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FlatLemon5553@reddit

It is very enjoyable once you have a career, but success in IT requires a thirst for knowledge and constant development. I was bored out of my mind the first decade. Once I started on more difficult jobs and certifications the job became more fun.

I would be very depressed just doing IT support or something low level.

It's up to you is the point I guess.

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Russtuffer@reddit

20 year vet appt f the IT world and I have done service desk to sys admin stuff sometimes in the same role for no where near the pay. I have worked for a mom and pop shop to a global business that has a huge IT department. The main takeaway is that working sucks and I want to retire like tomorrow. I am pretty sure I would say that no matter what profession I had. Some shops have no idea what makes a good IT department let alone a great one. Other places are the best, you get better at figuring out what works for you as you go.

In today's market it's a lot more taken what you can get and a lot of that is contracting jobs. Which does blow. When I started that was not very common in my area and now it's way more standard.

As far as being on call all the time that is company specific, I have worked places where they had no on call and it was great, I have also worked where I was the only on call person. My current job on call is split between 14 or so people and we have to do it one week 3 times a year unless we want to pick up more for extra pay. On top of that it's only business critical issues so if Sally calls in and says they cannot get x program to run on he weekend unless they are in manufacturing or the warehouse and it's to get out a big order I get to tell them put in a ticket and wait. It's meant for big items being down, though I do have to be close to home in case a printer in the warehouse goes down. J have had to run in at 2am to replace a printer for second shift which is not fun.

Overall what makes or breaks it is the management and the environment. If either of those suck you will hate your job. That's true of any job though. Find out what you like to do, keep at it and eventually retire.

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dissidentdukkha@reddit

Best decision I ever made was leaving it after sinking 10 years into it. Breeds some of the worst narcissists and sleaze ball car salesman Management / sales types imaginable.

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SoSmartish@reddit

A lot of the problem comes down to these three factors when I feel I am really starting to dislike IT:

Job bloat. People don't understand my job role, so it creeps into anything that runs on electricity is an IT issue, or anything involving information is on IT to provide. And since they don't understand, they can't be convinced otherwise. Saying "That isn't my job" provokes them because they think I am being lazy or don't know what I do, despite the fact that they just asked me to calibrate the microwave. Bonus points if I get asked about a project that another IT guy is wholly in charge of, and they get mad when I can't instantly download all of the information that this other IT guy has in his head.
No escape. Calls on weekends, calls after hours, calls on vacation, people want 24/7 unfettered access to their IT guy.
The work can be complex and frustrating. Non-IT people don't understand how deep it is, and that it's very possible to spend 8 whole hours on one error without finding the solution. It doesn't mean I'm stupid, it means that computer programing and network communication get complicated. Who would have guessed?

In the right environment, these things are manageable. In the wrong environment, it is absolutely toxic.

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Jmoste@reddit

I got a call from the warehouse manager that I was needed there because the employee couldn't get into their files. I strut down to the warehouse to see what the issue is.

It had nothing to do with the computer. There was this big machine, I think it's called a Power File Cabinet, that rotated shelves of files around and it wasn't working.

Well that's not my job, but no one else is going to fix it and I'm mechanically savvy so why not. Then when it's an actual computer, people think that you're just an expert at everything. Like: How do I do this in Excel? I don't how to do this in .

Then, you try training people (IT or regular user) to do stuff because you figured out how to make something work. Only problem is someone hired absolute morons who can't or won't follow directions. So instead of wasting your time explaining anything, you just do the line from SNL Nick Burns the computer guy. "MOVE!".

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sybrwookie@reddit

Then when it's an actual computer, people think that you're just an expert at everything. Like: How do I do this in Excel? I don't how to do this in .

Years ago, someone walks up to me and asks me how to do some detailed thing in SQL Studio. And I don't know, so I point her over to the DBAs who were right over there.

Maybe 3 mins later, she comes back and says, "the DBAs said the computer is broken and needs to be reimaged." FFS...

With her there, I google the problem on my machine, and follow what I found to go step-by-step through the application to do what she wanted. She watched how that took someone who has never touched that before maybe 5 mins to find and solve, while the "experts" said to reimage the fucking computer.

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A-New-Creation@reddit

The "experts" told her that because you sent her over to them, making work for them, so they repaid you the favor, fyi...

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RBeck@reddit

I always wondered if the LLM AI would help people who are somehow not capable of googling anything and bridge that gap. Thankfully because of WFH I don't see users enough to know.

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G8racingfool@reddit

Right now it's actually worse, because most LLMs just grab anything that may be relevant and throw it up on screen. And most users aren't inclined to stop and think what does or doesn't make sense, they'll just do whatever it tells them and, if there's conflicting or confusing information, they ask you to come over and do what it says for them.

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mineral_minion@reddit

A person who won't bother to type " " into Google will also not bother to type " " into an LLM.

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AGenericUsername1004@reddit

One of the issues with googling and also AI is that the person needs to know the bare minimum to identify the good and bad answers. People who can't google stuff don't even know the bare minimum.

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rosseloh@reddit

I dread the days when I have to craft a query that goes something like "generic noun" "company name" "generic noun" "crash" because I don't have any more info to give the search until I can dig deeper...So much crap pushed to the top by SEO.

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dudeman2009@reddit

I'm glad I was taught in school how to use academic database searches. You have to ask it questions like a computer, not like a person. Why that concept is so hard for people to understand. It's not a f***ing person on the other side looking at what you typed and print it all together. So asking in a full paragraph how to do your PowerPoint transition thing isn't going to get what you want. So you take what the user is trying to find, break it into keywords then search. They act like you just invented nuclear fission right in front of their eyes. 5 minutes later they are right back to asking Google a 47 page essay on how to get word to do page numbers the way they want.

The worst part is this will be a user that can't even recognize that there are two different fonts in the word doc because they copy pasted from something and never realized the change...

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Jmoste@reddit

There definitely levels to GoogleFu.

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Moontoya@reddit

And a reimage is a valid tech path

That 10 mins digging for a fix adds up over the fleet and now you have customisations roaming around that could break other apps.

Not saying it's the best, right or only solution, just that it is a valid one from the DBs perspective.

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sybrwookie@reddit

1) No, a 10-min fix is not a valid reason to reimage

2) They didn't even try to fix anything

3) A reimage would have fixed NOTHING

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Moontoya@reddit

1: yes, it is depending on how rigid your deployment schema is.

2: os issues are not a DBs job, and you had to modify an explicit pc, proving them (sort of) right

3: then your deployment image needs fixed or a better understanding of why that specific machine was set that way.

I've worked for places where reimage was all T1 could do, each machine had to be absolutely identical, from hardware to firmware to explicit os DLLs. I escaped there 18 years ago, thank Murphy

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sybrwookie@reddit

1) No, it's not

2) It wasn't modifying an OS, it was modifying the software they own and should be experts on

3) One-off DB issues are not an image issue, that's idiotic

And a bonus 4) I wasn't tier 1. And god, we would never let tier 1 make the call to reimage someone, that's a TERRIBLE idea.

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Moontoya@reddit

Im relaying my experience, I concur it was idiotic

Question is, why didn't you push it back? and decide to own the problem, was it actually your circus ?

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sybrwookie@reddit

The DBAs answer sounded like utter nonsense. I wanted to confirm it was utter nonsense before going back to them. And then I saw that answer was so simple so quickly, that I just fixed it.

I then made the stunt that the DBAs pulled quite public so management saw how they treated that situation, and how I saved it from being a complete disaster.

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RequirementBusiness8@reddit

I loathe the advice of “just reimage.” I mean yes, it is sometimes the correct answer. Back when I did L2 and got tickets asking to reimage for some reason, I’d usually ask the user if I could try fixing it first. Everytime, without fail, “yes please” because no one wants to start over again. Probably 95% of the time could fix the issue AND it was usually brain numbingly simple. Like HOW tf do all of these previous techs and vendor support guys miss the obviously simple?

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Chocolate_Bourbon@reddit

I had coworkers who would do what the DBA did. Tell them something to get them to go away. If it works, great, if not reformatting will take a while. Either way nuisance dismissed.

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Dal90@reddit

Worked at a Fortune 10 for a bit.

Took me a while to figure out that sometimes folks would just give a not by department / wrong form answer meaning, "I'm too busy to deal with you right now."

My favorite, and when I figured it out, was a manager who rejected a storage request.

"That was the wrong request form."

"What's the right one?"

"I don't know."

"You're the only person who can approve whatever it is that I need to fill out!"

Grumble grumble grumble while she figured it out.

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JazzlikeSurround6612@reddit

Yep, this he just did it to pass the buck and gain time. Either he was extremely overloaded or just a lazy fuck.

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Aggravating_Refuse89@reddit

Congrats, you are now the SQL expert. Enjoy the new role

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jeetah@reddit

Never agree to look at a printer or copier problem, if that is someone else's job.

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SnooMacarons467@reddit

You never know what software a user has self installed that is causing an issue, depending on the way the infrastructure is setup, a reimage is often times so much faster to do than trying to troubleshoot it.

For example, if you already have all the software the user needs and all dependencies pre-installed in the image, and a reimage takes 40 mins, you can either spend 40 mins on the off chance you might work it out, or 100% have it fixed in their lunch break with a quick reimage, I would go the reimage route all the time and keep working on what I was doing. However if you try and fix it you risk wasting their time trying to fix it and just reimaging anyway which is troublshooting time + 40 mins.

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cluberti@reddit

while the "experts" said to reimage the fucking computer.

Well, you did end up doing the work, so......

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Temetka@reddit

Now you own that file machine for life. Congrats.

I never help users with hardware or pretty much anything out of a narrowly defined scope.

Excel formula? Hey my job was to install the software. Not track why E12 isn’t linking to some other cell in a file on a share that no longer exists.

So glad I moved into engineering and rarely deal with end users anymore.

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deadshift2010@reddit

100%, even if you can fix it, dont. Otherwise you will be responsible for that thing forever

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crzyKHAN@reddit

i wish this was drilled into green/junior folks in school

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Aggravating_Refuse89@reddit

Exactly. Just because you can fix something does not mean you should. Your successor will hate your guts for owning that thing. Same with the too helpful tech who figures out all the frankenstein Excel stuff or worse, creates it. Your name will be cursed forever if you do that. I wont touch anything that I would hate someone for leaving to me.

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Icy-Maintenance7041@reddit

To be honest? When im making that umphteenth pivot table with autoimported data in excel it warms my cold dead heart to know that my successor will have to deal with that shite. I mean come on, who doesnt want to sit down in retirement knowing that one excel file on the fileserver cant be moved outside its folder or the bookkeeper cant make his monthly invoices to the daughterfirms. right? RIGHT?

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farguc@reddit

If we all as a field just did this, The respect we get would be different.

Right now we try to do our best, get given out to for being "incompetent".

Can you imagine going to a dentist and screaming in his face because he won't prescribe you new pair of glasses?

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Temetka@reddit

No, but that visual got a chuckle from me. Thank you.

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Vogete@reddit

Same. I went into engineering, and I'm so glad I don't have to debug the finance lady's 13GB excel sheet because she's too fucking dumb understand it's not ITs job to fix her job.

There are moments that I miss from IT work, but I just can't deal with the constant "the bathroom light is out, please fix it" problems.

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crzyKHAN@reddit

My IT department turning into AV over IP + IT.. But you make way more in networking so after We train them up they leave for non help desk networking related jobs

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Kaizenno@reddit

What doesn't help is that a lot of IT are lacking a lot of social interaction, have a slight superiority complex due to working with items no one has any clue about, and we seem to thrive on tiny hits of dopamine. So when a problem is presented to us that no one else can fix and we have the solution, it kinda hits on all our personality triggers and we jump on it thinking it will also gain us some advantage when in reality it actually puts us at a disadvantage in the future.

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reddanit@reddit

Well that's not my job, but no one else is going to fix it and I'm mechanically savvy so why not. Then when it's an actual computer, people think that you're just an expert at everything.

I think the "worst" part is that large part of IT is basically applied problem solving with a dash of experience and knowledge. So if you are in IT, people expecting you to be half-decent at fixing any unrelated technical issue are often right. Even if you neither want to deal with it nor it is part of your job.

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DigitalDecades@reddit

Like: How do I do this in Excel? I don't how to do this in .

The funny thing is, whether it's Excel or some other highly specialized program that people go to college to learn, I usually figure it out by either Googling or just looking at the GUI and clicking on whatever makes the most sense based on what they want to achieve. I'm literally teaching people who get paid 3x as much as me for their knowledge of this specific program, how to use said program.

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JazzlikeSurround6612@reddit

I'm always amazed (shouldn't be at this point, but I am) when someone in accounting or some other office job largely dependent on using a computer asks the most simple Excel question. Like I don't expect everyone to be experts and know power query etc but I mean come on how you a accountant in 2024 and don't know something like vlookup or some filtering tasks just basic stuff.

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UninvestedCuriosity@reddit

YOU'RE WELCOME!

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ndroll02@reddit

gif

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apandaze@reddit

Well said.

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Davet620Y@reddit

"In the right environment" IT can be interesting & rewarding. In a bad environment, It can be soul crushing. I started in IT in Healthcare and I loved the company. I now work for a very IT-intensive government contractor which is kinda fun & interesting

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GoatWithinTheBoat@reddit

Another thing to add to this is youre expected to constantly be learning even outside of work, basically meaning either you really are interested in IT or you have to put in hours you aren't being paid for.

I hate that I can't just relax for a year and be comfortable without feeling the stress of my colleagues getting certifications and what not. Yeah I went into IT for the money and still do it for the money. I am just exhausted of constantly fearing i don't have enough certifications when I should just be able to learn on the job.

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SmallClassroom9042@reddit

Everyone says they do it for the money but I've yet to see much more money than any other field. How much money are we talking?

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GoatWithinTheBoat@reddit

Atleast twice what I could be making, especially since other career paths require years of schooling beforehand unless you find a golden goose entry point job that pays or helps you go through college.

Engineers? University Bioengineering? College Health sciences? College

I could go on and on for the list. Imo there's some obvious outliers like warehouse work paying 25 an hour but that destroys the body.

I'm more than likely being too broad with saying most other careers you need a strong step in the door AND there's a bar against it but that is how I saw it before I started in IT that I could study at home for without paying a substantial sum. Sorry if I'm incorrect but that's how the road was paved for me (low cost of living area in a state where warehouses and agriculture is the focus)

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SmallClassroom9042@reddit

I've been in IT for 12 years, I made 70k for a little bit, but on average 25/hr, I'm in NW arkansas where it is supposed to be booming but thats just what the wages are, they haven't adjusted with inflation

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Evilbob93@reddit

It wasn't always like that. I started in IT in the 1980s.. VAXclusters, later Unix servers and workstations and PCs... and in those days, they would send us to places on airplanes, rent cars, hotel rooms, per diem, and we sat in a room and someone taught us how to run the systems.

Now everyone is expected to figure it out on their own. It's a rare company that makes "sharpen the tool" time.

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Kwantem@reddit

Heck yeah. I got sent on a nice trip to Oracle in Florida to learn how to manage Forms and Reports. Didn't really care about certification back then. Still don't.

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Evilbob93@reddit

Is this a good place in the DECies subthread to mention DECUS? Anaheim, Orlando, etc. I would love to find someone's archive of Bill Hancock's networking talks.

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Skyyk9@reddit

Someone who knows what VMS, and VAX is! I was once sent to an island in the middle of Puget Sound (Think Washington State). For years this VAX system would randomly fail when the weather got warm. We were about to lose the contract for servicing and that was bad news for our company.

One of my many trips to the island to try to resolve the issue. I was randomly reading binders that were kept in the computer room. Some of the diagnostic took hours to run and we were looking for any kind of symptoms that could give us an idea of what is wrong.

I happened to find the binder that contained the service reports from the previous company that serviced this system. They put the freaking thing in and they couldn't figure it out. Then I looked at the system. I mean really just looked at what they built.

MicroVAX systems had a bus that was about 10 To 12 inches long. From the main cpu board to the bus termination board. A board with a lot of resistors. Pull up and pull down types.

There was an expansion buss. Another box that could be used to plug in more I/O or printer boards. It too was about 10 - 12 inches..

Computer clock cycles are very precise.

The configuration was Main buss ==> extension cables ==> other expansion buss..

The extension cables were supposed to be 24 - 36 inches in length.

Some doofus used the wrong cables.

Curled under the two boxes was a 15 FOOT long cable. The extra length just played havoc with the buss timing.

We still lost the contract. I was trying to explain to the sale person and he just didn't understand how the cable length could possibly be the issue. To him 2 feet vs 15 feet was no difference.

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scuba182@reddit

You said island in puget sound and I immediately knew it was K2 on vashon

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Skyyk9@reddit

Yepper. K2 was using a computer probably built in the 60's to control the manufacture process.

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caa_admin@reddit

Someone who knows what VMS, and VAX is!

Plenty of us lurking in here.

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Skyyk9@reddit

The MicroVAX was the more modern computer I worked on.

Motorola used PDP-11/34 and PDP-11/70 to stimulate satellite movements as they were designing a hand held GPS unit for paratroopers in 1985 when I was the DEC guy.

Shell oil had a massive werehouse 90 feet tall and 150 feet long. 5 or 6 bays all X, Y coordinates and ran from a PDP 11/23.

In 87/88 they wanted to replace it with a pc but the I/O interfaces just weren't there in 88.

K2 Vashon island in Washington state used a PDP 11/70 to control their manufacturing as late as 94? I think.

When I was working for MS in 2002 I was sent to a General Electric site. I was told this site is responsible for building nuclear power stations. I saw an RL-02 and made a joke. I was informed that is still in use for payroll.

If anyone really did set off an EMP, our world is toast. Forget about radiation or flying concrete from bombs. Just melt down the silicone.

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AmiDeplorabilis@reddit

I sharpen the tool on company time. If I'm doing company work, I'm getting paid for it.

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thrownawaymane@reddit

"sharpen the tool"

...Are we still talking about IT?

I sharpen the tool on company time would be a hilarious shirt

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AmiDeplorabilis@reddit

We'll never know... will we?

We in IT also attempt to sharpen the fool, but that often only sees varying degrees of success, since many fools actively resist being sharper. Some are downright dull, and with some, I see no point. Nothing like being bludgeoned to death by a dull and pointless person.

And with others, they've reached the "point of know return".

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Lostmyvibe@reddit

Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime, that's why I sharpen my tool on company time.

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AmiDeplorabilis@reddit

Fezzik would be proud of you!

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AlexisFR@reddit

This is why we need unions again, most other STEM fields still pay workers to learn.

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Keleus@reddit

No thanks, i negotiated my own education benefits without losing even more money from my paycheck to pay for just another layer of do nothing managers.

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Mysterious-Safety-65@reddit

Oh...I remember those days.... they were wonderful.

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ZuluEcho225@reddit

Ha! I got a family and a life. Stopped caring after 40 to keep up with the rat race. I'm here for the money and I'm done for the day when I walk out the door. When I'm cold and dead no employer will care.

I've moved up more not caring then I did trying to bust my ass in IT.

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neosar82@reddit

I will learn things on my own because even after 20 years I still like new stuff. However, if my employer expects me to get a certification then they can pay for the training and test.

Learning to learn either while tinkering in a home lab or on the job is something I enjoy doing and I will go a lot further than most in this regard. However, I’m not spending my personal time studying the specific questions asked on an exam so I can get a piece of paper just to make my employer happy. If they want to pay for me to take training during work hours and pay for the test then I’ll put the effort in. Other than that, pretty much the only reason I’m doing it on my own time is because I genuinely want to or to get a new job.

I say all this, but am currently speed running a couple Udemy courses to get a couple certs on my own time. However, I’m mainly doing it because I already have so much experience in those areas that it’s silly not to go get the certs. You never know what might happen in the future so it’s probably a good move. It’s worth noting though, that I’m not doing it at the direction or suggestion of my employer.

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wonderandawe@reddit

If I knew in college I'd have to take multiple SAT like tests every two years, I may have picked a different major.

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0solidsnake0@reddit

What are those multiply "SAT like" tests are you talking about?

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MisterBazz@reddit

Certs to stay competitive in the industry.

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Metalfreak82@reddit

Yeah, I see that a lot in IT. Where I have friends in different work areas that all have training during work hours. In lots of companies they expect you to study in your free time. I really refuse to do that and work at a company now that doesn't expect that of me, but it also keeps me from searching for another workplace.

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UninvestedCuriosity@reddit

Yeah and it's even hard to know when is the right time to dig in. For example, running local llm's a year ago was all pytorch and nonsense. Today you install ollama and everything seems to hook into it just fine.

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DeputyDumbDumb@reddit

If it helps, there's companies out there like that. My company encourages one hour a day of self-development, they pay for my CompTIA courses and testing and any books I want to order or courses.

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Sufficient-West-5456@reddit

This During a deployment of a legacy garbage software today

Our initial deployment person forgot to run a db script

Which we found out after 4 hours of running around of why application not working and checking random errors and logs

Heck we even tried to replicate it in test

Moral of the story

I do it for the money and ready to go to next company who pays more

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thisguy883@reddit

Ha!

The same thing happened the other day when an admin pushed an update out without informing our GPO guys. the system we used for remote work revoked our admin rights as a result, and it took a few hours and a couple of phone calls to figure out what had happened.

Gotta love the newbies.

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Downtown_Look_5597@reddit

I love that you have GPO guys

I am the GPO guy
And the network guy
Also the AD guy
And the DNS guy...

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darkzama@reddit

I love that they also have good guys. I'm the network guy, the server guy, the gpo guy, the "i can't figure it out" guy, the voice guy... the "i might have a virus" guy........

🤣 I think job bloat is the #1 gripe with IT.

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CeldonShooper@reddit

"Can you restore my file from the backup?" - "What was it called?" - "I have no idea." - "In what folder did you save it?" - "What's a folder?"

Fun times.

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thisguy883@reddit

Oh i got the, "Someone used my computer, and now the monitor stopped working".

I remote in, and the monitor is functioning fine on my end.

"Sir, could you see if your monitor is turned on?"

That was the problem.

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KiwiNinjaTiger@reddit

I have definitely experienced this 😂😂😂😂😂

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AdeptnessHead3847@reddit

Or the calls where they say the computer isn't working and it turns out to be a matter of them turning on the monitor, but not the actual computer.

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SoSmartish@reddit

Me, helping someone set up a basic program: "Okay so put in your username here."

"I don't know my username."

😐

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G8racingfool@reddit

"I made a mail rule in Outlook and now all my mail is gone. Can you find it and put it back please?"

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darkzama@reddit

Bruh.... I ask people now ANY TIME I'm troubleshooting anything. "Can you walk me through your process?"

Just to get a general idea of where and how things flow

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Veldern@reddit

I do this too, and found it's so underutilized by my team it's crazy

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Lumpy_Stranger_1056@reddit

Wait people out here have structure not just two guys shoved in the basement????

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Downtown_Look_5597@reddit

One of the nicer things about working in a SMB is that you do actually get to experience a lot of different technologies. It's a good start to a career if you can find a specialism you really enjoy.

My dyspraxic brain on the other hand needs a new shiny IT thing every quarter or I get antsy, so no specialism for me

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mrcomps@reddit

Consider yourself lucky if you have a window and some sort of ventillation. I always look forward to winter and the draft letting in some fresh air that will sustain me for the next few months until I get to see the sun briefly while commuting, once my skin and eyes have adjusted that is.

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deadshift2010@reddit

In the winter time of the year I have to schedule time for myself to go outside and see sunlight, otherwise I can go days without actually seeing the sun lol

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Lumpy_Stranger_1056@reddit

I have a window but it's stuck shut and the blinds are broken closed and they have to be up there in case of a lockdown. The asbestos floor is also never waxed so it's a good time.

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deadshift2010@reddit

My coworker is the Database Dev and also Head of IT, I am Helpdesk as well as General IT. We're literally 2 guys in the basement keeping this garbage barge afloat lol

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Lando_uk@reddit

Are you also the AWS guy and Azure O365 guy, oh and the vmware guy?

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Downtown_Look_5597@reddit

Not the AWS guy, but yes, 365, virtualisation, firewalls, MDM..

If it has a an IP address it's my thing

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redmage753@reddit

At least you know who the guy is. We just have guys who do things in gpo, ad, and dns. There is no structure to follow. It's wild. Literal wild west nonsense.

Management wants automation to magically happen, but won't enforce supervisors holding their people's feet to the fire for standards. And supervisors think doing 1 gpo is more toil than installing an app by hand on hundreds, if not thousands of systems. Multiply that by number of apps, and that explains why it takes months to do what should take minutes.

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Vast-Avocado-6321@reddit

I had to install a bed rail for the CEO once. I am the System Administrator.

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Sufficient-West-5456@reddit

Best part? In my case,Both of em here for over 20+ yrs and still to this day somehow....

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BatemansChainsaw@reddit

No one likes change management for some reason.

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neosar82@reddit

Probably because it is often applied as a one-size-fits-all solution. When you spend a lot more time in meetings discussing a minor change than it actually takes to make the change itself it can feel like a total waste of time. Especially when people who lack the technical knowledge of what you are working on chime in with what we used to call “pearls of wisdom” that are completely irrelevant and derail the conversations.

Don’t get me wrong. Change management is absolutely necessary, but often times the implementation and personalities involved make it feel like a waste of time or worse. Granted, I have a tendency to test things to death before ever pushing the button that makes said thing do something in a production environment. However, I’ve known lots of people over the years who are not nearly as cautious and have seen them do enough damage enough times to know why it’s a necessary evil.

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Grant_Son@reddit

We once had a department meeting covering support, devs, project management etc. One of the directors key points was the massive risk we took changing the GPO to change words default save type from doc to docx without months of planning and testing. Didn't we do well. 🙄

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BatemansChainsaw@reddit

There's change management, and then there's micromanagement. Yikes.

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IdiosyncraticBond@reddit

That's why you roll out the recipe to test first, not to find what went wrong (can be useful too) but the prevent a simple script not being included in the change request when rolling out to live

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Sufficient-West-5456@reddit

Buddy we did Heck we even had a test on client server

Somehow some dev forgot to tell install person that the script was needed for test to prod move

Because they internally tried to point test end points out into a new ... prod with database refresh

And that refresh they thought would not require that sql script

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R_X_R@reddit

This is why we automate.

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crzyKHAN@reddit

You want me to automate pay more

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BrainWaveCC@reddit

Automation is to reduce your own grief...

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crzyKHAN@reddit

What did you automate

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BrainWaveCC@reddit

Deployments.

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R_X_R@reddit

Seriously. Configs, routine maintenance, new builds, etc. I can have a new ESXI host up, in the cluster, and all config'ed in 20 mins. It will be the exact same each time. If something blows up on a patch night, it's 20 mins of waiting for it to finish vs hours of me digging through old notes.

If you want more pay, you need to build your skillset.

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Wd91@reddit

You don't automate for your employers, you automate for yourself.

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radicldreamer@reddit

Everyone has a test environment, some people are lucky enough to have a completely separate production environment too!

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Ekgladiator@reddit

A few months ago, I ended up taking a bullet for my team lead because I noticed a software issue but didn't think about it.

What had happened? Well, I had way too much on my plate and was trying to get stuff done. Team lead was supposed to migrate and activate the license to a new server. When it came time to test, I noticed that it wasn't working on multiple computers but I assumed it was a case that x software only lets 1 checkout per account. So months later, the teacher is freaking out about it and my stupid honest ass admits I noticed some of the issues. I proceeded to get a new asshole torn because my team lead was an idiot who only activates 1 out of 25 licenses, but I was the asshole who noticed it and didn't say anything...

