them off and make them go bonkers, like someone asking them to do their jobs and fix a printer driver. Yeah, some customers are jerks, but most just want help, and the simple ask for help makes em mad.
I think its in general a US mentality, because the IT guys from the US I know from the 90s weren't this way, they were chill like the rest of the world. And its not the US industry, its the people, nothing has changed even though they claim it has to make their insanity look normal. This is me working in it, but having years from the outside to be able to see it.
chikalin@reddit
Manufacturing, production is 7 days as week from 4am to midnight. IT team of 2 cover 5 days a week, 7am to 5ish and expected to support second shift and weekend as needed.
TheDeaconAscended@reddit
Because boring day to day shit is just that boring. I deal with a few weeks of stress and 11 months of peace.
sobrique@reddit
US employment law I think is the culprit. And partially the employer-sponsored healthcare.
In good times, a lack of rules means flexibility and wealth. Top jobs in top companies will treat you excessively well.
But in bad times... not so much. The good stuff can be cut back - for the good of the company - and abusing and exploiting employees is very cost effective in the short term.
As a result it's quite easy to be in a state of what amounts to constant emotional abuse, stress and anxiety.
Which is not to say there's not problems everywhere - and the US certainly pays pretty well compared to here in the UK.
But at the same time? Well, I know my employer can't "just" sack me for having a bad day. I know I will get a reasonable chunk of paid leave each year - legal min is 28 days including bank holidays (some employers close; others just give days in lieu, but the total is the same) and plenty of employers offer more than that. (Last one was 35 which was nice).
And I don't have to be afraid of getting destroyed by a medical bill - with or without employer health coverage. The NHS may not be the most luxurious and comfortable healthcare system in the world, and it can be really slow at non-emergency stuff... but it's free at the point of need.
EVEN IF I LOSE MY JOB.
So my employer has less control over me, and has to make a bit more effort to make me feel valued, respected and have a job I like enough to stay. That all contributes hugely to making the work culture a lot more laid back and respectful of employees and colleagues.
cyberbro256@reddit
Hahahahaha. This just goes to show once again that Reddit and other online forums are not representative of reality. That’s like judging Walmart based on the complaint department. Happy, content, easy-going IT workers are living like you describe and they just don’t post on Reddit.
ErikTheEngineer@reddit
Personally, I think it's a mix of all this. I've been doing this for almost 30 years now. There's a lot to unpack:
vCentered@reddit
I work for an org that has gone from a very stable 400 staff to 3600 in a very short period of time.
That on its own doesn't affect me so much but the reason that we scaled up so much is because we got greedy and started taking on as much business as we could get, and changing every internal system that we have, without stopping to be good at the work we already had.
The end result is an amazing amount of "top priority" work that requires me to cover multiple and unrelated areas of technology by myself that ordinarily would have their own teams in an organization our size.
The few things that I'm not responsible for and don't have access to I generally have to spend a huge amount of time convincing their product owners to actually troubleshoot and investigate before they'll actually own up to the fact that their app or system is fucking up.
If that wasn't enough, I'm constantly being pulled into other people's principal areas of expertise because they can't figure things out and they know I'll get them there even if it means I have to learn their basics from the ground up before I can solve for what they're trying to do.
Pair this all with budget constraints that force us to do, frankly, irresponsible things as far as constantly shifting things around and finding hacky solutions to keep things running instead of buying the hardware or software, or just taking the time, that it would take to do it right.
And I'm just going to say it, there are a lot of people in technology that should not be. This used to be an industry of people who were passionate about the subject matter and now it's highly, highly, diluted by people who picked it because they thought it would be an easy paycheck and don't really give a shit about understanding how anything works or getting things done.
Those of us who actually give a shit usually have to work around or through multiple layers of these people before we can actually get things done.
lowlybananas@reddit
American work life balance is in disrepair. It's not just in IT. It's across the entire workforce.
Jkabaseball@reddit
It's a mixture of the culture that working hard/extra pays off for you, not just the company. This with the fact IT is now a 24/7 required operation for most companies to even function. If IT goes down, my company comes to a screeching halt. Yeah, the CNC machines have the programs in them already, but we need all the data from the OT network to make sure they are good parts. Without that we have metal in the shape of what the customer wants, not actual parts.