Moral of the story: My honesty has and will continue to cause me unending issues because I dislike lying

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OkAmListening@reddit

Being honest and vocal is tough with job bloat (who can keep up with ever increasing responsibility), but I will say the team you're with matters a lot. Because the field is so misunderstood, I feel like it's easy for people to pin the blame on others/scapegoats with everyone just taking the authority figures word at face value (or worse, the loud mouth's word, or ladder climber's word). It really depends on the org you're with, but it can get awful.

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SnooOpinions2512@reddit

I had admin claiming there are 3 types of bits (citing an unnamed source from the database team) as an excuse to ignore a security breach. I wouldn’t have it, insisted on statutory disclosure to the victims. They complied but fired me immediately after.

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Rude-Sprinkles4118@reddit

"Over Sharing" often done by those with a passion for the job.

I've learned always to step carefully.

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serendipity210@reddit

This right here. This also caught me in some issues with my last, Private company job. Burnout was real there and this is what contributed to my departure there.

Moving into a Public job has been nice. I can set those clear boundaries and push back due to policy. And all layers of higher ups back me up too

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Moontoya@reddit

This is the way, your loyalty is to yourself

You're not an employee you're a mercenary

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SoylentVerdigris@reddit

I once spent two entire days troubleshooting an issue preventing me from running applications as admin, persisting through a full wipe and OS reinstall. It turned out that a specific app I was responsible for supporting and no other IT person had installed had a .DLL which somehow interacted with logon.exe and caused it to crash instantly when it tried to run. So much time digging through crash dumps...

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Optimal-Bar-257@reddit

"Isn't it your job to know?"

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Lumpy_Cauliflower503@reddit

Say it again. You knocked this one out the park..I'm seething reading this

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thecravenone@reddit

Job bloat. People don't understand my job role, so it creeps into anything that runs on electricity is an IT issue

I found a real easy tip to get off of furniture duty and that was requesting an incident form from HR after I cut myself on a screw

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Upbeat-Carrot455@reddit

Like when I told my guys not to climb a tower. The person requesting the microwave shot can hire actual tower climbers. Because sysadmin doesn’t include climbing a tower to place a microwave antenna. And I’m not doing the paperwork if you fall or taking the ass chewing.

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cluberti@reddit

Where I was a sysadmin at the time, all network work was considered electrical, and by law required a licensed electrical contractor to do the work, and 100% of it in the city I was in was union. None of that happened quickly, and IT never did any of it, which was great. We did almost everything else because if it plugs in it must be IT's job because you're one step up from the janitorial staff, but not having to climb in and out of cramped spaces and run cabling was pretty awesome.

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Upbeat-Carrot455@reddit

Rhode Island?

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cluberti@reddit

Maybe.

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Bio_Hazardous@reddit

I'm so spoiled, my company builds electrical equipment so we have a whole host of qualified electricians around. Anytime I need new wires run, they're the ones that get it done, usually in excellent time too. It's a tragedy that the previous work was done by what could only be described as escaped schoolchildren, but the new stuff that gets run is top notch and I don't get covered in drop ceiling dust. Win win!

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JohnGoodman_69@reddit

My definition of what is "it" is

runs off electricity
gets an ip address or connections to something that gets an ip address.

I'm sure there are edge cases that can defeat this.

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Jrnm@reddit

Adding to this: -one of the easiest jobs to offshore - constantly changing. You don’t get to learn and coast- what you learned for server 2012 isn’t gonna help when the web servers are moved to RHEL - you gotta deal with other IT, which invites some very unpersonable folks(who can do some frickin magic) - vendors.

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Hitokiri_God@reddit

This! This the most accurate description of IT EVER! PERIOD!

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schmag@reddit

#3 is a big one, especially since 90+% of the time we can fix an issue before walking in the door. to top it off the majority of users instantly tune out at any mention of complexity, hell, many managers don't care and just want it done.

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thank_burdell@reddit

As a corollary to your 3rd point, if you start diving into log files, you’re going to find something weird. Not necessarily anything wrong or anything to do with the problem you’re troubleshooting, but weirdness will be there.

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THORMUNZ@reddit

Me breaking Jira after an update spending 12 hours only to find out the update reset the database login 😮‍💨 which wasn't the case on previous versions

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Drapidrode@reddit

I love your number 3. with experience those times drop off

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UTRICs@reddit

Yes, I have seen that many people in the company work extra hours and IT becomes part of their whole life.

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DDS-PBS@reddit

One time a guy was stuck in an elevator and they got me. I was like, "WTF do you want me to do?"

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BrokenByEpicor@reddit

Like dude, I aint touching that fucking thing because I don't need to spend all evening explaining to a detective why I was tinkering with a system I had no idea about and now he needs to hire a cleanup crew to remove your remains from the wreckage of the elevator

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quack_duck_code@reddit

Well, you must have seem Deviant Ollam's talks and are a elevator messiah!!!

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KnowledgeTransfer23@reddit

Hey, credit Howard Paine, he was as much if not more of the knowledge in that talk!

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JazzlikeSurround6612@reddit

Fix the telephone line so they can call for help. 👀

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SoSmartish@reddit

Reboot the elevator. Maybe as an admin.

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kirashi3@reddit

Technically there is a key for that... but turning it without authorization may result in going straight to jail right away.

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MusicIsLife1122@reddit

Regarding number 2 , idk , I work 8 to 5 . No calls on weekends or after work hours unless there is crisis or something

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TSMFTXandCats@reddit

To your point 3: literally just spent 6 hours trying to figure out why file sharing stopped working on a server after an unexpected shut down. Wanna know what the answer was: me too. I ended up migrating the data and spinning up a new VM.

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G8racingfool@reddit

I've been spending the last 2 weeks working with a software vendor trying to figure out why their new update will no longer import CAD drawings that used to import just fine in the old version.

Nobody has any idea because "nothing changed there" in the new version.

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MasterIntegrator@reddit

Number 1. In house private family owned all I can say. The amount of shit laid at ITs feet is immense. Power strips gate control ear pods that broke app permissions no one can read.

It is true that they say, however, about imposter syndrome. I think it’s ordinary routine apparently but you think I’m amazing like a wizard or something 99% of the time. It’s a reboot. You just don’t know where and what type of reboot to do. Green Blinky flash good solid, green questionable red Blinky flash bad solid red worse no red no green bad I made a whole career out of this.

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G8racingfool@reddit

https://xkcd.com/627/ - Been pinned to my desk since it was created.

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lucke1310@reddit

"People not understanding IT problems and our role within a company is what is depressing."

Completely agree, however, I'd also add that people don't know and don't give a shit, which is even more depressing, especially since we need to have some sort of idea of all other departments workflows.

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SOUTHPAWMIKE@reddit

Non-IT people don't understand how deep it is, and that it's very possible to spend 8 whole hours on one error without finding the solution. It doesn't mean I'm stupid, it means that computer programing and network communication get complicated. Who would have guessed?

The absolute worst kind of user. In seemingly a single breath, they'll proclaim how little they know about computers (despite having been in a digital workforce for over twenty years) and then get upset that there's apparently one thing that I don't know about computers that's affecting their ability to do busywork. So it's fine that you know nothing, but I'm expected to know everything within 15 minutes of you remembering I exist?

Sorry. Needed to vent a little. Only way I stay sane is convincing myself there's a special level of hell for people like this.

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Justananomaly@reddit

Thank you for this perspective. I really needed to read #3 today because I've been feeling really stupid lately but have realized no, it really is just software vendors doing less testing these days causing me more headache.

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Hebrewhammer8d8@reddit

I send the user this.

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mazobob66@reddit

I would also add that having a good manager makes a HUGE difference...but that is not uniquely an IT difference. A good manager makes ANY job better.

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EmceeCommon55@reddit

I work at an engineering firm and the amount of tickets we get where it's some overly complicated engineering problem that I nor anyone on my team knows how to fix is astounding. Users assume we know how to fix every single thing that happens on a computer or anything electronic. I had a guy ask me how to fix his iPhone last week. Hey man, that's not my job.

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Prudent-Blueberry660@reddit

Oh man number 1 and 3 are my biggest sore spots! I work for a manufacturing company and you wouldn't believe some of the things I get pulled into working on. On top of that trying to make machines from the 90's work with today's technology. It could be worse though, I could be like my co-worker who basically has to deal with the company owners personal IT needs.

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reasonman@reddit

anything that runs on electricity is an IT issue

bro even things that don't. i had a guy walk into the IT room with a box of door knob parts and ask if i could change his door knob.

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Acidburn073@reddit

This right here. Also, not only do they want 24/7 unfettered access to the IT guy, they expect their issue to be addressed immediately, regardless of what you are currently doing.

I loved this job when I started it 20 years ago. I enjoyed learning new systems, new applications, and new technologies. But, scope creep and hyper-aggressive “Chicken Littles” (people who think the sky is falling when THEY have an issue) have ruined everything I liked.

There will be days where I become a customer manager because the problem I am trying to fix has nothing to do with any tech what-so-ever.

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ghosthak00@reddit

When you guys learn to check out or my other workers would say DGAF.

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obviouslybait@reddit

The perfect IT environment is mid-size where you have a team that can help provide coverage, and you're not so specialized that you will have trouble finding other work or move up in the field. In a mid-size org with an IT Team you can split on-call coverage, you can ask for help, projects can be planned, and multiple members assist, it's usually better organized with defined IT policy and procedures.

The negative side is that it's usually more corporate, and I hate corporate.

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Temetka@reddit

Calibrate the microwave. Dude, you pretty much nailed it with this.

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Plastic_Helicopter79@reddit

Make a diagnostic sandwich and a certification bowl of soup.

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Supermathie@reddit

In the wrong environment, it is absolutely toxic.

IMO this is the biggest thing. There's so many toxic work environments for our field and a lot of people feel they need to "prove themselves" and end up burning out.

My current job suffers from none of this and it's wonderful.

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Lumpy_Stranger_1056@reddit

I think your #1 is my biggest thing that and people literally asking me to do there jobs. How do i do this in random program X Oh wow that's hard can you do that for these 200 reports? Umm no I'm happy to teach you something but I'm not doing your Job!

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Agent042s@reddit

Yeah… i’ve heard those burnout stories too. But that was the first challenge I’ve had to learn as an L1:

1) It is not my job, nor my responsibility. I will find out who is responsible and contact him any way possible, but i will not burry my fingers into unknown machine or program and potentially fuck it even more. I was not schooled in this, I don’t have course for administering it… hell, I am not paid for this. You can also go f yourself. Or in other words, write a ticket with maximum priority and we will look into that in response time approved in our SLA.

2) Do I have emergency calls in my agreement? Do they at least pay me enough for that? No? In that case I don’t care. I have “do not disturb literally turned from the moment i leave my job till something like two hours before I’ll arrive the next day. Wanna support in my off time? You’d better to find a budget to pay my overtime. Or I have better idea: hire a second guy, pay us emergencies and then we will work at nights and on weekends.

3) I fully agree with that. We live on the bring of the AI replacing google and most of the office users are still incapable to google something up properly. I am okay that I will spend 5 hours on adding every Zebra printer to SAP. I get that we are using some kind of emulator to connect to banking systems from 1980 and it is really tricky to install and configure. But there is a set of users capable of asking about a stupid visual changes of office apps we warned in a memo three times in the last month and you need to be prepared for it.

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bebearaware@reddit

I had an assistant controller ask me if I liked IT because it was "so easy and black and white."

Ma'am.

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PweatySenis@reddit

ahh yes, because being an assistant controller isn't the most black and white job there is, Excel is really hard you know

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aceschool@reddit

This is spot on

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BiggOnion@reddit

I could not agree with this more. There is a saying that applies in most professions, "People don't quit jobs...they quit bosses".

As SoSmartish said, in the right environment things are managed. Such as the on-call rotation, good backup from your managers ("No, we're not sending someone to your office to move your PC from one side of the desk to the other, sorry"), and good planning.

Get the job; deal with the environment you're in and if you don't like it, you now have breathing room to find another job. It might seem daunting since you're younger, but trust me, don't feel guilty or scared about it. You will most likely have several jobs in your professional life, so leaving one should be just another stepping-stone.

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igazv@reddit

What you're describing has a lot to do with the specific workplace environment and not necessarily transversal to everyone on this career.

Stop giving a shit if it "provokes" them. If it's not your job then it isn't, end of story. It helps if you can point them in the right direction, you can't help but have them go talk to A, B or C who can. Also, try not to be perceived as the "IT Guy", you have specific functions within your organization, maybe you're a Network Administrator, a Technician, or a Systems Administrator. Make an effort not to be seen as "generic guy who solves anything".
I get that sometimes it's hard to push back on this as usually this kind of pressure comes from higher ups, so if you find yourself in this situation in your current job, the only way to fix it may be to start looking for something else. Usually when looking for jobs, small teams with big infrastructure are red flags that tell you it will lead to this. If you'll be integrated in a team with another 2 guys and you have a big amount of critical infrastructure to care for, it is obvious you will be depended upon to support it at all times. So, either make sure you go into this knowing you will be properly compensated for the extra time your dispensing, or avoid it and look for something else. Usually teams with 5+ people can atleast rotate on who's on call.
This seems to be a management issue. It's not your coworkers business to judge how long or how much effort it takes you to accomplish X. It's your manager's job to effectively estimate and communicate to others the effort and cost put into the tasks your department has to accomplish, and if there are any perceived performance issues those need to be identified by your manager and not by others.

Basically, in any field/career I've seen, if you don't stand up for yourself people will take advantage of you. This is not unique to IT. So if IT is something you're passionate about and see yourself doing, by all means go for it. Just be aware that holding a job and maintaining your mental sanity is not all about making sure you got the technical skills for it, you also need to have interpersonal skills to deal with your coworkers.

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fookingotem@reddit

Basically, in any field/career I've seen, if you don't stand up for yourself people will take advantage of you. This is not unique to IT. So if IT is something you're passionate about and see yourself doing, by all means go for it. Just be aware that holding a job and maintaining your mental sanity is not all about making sure you got the technical skills for it, you also need to have interpersonal skills to deal with your coworkers.

This! 90% of the complaints I see here boil down to people being doormats and accepting just about anything. All the other departments put stuff aside because it's not their responsibility, yet somehow the IT guy is too scared to say no.

This sets so many wrong expectations on what people have on us as a whole it's insane.

Also, I've worked with people who would take just about any request and it would absolutely piss me off when they'd mess around systems they were not responsible for or even know how they were set up. Like, right go ahead and potentially screw it up or misconfigure it just so you can be the guy who solves everything fast...

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avinitski@reddit

Point 1 really rings true for me, they think you know everything about anything IT related. It even stretches to family members, "What do you mean you don't know how to do this one task in this application you've never heard of, you work in IT!" argh can be so frustrating sometimes.

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JohnGillnitz@reddit

it creeps into anything that runs on electricity

It creeps beyond that. I used to work at a place that was about 80% women and became The Guy That Fixes Things. Need your car started? Rat stuck in a trap? Climb up a ladder for some reason? Call Gillnitz! You might think there could be some benefits to that, but I was married and everyone else was 20 years older than me.

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Library_IT_guy@reddit

I wish my boss understood point 3 better. She wants CONSTANT RESULTS, CONSTANT project completion. I feel like I need to actively seek out something major to add to my weeklly to-do list and complete it just to appease her, even though some weeks really are just "keeping the lights on" with patches, updates, chasing down errors, and making sure everything runs smoothly. We've close to zero downtime on any systems, never had any security issues.... I've done my job here flawlessly, but I still constantly feel that I need to prove that my position here is justified. No one else is treated like this. Everyone else is given tasks and does them, but I have to work solo, independently, and if there isn't a crisis to solve or a huge project to do, I have to invent one to prove that my position is worth keeping.

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Tech_support_Warrior@reddit

The only things I would add to this:

The job is customer service at it's core, and has all of the problems any customer service job has. When IT is working well, we are useless and not needed. When IT isn't working well, we are useless and should be replaced. Apparently, it's my fault that Karen in Finance shut her laptop down in the middle of an update and now it's blue screening or I am worthless and should be fired because Microsoft's last update changed a feature in Outlook and I can't fix it.
On top of that IT is expensive, so it a huge budget item and always under scrutiny. Get ready to have to explain every single thing you need to purchase. Also be prepared to get put on a project that is "Top Priority" and then get told, you can't purchase the software/hardware needed to complete it.

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Maximum_Eye8644@reddit

Good lord I relate to point 1 so much. This girl at the office had a hair straightener and space heater plugged in and the power went out in her cubicle. The outlets no longer worked but the breaker wasn’t tripped yet they called me like I could fix. I am an “IT Network Admin” I don’t recall electrical being part of the job description

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Cannabace@reddit

I’m dealing with creep myself. Fortunately the bosses boss is already aware of the his IT managers shortcomings. When your bosses have worse, untreated ADHD than you, it’s chaos.

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YouandWhoseArmy@reddit

These all boil down to “lack of control”

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work-acct-001@reddit

there is no better summary than this.

2 on the list hits hard. it doesn't matter if you have an on call rotation working after hours happens whether it was "on call" or just the IT Concierge service too many people expect.

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Coffee_Ops@reddit

That is not the entire it field though.

Federal consulting is a lot more strict on Work-Life balance and job roles, because there's generally a specific contract about exactly how many hours you are going to bill and exactly what you were allowed to do.

I will say that private sector and public sector have their own unique challenges. With many of the civilian contracts you may encounter motivation issues, because there's just not a lot of pressure to perform.

But these are generalizations and there is huge variance. It's just about finding the right job, and recognizing that no job is perfect. Each place you go to is going to have its own bag of dysfunction.

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lexbuck@reddit

The complexity is the thing that I wish other departments (that get paid more and have more respect) could see. I mean we have executives who the hardest thing they do all day is figure out where to eat lunch and which conference room to choose for a meeting

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Metalfreak82@reddit

And still don't get that right with multiple rooms booked for one meeting and the lunch is sent to the wrong room on the wrong day.

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lexbuck@reddit

Lmao. We all work in the same hell I see

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Downtown_Look_5597@reddit

Don't forget when you change something and everyone blames the change for every unrelated issue

Then it becomes a nightmare of picking through the bogus issues to find the one or two legit complaints

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TopHigh_Field2K@reddit

2 one of the worst things in IT. If you don’t want to be in this position change career.

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Ok_Cake4352@reddit

And this is why I love my current IT job. I spent my first 7 years in IT at jobs that have 1 or more of the above caveats but now? My job has none of those things.

Our duties are clearly outlined, and our director and CIO go to bat for us when these lines are pushed.

We have a 24/7 helpdesk, which is part of the nature of our job, but it also means we don't have on-call IT for pretty much all of our internal IT departments. We just actually have guys that agree and work those shifts. SAs and Engineers all work regular day shifts here, only pushing 45+ hours if we're setting up new locations.

And finally, nothing in my job is that complicated. It tests my skills, sure, but not as much as it could. We mainly work on streamlining existing procedure, and upgrading when beneficial. Anyways, stress-free for now

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JazzlikeSurround6612@reddit

Dance Lil IT monkey dance! You fix it and fix it fast.

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FerryCliment@reddit

Also the differences in complexity from an apparent similar things, is something lot of people cannot comprehend.

GKE? Managed kubernetes? has its issues and problems, but oh boy, don't try to run Anthos on VMWare (Especially early versions) I've seen people go crazy with what in theory is just the same but run locally.

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SilentLennie@reddit

And something about time management.

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siedenburg2@reddit

Don't forget for 1 that, because you are normaly involved in almost any part of the company even not it stuff ends at your desk because you know it

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ImCaffeinated_Chris@reddit

Except when the execs and managers decide to make important IT decisions without including IT.

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LunaLovesLunacy@reddit

This hits home hard. It happens all the damn time, and I just have to sit there and deal with it. "make it happen"

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uncp07@reddit

Yes.. Their three favorite words..."make it happen"

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SoSmartish@reddit

Yeah I thought adding a 4 but I didn't want to have a huge novel.

But what you said, the buck stops with IT. If Operations can't figure it out, they pass it to Engineering. When Engineering can't figure it out, they pass it to IT. IT has the stereotype as the smartest guys in the room, so we get stuck working backwards on an issue that only involves us very slightly, while everyone else watches like hawks as we try to come up with some kind of solution because there is nobody for us to pass it on to. Very frustrating.

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ikeme84@reddit

Budgets. Everyone wants a ferrari when it comes to IT, but only have money for a volkswagen.

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Aggravating_Refuse89@reddit

A volkswagen? You must work with high budgets. More like a handful of parts and a broken 87 Yugo. With ferrari expectations

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crzyKHAN@reddit

The VW GTI is peak IT car !!!!!!!!!

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AmiDeplorabilis@reddit

A Volkswagen would be nice, but it's often a Yugo or a Vega.

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SoSmartish@reddit

So true. People come to IT with this brilliant idea that requires a significant hardware deployment and then they fall onto the Fainting Couch when we tell them that we need to buy the hardware.

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jr-416@reddit

I guess none of the hardware can be cloud based with a small box on premises? Cloud still costs money, but not all at once.

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Outrageous_Cupcake97@reddit

Also, let's just lie to ourselves pretending to be compliant with industry standards and certifications (which by the way, we don't even have the budget to) and force us to do stupid tasks nobody asks for. False sense of security just for marketing.

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SoSmartish@reddit

force us to do stupid tasks nobody asks for.

The MO at my place is [stupid person with fancy title] wants to see some shit displayed on a TV screen and then a few months later the LCD panel on the monitor is blue and burned out anyway because nobody ever turns it off or takes care of it, but by god if that report stops refreshing the entire company WILL grind to a halt. 😂

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Outrageous_Cupcake97@reddit

Ah LCD burn in will be spotted right away😄 This is fine. Nowhere as annoying as compliance tasks you don't even need. They don't understand but still tell you 'its got to be done because we need it for x compliance' I'm like- Do you even know wtf you're talking about and what that involves?- ugh

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Happy_Kale888@reddit

German cars are not cheap... Money for a Dodge Journey

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lonetraveler73@reddit

I left IT for all these reasons and more.

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Metalfreak82@reddit

Big companies control everything. You will regularly be surprised that Microsoft has introduced something new today and you have to go with it, whether you like it or not, whether you hav e teh resources to implement it or not. And yeah, you sometimes miss an announcement of these changes because of the enormous load of news that's coming your way every day and the cryptic description of these features. They sometimes interfere with your companies policy, but hey, it comes from a company like Microsoft, what are you gonna do against it? Run after the new hype until a new hype train comes along.

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Bondegg@reddit

I’d also add that for me personally, you always seem to be doing something “bad”

If you’re working and being seen, it’s because something isn’t working that should be, so it’s your fault and you need to hurry up. If you’re minding your own business and not being seen, you’re lazy and have time to kill and therefore expendable, if the company is doing well and making lots of sales, it because the sales team have done a great job, if the sales team haven’t been able to make a lot of sales, it’s probably something to do with the internet not being available or that share going down sometime half a year ago.

You need to very quickly adapt to being the punching bag and never receiving any thanks, which can start to drain.

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samfisher850@reddit

Got this one the other day "How do you get paid full time? There's no way you're busy. Oh, I guess it probably just balances out cause you're on call all the time."

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Aggravating_Refuse89@reddit

Dont ever be "the IT guy" Be on a team of sysadmins. Nobody should be on call all the time. its not sustainable. Avoid very small one man IT shops and MSPs.

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R0gu3tr4d3r@reddit

Totally agree with this. 25 years experience.

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SkyHighGhostMy@reddit

Just a comment to your #3. Even a so called "IT managers" who did work IT things 10-15 years ago, do not understand exactly what you are doing. And in some cases they throw you under the bus in front of customers with "you'll figure it out" with unrealistic expectations.

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LightishRedis@reddit

90% of my workday is answering questions on how to use software. We have a dedicated “how to use the software team.” C-levels have decided if the team for teaching people how to use the software don’t know, it’s a tech issue. The most recent ticket I worked was “when I click log in, it tells me the user ID or password I entered was incorrect, but I didn’t enter a user ID or password in either field.”

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mrbnlkld@reddit

On #2, I can't even call in sick. If I do I still get calls. My version of sick days are suffering while working from home.

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SoSmartish@reddit

Yeah I caught covid last year and I think I closed 3 tickets after 10:30pm. I work second shift so that isn't SO BAD but still, sick at 10:30pm is sick at 10:30pm

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Dry_Computer_9111@reddit

On point 3 there:

We used to be lauded as very smart and valuable people. Exceptional.

Then our jobs got offshored, and cheapened. Quality, expectations, value all dropped with it.

I’m a programmer but it’s the same. We’re just replaceable units for the last couple of decades that could maybe be replaced with cheaper units offshore.

And absolutely, definitely, business has no idea how complex this role and similar, IT in general, is.

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ajrc0re@reddit

this sounds like a bad job, not an issue with the career. My company is great and the division between which department owns what is crystal clear. This mostly relates to office services, business technology (dev team), practice technology (software specific support), endpoint (regular tickets) and infrastructure (servers and networking). I work in infrastructure and if something ever ends up on my plate that I don't think belongs to me, I simply refer to the ownership matrix and hand it off to whoever owns it. im sorry if your job just throws everything at you but that's a 'your job' problem not an 'IT' problem. Same could be said for cashiers being forced to clean or whatever. I think poorly defined job scope is just an issue across the board in every job and the smaller/less organized your company is the worse the issue becomes.

Afterhours work is your company not having enough coverage. If help is regularly required after business hours there should be someone working a swing shift, staggered shifts so that your various coworkers are all covering different time slots, etc. A one off issue here or there on the weekend is one thing but who has to handle that should be rotated between multiple staff members and the frequency should be reasonable and irregular. There should also be a backup and escalation chain defined incase the person on call isn't available or the issue is very serious. if your job doesn't have this stuff in place, that's an issue with your job, not IT.

your third point is pretty accurate but that's why you should have a knowledgable manager who has your back and shields you from having to make those explanations. My boss is not nearly as technical as me, but once I describe to him why this one thing im building out is going to take a week or two longer than expected, he will be able to go and explain the situation in laymen's terms to end users, executives, etc. That way im not having to explain myself constantly, just once and he will make sure everyone who needs to be filled in with that info is taken care of.

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notHooptieJ@reddit

also its a Sisyphean task. There are always more tickets. Its always the same 2-5-10 problem children (both animate or inanimate), there is literally no end. There is always another ticket, task, or problem to look into.
the users/customers/people - its a customer service job plus a technical job 99% of the time. You're subjected to the worst of humanity and have to smile and thank them for stomping your soft parts. And hilariously its usually the least socially able to cope that are shoved at the front lines of it.

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iwishiremember@reddit

Point 1, absolutely!

From my 20+ years long IT career is the most frustrating part of my job/life.

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Evisra@reddit

4: being referred to as the “IT guy” instead of my actual fucking title to clients

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Va1crist@reddit

1000% this ^^^^^

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BigdaddyDD94@reddit

This!! Especially number 1!

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sybrwookie@reddit

Saying "That isn't my job" provokes them because they think I am being lazy or don't know what I do

I found the important thing is to know who does what. I can definitely say, "that's not my job" all the time, as long as I can say, "you should talk to XYZ." People don't mind as long as I don't make it a dead end.

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bTOhno@reddit

Personally, I enjoy the challenge, even if I spent the last 2 days trying to figure out why a new vip on a vlan wasn't working only to find out the physical switch doesn't have the VLAN assigned from the network team...oops

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Bogus1989@reddit

he is exactly correct.

the majority of problems are management issues, and a good boss/IT Director will solve.

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blue_trauma@reddit

The work can be complex and frustrating. Non-IT people don't understand how deep it is, and that it's very possible to spend 8 whole hours on one error without finding the solution. It doesn't mean I'm stupid, it means that computer programing and network communication get complicated.

Ugh, this. Sometimes I have to tell myself this also.

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pakman82@reddit

4) embittered co-workers make it that much worse.

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khymbote@reddit

Nothing like spending my entire day on a few errors from software not meant to run in a secure environment.

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Dizzy_Bridge_794@reddit

Couldn’t agree more. I do love what I do. You are 100% correct on those statements.

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livevicarious@reddit

This post deserves to be skyrocketed in upvotes. We share the same work routine. Whats funny is if I did what they do and bring an IT problem to them and asked them to help I would get chewed out because it’s not their “responsibility”

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MomentumCrypto@reddit

IT is indeed a pain. For me the big reasons are:

IT changes more than any other field. I've been in the field for 25 years and am having problems getting a job because I had a small business working with small companies that didn't have an IT guy and in the meantime absolutely everything in corporate America was migrating to cloud solutions. Pretty much all the concepts are the same, but because I don't have the cloud experience, it's tough getting a job. Microsoft's online offerings are a complete mess. They're renaming something or changing their portal in some confusing way everyday because they're unable to do something logically and competently the first time.
It's not just the change, but the breadth of the field. When I started you needed to have your A+ cert to show basic understanding of computers and repair, your MCSE to show you understand Microsoft and basic networking, maybe a CCNA to show you understand more in depth networking and you needed to know Office basics and maybe a little bit about SQL or Exchange. Now it's so diverse that you could make up a word, let's say "banana". Companies want 5 years of experience in "banana" and I've been in the field for 25 years and have never heard of "banana". There are hundreds or thousands of brands of networking hardware, servers, portals, technologies, OSs, client applications, server applications, cloud applications and platforms and people will insist you have experience with whatever random combination of products they're using, what I call their IT fingerprint. They want you to match their IT fingerprint walking in the door, which today is very unrealistic. You could have 10 years of experience with Cisco, but the company may not hire you because you don't have ten years of Juniper and that's what they use. Like a job I was turned down for just this week, you may have a lot of experience with Microsoft, but they want someone with a lot of experience with Linux. The lady that I was speaking with said they even turned down a guy with Ubuntu experience because he didn't have experience with Red Hat.
Most of the jobs on job boards seem to be senior level positions and junior level positions are much harder to find. The conundrum of "You need the experience to get the job, but you need the job to get the experience" is very real and quite an obstacle. I got my CCNA a long time ago, but couldn't land an engineer job with the cert alone. I'm still looking for an engineer role.
People are in many cases now outsourcing parts of their own jobs, such as infrastructure maintenance to large companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Google and many companies have gone to SaaS for many of their programs meaning less servers and administration, meaning less local jobs for these things. Of course security has become a much larger issue so as some jobs are lessening, other new positions are needed. Of course the impact of AI will throw a wrench into things.

I always wanted to go into programming. I used to program as a hobby. If I could go back and whisper in my own ear when I was 16 I would have told myself to go to MIT, ring up the debt and then try to intern while I was still able to live at home for the best company I could get into, with the most jobs of the type I was looking for. Getting your foot in the door is the hardest part. ...And I would tell myself to put all my money into Bitcoin as soon as I could. :D

I'm not sure why you think it's bad long term. But long term it is a challenge. Constant learning is a chore that a lot of other fields don't have to deal with, at least not nearly as much and there is definitely some age discrimination in the field. The thing I always liked about IT was that things were always changing and if you have a good idea you could end up being like Bill Gates, Elon Musk or one of the many other multi-millionaires or billionaires generated by IT. I had a project that could have been similar back in the day, but I just didn't have the time to continue it. The constant change of IT can be a curse, but it can also be a blessing with regards to the opportunities that a smart person that looks at the big picture can take advantage of.

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bushmaster2000@reddit

IT is a very broad field. Doing IT Help Desk sucks it's the worst but that's usually the ground floor you put your time in, pay your dues and work on a specialization yoiu like better. Those being like Storage, Networking, Servers, Database Admin, CyberSecurity. Then you get certified, trained, educated in these specialized fields and look for a job in those areas probably starting as an Administrator then Engineer then Director.

But SysAdmin is bad too i wouldn't suggest someone new to the field go that direction. And storage is really specialized a place that is paying someone just to manage SANs is goign to be a huge enterprise so limited career opportunity there. So Networking is really great place to go, CyberSecurity is a huge thing to get into as well . Both pay really well and can largely be done remotely too.

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frosty3140@reddit

It totally depends on who you work for and what that culture is like. I'm lucky.

Started in IT in 1986 as a programmer, have been an analyst, consultant, business owner, IT Manager. I eventually found my niche. Am now a systems administrator for a Not For Profit that serves people with disabilities. My work has meaning and I love sysadmin work, as I don't have to interact daily with a lot of people. My manager understanding my role and skills and mostly leaves me alone to just get stuff done.

I decided in 2003 to avoid management roles and stick to technical roles. Best decision for me and it has been great. I'm 61 now and retirement is not far away. I have no regrets about working in IT for nearly all my working life.

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DerpITDude@reddit

I have been doing it for about 10 years. People just can't use a computer and remember the simplest things. It becomes annoying and monotonous.

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lexbuck@reddit

This is what boggles my mind. We have many people who have used a computer in their professional life for like two decades and have learned absolutely nothing. We aren’t asking users to build a server. We are just asking they know what a “browser” and “file explorer” is when we say those words

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ohyayitstrey@reddit

Got a call from a guy in his 40s-50s. Asked him to open TeamViewer. He couldn't do it. Didn't know how to search his computer for a program that was installed on it. Couldn't find the windows start button. Theoretically uses this computer every day for work. It's truly unbelievable.

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InternationalEgg5330@reddit

You reminded a really dark time when I spent a fucking hour with a user to open TeamViewer… I got mad at phone. This is the kind of user I hate the most after as he told to others that “I wasn’t able to remotely assist him”…

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ohyayitstrey@reddit

God that's infuriating. The "WHY CAN'T YOU HELP ME" when they cannot help themselves is the worst.

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lexbuck@reddit

The “what’s a start button” from someone I know has used a computer for like 18 years is the most mind boggling thing to me. Like… you’ve not heard “the start button” at least once in the last 18 years?

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KnowledgeTransfer23@reddit

To be fair, there's only 6 years of that time span where Microsoft labeled the button as "Start." Beginning with Windows 8, it's had some weird four square icon by default.

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DudeOnWork@reddit

It was called "Start" from Win 95 up to Win 7, if I am correct.
It's more than a decade.
And if you hover over the button right now, it will show the name of the button. Still called "Start" in Win 11.

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ohyayitstrey@reddit

To be extra fair, If I say windows button, they cannot find that on the screen or on their keyboard either.

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gaybatman75-6@reddit

I’ve had users during a hardware refresh that couldn’t tell me what apps they needed installed. Like how do you not know what you use at least 5 days a week.

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highlulu@reddit

the fun part is they don't know these things when asked... but once you get the new computer in place they can immediately tell you what stuff is missing

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TheJesusGuy@reddit

This but also leadership not knowing what a new hire will be using. If you don't know what they're doing then why are they being hired?

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SMS-T1@reddit

Oh, they know what they want the new hires to work on.

But how dare you make them take time and think about how the hire will perform that work!!! You can't expect manager to do that!!

/s obv

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Moontoya@reddit

It's the blue icon, how can you not know it, are you incompetent?

(My deepest sincerest sympathy, I get that a lot)

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sinisterpancake@reddit

Even worse when those same people are taking home 2x your salary and leave early so you can work on their PC.

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quack_duck_code@reddit

Facts

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lexbuck@reddit

Been there. It’s maddening. Then people wonder why we seem crotchety all the time… just get tired of babysitting adults

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SnooMacarons467@reddit

My I always compare IT to mechanics and it boggles peoples minds...

Imagine we live in a world where your company has an awesome mechanic that also opens your car door for you, but one day your late to work because there is only 1 mechanic and he has to open everyones car door so they can get to work in the morning. When the worker gets in trouble for being late, and uses the excuse "the mechanic took ages to get to me in the morning", instead of getting this as a response from your boss "well, can you learn to open you own car door to be on time" the response is actually "thats ok, i will call the mechanic and make sure he gets to you first in the morning"

The thing is, people don't learn anything about computers because they dont HAVE too, they have the IT guy to do it for them. IT can't say they need to learn it for themselves because then we look like assholes, and IT is actually apparently a synonym for Customer Service, because that is essentially all your doing... EVERY IT role is essentially some form of Customer Service role with knowing how a computer works.

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DerpITDude@reddit

That is exactly how hiring managers view us. I was specifically asked in the interview for my current job, "What do you think is more important, technical skills or customer service?"

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lexbuck@reddit

Damn I felt this in my soul.

It’s so infuriating to get ticket about shit that’s not ITs job but of course we can’t say no because then we’re the assholes not being team players. People around the office have definitely caught on to the fact that you can literally punt anything to IT and we’ll try to figure it out

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SnooMacarons467@reddit

Yeah, it the one thing I don't love about my role, and it will eventually make me leave the industry because it is that much of an issue. A lot of people think I am super jaded and extremely negative but they fail to understand the one thing I complain about is a fundamental lack of respect when it comes to anything computer related.

IT skills are the one set of life skills you can literally brag about not having, "Oh Jenny, you think YOUR bad at computers, I got you beat, I literally walk past a computer and it erases itself, when ever I click on things nothing happens, I download things and can never find it, even just logging in is a struggle in the morning"
You hear things like this and no one bats an eye.... but if you hear the same person say
"I cant cook/clean/manage finances/drive a car/manage life" then its a lecture about how you really need to learn to look after yourself and not rely so heavily on others etc....

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lexbuck@reddit

100%. Ive even suggested having basic technology-related questions for every potential new hire to try to weed out people who are not good with computers but I know it won’t matter in the end. If the hiring manager thing they’re great, they’ll ignore that that didn’t know the technology questions because: “that’s why we have IT”

At this point knowing your way around a computer and what basic terms are should just be assumed. It’s required for damn near every job

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SnooMacarons467@reddit

The thing is though, if they did ask the IT questions, they will be asked by someone who has no idea what an acceptable answer would look like. If they asked you "What do you know about computers" and your answer was "They exist..." you would get through. If IT were on the decision panel and we could influence the decision, no one would ever get hired.

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lexbuck@reddit

You’re right. I don’t want to sit in on every interview and I don’t think the hiring people can translate answers back to me clearly enough to get an idea so it’s pointless. Even in the answer is right, you can tell by how it’s answered if someone knows the material or not.

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SnooMacarons467@reddit

We are in that weird phase of computers where they are still common but not, cars went through this period, first it was the amazingly rich that had them, then poor people started getting them so the rich people got chauffers because poor people now knew how cars worked.... well in IT we are just computer chauffers.

I wouldn't be jaded if I didnt have to teach the CEO how to open their file explorer, or how to "install outlook" by just opening the start menu and clicking on outlook.... and also have him come down and dictate to me the manner in which a server install needs to be conducted and the work that I must perform for them to get everything connected.... and then giving me 1 day to get it all done when I have asked for 5....

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lexbuck@reddit

Luckily my executives do listen to me and if I tell them I need something or need 10 days to do it, they’ll listen.

But it is super frustrating to help someone open a PDF that’s making five times your salary. Hell we have people in our marketing department that will ask us Premier Pro and Photoshop questions. Like what? Yeah I know those tools because I learned them in my free time outside of work but that ain’t my job at work. Open YouTube and learn.

Accounting is another one that loves to submit tickets for Excel when they get stuck with a formula issue or similar. NOT IT!

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Ozmorty@reddit

Solution and enterprise architecture can get you outta the weeds, but then it’s feckin politics, politics and dimwits as far as they eye can see.

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SnooMacarons467@reddit

Yeah.... fkn politics... Honestly, the higher up you go in tech, the less tech stuff you do and the more politics you have to play...

Down right suffocating.

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_TR-8R@reddit

I used to work at a Fortune 100 financial company where we were CONSTANTLY expected to bend over backwards and drop anything for the dumbest things if a user needed something, which naturally led to us getting blamed for not being efficient enough.

When COVID hit we had to migrate literally THOUSANDS of users to work from home within a week. After a single day of planning we set up a drive through assembly line in the parking garage with cones and tables with staff and equipment. Anytime anyone with main character energy tried to back up the flow to "ask a few questions" or "get my number so they can call me for issues" I was able to cut them off mid sentence, say "call the number on that paper when you get home, gtfo" and the C suite executive standing behind me would nod and join me in vigorously thumbing them out the door.

We migrated every single user, and after a month of hypercare things died down pretty fast. I even helped with a lot of the remote support in the immediate aftermath, it was really not as bad as I expected. And even if it was twice as bad for twice as long it would still be better than what we normally would've done, which is 6 months of trying to plan for every possible negative outcome and still having roughly the same amount of issues.

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SnooMacarons467@reddit

It ALWAYS makes a difference when the C suite can send out the communication and accept the decisions that they make. I am happy to enforce the decisions once they are made, I am not happy about taking all the abuse that comes from the bottom but never makes it to the top...

You were pretty lucky that you had the management backing you up, all too often we get dumped in that EXACT situation, except we don't have them there to see first hand what you have to put up with. It just really sucks when you cant do something because it involves making a decision above your pay grade... and then people not understanding that and then someone above your paygrade comes in and makes the decision and then says "see, that wasn't so hard was it"

Well, I am super glad that they listened to you when you told them what to do, when I told them what to do they didn't listen because I am just IT and they didn't HAVE too.

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SkyAdministrative459@reddit

yeah, exactly. its like hiring a chef who can cook but doesnt know how to handle a knife or a flame. A computer and some basic programs are just the tools every employee should be able to handle to do their job.

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SnooMacarons467@reddit

It's because society still treats these people sympathetically and it is a real issue. Millennial's and the whatever letter generation that came after are going to be the only generation that can actually operate computers effectively.

The kids growing up these days just completely lack the fundamentals. They all know how to buy apps from the app store on their phone, or tablets, and they are all awesome at those games, but typing skills are completely out the window, not a clue as to where a file goes when they download it, or even how to find it if they needed it. No clue on what a zip, rar, or even exe file is let alone literally anything else. A lot of this isn't even their fault, if you don't have someone around to show you, then you will never even know its a thing.

How many people do you know that are parents that have no clue about anything tech related? They might have a laptop at home, 100% they will have an iPad or another form of tablet, and a phone. This is the tech that people use in their day to day, they only interact with computers at work. If anything goes wrong they call their IT guy to come over and just fix it. They don't pay attention because they aren't told that they HAVE to by anyone with authority and by authority I am not necessarily just talking about employers, but society as a whole doesn't hold people to account. Social acceptance of tech illiteracy is the problem but we will never be able to fix it. At least not until something starts crumbling and we realise there is literally no one left to repair whats broken.

There will be a massive brain drain in the coming years when a lot of the older generation retire, and other people get jaded and leave the industry etc. Soon, there will be an entire industry where a significant portion actually don't understand why things are the way they are. This may not sound like an issue, because if they can fix the issue then they are golden right? But a lot of IT is this sort of flying by the seat of your pants, however it must be backed up with the curiosity to work out why?, and you can really only do this sort of thing if you have a deep understanding of what is actually going on...

TLDR - SOON WE ARE GOING TO HAVE TECH STAFF WHO DON'T KNOW WHAT A FILE STRUCTURE IS!!!

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Pugs-r-cool@reddit

The majority of gen z and gen alpha (kids these days) already don't understand what a file system is, they do everything on mobile and have no reason to interact with one, plus search is so good now that if they need a particular file they just use that instead. People aren't magically more tech literate just because theyre surrounded by it sadly.

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SnooMacarons467@reddit

Exactly, and people confuse this with tech literacy, but it isn't, it is being tech savvy which is different.

Once the world ends up only operating on tablets and phones etc, there will need to be someone or something handling a file some where in the world, and when that breaks and you got no idea wtf it was doing, society is going to have a hard time

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Moontoya@reddit

No, millennials and gen z and gen alpha are just as computer useless as boomers

Different paradigms , they can use walled gardens fine, they've little to no comprehension of the how or why stuff works.

It's a magic blinky box for most, generation be damned

Source, 30 year pro

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SnooMacarons467@reddit

I agree, there is still the same level of tech illiteracy, I was trying to point out that the tech literacy of the generations is a completely different thing.

If your tech literate as a millennial you are comfortable with a file structure, meaning you understand what I am saying if I tell you that I put the file in the c:\users\username\my documents folder. You are comfortable with installing and uninstalling software. You may or may not also be comfortable with re-installing your operating system. Your also very comfortable with apps on your phone, and you are comfortable with going through its settings page. The cloud is still a bit of a mystery, in general it is understood that it is a thing... but much prefer to store things offline

If your tech literate as a gen z, you are comfortable with the IoT world, very familiar with cloud based services, very comfortable with the idea of just storing everything online, cos what could go wrong right? What ever issue your having, there is an app for that, you just need to look a little harder. You want to put that thing on your iPad onto your TV? sure, you want it on your laptop too? no problem, want to see it in 3d with a headset? I got ya...

Both have their strengths and weaknesses and we compliment/operate well with each other, but the generation coming after us will find it very hard to follow in the foot steps of others because there is beginning to be a lot of gates being put up and a lot of gate keepers. Soon, the only REAL IT work is going to be handled by Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon etc, all other IT work will essentially be relegated to field support where you are literally just there to change the keyboards, turn the monitors on, and relay complaints to the big companies that manage your stuff in the cloud...

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KnowledgeTransfer23@reddit

As long as their 150" TV that's 75% filled with ads plays "Ow! My Balls!" at the correct time, nobody will care how their technology works.

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lexbuck@reddit

100% agree with you.

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Pawai23@reddit

Or the people that don't know what "signing out" is and just go and shutdown

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BoltActionRifleman@reddit

File explorer? Oh you mean the blue “e”?

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mynumberistwentynine@reddit

No I mean the folder icon on your taskbar.

"Where?"

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Cottrell217@reddit

“What’s a taskbar?”

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mynameisdave@reddit

the bottom bar. 😏

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JimmyMcTrade@reddit

Lol, dude.
I taught a class to zoomers 19-22. They did not know what a zip file was or how to zip or unzip a file. I also had to do a step by step (with screenshots) on how to send a wetransfer.

Then, at some point I was excited to teach them some cataloguing software that uses variables. I asked if anyone coded and they looked at me like, "why would we ever want to code?"

Then those people go on to get a job while not being able to read, write, code, listen, talk... and then they make and reply to tickets: "Do the needful."

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lexbuck@reddit

No you’re absolutely right. My comment was directed at older folks who just can’t seem to learn or be bothered to try but younger generation is or is going to be just as bad since they never grew up with a computer in the house and only death scroll reels on an iPhone or iPad.

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JimmyMcTrade@reddit

Zoomers are just proto-boomers.

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rednehb@reddit

My old company decided to go to the new Salesforce Lightning UI because too many people didn't understand the drop down file org in the old one. Like, click the arrow, it drops down multiple folders, click the folder, open the file. That was too hard.

Even the paid "consultants/experts" that were fresh out of college didn't understand how it worked or why anyone would use that type of system.

It was extremely eye opening.

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lexbuck@reddit

Not familiar with that UI. I’ll need to look too

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rednehb@reddit

I mean you certainly can, but it all depends on how your company sets it up if they decide to make the move.

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12312egf2323423@reddit

Same.

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UAHeroyamSlava@reddit

I got a CEO accessing his office system by vpn/remote. instead of closing X his remote sessions he shuts down his office pc. Ive had to answer that call dozens of times already.

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DerpITDude@reddit

Auto on that fucker

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Jonkinch@reddit

And lie. The lying boils my blood.

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DerpITDude@reddit

Always

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Hawteyh@reddit

Or are afraid to do anything at all they havent done before.

Had a user call last week when his Outlook asked him to "Accept terms and conditions"

Told him to just accept it, and he went "Oh, ok. I can do that?"

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DerpITDude@reddit

I would love to respond, "Or stare at it all day, up to you."

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LingonberryOne3877@reddit

We just did an employee survey and ALOT of people told us that the interface of our Watchguard VPN client is not user friendly.

It's just:
Server: (This is configured to always be pre-filled with the right info so the user dont touch it).
Username:

Password:

And cause most users are using Windows hello they forget their password and cause of that they forget the vpn password that syncs with their user.

I have guides in our knowlagebase that i posted like 5 times the past year on both how to reset their password AND how to use our VPN. 0 fucks given by the end users ofc, i think 5 people read it out of 100.

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DerpITDude@reddit

I used WatchGuard for years and heard the same shit.

I work in a school district with 300 employees I send an all-staff email detailing a change and virtually no one reads it and we get multiple tickets about said change which is all addressed in my email.

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RantyITguy@reddit

We thought alike when we created our usernames.

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DerpITDude@reddit

lol

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JimmyMcTrade@reddit

I switched careers from one that took me to concerts, pro sports, political events, and met different people every day. I decided to study and retrain in "cyber security" (very entry level stuff).

On some days, my most productive call is someone saying that they don't have access to a mailbox. I call them and they just did not expand the mailbox name in Outlook to view the subfolders.

My previous career was dying and I didn't want to end up like some older colleagues all begging for scraps. The switch was surprisingly easy and the pay is better but my soul dies a little bit more every day.

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DerpITDude@reddit

I feel the pain. I ask people to reboot their computers to fix the issue. They tell me they restarted, but it still doesn't work. I remote in, pull up Task Manager to show the uptime, and I have to remind them that closing the lid is not restarting the computer. Then I show them how to do it properly for the millionth time.

I knew a lady who used her disc drive as her coffee cup holder.

I just want some people to use their brain and help themselves for once. Every little thing isn't a call to us.

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Dogstile@reddit

I don't really get this, i've been doing it for 12 now and I really don't mind people asking me dumb questions. They're a nice break from the dumb thing that i'm too stupid to work out (or too lazy, depends on the day).

The only thing that annoys me is people telling me "oh its a stupid question". Especially from people new to the company using the software for the first time. Please stop being so shy about asking questions. It might not technically be my job to help you but if you're just polite and occasionally grab me a coffee i'm gonna be more than happy to give you a few minutes of my time whenever you ask.

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jfoughe@reddit

MSP here. Our best clients are the ones who ask intelligent questions, listen to answers, and defer technical responsibilities to those with technical acumen.

Our worst clients are those who ask no questions, are poor communicators, and suffer from a deep rooted dysfunction that poisons all aspects of the business. Without hyperbole, I cannot understand how some of these business owners navigate daily life, let alone operate a business.

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Photekz@reddit

MSP here. Our best clients are the ones who ask intelligent questions, listen to answers, and defer technical responsibilities to those with technical acumen.

You can't trick me, those doesn't exist!

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meikyoushisui@reddit

Working in an MSP for a couple of years gave me irrefutable proof that anyone with half a brain could run a successful business if they actually had access to the capital to do so. You can pretty much tell when you onboard a company whether you'll be offboarding them because they outgrew you or because they ran out of money and can't afford you anymore.

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CleverMonkeyKnowHow@reddit

> I cannot understand how some of these business owners navigate daily life

They don't.

Their daily lives are also a mess, and it's usually just a matter of time until everything goes tits up. We've lost quite a few clients over the years because they simply cannot manage... well frankly... anything.

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Prestigious-Sir-6022@reddit

Same

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__g_e_o_r_g_e__@reddit

We have a highly intelligent workforce, you wouldn't believe the shit they pull. Anything to avoid asking for help or following some unnecessary process like documentation or security controls. 10000 line office macros they spent decades developing while keeping hidden from IT, which are now critical business assets, and more recently Python worked its way in, now everyone is a software developer, just without qualifications in the boring bits like software engineering. It's on Github so it's production quality code right?

Bring me back Karen from admin who keeps forgetting her password.

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fsacer@reddit

go to INFOSEC, you will have new challenges and stuff to learn every day

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WlOOSws@reddit

Ditto.

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frustratedsignup@reddit

I've been in this job for 20 years. I like it, mostly. There are a few self important people that seem to think I'm their underling, but most of the people I work with are really nice. The only thing I don't like is that every manager above mine seems to think I'm at their beck and call when I'm not. I just ignore it, try to find something enjoyable to work on and try not to miss any deadlines.

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ProjektHelios@reddit

Here’s the thing. For companies that are good at what they do, you begin to realize you are in the customer service world. Yes, you do IT, but it’s about the customer.

I can have Mr Hotshot John 30 million a year absolutely pissed off that his company of 500 employees is down, but when I pick up the phone, I talk to him like a human. Acknowledge the fact that he is frustrated, assure him we are working on this issue and that it’s all hands on deck, and talk to him like a human.

John doesn’t have to know everything or even anything about IT. That’s what he pays us a crazy amount of money to do. The tech knowledge comes with time. I started as an intern 4 years ago , worked through Service Desk, got my Net+, studying CCNA and am a junior network administrator.

I still focus on the customers. Regardless of how much tech I learn and how much I progress, if John 30mil doesn’t realize I care about him and his business making money, my day is gonna be piss poor. I’m going to cry about being yelled at and about customers being “too stupid to understand”.

Personally, I love IT. But I’m in it for the customer service first and the tech second.

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InternationalEgg5330@reddit

Ok Candid… Such a pure soul, I wish you the best for the next of your career.

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SmallClassroom9042@reddit

This had always been my experience until by recent job, I have a director who says fuck the customer, it is not the way

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ProjektHelios@reddit

Bingo. I’ve only worked for 2 IT companies and the first one was very much “screw the customer they are the reason they have issues” needless to say we didn’t grow very fast there. This company is the customer first, and we have 60 customers, and have lost 2 due to financial reasons in the past 4 years. Soooo I think results speak for themselves

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tristand666@reddit

When I started in IT, it was like being the wizard that controlled the black box. Nobody understood what you did and as long as everything worked, they tended to leave you alone. Then the corporate metrics came along and determined they could squeeze much more work out of less people.

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nealfive@reddit

Highly depends on the company. Some are really good about setting boundaries ( usually the bigger the better, but that's hit or miss too lol). Other companies treat IT like a cost center, anything is plugged into an outlet is IT and of course you're expected to be available 24/7 and can't take time off. Also will need to to fix private equipment, can't you make windows cheaper, do we really need licenses? etc.

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Life-Cow-7945@reddit

It 100% depends on the company and the atmosphere. Some are soul crushing and not fun, but when you find the right one, you'll enjoy going to work every day

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Piipperi800@reddit

This is very much it. IT is a very wide field and different companies have drastically different approaches to IT. Just gotta find the company and (maybe more importantly) the specific role that suits you best.

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phillyrat@reddit

totally

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kali_tragus@reddit

Yes, and on what field you're in. My impression is that the ones struggling the most are sysadmins working with end users, and especially end users with, umm, limited technical understanding.

Most of my career I've worked with servers and data centre infrastructure, well away from non-technical end users. It can still be frustratingly complicated or mindboggingly monotonous at times - just like any other job - but as long as you are with a good company working with competent colleagues it's a good job.

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mellamosatan@reddit

Nah it's fine people just like to complain. And a lot of the jobs, especially help desk type stuff gets really repetitive and end users are dipshits. I suggest not dealing with end users and positioning yourself somewhere above help desk grunt stuff. They always seem miserable after 5-10yrs of the same desk work and mouse issues or whatever

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gadgethammer@reddit

It has its ups and downs.

The down side, I once drove 2 hours, on a Friday, at 2PM, to rebuild a site that was not even a client until 1PM after a ex-employee erased 20 switches, firewalls, and routers. Me and 2 other people spent all weekend figuring out how the network was suppose to function since no documentation existed.

The upside, the location was a locally famous resort with a steak house, and we got to eat free steak for lunch and dinner all weekend.