Don't worry about me, it's not my responsibility to make sure we have the proper amount of people and skills to run this place.
jason3448@reddit
you answered all your questions with your last paragraph.
illicITparameters@reddit
This sub is a small portion of the American IT force. It’s very rare I encounter someone as overly negative as you see in this sub in person at places I’ve worked, as well as industry events.
butter_lover@reddit
There's no public compliance framework for IT infrastructure so they literally are the last bastion for defense of critical infrastructure. Some are more or less critical but you never know if your sites are being used for staging and implementation of criminal or yes, nation state bad actors which could result in loss.
Loss of one's job, loss of resources, loss of critical business health or safety capabilities.
If there were a bit more oversight or investment that were mandatory it wouldn't fall on staff at sites.
By the way there are plenty of chilled out casuals in IT they definitely can't be arsed to post on Reddit about work stuff.
Better-Freedom-7474@reddit
Most American employees are on edge and disillusioned not just the IT sector.
bearcatjoe@reddit
Because you read Reddit and Reddit is mostly American and mostly used to complain.
russiawolf@reddit
For real! As a sysadmin in the netherlands, i really couldn't understand all the problems the sysadminds in the US are experiencing
alucardunit1@reddit
Because business owners feel that you are an extremely vital piece to their business. But pay barely above minimum wage and act like you owe it to the company to be as dedicated as the owner of the business. Yeah people are on edge.
Remarkable-Cut-981@reddit
Us workers are super racist too
SwiftSloth1892@reddit
I think what you're seeing is more of a typical manic American than an industry specific issue. As others have alluded to our country is plagued by issues stemming from disparity in wages, healthcare instability, financial failure, other social issues, political calamity and a host of other issues that makes many Americans generally seem crazy and on edge. I'm an IT manager and I feel more stress about the world around me than I do my job at this point but I also feel I've got a good position with a company that does not abuse it's employees. Not so much the case for many that I know. Especially those working for burnout mills, I mean MSPs.
oracleofnonsense@reddit
Constant outsourcing, H1b visa replacement, corporate cost cutting and no protection from layoffs.
My personal theory— “Security” seems to be the go to for old admins who don’t want to work nights/weekends. So they’re busy, busy during working hours finding things and getting some admins to work on weekends.
robxxx@reddit
That's why I joined a union. 37.5 hour work week and guaranteed raises.
Scall123@reddit
Likely the reason why every job in the US is almost like this. Horrible work and life balance and no worker's rights.
Affectionate_Ad_3722@reddit
We (the rest of the world) just assume they like it that way?
grahamcrawley@reddit
The US have pretty bad labour laws compared to other Western countries and their employers abuse it, knowing they can just fire them if they disagree.
Scall123@reddit
No. They're forced by the structures in place. Improvement in worker's rights in the US is incredibly hard
kayjaykay87@reddit
Yeah I noticed this too.. In Australia IT jobs are relatively cushy
BalderVerdandi@reddit
As a US based IT guy, there are literally a million reasons...
IT is seen as an expense without the ROI. Not only do we have to fight to get funds for normal things like life cycle, we have to constantly explain "why" we're needed. There are - and I'm not joking about this - C-Suite level staff that believe that as long as the computer turns on in the morning, they get their e-mail, and Yahoo! News pops up, IT staff aren't needed and they're simply a line item expenditure that needs to be removed.
Meanwhile, I've had partner level customers remember their coffee but forget their laptop, even though both were on the roof of their car, and they ended up driving over the laptop after it slid off the car as they were backing down their driveway.
We have non-IT people in control of everything, from budgeting to shipping/receiving to employment. A few years ago I worked for an MSP where my responsibilities were for just one client, and that company - I still can't talk about them by name due to the NDA - would actively stop an approved patching cycle in the middle of the night "because they said so". I mean we're talking about CMCB being approved across the board, notices being sent out via e-mail, notices on the webpage used for patching updates being posted - and we were told "stop" without a reason, valid or otherwise. And this was in the final months of the year I worked on this client, where my team of three had pushed over 60,000 patches across 1400 servers and workstations because they were so far outside of compliancy that the federal government threatened to shut them down.
I've had jobs e-mailed to me where they want to fill a position that's a "Jack of all trades" - helpdesk, desktop support, SysAdmin, some NetAdmin for the switches (nothing about the routers, firewalls, etc.), and Avaya phone system support - and they only want to pay $16 an hour, it's contract to hire but isn't guaranteed, you have to pay your own taxes (1099 employment) and there are no benefits. Meanwhile McDonald's is offering up to $25.