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crust00blodd@reddit

Not entirely depressing but it can be a quick downfall for burnout. Mostly because people think IT = experts on everything. For example I had guys call me cause internet stopped working in the warehouse. Took a look at it and basically electricity went out, told them "hey we need to get electrician to take a look at fuse box" and they just stood there and expected me to take care of electricity. I know some basis of electrical work but it's not my job to mess around with electrical cabling or fuses when I don't even have SEP [qualifications for electrical work]. They also had some machine for folding boxes and one day I was finishing up some works on server, they call me and they go "hey you need to help us with this machine, we don't know how it works". How tf am I supposed to know how it works, I'm and IT for christ sake and it took me a good hour or so for them to understand that. Basically when some people especially at work hear IT they think we're experts and geniuses in completely everything and everything should concern us even tho it's not our responsibility. And if people don't understand "hey it's not my job/responsibility" combined with a lot of work on itself it can lead to quick burnouts. Been working as a sys admin [+networks and basically everything they throw at us] for 2 years now, before for like a year in a different company and may i just say - i already feel like if I don't slow down I'm gonna burn out in a year or so.

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crust00blodd@reddit

also one thing i forgot to add would be: People just don't understand how complex some problems, systems or servers are. If something is not done within 5-10 minutes then you're shitty. They'll be coming to you every few minutes asking "is it done already?" and don't understand "there are many more worse peovlens right now, we need to priorityze, problem you have is minor, you can work around it for now". So yeah, mentality of people sometimes just gives a lot to wish for.

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Neratyr@reddit

Just speaking for myself here. I"ve been super into I.T. my whole life. Got fascinated by electro-magnetism and video games ( computers etc ) in elementary school and it has grown from there. I've done other things, and I have a wide variety of experience in and around I.T.

For me, the consistent self-educating and the diverse ways companies need to interact and deal with I.T. writ large has kept me pretty engaged. That said, I mix things up and do alotta stuff. Note: I also have ADHD so some chaos and variety is refreshing.

I have done other things professionally, and have gotten into entrepreneurship in a few different ways.

I think you must keep in mind that you're gonna see some more negativity in certain places, and any platform based on algorithms is going to really increase that. Also, you can be stuck in any career path in a bad company or a role that isnt a good fit for you in that career path.

Common issues we have are burnout, and companies having unrealistic expectations. As with anything communication can be huge source of pain for us.

Generally speaking I love it. I can and sometimes do other work, and I personally require variety. But none the less I'm fascinated by tech.

My background involves electrical engineering, computer science, digital radiology, systems network security engineering ( 'senior solutions architect' if you will ). My curiousity had me required to learn how electricity is generated, transmitted to a computational system, how that system manipulates and utilizes it, and ultimately how its displayed out of an interface for our eyeballs and brains to consume. I've done data cabling, pentesting, built MRI / xray / ct / etc, hardware gadgets for customers, the list goes on.

Since I learned so much **completely for free on the internet** I spend a good chunk of time on non profit efforts. I consult coach and mentor in the I.T., Security, and Entrepreneurially spaces. I help organize hacker conventions in the mid atlantic region

I.T. is my playground. And I play for fun and profit.

Hope this improv rambling helps shed some light on things for you. Feel free to follow up with my any time.

Good luck on your career, stay positive and keep scratching your itches

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Radiant_Evidence_445@reddit

That's awesome, which conferences do you help organise?

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Neratyr@reddit

Most often in the Security BSides family lately! I've also helped with some of the bigger ones like schmoo in D.C., or hacker summer camp out in vegas. Or a few of the lesser known but iconic ones such as Derby Con ( RIP )

Its easy to get involved! If you are interested definitely check if you can find a local BSides to help with. BSides exists to make security cons accessible at a local level, we try to remove all the barriers to participation that are inadvertently created by defcon/blackhat/rsa/schmoo/etc

This means ticket prices are like 20-40 bucks and we focus on helping onboard people into the security space, and being local and readily practical to attend! Each local BSides is run by their own crew, so think kinda like franchising but its all 501(3)(c) non-profits.

You should feel free to reach out to me via DM if you want some more info. If you are in the D.C. metro area I can likely help you get involved in something local as well!

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Sway-Dizzle@reddit

I concur, I have adhd as well and my a.d.h.d meds adds a bit of o.c d to the mix. IMO, it's both a blessing & a curse in the IT field. A curse because any problem that I encounter, I have to fix it; my a.d.h.d won't let me stop until I fix it; a blessing because I've learned SO much while doing it.

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nem8@reddit

Man, wish i had meds.. I never got my official diagnosis.

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Neratyr@reddit

do it! i was diangosed in kindergarten and ignored it as an adult for nearly 20 years. WE HAVE LEARNED SO MUCH SINCE THEN!

It can cycle, it can get better and worse. You also get super excellent at adapting and thereby accidentally hiding symptoms. Also I found out we now STRONGLY associate things with ADHD that I had no idea were ADHD related.

It has felt so fucking fantastic to get re-evaluated and thereby rediagnosed ADHD as an adult. It has been totally worth it. Also studies show that medication helps immediately but also the benefits immediately leave when you stop it - So you layer in treatment like new skills, systems, meditation, and more. Studies show that after two years ish many can drop the meds and rely on the other aspects of treatment to be just fine. Studies show that we can literally grow and develop our frontal lobes even as adults ( which is hte part of brain controlling executive function and is the primary part which operates diff if u have ADD/ADHD.

Anyway, go get your diagnosis. Here in the US it can be a bit of a line to get an eval done. It takes like 6 hours to do it, the eval I mean. But you may have weeks to a few months of waiting for a slot. I got lucky and got one 3 weeks out from when I called.

Do yourself a favor and pursue it. Reach out to me if you want free motivation and hype. Hell, there is probably an ADD/ADHD subreddit I should join lmaooo

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Captain-Spark@reddit

Hey! Another one like me.

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_TR-8R@reddit

Hard agree. To add to that, you're going to see a lot more venting on the internet just bc as professionals we have to keep it bottled up all day, so naturally given the demographic internet forums are the first place we're going to flock to share our grievances.

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Neratyr@reddit

100% I totally agree. Now, that isn't easy to disregard that.. but that is precisely what we must do. Lets take reddit for example ( or most forums even ) people come with problems to solve, so naturally it has more problems *anyway* cited on here.

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crzyKHAN@reddit

I got my electrical engineering fell in love with coding and now automate IT department tasks 😂

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Neratyr@reddit

facts, remote life is ABSOLUTELY a wonderful perk. Hard to give it up, especially in most metropolitan areas... you just spend so much damned time commuting!

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akumanotetsuo@reddit

I like my job

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DILIGAF-RealPerson@reddit

25 years in IT. I love the subject matter. Here are the keys to success and I think anyone here would agree: 1) You have to like the subject matter 2) You MUST grow your skill set every year 3) If your company doesn’t support its IT professionals, leave for another company 4) If your manager and leadership are assholes, leave. 5) If you don’t love what your doing, go do something else

I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. I’ve loved it and the profession had been good to me.

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Accomplished_Ad6195@reddit

I have been working in IT for 25 years now. I love my job. I find it far from depressing. Let me tell you one thing when I tell a server to do something 99% of the time the server followed my instructions to the letter, but when I tell a person to do something 99% of the time they fucked it up somehow haha.

Lots of communication with people, they are really happy when you can help them. I had this coworker who lost a file they have been working on for days. She came to me almost crying, asking if I could help. When I recovered the file for her, she lit up like a light bulb 💡.

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Character_Whereas869@reddit

Like any job it is what you make it. Its on YOU. Don't blame the users for being dumb...can YOU do their job? Alot of the stuff on the sysadmin is over exaggerated. Lots of negative Nancies. I have had a successful career in IT. I graduated with a Bachelors in Network Administration in 2006. I have hustled ever since. I have grown so much personally and professionally because of this field. I have had amazing mentors, I have mentored and there's now people who look up to me as I have looked up to my mentors, I have been challenged, I have rescued companies, I have rebuilt networks after ransomware attacks.

Sure its fun to joke about how ridiculously stupid people are. Yes it gets old that people ask the exact question you answered in the email, because you anticipated they would ask it, so why not include a bulleted list of solutions to problems you know they'll have. Humans are stupid.

Looking at it from the bright side, you encounter a lot of people. The volume of issues and the different types of people you meet make you realize certain things and see trends. I'm now an excellent judge of character. I have a person figured out in 2 minutes because I've seen em all.

From my perspective, this field pays well but you have to prove your worth and fight for yourself. I always give 110%. I was always better paid than all of my friends in other fields, and I'm what I have always called the bottom of the barrel IT. A generalist. the sysadmin. Plumbing problems? I got it. Ceiling is leaking in the new building? On it. Need to move a heavy thing? I get paid by the hour and I'll wash your car if you want. But you work your way up. In 2006 my first job was at a call center, I took the first job I could get. I literally didn't even realize I would be doing technical support for mobile devices at Wal Mart stores, I was just happy to get a job offer and start my new life after college.

Now I'm a Cloud Engineer and I have my own consulting firm. Yes it can be long hours, yes it can be stressful. Accept the challenge, take ownership, don't give up. Don't be a pussy. Don't be a dick to the users, you catch more bees with honey. Go get some time in at an MSP, it'll harden you. Its basically human trafficking for IT people. It is what it is. But whatever, you'll learn a ton about IT, you won't be bored and you'll learn what kind of person you really are.

18 years in IT has prepared me for anything. Yes I have indeed sacrificed a lot, but it was worth it. Raising 2 kids has been a piece of cake after the shit I went through spending 8 years at an MSP and 18 total years at this shit show. Go out there and kill it man.

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farguc@reddit

Yes and No.

It's whatever you make it. If you are in the right company in the right role, working with good people, The job is easy and fun and rewarding.

If your company is run by incompetent people, or you simply aren't a good fit to their way of thinking, you will hate your job.

But same can be said for any career. Honestly I had bad jobs, I had great jobs, and I would go back to be a cleaner for some people, whereas no amount of money would make me go back to other jobs.

It's all about the journey to find a place where you feel good.

For some this means changing careers, others just changing companies. Trust me it all starts with your own mental health and your own mind state.

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Admirable_Fortune_14@reddit

This answer should be higher - it's whatever you make out of it.

Unless you are your own boss, politics, ignorance and incompetence are prevalent across all organisations. You can't change people no matter how much time and effort you put in demonstrating easier/efficient ways, unless them themselves want the change. So instead of playing the hero and burning out mentally, just accept it and try to make most out of it and focus on your own pro progress and private life. This applies to all industries. Working in a pub or corp.

Learned it the hard way.

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daverhowe@reddit

I like the field; I don't necessarily like the people I have to interact with because of that field.

IT is notoriously overworked and undercompensated; expectations are often stupidly wide (literally down to "can you fix my TV/internet or hack my ex-girlfriend's facebook" type requests (USUALLY from people who aren't paying for your service, or are even friends) and the world is full of people who will either partially or completely ignore what you told them, do something idiotic, and claim they just followed your instructions.

Seriously, you need a fairly thick skin to deal with the people, but the actual work can be fun and rewarding. You will just learn to spend as much time interacting only with the machines as possible.

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kafeend@reddit

I’ve been in IT for over 20 years and still love it. Now with that said, have I ever struggled with burnout, thoughts of doing something else completely, or leave a high paying job due to burnout? Hell yes…like any career you will have your ups and downs.

I recommend that you continue learning new things and/or try other aspects of IT other than the technical side, if you start feeling unhappy. After a few years you may get that love back or you may not, but at least you still have another position and avenues to grow in.

I would also recommend working on the infrastructure side of things as you don’t have to deal with end users very often. Other than dealing with lazy coworkers, it’s honestly one of the best positions to be in.

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Influence_Vivid@reddit

Yes, especially when you’re being paid very little but you’re overworked. It got so depressing that I just quit and never worked in IT again. I decided to work for myself. I could no longer work a job where I’ll never amount up to anything.

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The-Based-Doge@reddit

Yeah, and I regret going into this field..... It is what it is.

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Pristine-Row159@reddit

IT is unreal. The needs change faster than the initial requirements, and to be honest it can and probably will spit you out at some point. However, I seriously even after being beat down by it, can't imagine a more 5 or any industry, really, that touches as many people as it does.

If you want to change lives, touch lives, or merely get by: dive into it. Saying IT is depressing is like saying how humans speak language is depressing. It is, in a sense, but if we didn't have language how could you even express the point of being depressed.

Morale of the story language is a primitive form of what we call "IT", the fact you can tell a bunch of strangers is IT, be a part of the solution not the problem, it'll all be tough if you look at the social aspects of any career. If you want to change lives understand the medium will change and you with it.

Society doesn't have to suck and people don't. Though they do and will, be a part of the solution not the problem.

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infosec4pay@reddit

No

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h4d44@reddit

Unfortunately, the role suffers from 1% familiarity bias. No one knows what you actually do, but think they because they use a computer every day to do their job. It's like how people take one intro to biology course and start to tell doctors how to do their job.

Then there's just the disrespectful part of the job from treatment. People may still think you're a nerd or something and may have less respect for you. If you don't have boundaries, you will be abused, people will keep asking you to do things that aren't your job and say they need it now constantly. It is miserable if you don't establish boundaries quickly when you start the job, this is important. Some people may not get that luxury, but it's the only way to protect yourself. If you do that it's a cool gig, I have a dream job now as we on the IT team see it all the same, the rest of the departments run their employees to the ground we don't let them do it to us, if there's not a ticket submitted, or if it's not our actual job, we aren't touching it.

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scristopher7@reddit

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Eclipse914@reddit

Depends on the environment, really. If you're lucky to get into a position where management is decent, I feel like you can go far in IT. Likewise, you can also get stuck at the same place, for a multitude of reasons. For the most part, it's like anything else. I love IT; it drives me, but some days it almost drives me right up the fkin wall

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BlackLusterDragoon@reddit

I mean I did IT for the US Army. There's nothing more god damn depressing than that. Civvie side is a breeze compared to that. You mean I don't HAVE to stand in 30 degree weather in shorts in a t shirts at 0400 and then get told I have to go watch an empty conex for 9 hours cause apparently 3rd BCT has a superman that can lift a 5000 pound container and run off with absolutely zero of our shit? And then getting yelled at the next day because I didn't do my job? Nah I'm good. Civilian IT is the fucking life my friend.

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TinkerBellsAnus@reddit

Form my perspective, its not that its depressing. Its that its so constant in this day and age, that we have trained every person in society, through social media, through in your face interactions, that they want their dopamine hits now, and they want them often. Couple that with entitled people in roles they most often successfully failed up to achieve. You have what amounts to the culmination of exhaustion and an utter lack of self value in the workforce by people who if you were outside of work, you would have gracefully stomped their face into a curbside.

The biggest thing I tell people is "No is the damn answer somedays, and you should use it, you should learn how to use it and you should learn how to explain why No is still worth something". You have to set limits, you have to be willing to stand up and say that.

Respect is given, but Trust is earned, and far too often, we don't get enough of the first, so we're constantly over achieving to earn the 2nd, this creates a bubble of burn out. Praise is great, I love praise, you love praise. We all LOVE praise. Whats praise to you? That depends on how well the person giving it to you, knows this.

I had a program manager, she and I got along great, if she'd come to me with an issue, she'd articulate it, she'd tell me her pain points, she'd ask what I/we can do to work best on this, and we'd get our heads together and we'd more often than not, be successful. One of the things she would also do, she'd sneak a soda from me when she was out and wanted her caffeine fix. One day she left a can of that with a thank you note in return on my desk. I knew it wasn't one she just took from me and put back, because it was different. She understood that I had no issue willingly giving of my resources for her, and in return, she showed that appreciation by going out of her way and doing something just slightly different enough to show effort.

Thats all it takes in 99% of situations to make someone feel valued. Put in 2% more, than anyone else does, and you'll get 100% more back in terms of value.

A coworker (and also a manager) today shared with me that he bought thank you cards for his team. He didn't have to, he wanted to. He fights hard for his team, and he listens with full intent on making the job better for them, and more productive for the company. He's a good human with a soul blessed by God. I say that, as an atheist myself. He's gonna be a tremendous manager for a long time, as long as he's given the ability to be the human being he is.

If you find people like that in your life, nurture them, encourage them and empower them as an IT Director, as a CIO, as a whatever upper level you have, make them feel wanted, and you will be able to sit back on absolute cruise control, while amazing people do amazing things. Most did not get to where they are in life without a struggle, without something they had to overcome. But every one of those people has a dream, has a burning passion to be, to do, and if you can help them get there, if you can be a part of that, you'll create a culture that is impenetrable when it comes to handling the hardest tasks in the most effortless ways you could imagine and not kill people's self worth in the process.

Thanks for coming to my RantX talk :-)

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rodder678@reddit

I've been doing IT for 30 years and still enjoy it. I like working for startups where "that's not my job" isn't something you'll hear in any department.

The problem with IT usually isn't the work, it's the people. I've had to deal with a lot of IT people at customers, partners, and companies that acquired the startup that I was working at that just weren't very good at what they did. And that usually goes hand-in-hand with shitty management all the way from 1st line managers to the CEO.

One thing that seems to hit IT harder than other technical jobs is competing priorities. You have projects that you're supposed to keep on schedule at the same time you're constantly hit with unscheduled support/break-fix work that's more urgent that project work. Without a good manager to set and reset expectations both up and down, you're constantly set up to fail. With a good manager, you get to be a rockstar and a hero, unless you're one of the people who's just not that great at what you do.

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TeaKingMac@reddit

Working in IT is constantly anxiety inducing.

Either you're good and automate everything and never do any work, and wonder why you haven't been fired yet, or you suck and are constantly swamped with bullshit.

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Pip-Pirrip@reddit

Yes

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Recent_mastadon@reddit

I've had more than a dozen jobs in IT. I loved it. I finally got past the hands on and into the managerial side and no longer really like it. Hands on, it was great. Building computers before Dell.com, setting up computers, fighting malware, imaging batches of machines, automating tasks, standing up webservers, doing AWS for the first time. It was great!!

If you hate that kind of stuff ,you're in the wrong field.

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oldfinnn@reddit

IT is not depressing. Certainly there are some IT jobs that can be depressing. My suggestion is learn what you can and move on to a better job. They are out there

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cantstandmyownfeed@reddit

Every job is different. I've been at some that were soul sucking for 5 years and I've been at others that were great for a decade+. It's really environment specific.

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ravigehlot@reddit

So true. You couldn’t have said it better.

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sroop1@reddit

For real. Nearly all of the complaints here haven't applied to my roles in a long time - just stay out of the SMB sphere.

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S-r-ex@reddit

Sat at an MSP for SBMs for a year, holy shit that was awful. Then had a stint in the public sector for some 10k users, a total dream in comparison.

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cantstandmyownfeed@reddit

I work in a ~100 employee org. Don't get me wrong, it's an OK place to work, but, plenty of the BS you read about here exists in my company. It's just that I've been here long enough to both not give a shit, and I exist in a space where my not giving a shit, is worth significantly less than the shit I do give a fuck about.

It's all pretty Zen if I think about it.

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SAugsburger@reddit

This. I think people paint very broad brush strokes on the profession based upon their experiences, but it can vary widely not only based upon the organization, but the role. Some roles are more stressful than others.

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quack_duck_code@reddit

This is the truth. ☝️ Good companies foster good work environments and retain good employees.

It's a good sign when you see the majority of people have worked there 10-30+ years

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TehSpider@reddit

Been in it for about 27 years. I was help desk/tech for about 3-5 years and then started building and supporting IT depts for small companies. Not sure what the equivalent would be now but the lessons I learned with the small companies were invaluable. You really get to know the technology when it is critical to the success of the business and needs to be done in a shoestring. It can be challenging and will be thankless so get ready for that. Find the technologies you like and then use them to build cool stuff. Good luck. Hope to see you out here.

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Juan_in_a_meeeelion@reddit

I have twice had to do a 450 mile round trip, taking an entire day of work, to restart a server that several people assured me had been restarted.

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canadian_sysadmin@reddit

I love IT. Parts of it I don’t like, but I still enjoy being in IT. Couldn’t imagine doing anything else.

Keep in mind you’ll always have a strong negativity bias. All the people who enjoy IT and get on fine aren’t going to make posts about it.

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mallet17@reddit

I like the money.. :)

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mrkwns@reddit

I used to like it but now I only do it because I can't make the same money doing anything else and it's too late to start a new career.

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monkeymagic2525@reddit

I love my job. Loving your job only comes from two things. Satisfaction in what you do and the people you work with.

I work in a great company with great people. I occasionally snark at them being fuckwits but they're my fuckwits so that's ok and I occasionally put in long hours to get projects over the line and I gain a great deal of self satisfaction from that, I also gain support from the team and colleagues around me who appreciate my role.

Now! I have been grafting since a very young age, I've been in IT 27 ish years and worked for some terrible companies with great people, some great companies with terrible people so it's not always been perfect but right now it's about as good as it could be. I've only ever hated one hob and that was very not me and super corporate, but I lived my team and we had a great rapport and still delivered (apparently celebrating success was frownd upon when you borrow the work mini bus to take everyone out for chicken! Sigh)

Stick at it and if you don't like your job or the companies you work at then you can change some of it.

IT is an amazing field to work in and specialise in if you wanted to do something specific.

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Turdulator@reddit

It’s not so much that IT is depressing, it’s corporate America as a whole that’s depressing.

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MrSmith317@reddit

I love my job most days but I love IT more. I've been working or playing with computers since I was 5 or 6 (TRS-80). I've grown with the industry and I've learned a lot along the way. If you're the type that hates computers, find something else to do. If you're a tinkerer and like doing things and learning on your own, then you're in the right place. The problem is the former....and there are a lot of them. I guess they stick around for the money and the joy of making life miserable for everyone else

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jedzy@reddit

I’ve worked in IT for 34 years now and still love my job 😀

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45t3r15k@reddit

Almost all problems in IT are "first world problems." VERY rarely are we in a position where someone's life depends on code or computers working correctly.

"I don't like my coworkers/boss." "My industry isn't respected/fulfilling my emotional needs." "I don't get enough recognition/stimulation." "I stress out and don't get enough exercise or fresh air."

Pretty rare that the work environment is actively hostile. Few instances of not being paid or ripped off. If you are working, you generally are able to pay your bills and have health insurance and are not asked to do illegal things in order to get by.

Most of the problems in IT are just adult work problems common in most engagements.

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Voxmanns@reddit

About a decade in on my end.

It has its ups and downs. I think anyone who tries to wholistically summarize what it's like to be in IT with just a few sentences is probably missing a lot of key details.

Something I love about IT is that everything is possible within the limits of the underlying computers. And that's a lot of room to work with these days. It provides a lot of peace of mind about some things, and opens your eyes to issues others may not see. I've even found programming specifically to be oddly spiritual at times. I'm also weird though so grain of salt on that one.

Something I hate about IT is that the people who don't understand IT can't possibly understand 80% of the thoughts I put into a single decision. One of my strengths in my career has been the ability to translate tech to biz, but the efficiency rating is still incredibly low and sometimes impossible to overcome. You throw in another developer who's trying to play their own games at the table and it gets messy fast. Some fight with raw technical knowledge (or word salad) in the meetings. Some fight in the code. Either way is not fun.

I think oversimplification is the biggest issue facing IT in all directions. It leads to poor designs, poor decisions, poor communication, and everyone in this space feels it every day. You have to realize stepping into IT means stepping into one of the frontiers of societal development. Sure, you may stick to websites or fall into a comfy stack and ride your whole career out in that area. But even then, you have to watch emerging technologies, discoveries, and anything another tech might use to get one up on you. Competition is real in this space same as any.

However, you get front row seats to the new innovations of tech. You won't go deep into every topic, but I learned I could build my own security system for about 100 bucks and never pay a security service again. So that's dope.

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toxicdover@reddit

IT itself is quite fun in the right circumstance; it depends on where you work. If you're a single man IT staff for almost a decade, it's exhausting (speaking from current experience). But if you're on a team that works well together, it's great.

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gotmynamefromcaptcha@reddit

If you work in a shithole, it can get depressing real fast. It's really about WHERE you end up working and who you work with, like many other jobs. For example, I absolutely despise where I work right now, but I enjoy working with my team so we kind of struggle bond through shit while looking for a means of getting the hell out of here.

So yes, it can be depressing, but it doesn't make me hate IT. I love IT stuff, just need to find the right place.

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GSVKP12193@reddit

It depends on how you view your position. The redundancy is a bore, yet if you can manage to appreciate the end result of your skillset, you will be far healthier. The competition can be overlooked as well.

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Competitive_Tea6785@reddit

Been working on a 25 Year I.T. Career. Have seen a lot of changes. I still get a kick out of solving problems, and helping users. Work at a small MSP - have some loyal customers. Here is What I believe to be occurring. Microsoft will absorb itself into the cloud business. Very little Stand Alone Server business. I spent a large part of my career managing stand alone Windows Servers.. I think that will dry up. Linux will become very powerful and important. Study that. Windows Workstations will be absorbed into cloud infrastructures. More like Virtual desktops. Cybersecurity will be important. I get bugged when I hear ads for "HIGH PAYING I.T. JOBS with 6 month training". Not likely. I think A.I. will take jobs away, and companies will pay less for support. President of NVIDIA predicts programming will be thing of the past. Not likely. I have learned I.T. skills, Programming, Networking, Web Design. Always something to learn, but keep learning and convince companies you are worth it.

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Dave_A480@reddit

If you stay down at the desktop-support level for your entire career, yeah, that's depressing...

16 years in, working for one of the 'Bigs' in a zero-end-user-contact-role? It's great....

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eNomineZerum@reddit

Been in over a decade. I love it, then again I love tech and tinkering and couldn't really see myself elsewhere.

I started out in networking and, while I don't enjoy large scale enterprise and ISP networking, I do enjoy SOHO networking and all the related network services such as DNS, proxies, load balancing, etc. See, even the subset of networking can be varied depending on the size of the company. Find what you enjoy and lean in there.

I later transitioned to Cybersecurity, supporting network security solutions, and branched out from there. I love tinkering and learning so some of this was like reliving college all over again, setting up labs, tweaking things, and having fun.

I now manage a team and find that enjoyable as I love empowering others and lifting them up.

It isn't all sunshine and rainbows, then again nothing is. I loved some of what I did in retail, but hated some of it as well. I was paid $10/hr back then so now, as IT management, even if the work is equally as shitty as retail, I am making some 10x more money.

Suppose the trades are there if I even want to step away from the computer, but I kinda roll out of bed in the morning, check in on my morning folks, and attend meetings as needed, working as needed. Can't say I am dodging work as I support a 24/7 team and spread my 40-50 hours out across the entire week. Somedays I am up at 7am and some days I am up at 10am. I have a great manager who only cares that my team is performing and how I do that is up to me.

So, can't really say it is doom and gloom. Early on it sucks, but most careers suck as you get your footing. You will be pressed because you don't know anything, everything is new. You may have to work lesser shifts that have higher turnover as a first job, but eventually you move up. The first year is the hardest and every year after gets a bit easier until you hit year 5 or so, when you actually know some stuff, and are able to pick a job more than find any place that will employ you.

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_-_Symmetry_-_@reddit

Finishing my second year in IT. I left after 11 years as an electrician (last 4 as foreman). My life would have been far better if I got into IT earlier in life.

I wish I changed sooner. The trades are rougher than people understand. It's easy to imagine yourself in the trades at a desk or as you brew your coffee bored in your home office. But watching people get maimed and killed on the job is a stark eye-opening situation. If the day ends back in IT land you go home. A bad day in some trades you have to explain to a family why their child is dead or what happened to the husband to his family.

Also, your coworkers are salt of the earth but often in a hard place in life and your interactions with people who are stuck do unbelievable to what hope you have in a mental state.

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eNomineZerum@reddit

Yup. I spent 6 years at Lowe's Hardware in retail and while it isn't trades, I regularly dealt with tradespeople. Many of them were horrible. Also, while driving a forklift was fun, having a pallet break and bury you in mulch isn't fun. Nor is spending days loading truckbeds full of whatever in OSL&G in 100F weather with 90% humidity.