The position I'm in now is a long term contract even though I'm a full time employee of the company. Where I work, we're required to have all of our IT stuff shipped in via a "secure" carrier since it's government. The problem we have is that it could take 9 months to 2 years for this stuff to be sent out from the "secure storage" warehouse. We stopped buying UPS's and replacement UPS batteries because of a 40% failure rate for this stuff straight out of the box. We just got a shipment of new workstations - I'm using the term "new" very loosely here - that their 3 year warranties will expire in 4 months because it took over 2 years to get them shipped out here.
I've also experienced situations where the end of the fiscal year comes and someone "finds" a bunch of money that needs to be spent, otherwise it's taken away on the next budget. Instead of buying new workstations, servers, or network hardware or licensing, it gets spent on garbage like an office remodel that didn't need it.
Like I said, there are a million more reasons but this gives you all a clearer picture of what we deal with.
uncleirohism@reddit
Hey there, US-based career IT Manager here with 15+ years of experience.
You aren’t wrong.
It’s about salary vs. inflation, plus the nightmare of our healthcare system, plus the general overbearing nature of the american mainstream media and various subcultures.
Burnout isn’t a risk, it’s practically prescribed.
Even with talent and grit it was an absolute struggle to make my way to where I am now, and that’s against the odds in an absolutely cutthroat economy. It is fight or die here unless you are born into wealth and there is a lot of subconscious emphasis in covering that up with ego for reasons I cannot fathom. The entire experience almost seems to be engineered on purpose to have the same effect as a placebo antidepressant.
All of that said, some of us still manage to cope well enough to settle down in life but the cost is often far too high. This is rampant across many industries and sectors of public service in the US. One way or another everyone who works for money is grinding and it’s our families, health, and sanity that bear the weight of it. Attaining work/life balance here is a deceptively brutal art.
I have four children from two marriages, and a mortgage. If it weren’t for my partner’s income, we would not have been able to buy a house at all, let alone afford to have kids. We have to structure our time together as a family VERY purposefully or it just doesn’t happen. The time gets swept up immediately into productivity by default because we need money. We still need money.
kitsinni@reddit
People who see happy at their jobs don’t really post about it. People post when they have something they want to say.
leaflock7@reddit
hmm, I would say the opposite. European seem to be more on the edge with security etc in private sector.
Public sector/army/police US i would say it is more like you describe but it is for their reasons.
Thebelisk@reddit
Good post, long over due.
I’m tired of the ‘omg, I’m burnt out’ posts on here. Tired of hearing about ‘I work for a fortune 500’ or ‘we have a bazillion headcount users’. At the end of the day, we’re all just numbers on a payroll. The world isn’t on your shoulders, and the company isn’t going to fold if you leave.
Go to work, do your best, and have a life.
redunculuspanda@reddit
I have worked with a lot of US teams over the years.
In my limited experience it seems US corporate culture has a lot to do with it. Maybe the terrible employment law means everyone has the underlying fear that they could be fired at any time. This is going to add a lot more pressure to everyone in the org.
CryptosianTraveler@reddit
In the US? Workforces trimmed to the minimum along with relatively stagnant wages and often reality show level expectations. More recently there are people landing jobs along side the competent whose only marketable skill is checking the right box on an employment application due to genetics.
I've been out of the field for going on 4 years now. It's going to stay that way if this nonsense continues.
aamfk@reddit
I kinda agree with your words.
I'm just HUNGRY AS A COYOTE to get back to work in the computer world. It was a MUCH better career than anything else I've done since.
PhoenixVSPrime@reddit
Either I'm being underpaid or we aren't charging enough for these companies to provide services.
Zerguu@reddit
MuH JoB Is TaKEn By MsPs AnD MiGrAnTs
WhiskyTequilaFinance@reddit
To the last list, add: 'The catastrophic financial and medical consequences of losing our family's Healthcare coverage that's completely linked to our continued employment'. Which often means no matter how abusive the environment is, we can't leave because them our kids can't even see a Dr for basic needs without thousand of dollars in bills.
BloomerzUK@reddit
I've read through OP and I can completely agree with everything. I didn't actively think about it before, but there does seem to be a lot of drama attached to everything which doesn't seem to be the case.. at least for me in the UK.