You are still early in the IT career, those first few years are the hardest, but you will come through it and better for it. I don't want to sound like a boomer, but the wherewithal that you have likely puts your decade younger peers to shame. "Shut up and work" is something that isn't taught, but learned, and it gets you through so much.

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_-_Symmetry_-_@reddit

Yes, it has been very hard. I fear I might be burning out as the entry wages are a dollar or two more than girls carrying food to you. Add in Cancer and an ACL reconstruction chewing up much of my study in the 1st year. I feel so behind and burnt out.

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antilochus79@reddit

IT in the K-12 or higher Ed space can be very rewarding if you’re willing to take on a few extra duties to help people with educational projects. Working with staff, students, and helping a community can be very rewarding, as long as you don’t mind the smaller paycheck.

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nPoCT_kOH@reddit

It has it's ups and downs.. depends on the period. Yes the potential for burnout is a bit high, but so is with many other jobs. My SO is in commerce and it's not so different.

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fat_cock_freddy@reddit

You're asking a question that suggests to me that you don't really understand how tech jobs work after graduation. IT could mean many things. Not just the desktop tech support type role that very many of the replies in this post mention.

I graduated with an IT degree as well. Bachelor's, but it doesn't matter. My first job was full stack web programming. After that I transitioned to devops and system administration.

It's easy to switch roles early on. You're almost 30, I was in my mid 20s at the time. Not a huge difference. Find what you like and gravitate towards it.

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VulturE@reddit

Find a job that gives you good benefits and minimal/none/fair on-call. Then roll the dice and hope you get a decent boss.

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BaldBastard25@reddit

Much of my exhaustion with IT comes from having shitty management. The "work" in IT can be super interesting, engaging, and challenging, but when my manager pulls me off of a network design project because "Little Jimmy" in accounting forgot his password for the third time this month (then I get yelled at like it's my fault), or s/he doesn't understand project time lines, or (my personal favorite) when they buy the "clown car" equipment, then blame me because I can't make it run like a Lamborghini.

TLDR: too many IT managers spell "computer" with a K instead of a C.

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SeriekDarathus@reddit

The job is fine.

The people are the problem.

“Love what you do and you’ll never work a day in your life.” This is naive idiocy. EVERY job has its headaches, hard times, and rage inducing people.

I know this will be unpopular with a lot of people, but work isn’t supposed to be fun or awesome. It is, by definition, a chore. It is difficult. It requires effort. It is seldom, if ever, enjoyable. That doesn’t mean you should live in miserable circumstances, it just means you need to find your life’s joy somewhere other than your job.

When people quit worrying about whether or not they love their job, and instead focus on DOING the job, their life tends to become more enjoyable.

(Oh, and get out of debt. Constantly stressing over a paycheck covering your payments makes people miserable.)

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Fair-Morning-4182@reddit

My problem is that it COULD be enjoyable, but the powers that be will not allow that, nor will anyone disrupt the status quo enough to cut us some slack. Remote work, larger teams, more support, etc. So what you get is the mass of people doing the bare minimum to "do their job" when we could be way more efficient and in a better place mentally. I'm not going to work at my maximum output while miserable.

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SnooMacarons467@reddit

- So what you get is the mass of people doing the bare minimum to "do their job"

Just on this, one of the issues we face though is when a lot of people start in the industry, they do have a "can do" attitude, and we all like to be helpful and go above and beyond. We are an industry of people pleaser's when it comes right down to it, the issue is the more that you understand what your actual job is, and the fact that everything extra has now unofficially become your job. This right here is where it becomes miserable for people as they have then accidentally put themselves in a position where just doing their job can be a totally miserable existence.

Forever explaining that collecting batteries, replacing toner/paper, fixing the air con, setting up the AV equipment for their presentation in some random location is all actually not part of the role of a Sys Admin... and then being looked down on because no one can see, nor care to understand the actual behind the scenes work you have to get done. Such as the back ups... no one cares that they failed to completely run and are at 99% at the beginning of the work day, you had better sort that out to get the network up so that people can start their amazon shopping and organise your time better to get it done out of hours... but that back up from 10 years ago they need access too right away at 3pm when your in the middle of setting up the AV for some stupid teams meeting... this is suddenly when backups are super important, right now, not at 9am this morning, super not important, but 3pm now they are super important....

This, is what jades us, the constant pulling back and forth, my best advice for new techs,
1. Don't accept more responsibility than you HAVE too to get where you want to go. If you want to be a manager then accept the manager type tasks, if you don't want to do that and are happy where you are, put your foot down and only do your job. Otherwise you will end up being the gardener too because you watched a youtube video once on how to fix the retic, this sounds like an out there example but this is from personal experience of being a tech for a federal institution in the country. The retic had a digital interface therefore it was tech therefore it was my job....

Don't waste time trying to teach your users how to do things with the belief they will be able to fend for themselves when they have issues. They 100% will not, but you have just given them enough confidence to unplug stuff, and then not figure out that they can use the shapes of the things as clues as to where they all go and just jam USB plugs into the ethernet port.

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deadshift2010@reddit

100%, I was thrilled that I finally broke into IT, then got stuck making an inventory of all the random IT crap we've had since the 90's, creating a map of the buildings, apparently redesigning our physical key system since whoever initially designed it must have been brain dead, and actually going out and helping in the shop since they were low on people. This job has sucked my soul since they treat me like I am a multifunctional employee when in reality I'm supposed to be general IT. Just finished my degree though and I have a year of experience in IT, so I'll definitely be looking elsewhere soon.

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0MrFreckles0@reddit

Honestly I think I like the people more than the machines lol.

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Wd91@reddit

I enjoy my job tbh. There are obviously some tasks I find tedious, and some days I can't really be bothered getting out of bed in the morning, but for the most part I feel comfortable saying I enjoy my job.

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gryghin@reddit

100 % agree, more people need to realize this.

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agentobtuse@reddit

Job bloat.... From installing a 5g antenna on top of a 4 story metal roofed building, building cables, full intune administration with autopilot deployment, the list goes on with automations between all the saas. I been at it for 7 months now. I feel like I have done 2yrs worth of work and now I'm rolling out Salesforce. I'm only making 92k ffs

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SmallClassroom9042@reddit

I do all that for 56k and I feel lucky, the market is a sham

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agentobtuse@reddit

Wtf you need to switch employers. You are grossly underpaid.

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SmallClassroom9042@reddit

Also hardly any benefits, I was a director in a past life, but without a degree or certs no one will touch me

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BradL30@reddit

I’ve been in IT for almost 30 years - I still love my job!!

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mr_ballchin@reddit

I've been for only 15 years, but I still love it. There is always something new to learn in the field.

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StCatFan@reddit

What do you do? Sys admin? Big company or small?

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BradL30@reddit

Network Manager for medium sized private global company. been at current company over 15 years. I do really love my job, but as I get older, I find keeping up with the latest technology can be tricky at times!

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Sir-Vantes@reddit

Same here.

Nothing beats solving a critical issue in an Enterprise shop that's broken for the first time, let alone having an F1 help key.

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HappierShibe@reddit

This, so much this.
I'm not gonna say its better than sex, but its a damned close second.

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Ok-Section-7172@reddit

I love this part of my career. It really makes it all worth it.

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random_character-@reddit

Are you hiring? 😅

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Creepy-Editor-3573@reddit

I've been in the gig for 28 years. The things that truly drive me insane:

Employees with no sense of urgency
Vendors who don't understand the word, STOP
Employees who can't seem to make it fucking work for "reasons"
Nothing about the technology other than M365 basically being a constant retrain on a 6 month cycle

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mikew1008@reddit

Great comments in this thread. I have been in I.T. for +20 years. I still love it and enjoy my day to day work. I am a technology administrator for a medium sized government organization. The good is my boss is great and incredibly flexible. The bad is that the mindset is antiquated and work from home is rare, but possible a day at a time, but not long term. My pay is low compared to a lot of others. For example, network admin makes $15k more than me and that is probably my biggest frustration that I have been in the field for so long, but make less than many that have been in less than a decade because of timing of job openings and such. Overall, all good, still love it. I did hear one time the average burnout for IT jobs is about 4 years and I could definitely see it. I would recommend changing jobs when one gets to the point of using you up too much and finding a better fit.

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ncc74656m@reddit

All jobs are tough like this, but it all depends on how your career evolves and how you navigate it, and IT can be particularly prone to these kinds of issues. IT has a few factors that can make it more difficult and less rewarding than others.

First, much of it can be "customer-facing." This creates a problem because there is the Starbucks expectation of being a "customer service professional," which a lot of people these days take as an excuse to abuse you or make you do something for them. It also adds a layer to jobs that other fields don't have or retain.

Second, IT is one of those fields where knowledge can become stale in a way it doesn't in many other fields. It can make it hard for some folks to keep up. Some roles call for being a generalist, but others can punish you for that.

Third, it's the only field where you can simultaneously have youth demanded of you, while age and experience are also a virtue, but both can be equally detrimental to you.

I personally have had some good jobs or parts of the job that were very good to me, and I miss those ones quite a bit. I got some great travel experience from it, including jobs that were basically paid vacations. Of course, stress is a real killer, and IT can damn sure find you some real stress. Overall though I feel like I chose the wrong field in some ways, I just don't know what else I'd have done.

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Tivum@reddit

It also really depends on where you come from I guess. I came from being an EMT on an ambulance working 24-36 hour shifts, back breaking labor, trauma inducing scenes to IT.

It’s a breeze, there are bad days like any other job but I make more to do less in IT (at-least physically). It also helps that I make almost double what I did in EMS.

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Genbu7@reddit

I'm approaching 30 years in this field. I spent most of my younger days in a fortune 100 corporation, from technician to systems engineer. Funny thing is when I had some mental issues and the shrink said something like "oh, another one of you guys".

It's not for everyone I'll say that much.

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psgrn@reddit

Care to elaborate on mental issues? Been working with anxiety my whole. Comes and goes in points of my life. Just when I think I have it licked… I’m 44 now and I’m going through it again. Almost always career/job related.

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Genbu7@reddit

Originally went in thinking I had depression, came out diagnosed with major depression disorder and anxiety disorder.

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KnowledgeTransfer23@reddit

What was your "tipping point" symptom, if you care to share?

I have this thing where since I'm getting 7-8 hours of sleep, eating my normal schedule, and haven't lost any hair, that I'm not nearly bad enough to go in. But then the analytical part of me questions why I would wait until it got that bad in the first place before seeking treatment? But then that first part of me says "well, you're not that bad yet, but you're also not nearly close to bad enough to go in..." so I fear I'll never feel like it's OK to go in for something like that.

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Genbu7@reddit

It was actually high blood pressure. If you have a concern then go see them, some health issues are like broken dams, once it breaks all you can do is maintain, there's no fixing it.

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KnowledgeTransfer23@reddit

Ah, yeah, I'm on Liprinosil for my blood pressure. But it's just as likely to be a result of sedentary lifestyle and garbage diet than it is from stress. At least, eating better again and exercising would help both fronts.

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psgrn@reddit

What kind professional did you end up going to? Cognitive Behavioral Therapist, or somethig else?

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Genbu7@reddit

I think it was a general psychiatrist, my options were limited by the insurance.

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SnooMacarons467@reddit

it comes from the attitude of "i dont know what you do, i dont care what you do, but you had better be doing it, and if we hear any complaints we will let you know that what your doing is/was wrong"

it literally puts you in a damned if you do and damned if you dont position, and it is something that society as a whole just accepts and says "that is all a part of the job"

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m2ljkdmsmnjsks@reddit

It's also just a little dehumanizing? That attitude, I mean.

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Sincronia@reddit

What a shitty shrink

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ConstantSpeech6038@reddit

I heard expert witness to claim all people working in IT are on autism spectrum. First I was angry at the gross generalization but more I think about it...

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Sincronia@reddit

It's still probably a gross generalization...

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Genbu7@reddit

It could be, but it's a large company and there were close to 2000 employees in the IT department alone. And it's in the middle of nowhere, so I wouldn't be surprised if she'd seen more than a few of us in there.

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SiIverwolf@reddit

Look, the short version is that you'll always get a skewed perspective online because the most vocal are the most passionate, and nothing makes humans passionate faster than being pissed off.

The content, or dare I say happy, IT techs are less likely to be in here posting a complaint that gets voted to the top of the pile.

Does IT make me depressed? No, not really. Frustrated? Frequently. Stressed? Depends on what's going on. Anxious? Well, there's some Dunning Kruger curve at work there (beware the confident "I've been here 25 years!" tech who's still doing L1/2 support...). But not depressed.

The depression comes from remembering that at 18, I thought about getting to being a Senior Engineer and earning >$120k and thinking I'd be content... and then sitting on more than that now and feeling like I'm living pay cheque to pay cheque. But show me someone not earning in the 0.1% who feels good about the rising cost of living.

EVERY career has issues. The real question is whether you're getting into IT because you think it'll make you rich, or because there are areas of IT you find really interesting. If it's the former, start studying to be a lawyer or a surgeon. If it's the latter, than ignore the grizzled old industry vets. We're jaded by years, sometimes decades, of watching "morons" with better soft skills than us fail upwards into management roles, while we hang out in technical roles now being told what to do by the guy who couldn't figure out how to use ping properly.

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MrCertainly@reddit

Yeah, it's kinda that depressing. Let me explain.

IT is a job that's relatively new, unlike jobs such as accounting, engineering, etc. It's constantly changing -- sometimes so rapidly that when a book is published on a specific technology, it might be already outdated.
IT also lacks any governance authority, like the legal, medical, and engineering professions. Job titles and tasks might wildly vary from place to place. Best practices are often ignored in lieu of profit.
IT is a position that attracts intelligent people, but it comes with the "curse of competency". If you're good at your job, you'll be shoehorned into doing something else that ISN'T part of your job description. Do that enough times, you'll either fail out or burn out.
Speaking of well-defined job descriptions to protect you from hostile employers, IT workers are notoriously against Unionization. Since in the USA there are precious few other workplace safety nets, it's a wild west of employment insecurity. "Do these extra tasks, work these extra hours, all unpaid -- or else. And we still might fire you anyways, even if you do comply enthusiastically."
Speaking of working for free thus devaluing the concept of labor for everyone, IT is one of the few professions that demands unpaid overtime -- after hours work, oncall, working from vacation, etc.
The work isn't easy. Being up to date on such a massive variety of bespoke systems and configurations is a serious burden. And there's an expectation that you do this homework on your own time, on your own hardware. Obtaining certifications isn't cheap.
There's very little job security inherent to the industry. IT is often viewed as a cost-center, not a profit-center. So it's the first thing that gets cut when businesses are looking to reduce operating costs.
Learned helplessness from users. You'll find that most people simply don't care about learning things, unlike IT which must learn new things ALL the time. And they get paid more than you do, typically. And higher ups, in their application of the Curse of Competency, will tell you -- "do whatever is needed." So now you're touching things you should not be supporting, and therefore you own them forever.

Now some places do things right. Some places treat employees well. And there can be some serious money to be made. But all it takes is one change, and a sure-thing is now a dead-man-walking.

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SmallClassroom9042@reddit

This should be top reply

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OldishWench@reddit

I've been in IT since 1986. I've had a few different roles, for the most part in software development. Loved it then, still enjoy it now.

These days I'm a team leader, with 16 people. 50% looking after them, the rest working for clients.

The best bit is that my client work is onsite and as such completely focused on them. And my team lead work is from home so I can focus on that. I don't allocate projects to my team, just check they're okay, have what they need and aren't over burdened.

They're the nicest and the hardest working bunch of people and I get to chat with them and get paid for it. I take their worries off their shoulders and hassle other people to get what they need so they can do their jobs.

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Boo_Pace@reddit

Its a thankless job, been doing it 18yrs. When things are going smooth, no one says a thing, something breaks? The world is on fire.

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jkw118@reddit

So as SoSmartish mentioned alot of reason people get upset with IT jobs is the Job bloat. (other duties as assigned) which can range from doing desktop, servers, network whatever.

Odd things I've gotten put in charge of:

Door counters-- (yes to track foot traffic in and out of the building)
Cat5 Wiring -- at least it was IT related..
PBX and Phone systems
dropboxes --(yes the ones that people drop envelopes in..) as we were the only ones who had tools.
Security systems (cameras and door security)

Being a pro at all the software everybody uses, more then the ones who've been using it for decades.. Being on call 24/7 for all of it.

People screaming at you when anything breaks, and they don't want to spend the money to replace/upgrade anything till it's broken and then why isn't it fixed yesterday.. When it's on 6 month backorder and it hasn't gotten paid for yet. Depending on the place it can be a constant stress ball, with everyone saying we need it now, or we'll fire you.. But hey we won't pay for the equipment or services ya need to do it quickly.

And yes their will be too much work to do, many times no to limited recognition. They will more then likely not consider you for any promotion, as they need you in the position you are. (at least if your good, and if your not then it's their's the door)

BTW everyone else will get OT, or major comp. You will not, and you won't get additional help.

I've been doing IT since 1995.. so about 30 yrs.. Some places will support and help you get things done.. and will know your doing the best you can and you will never have enough time/resources to get everything done.. (so it's usually majorly understaffed and underpaid)

Others are decently paid, and have most of the resources but your getting a constant nightmare of people yelling and screaming about things.

I mean I have this one lady who calls every saturday morning because her account is locked, forgot her password, or some app is broken.. The same lady..

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TechPro123@reddit

I have been in IT for 25 years. The excitement ebbs and flows but that is no different than a mechanic working on a new car model. Here is why IT is not depressing>>> there is no other field or type of employment where the area of growth is so large and dynamic. I started in databases BORING...now I work on edge security and other legal things related to forensics EXCITING.

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roninmagik1@reddit

I've been in I.T. for at least 30 years, started as a cashier at COMPUSA, currently working in I.T. at a law firm. Even as a child, i loved computers, and to this day, i still love them and love working with them. If you like your job, no matter what profession you go into, you'll do well, and you'll be happy because you're doing what you like.

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Iwonder19@reddit

You could work for a great company but with bad and incompetent leadership or viceversa. It’s only nice when both the company is great and leadership and colleagues are great too. Yes stating the obvious here, but that’s it in a nutshell. Ohh, and if your managers are stuck in 80’s and don’t adapt hybrid working then, yeah… it’s depressing. Imagine commuting into office, wasting 3 hours of your life on trains on a Friday and then the whole building is empty. Then you help people that work from home via remote support. Oh… forgot something. Budgets! Some managers are married to the job and think that the company’s budget is their piggy bank. Ahh, makes my stomach turn.

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Weak_Wealth5399@reddit

IT isn't depressing, people are.

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PappaFrost@reddit

You could go purely by anecdotal evidence from Reddit, but remember that drama gets upvoted and any boring business-as-usual stories from contented people will not get upvoted. So barring anecdotal evidence maybe there should be a sociological study?

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Illthorn@reddit

The smaller the company the more likely it is that you burn out. Larger companies breakout by function. However, both can be toxic.

Its the toxic environment that burns you up. If you can move on or move up, you'll be ok.

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Drapidrode@reddit

"Meaningful" or "Rewarding Jobs DO NOT EXIST! AaronClarey

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Nandfred@reddit

It's not :) What is depressing is that users still can and do get away with, I don't know computers. If I hire a carpenter, and he don't wanna use that electric saw, I find another. My gawd, how often have you heard. ' no no you can't change that, we have been doing it like this for 15 years.'

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Altruistic-Map5605@reddit

I think my job would be perfect if I could just tell the truth all the time without any kind of doublespeak.

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wingerd33@reddit

So the standard IT lifecycle for top performers is IT > Sales Engineer > Land Owner > Farmer who used to work in IT.

For the bottom level performers it's IT > Manager > Divorced because wife was fucking her personal trainer.

Therefore, how depressing this field is depends on how good you are at it. Work extra hard and you'll be rewarded with goats and a nice apple orchard someday.

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0xb2b@reddit

I've been in the field for a little over 12 years now.

If you don't like to constantly study to stay relevant, a stressful work environment with a ton of work coming your way all the time - then I suggest you find something else.

The better you get, the more work you're gonna have as you'll become the go-to guy for more and more people.

I don't know if it's just me and I drew the short end of the stick all the time but that's my experience. I sacrificed a lot of family and personal time to be where I am today and I am more busy than ever.

I like what I am doing and I don't mind these things now, but looking back, I don't know if I would've chosen this field if I knew the sacrifices it would take.

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yamsyamsya@reddit

it depends what you do. once you get out of the trenches and start getting into devops stuff, it becomes really cool. the stress is worth the pay. then once you learn how to code and start writing tools and web apps, it opens up a whole new world.

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MusicIsLife1122@reddit

Not for me . I work as an IT and I absolutely love my work . Most of the time I enjoy it .

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iseriouslycouldnt@reddit

I used to like it. Except for printers. Printers can fuck off.

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grouchy-woodcock@reddit

I've been doing it for almost 30 years and I love it.
I even have an extensive home lab I use every day.

When you're not on call or on vacation, you have to unplug from work. If they can't go a week without you, you need to put in the time and resources to document and train.

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yotties@reddit

Main causes of IT stress:

People over policy. IT as 'just hands' . Dehumanization. "We have a guy who can". Seeing not just their hardware and software as owned, but you as well. 'You are means' ... Not being seen as a fellow human being. This becomes worse when you become aware that owners of systems tend to unhealthily see IT as having to be visibly doing things and see themselves as in control of IT. The starship Enterprise was not run on spreadsheets. PC/MAC-enthusiasts dominate IT on the business side, and they often make decisions based on what someone behind a PC/MAC supposedly could do.
Overfocus on clients/workstations.
Blurred distinction between professional and hobbyistic solutions.
Dodging of responsibility, hiding behind offline reports. Strong focus on wanting to give people copies of 'data' so they can immediately do something.

So it can be a field where anybody can judge and manage and everybody wants a powerful client where they can 'analyse' and 'tell others what to do'. But the more power they get the worse bosses they will be because their focus on clients indicates they dodge responsibility.

Although IT has been professionalized and soem of the worst examples have disappeared, the entitlement of people with spreadsheets has deteriorated IT, disconnecting responsibility from the data and systems and replacing it with reporting tools with own 'data management' that is at best dubious.

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Moxy79@reddit

I have been in IT for 25 years, 3 different places

I still love what I do, I always liked helping people and I see this job as an extension of that...

However burnout is a real thing...

You will have a constant battle of

Keeping up with new technologies, you will never just get to be an expert at one thing because that thing is going to be different in two years (some may find this a fun part of the job)
Fighting with the powers that be about dumb things that they don't see as necessary because of the cost incurred and you will always have to sell it to them
You will always have that one or two people at work that make your life miserable...if you don't know you who mean you might be that person
You will always be the worlds IT guy "Hey this isn't work related...but my son wants to buy a new computer..."
As you get older companies will look at the new kids out of tech school who will be ok with starting at 40k a year and wonder why their paying for the "old guy" at over 100k
You will be expected to be "always on"... "I know its 2:30 on a Saturday but I cant access my email"
You will be expected to know everything about everything that has an electronic heartbeat... "we got this new Bluetooth coffee maker we need you to fix it"
No one will understand why it took you HOURS to fix something that they see as "A simple problem" because they dont understand the complex processes behind it.

Now that I scared you lol....here is what kept me going

Force yourself into a good work/life balance...if your job doesn't allow you to do that...find a new job.. It's not worth it killing yourself over.

This job can be fun and satisfying, researching new technologies and figuring out how they will best support or benefit your environment can be very fulfilling.

Sometimes a little embellishment to "wow" the normies is not a bad thing. Make them feel a little better about themselves even though all you had to do was plug your monitor in and make yourself seem invaluable by explaining why the graphics card needed to be flashed to keep up with the new International RGB code and thats why your monitor works now.

Disconnect whenever you can....take a walk, a hike..go camping fishing or whatever isnt electronics related

Sometimes "Quitting up" is a good thing....only making 50k at a company? Find another one that will pay you 60 for the same work... a new environment will help you refresh your interest in the field

Network Network Network....find others in your field..go to conventions and trade shows... get contacts and bounce ideas off of them... a little free food is never a bad thing lol

Moral of the story is your experience is going to be as good or bad as you make it... When you start to feel the burnout look in a different direction and you will be fine!

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HoochieKoochieMan@reddit

Counterpoint: It's not that bad. I (28 years in industry) get paid to learn about tech stuff, and figure out how to apply it to my company to make my co-worker's jobs better. Yes, there's sometimes crap work, but that's true with any job. I'm empowered to organize things the way I think they ought to be, automate the tedious stuff, and build things that are interesting to me.

Most paths start with end-user support, but that doesn't mean it has to end there. Learn networking. Learn server administration. Learn security compliance. Learn coding. Learn service management and process optimization. Or anything else! And once you get good and you decide you don't like it - pick something else to learn. The entire industry is being redefined every 5-7 years, and accelerating. There's no reason for anyone to feel stuck in a rut.

Remember what it was that made you think computers were cool to begin with, and get deep. Geek out. And build your career around the skills you enjoy.

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brokensyntax@reddit

It's a large misunderstood field.
Every job is depressing, you're selling your life to someone when you could be doing literally anything else.

If an employer becomes untennable, job hop.
I've had great clients, and only a few not great ones.
At the end of the day, your management, and your team, are going to make or break any job, in any field.

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Large-Barnacle6730@reddit

Yes, it really is THAT depressing. I have been in the field for over 25 years. I had a fun job at a ski resort for a while but we always got shit on and never got funded for anything. I was paid better than most but the pay was shit. I had a job for a bank, that was boring and required me to document every minute of my day and argue for my existence all of the time. I had a job for a small medical practice, I was the only tech, it was boring most of the time but when problems occurred it was all on me and I had no one to bounce ideas off of. I had a job for a green energy company they wanted me to spend more money than I could, I didn't have time to complete most projects before the next one was forced upon me, I was expected to work 60+ hours a week and there were always problems and never enough time to solve them. I then got into Managed Service and that has been 10 years of hell, you are always fixing broken shit and everyone is stressed all of the time. Our little MSP got bought out by a huge MSP and then it went from bad to unbearable.

When you are constantly dealing with problems it wears on your system. This leads to bad habits in attempts to cope. Those exacerbate the problems and make people cold and calloused.

The only upside is if you can stay alive and away from the worst of the bad habits the job pays well and you might someday be able to retire if you are lucky and make wise decisions.

If you are young, prepare for it to get worse. AI will soon take all of the easy jobs, IT will only be necessary when shit is really bad.

Learn how to write prompts for AI, that will be most of your job in the future, for us of the past we had to be good at Google, you will need to be good at AI until the robots take over.

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coralgrymes@reddit

Generally yes and the burn out is real. Not all IT positions are like this though. Some people get lucky with generally great employers or employers that understand technology at a basic level which helps them not be dicks when demanding things.

Overall I'd be prepared to deal with a lot of dumb assery from employers, bosses, clients, and even coworkers. The dumb assery, most of the time, comes down to the individual dumb ass's lack of knowledge. Once you understand some one's dumb assery comes from a lack of knowledge then you can learn how to deal with it positively. Also patience is key in this industry because your patience will be tested daily.

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barbarosa2009@reddit

It's more the corporate world and bad management than IT itself. Unfortunately the two go hand in hand.

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Muted-Ad6342@reddit

When I started out, I was at an MSP -- constantly slammed and stressed. Felt unappreciated and dealing with customers was miserable. Next job was in-house support tech for a company of around 200 employees; totally different vibe and I enjoyed my time there. 5 years in as the IT Manager at my current firm of 300 staff and I've never been happier!

It's definitely dependedent on the work environment, the people, and leadership that makes or breaks it.

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Few-Quality-6806@reddit

Sometimes you’ll land a job and not realize how much more you’re going to be doing out of scope. Or when you’re tier I to III. It is very frustrating to try and troubleshoot complex issues when you find out there’s something wrong with the architecture and you have no idea what they did to get it to work and so now you’re rebuilding it.

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mspax@reddit

I've been in IT for quite a while. It's been an up and down career. Some places were terrific while others sucked. That said, I think there's too much focus on salary. This is not to say you shouldn't get paid what you're worth. However, sometimes it's worth a small pay cut to save yourself a world of stress. I've developed a patter of working in stressful positions for around 4-5 years and then cycling to something a little more chill for a while.

Do what you need to do to survive. Take care of your mental and physical health. Be your own advocate. Don't be afraid to set boundaries. Your job is not your life.

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Muted-Bend8659@reddit

No matter where you go, there you are. It's not the job or the field. Most of the people that are miserable at work (I've been there) are just miserable. If you don't take care of you, then you will be miserable anywhere. It's important to set boundaries, can you call me after hours? Sure, if it's an emergency, don't expect me to always answer.

The one that most people neglect to admit is that they have purposely made themselves 'valuable'. By this I mean they hoard tribal knowledge and document minimally if at all. If there is a proper system to document EVERYTHING and EVERY system to the point that anyone in IT can back up your role, then there is no reason you can't disconnect on PTO or personal time.

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Tilt23Degrees@reddit

The problem with IT is that most people in IT don’t know how to say no.

And then everything becomes your problem because you’re a door mat for morons all day long.

I’ve lost jobs because I was asked to setup office furniture and build chairs before. Some people just eat shit for a living, I refuse. I didn’t get a college degree and certifications to build office furniture for schmucks who are too cheap to hire an office services person.

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Aggravating_Refuse89@reddit

To be fair, IT managers do not know how to say no and will change your no to a yes if the right person gets their ear. That teaches people to not say no because then it becomes a yes directed at you and a yelling at for saying no.

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Tilt23Degrees@reddit

Well those IT managers need to be fired and let go from the entire industry completely. They aren’t managers, if leadership can’t defend their staffs skill set and expertise than somebody else is gotta step in.

We aren’t here to fill every gap a corporation wants on a whim. It’s bullshit.

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m2ljkdmsmnjsks@reddit

You reminded me of something. I worked for a consultancy/MSP (not one of the biggest one but close) at one point when I was younger, and I was asked by a director level if I could work on this project.

Was I qualified? No.

Was I comfortable working on this task? No.

Did I agree? No.

Didn't they just ask me again the same day? Yup.

Did I agree? Eventually, yes.

I was effectively trained not to say no, even when asked to work on something I had no business working on (financial forensics and data recovery). These were senior auditors, and they had no capability or even knowledge of the risks involved.

Now I know my limits, but I am still haunted by the bullshit I felt like I had to do. I go to therapy and lose sleep because of it.

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Logical_Destruction@reddit

In summary. We are rarely rewarded or recognized for the work we do. We only hear about the complaints and frustration of our customers (users). You always have to stay up on current tech, ie its a never ending loop of learning. The people you work with rarely operate in the same way you do or they are so disgruntled you end up trying to do everything till you reach the same place. 99% of our jobs could be done remotely but you still have to sit in a cubicle. You are often asked to work after hours even though your employer has funds to hire after hours support, then they complain when you aren't sitting by the phone at 2am. Pay for the role can be fantastic to terrible with expectations all over the place for a given role. You will often find yourself working with others that don't have a clue about what you really do.

All in all it can be a very exhausting role and very unfulfilling. Especially when you get stuck working for a bad company.

Note: I've been doing this for 20 years, and at 6 different companies during that time.

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VincibilityFrame@reddit

Like most jobs, it depends on your working environment and your customers. Also, aside from on-call availability, you really must be the kind of person that leaves work at work or learn how to do it fast. If you can mentally compartmentalise, you'll be fine. Another addendum: do NOT give your personal phone number to your customers, ever, otherwise you'll tacitly agree to be 24/7 available on call. If they ask, say you don't have a work cellphone yet and if necessary, they can call the emergency number.

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Manashili@reddit

25 year IT veteran here. All jobs have some level of stress/BS/days you want to quit. There is no job that you wont get bored or upset with at some point. Do what you want to do(profession wise) and just deal with it.

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vlycop@reddit

One thing that get to me is the endless todo list. You'll never be done, you can never work enough hours. And since companies are mass firing right now, the trend is to put more work on existing staff, not hiring enough to let the current staff have free time to read on stuff and chill.

And they still expect you to be on top of everything new in the it world by working on it in your off work hours...

If you can't force yourself to say "enough for today", this get dangerous fast

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GeekTrucker@reddit

As someone that's been in the IT field longer than it's been called that (anyone remember Demand Processing, Punch Cards, or even Tape???), I always ask people this:

When was the last time you called your cell phone provider, or cable provider, or internet provider to say, "Hey everything is running great, thank you."

Especially here, you'll only read the worst, never the compliments, nor rarely the love of tech which is why we got into this in the first place. We all love IT. We all hate IT. We are Groot.

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Arklelinuke@reddit

It all really depends on the company you're a part of. Does upper management understand the value of IT, or do they just see it as a cost center? How about within the department? Do they actually work to make it a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship, or are they parasites bleeding you dry? Will your supervisors have your back or are you their scapegoat when they're in the line of fire? I'm very fortunate to work for the bank I work for where it all lands on the good side of that - everyone across the board in this company knows they couldn't work without us and are very rarely overly demanding. I'm looked to for my previous knowledge and experience, as well as problem solving/critical thinking ability. The bank I left to work for this one, is the opposite of all of that. Just a cog in the machine, near impossible to climb.

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Memitim@reddit

We're in one of the fastest developing fields on Earth, and it has been this way for decades. We're not talking about learning how to use a new tool that is getting popular in the trade, like most professions have to deal with in modernization. We have to constantly relearn everything, and to a degree that we can then execute down to the semicolon. But we're often treated like any other task worker despite having this massive expectation of continuous learning, ever-expanding scope, and often ridiculous availability.

A couple of decades of that and you tend to get a bit worn out.

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jooooooohn@reddit

The environment and management matter a lot. They can make a job suck or be wonderful.

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JuJitosisOk@reddit

The most depressing thing about working in IT in my opinion is when you work along people who got the "incel" vibes.
They are great partners, you can talk about a lot of things but you won't ever hangout with them and bond with them cause they don't really want to, they are "okey" with that level of interaction and don't reallize they are just "NPC" that you see 8h a day for years and sometimes that attitude gets on to you

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jimicus@reddit

Graduated 2002, so I think I count as a veteran.

I think there are three things I would say to someone coming into the job today:

First: Having a thorough understanding of what the hell is going on when you do something has always paid massive dividends. If you're just clicking "go" without really understanding what you're doing or why you're doing it, you cannot effectively troubleshoot and learning new things becomes orders of magnitude harder.

Second: Where you work is just as - if not more - important than what you do. If you're not being challenged, if you're not learning from others, if you're not developing yourself as a professional (regardless of what exactly that looks like) - then what you are doing is building yourself a glass ceiling.

Third: IT is chock-full of people pleasers - people who don't know how to set boundaries or stop when there's still more work that could be done long after 5 pm. If that sounds like you - get out of that habit right now because sooner or later, you'll burn out.

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SnooDucks5078@reddit

I love working in IT, every day is different. Yes, it can be very stressful at times but most jobs are like that. I think when I realised that I can't please everyone. Only frustrating thing is that more and more things are connected to the Internet so next thing I'll be asked to fix a faulty toilet which can't get an IP address. But, like I say, every day is different and that's why working in IT can be enjoyable and not repetitive.

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senpaijohndoe@reddit

for me its the people the user; i can handle issue giving to me and deal with them but the customers/users can go eff themselves

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MostMediocreModeler@reddit

It all depends on your employer, and setting expectations. After 13 years I went from a demoralizing grind at an MSP back to an internal position with a decent-sized IT department for the company's size. I wear a lot of hats just like a lot of people (servers, network, cybersecurity, etc.) but I also get to play with new technology in a lab. I've been in IT for 25 years now and the move was a life saver.

There are good days and bad days but at least the good days outweigh the bad ones.

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OkOutside4975@reddit

21 years and counting. They haven't taken me out yet!

I love the smell of packets in the AM.

People can suck or be a dream to work with. The tech is too logical to be upset with; except Micro$oft.

We all have a weird distant cousin no one talks about.

As you move up circles get smaller quick. Validations come from yourself, not others. Then, it don't matter.

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Triairius@reddit

Nah. As everyone has said, it depends on the environment. I’ve just hit my first year at a job, starting a late career (I’m 34), and I am smiling and laughing most every day. Some days are stressful or even bad, but I love my team, and my users mostly respect me.

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Quirky_Ad5774@reddit

I've been working for 10 years in IT. Started off as IT Support, moved to sysadmin, now I'm sysadmin in title that's more like a SRE. I hated IT Support after the first year, I was always putting out fires, was expected to know the inner workings of 10+ year old applications and how to resolve them, and just generally started to hate interacting with people because it was all about how I can fix their issues.

After becoming a system administrator, I needed to find the right company, I worked for a defense contractor and hated my life every day because me and my team were used as scapegoats for every project that fell behind schedule (30+ year old systems have a tendency of failing no matter how well you take care of them).

Now I work remotely and only with cloud infrastructure, and I love it, I don't have to be constantly changing out hard drives, RAM sticks, UPS batteries, etc. and can focus completely on creating well architected infrastructure that can survive failures and load spikes.

My advice: find a job where putting out fires is a rarity and not a daily task, you always want to be building and improving instead of maintaining.

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quaglandx3@reddit

Depends on your environment. I’ve worked in shitty spots before. I’ve been working in sports and entertainment for the past 20 years, there are ups and downs but it’s exciting, fast paced at times, and a lot of personal freedom and I love it. Getting championship rings help too!

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NEWREGARD@reddit

I’ve been in the IT space for almost 15 years now. Couldn’t be happier. I derive great satisfaction from troubleshooting operating systems/peripherals and diagnosing network related problems.

There’s something special about end users calling you a wizard (or IT God has been my favorite). Simply by walking them through things you’ve done like it’s second nature.

There’s plenty to get excited about in technology. You just need to find what you enjoy the most, and pursue that with raging intensity. Never stop learning/seeking other professionals opinions/insight.

They say you never work a day in your life if you do what you love. Find your niche OP

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indiginary@reddit

The thing to make It not depressing as an employee is to focus on solving business problems. Always. Your business clients will respect you more and it will keep the conversations focused on what they care about. You will be valued more and it will eventually result in more respect, promotability, and earnings.

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Throggy123@reddit

It's not depressing, but I'll give my insight after working in IT for just a few shorts months:

People think IT workers do nothing. They think we just sit at our computers and stare at a screen.
They love us till something breaks and we can't immediately resolve it.
You are at everyone's beckoning call for some odd reason. I had a lady call me freaking out that her email turned gray. Lo' and behold, she randomly pushed a button and it turned a different color. I see her number pop up on my caller ID and I just let out a loud sigh because she's annoying to deal with and can't continue her "work" until her issue is resolved.

However, I'm thankful to work at a company where the higher ups are actually backing us on a lot of the policies we put in place, as well as understanding that some security measures we have to take will cost money. Plus it's a laid back atmosphere and they let me study for certs in my free time.

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Neblovesyou@reddit

Where you are is often more important than what you do. (When it comes to happiness, stress, etc.)
IMO

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aries1500@reddit

Like u/SoSmartish points out, you are the last stop and a garbage disposal of things no one wants to figure out. Depressing isn't the right word, people are LAZYT and its frustrating, the burn out is real. In my time I usually see two types of jobs, job A. wants you to stick to your area of expertise or core job role and not step out. Which can be a little frustrating if your passionate and have a desire to learn. Job B. will feed into your passion and desire to help till the point that you are holding everyone's hand and while it feels good for a while, you will burn out. You have to set the expectations and set your boundaries. Easier said then done.

The point is it's all about how you navigate the positions because let's face it, majority of people who hire IT and oversee IT and rely on IT have no idea what you are doing and assume a kid can do it and they don't value what you do. It's up to you to navigate, manage, lead, and guide your position to a work/life balance that you can handle.

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cx_fan@reddit

As long as you're making money, depressing times is part of the game.

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The_Radical_Alex@reddit

a lot of the folks on here have clear anti-social tendencies. I think the nature of the work draws this kind of mind. If you enjoy talking to people, you will avoid 99% of the issues that you see show up in rant threads. It's always possible that you'll end up with a shitty boss or a dickhead end user, but if you are naturally charismatic, it really won't be that much different than any of the other jobs have worked.

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Magazynier666@reddit

Yes

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punklinux@reddit

When things are going well, it makes for boring posts.

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caa_admin@reddit

Yeap.

Been in IT since 1989.

Before the term 'IT' was an acronym it wasn't thankless, on-call wasn't the norm and training happened.

My way out was to go K12. I'd rather be part of improving a kid's education than make someone else rich.

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Wooden_Newspaper_386@reddit

Generally I wouldn't say it's a depressing job field, but it can be at times depending on where you work.

I've worked at places where it's soul crushing because there are no breaks, you're understaffed, and OT is "mandatory" because you don't have enough people to get the work done during regular business hours.

I've also worked at places where it gets depressing because it's such a well oiled machine. Sure you'll still have work to do and plenty of time to learn new skills, but personally I get bored of that eventually and that leads to depression for me.

You just gotta find a place that's not absolutely toxic and is a good fit for you. Unfortunately that's easier said than done, but there's a good spot for everyone. You just might not find it right away, or too early on in your career.

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Public_Warthog3098@reddit

I work from home. I make great money. I am happy. It's all about where and who you work with.

Imo, a lot of these folks are in a bad situation or really bad whiners. I am certain a lot of them would whine more in any other field. Work is work. I don't think most ppl in the world will be passionate and love what they're doing to get the bills paid. Only a very few unicorns.

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Recalcitrant-wino@reddit

I've been in IT over 20 years, and I still love my job. I don't answer the Help Desk phone, no one pitches me shit for the things I do, and every year I get a small pay raise. I'm good at this and I'm appreciated.

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Ok-Section-7172@reddit

Depends on who you are. Do you like hard complex stuff that comes with massive stress and huge wins? Do you like people? Are you so obsessed that you learn every nook and cranny you come across? Does being wrong, feeling the pain to get back on the right path feel great? Then, IT is amazing.

If you are in a job and unwilling to hold out until you can move along, or don't like people, have some sort of superiority complex, are unwilling to constantly lose... then it become rather tough and you shouldn't be here.

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exccord@reddit

Me looking at my morning cup of coffee....

Hello Darkness my old friend...

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skeetgw2@reddit

Its pretty situational on your place of employment but yes, burn out will hit hard and fast.

For me its just the absolute lack of care end users have for anything they don't deem important. The rudeness is also grating.

Find yourself a good situation though and that changes pretty quick. A good boss goes a long way too.

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Ihaveasmallwang@reddit

IT isn’t that bad.

The people who complain day in and day out are the same people who would complain no matter what career they had.

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Alternative_Bag_7381@reddit

I love this answer so fucking much

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LibtardsAreFunny@reddit

it gets real depressing when i have to explain to a user what a browser is. This should not be a thing in this day and age.

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SoonerMedic72@reddit

I was a paramedic for over a decade. IT work is great. I haven't seen any dead kids or had to pick some stoned teenager while hearing that a stroke is now waiting for an available unit. Haven't had a HVAC issue where someone suffering heat exhaustion gets worse in the AC. Haven't been sued by a meth head that reversed into me at a stop light. Haven't had to sit in court for 6 hours in between my 12-hour shifts because the defense attorney is out of his depth.

Plus I make like 3-5x what I made then, and even factoring in on-call and monthly off hour patching, I am still working less hours with way better benefits. 🤷‍♂️

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cosmicsans@reddit

I scrolled through some of the top comments and didn't see this posted so I figure I'll give this another perspective.

OP, one thing that you should keep in mind in any facet of life is that for the most part you'll only ever see the best and the worst things posted on the internet.

You'll only ever see people complaining about the worst most toxic jobs, and you'll only ever see people bragging about the best, rarest unicorn jobs.

You won't see the vast majority of people posting things like:

I get into work at 8:30am, have a quick chat with my co-workers who all get along pretty well, and get a cup of coffee and work at a steady pace on interesting and uninteresting things until it's time for lunch. I then eat lunch and go back to work until it's time to leave for the day. I'm not disturbed after I leave with work "emergencies" and I have a very healthy work-life balance and I believe I'm compensated fairly for the work that I do.

Those people who are satisfied and content with their jobs and lives aren't going online and bragging about it or complaining about it, because it won't get engagement.

So yeah, certain aspects of the job may be depressing but you'll find that with every job.

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Dogstile@reddit

I like it 99% of the time, but that 1% of the time is infuriating.

That being said, I just stepped down from a senior role in one industry to doing the same thing as a junior in another industry for the same pay, except now if shit happens off the clock someone else gets called to do it. Fuck the title, i'm vibing.

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asimplerandom@reddit

It all comes down to the environment. I’ve worked in several industries and locations and I’ve absolutely hated some of those environments and tolerated/occasionally enjoyed some of those places. My current place is absolutely amazing and I come to work excited for the most part about what the day will bring.

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Individual-Teach7256@reddit

As someone whos now been in about 6 years.... It was really fun and enjoyable early on. Then it quickly became monotonous. So i changed companies hoping for a refresh in attitude and increase in pay. Didnt work.

Now I just accepted a new job with a focus on automation and almost feel a sense of relief getting away from the same old end user / vmware bullshit.

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HotPraline6328@reddit

Never regretted being in the field going on 30 years. Now my coworkers are a different story, but that doesn't change with the job

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SVSDuke@reddit

Just skip to the end and take up goat farming, you'll be happier.

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NunyaaBidniss@reddit

I was a goat farmer for 5 years. A wise man once said "If you have no troubles – buy a goat." and that could not have been more true. They are amazing animals, just a LOT of work and troublesome little shits haha

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TheBug20@reddit

Yeah man I’m already bald and drinking daily… 31 years old here…

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Nuclearmonkee@reddit

It’s interesting and enjoyable to me, but I would not recommend it to anyone. You either make kind of shitty/mediocre pay as a junior/service desk kind of role, or make decent to good money in a more senior role with serious strings attached.

In a senior role, you can expect terrible work life balance and the nature of the work involves a lot of sitting and staring at screens, so it’s terrible for your health too. Your job will inevitably expand endlessly in scope. I work in infrastructure but I know it’s no better for my colleagues in dev. I work in manufacturing so it also eats holidays and weekends often times.

If you’re willing to bind your existence to your career and are good at your job, the upper earnings ceiling is quite high if that’s all you care about.

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The_Sad_In_Sysadmin@reddit

Never been happier...

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Reputation_Possible@reddit

No not at all. All jobs are depressing right now. Companies are abusive across the board. It has nothing at all to do with IT just the failing us job markers in general. Corporate greed has made the is into a 3rd world labor market.

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LilMeatBigYeet@reddit

Honestly if you find something in public or school sector, it can be great.

I’ve worked in public and private sector, there is a world of difference

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2donks2moos@reddit

I have been the sole IT person for a k-12 school district for 21 years now. It wears you out. Like someone else said, more tech comes in, and it just gets added to your plate. We now have 1,400 Chromebooks in our district. Guess who gets to fix them?

Here is what you have to remember: Think of one person at your job who is of average intelligence. Now you have to realize that half of them are dumber than that person.

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tininairb@reddit

Yes.

IT is depressing and getting slowly shuttered.

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TEverettReynolds@reddit

I love my job, love my community, love my career.

Been doing IT for 30 years.

What do I love the most? The sky is the limit to how successful you can be. The more you can learn and do, the more money you will make. If you are willing to move around to find the bigger and better companies, it's really that simple.

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peldor@reddit

I've worked in IT for over 30 years...I guess that makes me a veteran. I'm also in the very fortunate position where I don't need to work to survive/exist. I still work in IT because I enjoy it.

In my experience, a lot of people in IT are great with computers but not nearly as good with the people skills. They don't tend to have the skillsets to quickly identify when they're in a toxic work environment. They also tend to make the mistake of thinking a toxic environment is "something to fix" and they end up staying far longer than they should.

Most people who work in IT are wired to fix things, not walk away from problems. I don't think working in IT is inherently terrible over the long term. But you need to be willing walk away from bad roles.

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FullMetal_55@reddit

ok, 25 year vet. not the longest, but pretty long.

1) I love it.

2) It's not for everybody.

3) not everybody is the same/wants the same out of a career.

thing is, I was there in the dot-com boom, and bust. Lots and lots of people were joining the industry because "it was the next big thing and you can make a lot of money doing it"... a lot of those people who were only in it for the money abandoned it quickly.

In my training, we had a lot of career changing individuals. we had a bus driver, a jeweler, a welder who got hurt and couldn't weld anymore. of them, the welder stayed with it because he enjoyed it. the bus driver, was back driving bus in 2 years. the jeweler couldn't find a job that paid better than her jewelry job, and a few others just stuck it out until retirement in 5 years.

Now to those people, yeah IT was boring and a terrible career. The key for me, is passion. IT requires a little passion for technology and troubleshooting, without it, you won't last long. if you're in it only for the money, you'll have to do a lot of job hopping... I was never in IT for the money. I started out making $10/hr on helldesk. now up significantly. I could even make more money moving on. But I'm older now, and the money I make is comfortable, plus where I am I get a pension. so, yeah, guaranteed money for retirement sign me up :P... IT is not for everybody, and as with ANY OTHER CAREER there is attrition and people who say it's the worst job ever, and only good because it pays well... (sounds like the oil patch to me) Truth is, all jobs suck to the wrong person.

I love IT, I've been in it for 25 years, I've seen it go from NT 4.0 to Windows 2025... from baremetal servers to virtualization to cloud, back to on-prem and hyperconverged. I've seen so much change. It can be an exciting and rewarding field, or it can be a nightmare. It really depends on the person. if you're looking for a stress free job that doesn't change and you just do your day-to-day, then IT isn't for you. If you're looking for a dynamic career, that will shift and change and provide you learning opportunities, and growth potential, and no two days are ever the same? IT is like that. Sure there are grinding times where it's the same thing over and over and over again, but those pass, and you get back into exciting opportunities. Heck, you also have to be willing to forget useless information. I tried reinstalling NT 4.0 a while back, and was... uh... how do I install the network driver again? lol. after 24 years of not using NT 4.0, It's left me :P.

I highly recommend Office Space, not just for the humour, but really for an accurate presentation of what corporate IT Burnout is. IT wasn't the right job for Peter. He was not a good fit for IT. and at the end, he works construction is having a great time, every day is different, but he doesn't have to learn or think, or get yelled at 5 times for forgetting a coversheet on his TPS reports, just do the work, get paid, go home. That's all he ever wanted. But Burnout is a thing, and it's best to listen to yourself.

IT is great, it's not for everybody, but if you like it it's great. if you don't like it it'll be the worst thing ever. to some it's a career to others it's a job... as a job it sucks, as a career it can be rewarding, if you're the right fit.

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brolix@reddit

The only thing worse than tech is everything else

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WaldoOU812@reddit

Absolutely, although to clarify, I don't just "like" my job, I straight up "love" my job.

I haven't loved all of my IT jobs that I've had over the last 25 years, though, and one was so bad that I would have left the industry to go flip burgers at McDonalds if my wife at the time hadn't threatened to divorce me. However, aside from that one godawful horrible job, the rest have all been the type where I couldn't believe people were paying me to do it.

This may be an unfair statement, but I think a lot of IT people can be rather entitled and ignorant of what other jobs (especially blue collar) can be like. Granted, there are definitely some terrible IT jobs our there, and some companies can be downright abusive, but the average IT job is pretty cushy and definitely a lot less physically and emotional draining compared to other positions. You're usually not working in freezing cold or blistering heat, breaking your back doing physical labor, making minimum wage, standing on your feet for 8-12 hours (or more) per day, dealing with abusive patients yelling at you and physically attacking you, etc.

I'd also say that it's usually not the job itself that's terrible or depressing, but rather the company and/or the boss. As the saying goes, people don't quit bad companies; they quit bad bosses.

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Organic_Basket6121@reddit

You wanna know what's wrong with IT? All the people who do it for some kind of approval. If you don't like it, there are hundreds of other fields.

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SWM89@reddit

I like my IT job. I'm thankful everyday that I don't have to endure a labor intensive job as I get older.

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p90rushb@reddit

Watch out for extra full time jobs. What I mean by that is say you have a full time job, and your manager decides that another full time job such as DBA or administrator/developer of a product, should just be an assignable role and then you get stuck with it. Your workweek does from 40 hours a week to 60+ while your performance suffers because you can't keep up, causing your year-end review to be average or being put on an improvement plan. Stick around at a shitty company long enough, and you'll be a victim of this. I think that's why a lot of people tend to job hop. It's a natural shed of responsibility and most people take the path of least resistance.

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tarmo888@reddit

Well, if you like your job, the problem is solved. Don't like it anymore, look other fields in IT.

If they don't like it, maybe it's not their thing or they haven't got good yet. There are so many fields in IT to specialize that maybe they just haven't found their thing yet.

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Dry_Marzipan1870@reddit

It sure as fuck can be. I've reached a point where i fuckin hate these morons i help. im trying to get out of help desk but apparently that's a large order.

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agentdurden@reddit

It's what you decide to do and at what pace.

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ITaggie@reddit

Dunno if I would call myself a "veteran" quite yet but I've been in IT for around 10 years. It depends heavily on the work environment. MSPs and cowboy IT shops are known to be very stressful because the work is demanding, inconsistent, and seemingly endless.

I'm pretty comfortable in my public sector sysadmin job though. I work with a competent team and management, we have a reasonable budget, and we have a very good relationship with our end users. Being on-call is annoying but thankfully our k8s/automation stack tends to at least keep things together over a weekend even if something is screwy. Even if I have to work outside of business hours we have a pretty lax "comp time" policy so I can effectively bank that off-hour work time as PTO.

Moral of the story is, start in a large organization so you aren't in a position where you're doing all of the IT work all of the time. Make sure to use your PTO regularly and don't be afraid to ask your coworkers for help.

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Mechanical_Monk@reddit

I love it, but I've loved it my whole life and essentially made a career out of my hobby. If you aren't getting into IT because of a love for technology and problem solving, you'll have a bad time.

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RichardJimmy48@reddit

Everyone likes to bitch. That's universal. Doesn't matter what job you pick, there's a reason they call it work and not play. Do you like solving difficult problems? Do you enjoy technology? Would you rather be doing that than taping and mudding drywall? If you're unsure of IT, go take a sabbatical and work at a pizza shop or a landscaping company or a steel mill or an insurance company and see if there isn't anything to complain about in the greener grass.

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Icy-Maintenance7041@reddit

I have worked in IT for about 20 years and i learned two things:

- the work in itself is fun, challenging and often rewarding. The way IT is often misunderstood or mismanaged can suck the fun, challenge and rewards out of it really quickly. Train your managers.

- Educate everyone around IT this: Cheap, fast or good. Pick two, any two. You will often be asked to make stuff work fast, cheap AND stable or good. This is not feasable and shouldnt even be attempted. Understand this and the pitfalls of corporate IT become easier to navigate. Not more fun, but easier at least.

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Remarkable_Air3274@reddit

You'll start loving it soon enough.

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Amazing-Tonight-7217@reddit

I'm about to turn 50 next year and have been in IT since the late 90s. The most annoying aspect for me is dealing with customers who think they're more important than the ticket system. Yes it becomes boring but I'm still at it.

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SpiceIslander2001@reddit

I've been in IT since 1989, so I think I can consider myself a veteran. Got pushed into a sysadmin role from very early and I've artfully dodged getting pushed into any position where I'm not involved in implementing and troubleshooting. And I do like the field.

However, I have the option open to me to retire next year, and I'm seriously considering it.

I don't see many conversations around the physical toll that this field can have on you. Staring at a computer screen for hours, even with scheduled breaks in-between, will eventually have a physical impact, as the last X-ray of my neck showed. The internal creaking noises when I rotate my head can be .. unnerving.

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Epicfro@reddit

Jobs at a certain level are horrible. Make sure to research the path you want to take and be willing to take risks and jump jobs when appropriate. I've been fortunate enough not to be on call since 2020. Keep getting certifications and proving your worth. Be confident but humble. Don't let people push you around; it will happen, but be willing to leave when it does. Ultimately, all jobs are miserable and depressing and if you're getting into IT without a passion for it, you're going to be miserable and depressed.

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Tech_support_Warrior@reddit

I love IT. I love doing what I do, that being said there are downsides. I think a lot of people in IT suffer from "Grass is greener over there!"

If I could do it over again and know what I know now, I would go into a trade like plumbing or something like that and keep doing IT stuff as a hobby.

In a lot of organizations IT people aren't treated the best. When things are working well, IT is viewed as unneeded. When things are broken, IT is viewed as useless and lazy. For me the parts of IT that I enjoy the most, won't pay the bills to do them as a career unless I get very very lucky. So I do the mundane stuff and collect my livable wage.

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pohlcat01@reddit

Depends where you work. And people go online to vent. So it's heavily weighted toward negativity.

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DBRY98@reddit

Can't upvote this enough! 100%

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JC0100101001000011@reddit

i think it all boils down to people you working with, managers and your work environment.

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JH6JH6@reddit

I've done State/Local Government IT for 15 years. No I don't make a fortune, but its good honest work and we don't have layoffs. I have little to no stress and go home at 5.

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entirestickofbutter@reddit

my company just forgot to pay for its domain and we now have no email or website.

its bad, yes

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tiberiusmurderhorne@reddit

20 years in and i love it... moneys crap but im in the country...

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Puzzleheaded_Skin881@reddit

Is it depressing? Maybe. Is it LESS depressing and pay higher than 99% of other fields? Yes. Atleast in my cross trained experience

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Airver999@reddit

20 years in the business. IT itself is always interesting and probably always will be, it's always evolving and there's always something new to learn.

What doesn't evolve are the end users and that's extremely frustrating.

So my advice would be to find a position where you have as little to do with the end users as possible.

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g3n3@reddit

You go more specialized and make more money and not have to deal with little chicken shit stuff like workstations or other non IT related functions.

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HITACHIMAGICWANDS@reddit

IT people in general have below average interpersonal communication skills. As a general rule, if you explain the problem and your steps to resolution in an easy to understand manner non IT people will understand your position. That is to say - if you don’t explain you don’t work 24 hours either in words or in actual actions(ex: don’t answer calls or emails after hours), people will treat you like a 24 hour employee. If you don’t explain the trouble you’re having solving an issue, people will think you’re stupid, and on that some people will just think your stupid because their nephew restarted their laptop once and everything worked better. IT isn’t depressing, assholes are depressing and in IT you will deal with a lot of assholes, above below and on the receiving end.

All that said, if it’s what you enjoy you’ll be fine. Don’t lose your passion or fire and NEVER stop learning.

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EEU884@reddit

Best career I have ever had but I am one of the people complaining who exists out of spite.

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wimpunk@reddit

No. The users and the managers are.

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crackerjam@reddit

IT is an enormous field. There are roles where all of your time is spend dealing with absolutely braindead users that need their hands held for everything, and other roles where you're in a code editor all day with minimal human interaction outside of Jira tickets. Likewise there are companies that will middle manage you into jumping off a bridge, and others that won't bother you as long as your tickets are being done.

The key to success in this field is finding the right role and the right employer for your own success.

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sibble@reddit

I've held a jack-of-all-trades IT position for the past 10 years and I've really enjoyed it. I get to do everything and for a while each day was something new.

I have ADHD and I found that, for me, specializing in 1 thing lead to boring work days.

Again, that's just me though.

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penguindows@reddit

I like my job a lot. I think forums like reddit can be a place to vent, so you might get a more negative impression of the field than reality. You're sort of "standing in the hot isle" when you come to reddit. being in IT is just like any other job at the end of the day: some people feel fulfilled by the challenges, some people feel fulfilled by the accolades, some people feel fulfilled by the money. If you ever find yourself having less than 2 of the 3, then its time to look elsewhere.

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t3hmuffnman9000@reddit

It depends. Some jobs are better than others. Here's a few major drawbacks to a career in IT that I think everyone thinking about a job in the field should consider.

1.) Education. This is not a field that you take a few years of college courses and never have to think about again. I was a Systems Administrator for four years. You will be required to learn on the job, non-stop, oftentimes on your own time. "I need to study this first" is not an answer that most employers will accept when they ask you to do something. The DNS server is down? You better figure out how to fix it within the next five minutes or they'll find someone who can. The servers need updates? You'd better already know how SCCM works, as well as how to replicate VMs and test the updates on them, because only a suicidal fool pushes untested updates to production machines. The CEO wants to set up a teleconference room? You'd better be intimately familiar with every equipment manufacturer and their offerings, because you have until the end of the day to get everything ordered and nobody's going to forgive you for blowing $10,000 on something that doesn't meet/exceed expectations.
2.) Stress. See above. You are ignored when everything is working and blamed for everything when it isn't.
3.) The hours. You will almost always be salaried. Get used to endless hours with no overtime and working by yourself on weekends when everyone else is at home sleeping.

The industry is far easier when you work with a team, but the pay tends to be relatively disappointing unless you accept the high-responsibility positions.

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Teguri@reddit

20 Years and going, still love it.

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doodads_please@reddit

I have been in IT now for 30+ years. Does it drive me insane? Definitely. On a daily basis. End users making life difficult, projects that change 3/4 of the way through them, bosses that don't understand what they are actually asking me to do even after I explain it to them. Would I want to do anything else? NOPE, I love this work. All the things that drive me crazy, those are just challenges to overcome. The main thing that has made this career work for me is having a good team to work with in the office and a wife and family at home that are supportive of some of the insanity that this job requires. I am at a point in my career where I could retire within the next couple of years, but I really doubt I will because I haven't reached that point yet where I don't want to do this job anymore. The main thing I would recommend is to make sure you find some non-IT interests to help balance out your life. I enjoy working on cars, woodworking, golf, things that require other skill sets that let me give my IT brain a break. It's amazing what just a couple of hours of focusing on something else like that can do to help reset you when things feel like they are getting to be too much.

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darklogic85@reddit

I've been working in IT for over 20 years. I find that there are things to complain about with any job, but overall, I like it. I'm more of a developer at this point and do mostly SQL DBA work. I know some people wouldn't consider a SQL developer to be technically IT, but I've always thought of myself as an IT person, since the fields between development and IT overlap in a lot of ways. I like the freedom I have with working remote and I enjoy the work I do. Even when I worked as a server admin, which is clearly defined within IT, I enjoyed it.

In my opinion, as you get more experience and move up in your positions in IT, it gets more enjoyable. What I least enjoyed was help desk type work. If you're focused on fixing problems that people open tickets for, or helping end users with the stupid things they do, I can see why that would be frustrating, and I wouldn't want to do that for 20-30 years. However, as you get more experience and move up, and you're in more of a position that either works on development, or setup/migration/upgrades of equipment and systems to new hardware and software, you get into more complex technical stuff, and you also get away from working with end users and fixing their problems to some extent.

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dlongwing@reddit

It depends heavily on where you work. IT can be a rewarding and fulfilling career (despite what this subreddit might say), or it can be a horribly depressing slog.

It mostly boils down to whether or not you've got buy-in from management and a halfway decent manager to report to. Keep in mind that people tend to post when they're unhappy, and tend not to post when they're doing fine. You're seeing a hefty bias towards the folks who aren't having a great time.

The important things:

Do not stay at a bad job. You can't fix bad management. You definitely can't fix an abusive or incompetent boss. Start looking for a new job if you run into either of these problems.
Let go of the idea that the tech you're working on is "yours". That sense of responsibility can be an anchor that weighs you down and keeps you at a bad job.
Document everything and follow procedure. Your job will put you at odds with people in other departments. You're often indirectly responsible for telling them "no". No they can't have 12345 as a password. No they can't install software sent to them by their kid's school. No they can't use their work-issued laptop for personal activities. If you do all this stuff by word-of-mouth, it becomes something you are doing. Follow policy. People will (mostly) respect that. When they don't respect it, make sure you've got your orders in writing so that no one can throw you under the bus.

I've been doing this for 20 years. I've had atrocious jobs and I've had awesome jobs. Even the awesome ones have their frustrations (there's a reason we're paid for this), but they're nothing at all like the bad jobs. When you're in a bad job, it can feel like the job is your whole world, and by extension, that all the world is like your bad job. The best thing you can do in those situations is to get out.

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RikiWardOG@reddit

Hi I see you're on a call right now with multiple people in the room but I'm going to barge in and let you know my monitors won't work because IDK how to turn them on.... to sum it up the best I can. What happens is a company will grow way faster than the IT department to the point you're drowning and unless the right person and management pulls for you there's a chance you get stepped on. At many orgs there's a general lack of respect for IT. There are good places to work for though. I happened to currently work for a really good one overall.

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emeraldwyrm@reddit

I love it personally but I've found a good place to work. It wasn't my first career choice and who knows it might not be my last. You won't know until you try, but just keep the idea in mind that you might change careers one day. If it starts to suck, figure out why and change it.

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Unable-Entrance3110@reddit

People are much more likely to post their displeasure.

I have been in IT for neigh 30 years and I LOVE IT!

If you enjoy helping people, solving problems and working with computers, then I see no reason why you wouldn't find a long and rewarding career in IT.

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Arab81253@reddit

IT covers such a wide range of jobs that it's very tough to make a generalization on things across the entire industry. What I will say is that no matter the job, you will find people who are unhappy or unfulfilled and like to spread that to others.

I have been in those environments and I've found a lot of success in keeping myself motivated to learn and work outside of my comfort zone. There are very few industries remaining where in a short period of time you can find yourself having exponentially increased your salary while working normal hours and without sacrificing your body.

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bentbrewer@reddit

I love my job. It’s awesome, I get to play with new tech and solve problems.

People suck, it doesn’t matter the field.

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ResultsVary@reddit

Been in the field for 15 years. Granted, before that, I was a teacher - So I have perspective. Teaching was horrible. Overloaded class sizes, too many classes to teach, expected to "volunteer" for after hours activities and still have all of my expected stuff done. I was turning into a borderline alcoholic before I quit.

IT is a VERY broad umbrella. And it all depends on the job and where you decide to work. MSP? Yeah, you're going to have a rough time. Those are basically IT sweatshops with shit pay, no work-life balance, and shitty benefits. I worked for an MSP for about 5 years and ended up pulling 70-80 hour weeks, salaried, with no overtime. Getting paid 45k to be a T3 Network Engineer. The ONLY way they would give me marginal raises is by getting certifications in various stuff that I had to do on my own time, which was difficult considering the 70-80 hour weeks.

After that I made a self-promise that I would never work for a MSP again. Now? For the last 5 years, I've been a network/systems admin for a small local credit union. It's SO much better. I have input into things, I'm hourly - so yay overtime, and I'm only on call for an additional 30 minutes, every three weeks. And we don't get any calls, because people don't want to bother us with little stuff.

So can it be bad? Yeah. Depending on where you land. But it can also be really fucking rewarding and fun. Sometimes you need to log some time in the salt mines to land in a cushy desk job.

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eltiolukee@reddit

Do we have anyone here who is a veteran in the field and actually likes it?

15 years and loving it. You just have to find whatever IT branch you like, maybe try some stuff while you're still fresh, and worst case scenario you can always convert into one of those soul-sucking PMs :)

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da_apz@reddit

It's a field where the job itself might be rewarding and interesting, but the people indirectly related to it may make it really bad, ranging from hopeless people in managerial positions to abusive users to whom you're nothing but annoyance that bothers their daily routine.

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CAPICINC@reddit

It's not depressing, per-se, but it is viciously under appreciated. Or, to put it in terms of the Hell's Angels:

"When we do right, no one remembers. When we do wrong, no one forgets."

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Plus-Glove-4850@reddit

I wouldn’t say that it’s depressing. There’s good and bad like any job. My issue is that oftentimes people won’t believe me.

I’ve had branch staff lie to me when I troubleshoot, either because they don’t know what I’m asking or just don’t care to do it. I’ve had branch staff play dumb on taking equipment from other locations until I check cameras and have to confront them. It can be pulling teeth to get my supervisor to order replacement tech, and sometimes I’ve had to oversee facilities projects (sub pump installations).

But there’s a lot to like. I handle onboarding and love meeting the new hires! I like being able to solve problems for folks and tackling larger projects. I’m starting up some of the cybersecurity procedures and taking on more responsibility. There’s stuff to like and stuff that could improve.

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Scary_Board_8766@reddit

I've been in it for 26 years and parts of it are miserable but other parts aren't so bad. It can be really stressful at times. Of course I work by myself. I've thought about a career change most of the time because I don't have a passion for IT. But I don't know anything else and can't afford to start over at something else.

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Jokerchyld@reddit

I find this interesting being an OG

I started in technology in the 80s right when the (commercial) internet was about to take off.

I loved the puzzle of getting computers to talk to each other and focused on that essentially creating my own role with its ups and downs. Tech back then was more wild west so I admittedly got away doing tons of things that wouldn't fly today.

Some constants I've realized between IT in the 80s and IT today:

Most people, especially management, rarely truly understand technology. This frustrated me and I'd change companies every six months until I realized it wasn't going to change

Your value isn't just understanding the technology but EXPLAINING it in a way that non tech people can understand. Management will learn to trust and depend on you and you can move in the direction you want

Majority of projects will fail go over budget because companies don't spend (enough) time understanding what they have and the (actual) impact of changing it.

The first 90 days at a new company I spend the majority of my time working on the "data flow". How does data get into the firm? Who uses it? How does it leave the firm? (including protection, duplication, and synchronization). I always stand by this mantra - The one who knows the data runs the firm. That's not literally but that knowledge will get you into conversations most wouldn't think IT should be. You can make the project "go faster". Just be able to point out why it didn't go

Fiefdoms are real. Due to #1 and #2 people build these false bubbles to protect their realms. You can't do your job alone.

IT isn't all about technology. There are critical soft skills such as presenting, communication, and debating. Building these skills will help you more than you know.

Build your A-Team. Every team has that one person who loves and commits to what they do similar to you. Befriend them. Go to them when you have an issue in that team first. This builds trust which will have people go out of their way for you.

Lastly, stand in your integrity. It will always serve you to do (what you feel) is the right thing than to do what you think is not. Yes it's scary. Yes I've lost jobs over it. But over my 40 years in the industry (Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, IBM, Credit Suisse, Bridgewater) it has served me extremely well.

TLDR; I dont find IT depressing. If you have passion for IT, stick it out and make your own path. It will be tough but will yield value beyond what you're looking for.

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wwbubba0069@reddit

like any field, do it long enough you find some that will be pissed about that field. Most of the ones that are full-on sky is falling all the time, those are the ones that either cant handle stress or "glass half empty" types. Its like product reviews, people more often to leave a shit review rather than a good one.

as a grumpy gray beard myself, some days are better than others. Printers and users tend to ruin my mood fastest, buy mainly just being old is cause of being grumpy lol.

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mobious_99@reddit

Short answer yes. Long answer all of the comments that I’ve read are situation’s that I’ve run into.

I’ve been in it for 30 plus years and seen people be shafted, and laid off when we are barely able to keep up.

I’ve had to switch careers within it at least 5 times just to be an asset.

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Buddy_Kryyst@reddit

Going on 20+ years and still enjoy my job for the most part. Just working for a singular company not an MSP. 300 employee's, then we do partial support for a sister company with another 100 employees. Just a small team so while I'm a the sysadmin we are all jacks of all trades. I get to touch everything, lots of variety so things don't get dull.

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joshtheadmin@reddit

IT is fine, the entire concept of having a job sucks.

I don't hate solving IT problems, I hate maintaining a time sheet and having to be fake nice and having to bite my tongue over things.

I don't hate getting up early, but I hate giving control over my life and schedule to a company that would post my job within 24 hours of my untimely death.

None of this is unique to IT. Having a job sucks sometimes. I try to remember to practice gratitude because in general I am proud of my career and the life I am living.

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Creative_Onion_1440@reddit

I've worked in I.T. since the mid-late 90s and I'd say it all depends on where you work and how you handle stress.

Try to find a good place with good people to work at and leave your worries at the office when you head home.

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evasive_btch@reddit

Not at all. For some reason "I hate the it-stupid person"-sentiments exist a lot in this field, but I don't mind it. I just like helping people with the cool skills I have.

You'll just have to try it out yourself. There are big varieties of job-types when thinking about person-interaction.

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Chubakazavr@reddit

no, its just people often come here to rant. 99% of the time the job is great actually

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Magnus_Rex12@reddit

TL:DR: Make sure you have at least one aspect of the job you love.

Been working in IT for over 10 years now as a consultant and systems engineer, and I still love it. It really depends on what part of the field you enjoy and taking the time to enjoy that aspect and knowing how to find the little things that you still love through the annoying as fuck times. For example, I love being able to work remotely and even do a little hardware repair here and there, so the days I get to work from home or spend a few hours working on some hardware are great days. But then when I have to be extra patient with stupid people or dig some idiot out of a digital hole, I get to enjoy the fact that I was able to actually help someone, a human with an issue that was a big deal to them. And if they’re nice enough, getting that actual “Thank you so much”/“you just saved my ass” is the extra cherry on top. Most people don’t understand what we do or how complex it really can be even as a Tier 1 Support Desktop Admin, but always remember you’re in a field that is ever growing and you’ll most likely always be able to find a job. Because as long as people aren’t being educated on how to use their computers, they’ll always need people like us to show them how do even the most basic things. Also shout out to HP and other printer makers for creating the most unreliable devices known to man. I know I’ll always be employed as long as that is the case.

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Illustrious_Eye_4506@reddit

In a word. No!

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descender2k@reddit

What job is it that you think doesn't have stress, unrealistic clients or incompetant co-workers?

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taito_man@reddit

After reading a lot of the comments on this subject, I have to share my bit as well.
No, I don't find the field of IT depressing.

The TLDR is: its all about where you work.

Another thing: You either have true interest in IT, or you don't.
Another thing: Are you capable in focusing on delivering quality, and not on holding onto animosity towards other people annoying you at the job? You'll find that people as a whole are annoying - we're all annoying.

Like many here pointed out - it truly depends on your situation.
Is process flow at the company in some form of order, or is it chaos?
Is your direct manager a good protector, or is he an active source of stress?
What work are you doing? If you're answering the phones all the time, can you personally handle it? Or are you just annoyed to be having to talk to people period? Do you find IT and tech fun out of work, or is this just a job to you?

Having no degree, and starting off answering phones - working my way up from Service Desk all the way to Engineering in 5 years has been a literal life changer for me. I've worked shit jobs, this isn't a shit job. But I work at a stable company.

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therevjames@reddit

I have been in and around IT for over 25 years, and can tell you that I know more burnt out, disenfranchised, and outright depressed IT people than happy ones. Clients and managers don't respect us. Trades people don't respect us. Professionals don't respect us. We are, typically, underpaid and treated like being in IT means that we live to do IT every waking moment of our lives. Our personal time means nothing to them. The laws of physics mean nothing to them. When everything is working, they question why they "waste" so much money on IT staff. When anything fails, they do the same thing. The better you are at your craft, the more people will expect you to solve every issue off the top of your head, immediately. Most organizations will keep good techs anchored in the bottom positions and hire non-IT people to manage you, which makes it even tougher to get ahead, and defend yourself against unrealistic timelines.

If I was young enough to pick another trade/profession, I would.

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kerosene31@reddit

I don't think IT itself is depressing. I couldn't imagine doing anything else. (you can keep your goats, they smell and they bite).

In my opinion, the depressing part is the corporate environment that IT operates in.

As an old greybeard, it wasn't always like this. Back in the day, IT was the department that could make great things happen and really help the business succeed. Now? It feels like we are just a cost to be minimized instead of a business partner.

Today, every company wants 24/7/365 uptime without having to actually pay for it. There's almost this attitude of, "we have to pay you a lot of money, so you're going to work your behind off for it!"

On one hand, this is a good way to make money. I wouldn't last a day in sales, HR, accounting, etc.

On the other hand, don't expect a pat on the back or a "good job!". Companies will be looking to cut you the moment they get a chance.

I think the big problem in moderm corporate culture is short term greed. Companies exist to make money. Calling them "greedy" is silly. That's their reason for existence. The problem is that they don't care about next year or even next quarter. They want the numbers to look good right now. That's where IT ends up at odds with them. They see big expenses for IT to prevent something bad from happening "someday" and they think, we can cut that today and worry about it tomorrow. When they slice IT, it doesn't fall apart right away, but a slow decline. By the time it bottoms out, the people responsible are gone and off to the next company.

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RegisHighwind@reddit

Been doing this shit for 12 years and still loving every second of it. Just have to find the right workplace.

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SandingNovation@reddit

I've been in it for 12 years. I just turned 35. I lost my job about 9 months ago and haven't been able to find another (I've been doing other stuff since then so I haven't been looking very hard the entire time) and I still absolutely dread the day where somebody actually calls me back to do an interview.

I have zero desire to continue the "make your entire life about IT" grind that is expected these days. I spent my childhood learning IT stuff because I thought it was cool. I went to school for IT because I thought I'd have a leg up doing something that I had already been doing as a hobby for a long time. I worked 12 years professionally in IT, and now people are telling me that I'm not a good candidate because I don't run a home lab on my off time and billy from HR who has 79 certifications in everything from ccna to ITIL for some reason is willing to do the job for $18 an hour because he's trying to break into the field.

I quit my last job on the spot after a few months of progressively worse treatment by upper management that culminated in the sudden firing of my coworker who was the second of two people with my job title. They expected that I was just going to take on both of our workloads and eat shit. Financially, maybe not the best decision ever but I'm fortunately in a position that I can manage it for a bit and I haven't regretted it for a second - my mental health was deteriorating and it wasn't worth it.

In short, in my experience, yes, it really is that depressing. I daydream about doing almost anything else every single day.

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criticalseeweed@reddit

Same here bro except I'm still employed. I dread the day I get let go and as an older manager, it will suck having to interview and potentially go back to being an IC. I've been hands off for over 5yrs now and I have no desire to learn new tools or languages. My heart isn't in it anymore.

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SnooMacarons467@reddit

Literally any role you move too that has a computer with it, like into any general office type role, you will be like a god because you know computers.
Anything else such as manual labour or trades you will be awesome because after being in IT you still have the ability to learn new things.

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Zealousideal_Ad642@reddit

26 years in for me. I've had jobs where I've nearly had nervous breakdowns while going to work in the morning, or returning from a lunch break. I've had some where I traveled every few weeks, met really good ppl and enjoyed myself.

For someone who didn't finish high school or do any higher education, it's been a fairly well paying job. There's been some pretty low points but I assume that's the same with any field. I don't really get that invested in anything I do anymore as it'll probably be replaced within 6 - 12 months

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criticalseeweed@reddit

This. I've had on call days and weeks where I dread going into the office. If was brutal. Had a boss once say we're not saving lives when our entire infrastructure was down. He would say this after we fixed the issue because by this point everyone triaging the call was fed up and wished they weren't working in IT. It was his way of giving us a pep talk.

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one-man-circlejerk@reddit

It's one of the best fields to work in. You're sitting in comfortable environments, work from home is common, a lot of the work is interesting/challenging, and you're getting paid pretty well.

Some people in this sub are overexposed to the political/people side of things, or they're doormats who can't set boundaries so coworkers push them around, or their boss is an asshole, and they post their grievances here. Nobody comes here to post about having a pleasant day in the office, even if that is by far the most common experience.

Compared to many other jobs, IT is a dream.

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criticalseeweed@reddit

25+ years here .... I wouldn't want my kids to go into computers unless it was for Cyber security. I'm a DevOps manager and the work becomes repetitive. Eventually as you get older you get replace with younger crew making less than you.

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cmack@reddit

Love much of IT, hate most of the people.

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NoneSpawn@reddit

I like it. It's not easy, tho.

You have to work off hours, to extinguish fires, etc. Most of the time is work "no one sees". You're not a sales man that will be praised. Ppl usually don't even know whata hell you do and how important that is. You are constantly behind in any segment you work with. A lot os segments in the industry won't care much. IT "doesn't make money", it's a necessary expense. IT is everything. From installing a monitor to managing critical servers that hold your entire operation... You won't find another segment that is so broad and yet summarized in just two words.

It's pretty cool, but it's a lot of work.

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Moontoya@reddit

50 to here, 30 years as a pro.

I still like the hardware and doing stuff.

My loathing for users continues to find new depths

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catonic@reddit

Yes. Find a way to cope with it and enjoy what you do.

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barthelemymz@reddit

Yes.

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mrbiggbrain@reddit

I don't know if I would be a veteran, I have been doing IT Work for 10 years now. I love my job, I get paid lots of money to solve complex problems using technology.

Imagine you work an "8 hour" shift every day. 10 hour of work is dropped on your desk each day at 8AM. You can only leave when that work is done. Every day through the day people will come and give you mundane tasks that must be completed immediately in addition to the 10 hours of work.

Being successful in IT is all about changing those terms, knowing the ones you can, the ones you can't, and having the knowledge to do so. Many of the people who languish do so because they accept the terms and never really change them.

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ExceptionEX@reddit

I think it comes down to your personality and how you deal with a situation. The biggest factor in not feeling depressed is maintaining mobility (ie you can leave the job if you need to, and maintain current skills to get another job)

Alot of my career has come down to perspective and realizing that most of the bad times aren't really that bad in the grand scheme or things. I have a lot of friends that work much harder in worse conditions for lots less money. So it helps me reset my perspective.

Your mileage may vary

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HucknRoll@reddit

I don't think it's IT specifically that's depressing; it's more about adjusting to the reality of working life in general. Every job has its ups and downs, and no career path is perfect or fulfilling 100% of the time. The key is figuring out what you're willing to do day in and day out and what trade-offs you're okay with.

For me, IT is one of the least 'sucky' jobs I've had. I get to work in an air-conditioned office, drink good coffee, and have coworkers I genuinely like. Sure, the workload can be stressful at times, but it's manageable. Compare that to my old job in quality control at a machine shop, where every mistake became my problem and no one cared—it was way worse.

The reality is, work will always have some level of 'suck.' The trick is embracing it and focusing on the things that make you happy outside of work, like hobbies, family, and friends. IT has given me a decent work-life balance, and honestly, I feel like I'd be a fool to leave it for something else. If you enjoy it now, keep going—you might find it's better long-term than you think.

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stonecats@reddit

your own personal attitude and what industry you support will matter.
where IT is just a necessary overhead cost, you won't get much love,
but where IT is clearly increasing productivity, you may be valued as
a production asset instead.

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thedatagolem@reddit

I've been an IT pro for about 20 years. I love my work.

But I'm in my mid 50s, and I've had a LOT of jobs. Many of them were not in IT. But even the jobs I hated the most didn't make me depressed. There are depressed people working at every job you can imagine, from construction workers to Doctors, Lawyers, and wait staff.

My opinion is that there are no depressing jobs, there are only depressed people who blame their job for their inability to cope with life on life's terms. But that's just me.

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pizat1@reddit

To me IT is cool. It's corporate life that makes it suck.

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YesImThatGay@reddit

I may regret saying this publicly. First I'm in my late 50s and have worked in IT since I was in my 20s. A lot has improved technology wise and given me an awesome career filled with great partnerships, friends, and knowledge. And I earned a boat load of income to be able to retire at 50 if I wanted to. I started as a Project Manager (great career path btw) and mid point was in mid management (director) at BlackBerry, and climbed to VP and then CIO in the later portion of my career. I have two pieces of advice. 1 decide to be happy with your choices in life; this may be the most important thing ever because attitude will make or break your happiness and success, and 2 do what you love and when you don't love it move on to something that has potential to be what you love next. I don't believe anyone stays in one company or one job role anymore or is happy doing that. The variety of experience improves your world view, your ability to see other ways of solving problems, and generally makes your social skills better which is always important in any job. IT people often are introverts and considered not very socially graceful with non-IT people and based on some comments here you can see why. Regular people don't owe IT people anything including the courtesy of appreciating their craft/experience/knowledge, they are just seeking help when they are in a stressful state-- have you ever been in an airport and seen how crazy people are about getting to their gate on time and the edgy way they talk to the gate agent? Regular work people under circumstances of frustration are like that-- they don't mean to be asshats but they are in that situation. Being able to de-escalate people and not take any of it personally is a skill that everyone needs to develop. Asshats are in every profession. Sooner you accept why they are the way they are and find a path to be helpful the faster you will unlock your own happiness and income flow. I have zero regrets about my career path, and it has not been all bliss filled - I've had a lot of chaos in places I've worked and inherited, went through nightmare IT employees who make every situation about them instead of recognizing we are all trying to provide a professional service for a bigger cause than self aggrandizement, been laid off, been fired, been privy to some things only C levels would understand from the inside that made my skin crawl, and I'd do all of it all over again. So jump in and be happy.

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mynameisdave@reddit

me like fix broken computer but the easy days are ending and the field is in pain.

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srbmfodder@reddit

You gotta get away from end users #1. #2, boundaries with management. Of course they want to call you 24/7. I had to just not answer the phone. I was “double on call.” 24/7 for network because I was the only network engineer and a rotating on call for any general issues. I had my phone in DND and usually people were too lazy to try calling 3x to wake me up so I rarely got a call. Usually it was another on call person calling for me to “look at the network”. 100% of the time it wasn’t the network.

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shouldvesleptin@reddit

Lifelong career, nearing retirement here. I like what it provides at the moment. While most other professions require on site attendance, I can WFH nearly 100%. About 1% on site is just meetings where my boss wants to make sure I'm actually still alive.

At this point, I'm just bored with it, really. I still like to fiddle with systems, but only when it's entirely on my schedule, at my pace, with only whatever personal risk I might assume and no one else (except my wife) to answer to.

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Roninn47@reddit

Everything depends on who you’re working with in terms of management, if your manager is someone who can recognize your strengths and bring out your expertise and connect it to the right agenda and won’t be having you all over the place just because you’re familiar with everything you can manage to escape the depression,

Otherwise if you’re all over the place every time and everyone is messaging you all the time and you’re the only guy with the solution due to your involvement in many procedures due to your seniority over your other team members it can get quite lonely and depressing since every message could be like a sharp pain to the brain and you can get triggered from every little thing.

In my case I found that out when a junior team member approved the lateral move of a senior architect without taking into account the fact that his GitHub account will lose its current privileges and break a lot of automations due to legacy code,

And this happened as soon as I was about to leave for home

Moral of the story is be open with your manager and set expectations from the start so you won’t be surprised.

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jfreak53@reddit

Ive been in it 26 years, its not what reddit shows. Reddit is full of woke IT field individuals and they hate life, hate their jobs, and hate helping people. They should of never gone into IT. I hired one once without realizing it with this attitude and he was just miserable.

You gotta like customer service, period. Do people blame you for things that aren't your fault, yeah, they do. Out of ignorance and in corporate they are treated bad by managers and the only one lower than them is IT so they treat bad sometimes.

Do people ask stupid questions and could answer their own by just reading? Yeah, they do, 90% of the time.

But, its always been this way. The 90s IT guys and early 2000s IT guys still had it together, same problems, same stupid questions, but they didn't need a nap room and a screaming room to deal with it. Its life, you sign up for it when you join IT. You don't want mundane IT, join the Navy tech ops field!

Its customer service, plain and simple. IT guys think they have this special field where people ask stupid questions and don't read, I've been in 3 different customer service fields in my life, they are all the same, stupid questions, people are dumb and ask them. Its not special to IT. What is special is people who shouldn't be in customer service try to be, and then they pull their hair out.

In short, if you don't like helping idiots solve stupid problems that they don't truly need you for 90% of the time, stay out of IT. If you like networking, go Dc tech and stay away from helpdesk.

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V17R@reddit

Reddit is also an echo chamber for disgruntled people, if you go to any job subreddit it’ll likely be people complaining about all the worst aspects of their job.

IT is a great industry in my opinion but there are absolutely toxic jobs and workplaces out there and that doesn’t apply to just IT.

Some general advice would be don’t get stuck on the help desk too long, it’s a recipe for burn out. Figure out what niche of IT you actually enjoy or have an interest in and pursue that and I think most importantly find a good company who values you and has solid employees that you actually enjoy working with and it’ll be great.

The best paying job is not always the best job. I’ve been in IT for nearly 30 years and love my job but it took me a while to realise you gotta strike a balance between work / life and a big key to that is being able to ‘switch off’ after work and to not stress over things that aren’t in your control.

I think that probably applies to all industries but it’s especially true in IT as it’s very easy to bring your work home with you and never disengage which leads to burn out.

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el_cucuy_of_the_west@reddit

Absolutely fantastic advice and all true.

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nem8@reddit

I think you will struggle to find anyone, regardless of profession, who is not, at some point, sick and tired of their job..
Mostly i love my job, when i look at alternatives i usually love it even more.
Then there are other days where i wish i was a truck driver and didnt have to use my brain too much. (No offense to truck drivers!)

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Boogertwilliams@reddit

I love it. Been at same company since 2001

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dsmith30@reddit

I love IT I have been in it for 30 years from bottom cable runner to IT Director the friendships have been lifelong. Sometimes the fires get to you but take it in stride everything does pass.

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fatbergsghost@reddit

Maybe I'm an optimist, but I'm not picking up those vibes.

I think there are some jobs/sectors that seem to be miserable, and when you look at places like reddit, people are just being bleak about their situation. The jokes don't really come out as happy, or cheerful, they come across as slightly bitter and resentful. The complaints are actually complaints. There is a lack of depth in a lot of these jobs, there just isn't that much to understand, and understanding it doesn't bring joy.

I think this field has the sense of being something that actually suits people. Yes, it's hard sometimes, but so is every job.

When bad things happen, there is a sense of humour. There's a genuine sense of job satisfaction, and pride in the job that doesn't really exist in other places. There is a mix of complaining, but what I think is notable is that this is one of the fields where a lot of people hate the job and love the field. Also, a lot of the complaints are about the technical intricacies of the job. Yes, everyone hates Microsoft, but everyone seems to have a different axe to grind. It shows a level of pride, competence, and knowledge of the job rather than being the kind of generic "I hate Mondays" kind of comment that you'd get in different jobs.

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climbtigerfrog@reddit

I've been in the field for 21 years and it's great. I continually get new challenges, improve my skills in the direction I want to go, and get paid well.

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OtherTechnician@reddit

What do you consider to be "IT" jobs? I think the definition has changed over the years and now includes jobs that may not truly belong in the field.

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doorsfloyd@reddit

Yes, simple as that. I tell my own kids not to pursue a job in it if they want to be happy in life.

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Danuzo_8@reddit

Damn bro, tell us about it.

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Stewie56@reddit

I was in IT for 30+ years, retired in '23. I loved my job! Like any job it has upsides and downsides, It always kept me thinking. Yea, I do miss it sometimes but enjoying retirement...

Don't let the Id10t 's get you down!!!

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xxxxrob@reddit

Some really cynical or burnt out sounding responses here.

I worked my way up from T1 to T3 at my company. Every day I am excited to see what new things I can learn or process improvements I can make. I love the curveball type issues, I find them invigorating

I’ve been employed here for 12 years and in the industry for 18 so I’m hardly new to IT.

I think if you are engaged in the work you’re doing then it can be very fulfilling. But if you have poor initiative or don’t have an interest in what you’re doing then I appreciate it can feel harder to feel good about work - but I think that applies to any field not just IT.

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waltwalt@reddit

Get yourself a work from home job if possible.

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Retro_Pixels@reddit

i’ve been in IT for maybe 15 years now, and i’ve had some jobs that have made me want to gouge my face off, absolutely. in my first 5 years in the industry, i had 3 different jobs and was genuinely regretting life choices.

love my current role, though. been here 10 years now and have loved nearly every minute. it’s about finding a role & company that fits you best.

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IGotNuthun@reddit

Beats the hell out of digging ditches.

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GhoastTypist@reddit

IT is far from depressing.

The horror stories are from companies that are barely functioning or from people who are unable to improve their own situations.

I sometimes get frustrated working with a big team of people and everyone has their own demands, I sometimes get frustrated with a boss that doesn't understand what I need so communication is hard, boss also tries to tell me what I need instead of letting me tell them exactly what we need. We always get there eventually but in a non straight forward kind of way.

I took a few personal days this year because I was on the fence of quitting my job, and the job itself I love. However the high turnover we have in leadership levels in what sucks, every time I start building a relationship with one of our higher ups, they move on and I'm going around in circles with the new leadership.

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Unhappy_Clue701@reddit

Some places are great, some are horrendous. I was at one place that was so bad that Sunday evenings I'd feel physically sick at the prospect of Monday morning. This was doing IT at a recruitment agency - think of all the arseholes you see on The Apprentice, and then put 200 of them in a room, all working on commission so if something isn't quite right they get aggressive and sweary at you because they see it as your fault they might lose out on money. Even though the actual problem is they are unable to use Word properly. Not all of them were like that, some were quite nice - but there were certainly enough who weren't to make it a throughly horrible place to be. I've worked in dozens of companies over the years (used to do consulting) so I've seen all sorts.

Thankfully, after several months of hell, I struck lucky and found something else - the place I'm at now is great, been here seven years and I hope to spend the remaining 10-15 years here that I have left before retirement. (Much) better pay, very supportive management, training isn't a problem, people in general are pleasant.

In summary, find the right company and IT can be a great career. As soon as it starts to turn sour, keep that CV updated and move. Life is too short for the stories you see on here. And don't let it get on top of you, which I know is easier said than done when you have bills to pay and can't see a way out. Something else to bear in mind is that IT is quite similar across a vast range of companies. What I do in my current company (insurance sector) is essentially the same thing as I did when working for a major brewery, a chain of theatres, a car park management company, a massive bank and a local authority social welfare centre. Delivering desktops and apps is much the same everywhere. Oh - and expect change. That's the only thing that stays the same. :)

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traeville@reddit

It’s all about the people you work with, and your boss. Those two things can overcome even a sucky organization. Stay positive.

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GloomySwitch6297@reddit

"Is IT really that depressing?"

Yes

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iccccceman@reddit

Huge difference in real IT jobs versus being a glorified phone jockey. Most people on Reddit who work in “IT” are just customer service roles.

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maracusdesu@reddit

If you have a good manager then it’s what you make of it. There will always be people who don’t follow the rules and you will run into cases that feels like brickwalls but it’s also really fun. Tech is just getting bigger and you learn so much

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SnooMacarons467@reddit

Just a quick one to explain that all of my posts so far sound kind of depressing and negative, that is my autism coming out.

I work in IT because I actually like tech and computers etc. I am good at what I do because I have found a way to have a hobby and do what I want to do such as set up my own linux/windows environments, and I get to work and manage a professionally setup infrastructure. When I take time off, I just hang out at home on my PC as that is just what I think about. I really dislike the politics and the endless hand-holding of the most simplest of tasks "Yes Julie, your password needs to be 9 characters... Yes it needs a capitol just like it has every 3 months for the last 9 years... No, the keyword in this error is "history", this means that you cant use 1 of your last 5 previously used passwords...
OK, cool we have one, now you just need to type it in again to make sure you know it.... what do you mean you don't know how to type it again?"
Get me managing an IT system and I am in my happy place, bombard me with a workplace full of these people, "Julie" is filling in for about literally 200 people that I work with. I have that above conversation with literally every single one of them every 3 months.... their 3 months don't all align, so for them it is every 3 months for you... it... is... every... day...

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No_Dot_8478@reddit

Once you put your time in to get off help desk and then only work outages, O&M, and changes it gets a lot better. It’s the help desk phase that kills your soul. Everyday you wonder how people can be soo helpless and stupid with a computer lol or that they don’t understand you are not the teacher of the powers or excel.

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Texkonc@reddit

Better than mortgage industry what I was doing after college. I have too many morals to force people to use 100% of the equity. Yes the company I was at was part of the 2008 collapse…..

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github-user@reddit

Yea, even you know the how to's the job is depressing its just constantly thinking the problem over and over again.

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Gooners4life_14@reddit

Yep. I enjoyed IT at the start now, I find it boring. All those silly tickets and laptop builds. Been in IT for 8 years.

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pierrick_f@reddit

Mandatory reminder that we easily forget that unsatisfied people will complain on reddit, while happy campers won't.

There are plenty of very happy IT folks who you don't hear about. :)

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Telestis@reddit

It is now 11:10, I have been in the office for 3 hours. That means 3 hours of browsing Reddit. Since I do it in front of a computer, I am "working". Since I installed a new WIFI-AP last month people think I am a genius. I make significantly more money than the average employee. Would choose this career again.

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Ashamed-Age-5479@reddit

Money money money

More money

And then some more :)

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m2ljkdmsmnjsks@reddit

You reminded me of something. I worked for a consultancy/MSP (not one of the biggest one but close) at one point when I was younger, and I was asked by a director level if I could work on this project.

Was I qualified? No.

Was I comfortable working on this task? No.

Did I agree? No.

Didn't they just ask me again the same day? Yup.

Did I agree? Eventually, yes.

I was effectively trained not to say no, even when asked to work on something I had no business working on (financial forensics and data recovery). These were senior auditors, and they had no capability or even knowledge of the risks involved.

Now I know my limits, but I am still haunted by the bullshit I felt like I had to do. I go to therapy and lose sleep because of it.

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crimesonclaw@reddit

It's mostly just the users..

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LilGreenGobbo@reddit

I love it in general, and have had some excellent times, and learnt a lot. but I'm probably at my most jaded recently but that's just present circumstances. yes people are dumb and annoying and we do get abused by management but we're there to make 90% things work correctly so everything else is down to user error or microsoft.

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pastie_b@reddit

Whatever you do do not take a role as solo IT, when the proverbial hits the fan it's all down to you except it will be implied that you run the helpdesk, future planning, admin and all the other crap at the same time.

Otherwise..
It's fine if you're part of a good sized team with overlapping roles and knowledge.
Pay can be poor considering the effort expected to keep up with certs and knowledge outside of work time, it's almost like a second part time job.

I suggest running the helpdesk gauntlet for a few years to get your real world skill up then specialising in a particular field.

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pastie_b@reddit

I forgot to mention, aim for a role at a tech company, most other industries tend to put IT at the bottom of the pile.

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Bright_Arm8782@reddit

Can I manage the marketing team? I've never run a marketing campaign and know very little about marketing? No, go away.

Can I manage the accounts team? I'm not a qualified accountant but I can do basic maths? No, go away.

Can I manage the HR team? I don't know anything about employment law or hr practices? No, go away.

Can I manage the IT team? I don't know much about IT but I have a nice suit and a good handshake? Welcome to the company!

That said, I'm in a tiny company surrounded by brilliant people now, working as a cloud engineer and still learning new things and developing skills.

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SnooAvocados2430@reddit

You need to follow what you like doing, even if it gets hard. I don’t mean to lecture though.

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KingKoopaBrowser@reddit

The other day a user put in a call. My monitor is broken and I can’t put in a ticket because the screen that the help desk comes up on is the one that is off. I get down there, look down, the monitor is unplugged. Ticket closed.

Yesterday I get a call - the printer isn’t connecting and I rebooted it twice and unplugged it and plugged it back in. ( a rare USB printer used )

I go down there, look at the front of the printer, it is off, I press the power button. Ticket closed.

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figbiscotti@reddit

Upper level management are starting to believe that they replace IT staff with an AWS subscription and then ask Chat GPT to create the build scripts to instantiate a new payroll system on an Aurora database.

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darkelf921@reddit

I love it. You have to have hobbies which are not IT related. Physical activity for the brain. Gaming to legally kill things. And humans not work related who will drink coffee with you and be your shoulder for the days where you can’t bite your tongue any longer. Having good support from bosses is also essential.

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TrippTrappTrinn@reddit

I worked for a global enterprise for many years. Had mostly good managers, so no issues at all. There are ups and downs, but overall it was quite good.

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UAHeroyamSlava@reddit

spent a week setting a replacement server for a moving-in client at new location. asked multiple times to fix server room door; wasn't locking correctly. dozens different contractors in that location 24/7.. today I was supposed to setup workers stations move-in and fix little issues. Got a call this morning: server's gone. fuck!

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illarionds@reddit

Not for me. I had to move sideways from coding into sysadmin nearly 20 years ago now for health reasons, and although I still miss coding, I love my job.

I basically get paid to do what I would otherwise do in my homelab for free.

There are frustrations, sure (but find me a job without those!), and I get paid pretty poorly by the standards of most here.

But you can't beat a job you are genuinely passionate about.

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AGenericUsername1004@reddit

In the UK IT professionals have to know such a wide range of knowledge for pay that is basically only about 10-15k more than the UK average. I know random office admin workers who are on £30k and IT professionals who are only on £37k while having to support companies with 7000 users, while being on unpaid oncall shifts, having to work out of hours to implement change management changes.

IT also are always the first on the list of redundancies as our jobs get hoofed off to India.

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Claidheamhmor@reddit

To be honest, I love the field. It's ever-changing, and I have done so many different things even in the same area. By and large, IT is not a hard job, as such, compared to many other fields, like sales or artisanal work.

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Chivako@reddit

Like any job it depends on the company and work environment. If you work for a company that drains you. It will make you hate IT and make you loose interest in your job.

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NaeWorriezPal@reddit

Me, 20 years and I'm still enjoying it on a daily basis. It's 99% about the quality of your employer and IT leadership team. I've had good ones and not-so-good ones over the years and the enjoyment of the job tracks these pretty consistently.

There's kind of a tendency in this /r to see the role as a battle between IT and the business / users which is not really conducive to a happy working environment imho.

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DadLoCo@reddit

I don’t consider myself a veteran since I’ve only done about 15 consecutive years. I’m specialised and I love my job. Been doing the same thing for 12 or 13 years now.

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nicholascox2@reddit

People who work outside will be happier always because of how their job works best with natural genetics With a desk job, you aren't getting as much sunlight and exercise which will contribute to depression

As others said, the fact you don't ever really get off of work is frustrating

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thisguy883@reddit

10 years in.

I still love my job.

Once you learn how your compainies enterprise works, and know where almost everything is located plus little tricks here and there, the job becomes a cakewalk, and you're the guy everyone wants involved for a project.

Earn a new cert every other year and renegotiate your salary if you’re in a position to do so.

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ACIDcuz@reddit

Everything being said here can relate to almost any job. Each job has its complexity. Mechanics would get the same bs we do, I enjoy it as a career and more so then the previous 10 years in retail before starting it

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Proper-Obligation-97@reddit

I'm working since 2007, I still like it, but I can tell you it can get exhausting. What helps is to learn to maintain focus and don't get seduced by the marketing/sales. Find a place where you can keep your sanity and draw ground rules with management, keep bullshit at bay and avoid backstabbing co-workers.

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TotallyInOverMyHead@reddit

Yes it is; but it doesn't have to.

In my Experience (25 years general IT -> Degree -> 5 years as a COO for a medium sized MSP) it all comes down to Management decisions (like in every job). The Key-Factors are:

- Are you (the IT person) a human or a number/checkbox

- Does the Company run a sane "workload to employee" ration (sane == enough to cover rotations of on-call/on-standby and having replacements for Vacation/sickness)

- Does the Company have working and documented Internal Processes, or is it a personal fiefdom where things change minute-to-minute.

IT can be fun. non-depressing. Most often it is not.

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juanchopancho@reddit

I will tell you what is depressing. Layoffs. Last week some of best and very smartest people I know got laid off. The most knowledgeable people in their area if expertise. This the fifth round of layoffs in past 24 months. I feel like I have PTSD. Anxiety, insomnia, people leaving on their own, job market sucks. I miss my teammates.

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webprofusor@reddit

Depends, same goes for most careers but if you work for yourself it's only what you make it from that point on. If you work for someone else, then they determine what you do and freedoms they will/won't afford you.

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liftoff_oversteer@reddit

It's only terrible at the wrong position or the wrong company. If you find the right place it is interesting and challenging, you see new things all the time and can learn them all your life. Not so bad after all.

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dk_DB@reddit

No - but users are. And especially customers if you're at an MSP.

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kuzared@reddit

I like my job and I like IT. Sure it has its ups and downs, but honestly, I can’t see myself doing anything else.

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Significant_Carrot61@reddit

Yes the job is depressing. Project Managers! Say no more. Everyone wants bullet point explanations never understanding or considering the complexities of what "really" needs to be dealt with ..

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Aggravating_Refuse89@reddit

The golden handcuffs are real. I am not at a point in my life that I can go back to making 20 bucks an hour. If I could career switch and start at 100k a year doing something, i probably would.

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Chocol8Cheese@reddit

Just change employers every three years if you're not getting the promotions you're looking for. Plus, there's a lot of Eors in IT, ignore them, they're energy vampires.

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Skyyk9@reddit

I actually do love what I do.

I have been a component repair. Sitting there with a oscilloscope and schematics finding out which IC, Or Descret component failed.

I used to do field service / Field Engineering work. Traveling to customer sites and repair their hardware issues.

For the last 25+ years I have done software QA / finding bugs. I do like it. It's very satisfying to understand some esoteric solutions for a failure.

The work is certainly not depressing. The game is. Companies are always looking for ways to reduce costs. They don't supply me with the required tools and seem to only see what I could have done with no respect for what I did do.

EG: My boss regularly canceled our 1/1 meetings. For three months straight. Then when she actually keeps the meeting, her opinion of what I do is disheartening. She seems to think my last 3 days of work should have taken an hour.

I am so very tired of the games people play.

I really do hope you enjoy what it is you plaa to do for a career. It should be something you derive satisfied from.

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vdavide@reddit

People's functional illiteracy is depressing, not IT

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Patrickrobin@reddit

It's not about IT; All jobs are depressing until you enjoy your work.

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Geminii27@reddit

As with any job or industry, there are aspects which at least some people don't like. If you're aware of which potential aspects you're OK with or aren't, and act to minimize the latter, it's not generally as much of a problem as if you get blindsided by them.

It helps that IT is a very diverse field. There are jobs which are very different experiences. And of course every workplace and employer is very different. I've even held jobs which were at the same desk, with the same employer, doing the exact same thing on paper, but the workplace itself changed so drastically that my previous enjoyment of the job became distaste for the altered setup (mostly the makeup of the rest of the team changing from quiet, experienced professionals to loud people who had no idea what they were doing).

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SatisfactionMuted103@reddit

I've worked for the same company for nearly 20 years now, working my way up the chain from call center to head of IT. I love it. Crazy stupid OT while I'm salaried, insane problems to sort out, problems that I never knew would be mine dumped in my desk. I have an awesome team of two, a great boss, and good to awesome coworkers. There have been times when I hated my job and wanted to quit, but most of the time, I really enjoy my job.

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unsafetypin@reddit

Yes

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serverhorror@reddit

I made my passion my job. 20 years in. Still don't think I have had to work a single day in my life.

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SnaketheJakem@reddit

Lots of the problems are culture/company related.

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HappierShibe@reddit

20+ year veteran and I LOVE my Job.
I'm saying this even a few days after a I had to pull an all nighter working on a critical data integrity issue that cropped up mid stream in an ETL pipeline. It was challenging brain-bending work, but it was an engaging challenge to untangle even with furious business users complaining and stressing the whole time, and it was deeply satisfying to resolve.
It's also paying pretty well, and I feel like I have considerably more job security than anyone I've talked to except for maybe state/federal employees- and the current political climate is starting to worry some of them.

Keep in mind that much like systems work, people on here aren't posting to tell you everything ids going great, they mostly just post when things go wrong.

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Askyl@reddit

Its only depressing if you have to explain things to users.

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JohnyMage@reddit

10 years in and I still love it. Already switched jobs multiple time, skilled people on my teams, mostly Linux and cloud stuff, I don't get to see the end users.

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recklessadverb@reddit

Working in IT for 16 years and love it. I've worked mainly as a Windows SysAdmin. My work can vary from projects such as image creation/deployment, custom scripting, server migration, setting up and mastering new software I've never heard of because some department purchased it without our input, and/or working with cybersecurity to test/deploy security settings to remediate vulnerabilities and anything in-between.

Outside of that, as a sysadmin, you're also the last point of escalation for tickets, so I work with end users, techs, and vendors and typically troubleshoot the more complicated issues.

Sometimes you just need to try a bunch of different areas and see which one fits you best. There are areas that I wouldn't be too fond of, but others that I really enjoy.

Also, a cool benefit is that you'll typically be involved with everyone in the company, which is not the case for every department.

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bindermichi@reddit

The key is to move into a non-user-facing position as fast as possible. Especially if you are working in user-support or workplace related roles.

The less you have to deal with employees messing up their computers the less frustrating it is.

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monedula@reddit

Do remember that (a) this is a sysadmin group and (b) it appears to be dominated by people from the US. And I get the impression that being a sysadmin in a typical US corporation can indeed be pretty depressing.

But your question is "Is IT really that depressing?". IT is much wider. I'm in Europe, and have done a wide variety of IT jobs. (Am not a sysadmin, but pop in here fairly often to see what life is like on the other side of the fence.) And while I've had days - and even months - which made me feel 'what the hell am I doing here?', I think I've enjoyed around 90% of my time in IT. I've certainly not come across an area of work that made me feel that I should have done that instead.

My main function now is keeping a complex and important group of applications running. We have a small team who get along together well. I don't exactly have a manager - I have about five people who I report to for different aspects of my work - but I get along passably with all of them. And around here people respect weekends and vacations. I do answer work phone calls when I'm not at work, but that's because I only get a handful a year.

So yes, I am a veteran in IT (>40 years) and I like it.

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Big_Emu_Shield@reddit

No, it's shit.

A) You're the smartest person in the room. This is actually a bad thing because nobody is on your intellectual level. So you're consistently not challenged. You very quickly run out of innovative solutions and start going for rapid and reliable fixes. Very rarely are you asked to actually flex your intelligence.

B) You're the dullest person in the room. If you're a sysadmin you're higher than help desk so you're likely interacting with upper management. And while you may be smarter than them, they're more cunning and crafty than you and know how to play the game. You don't (because if you did, you wouldn't be doing IT).

C) You're not well paid compared to people at your power level in the organization. You're off to the side, but there's gonna be fucking secretaries making more money than you. And if you got sales? They're gonna be making in a day what you make in a month. Unless you manage to eke your way to the CTO or COO position, but guess what - even if you're on the board, you're gonna be making less money.

D) Nobody is actually grateful. You're the help so people take you for granted. Businesses worked fine without computers and Internet and yes, you make it easier, but on the other hand, you HAVE to make their things work. And when they ask you to go above and beyond you can say no, but then you're accused of not being a team player.

E) If you're going to have your own team or department, the other departments are going to CONSTANTLY fucking war with you. "Why do you need this, why are you costing so much money, oh we're losing productivity because a drone had a 5 minute outage, etc."

F) Whenever you deal with service providers or vendors, you're forced to talk to the absolute fucking dregs of society, people who really shouldn't be called human. The AIs we have already could do a better job than the absolute fucking genetic dead ends working at Solarwinds, Microsoft, any CRM, any phone provider, any ISP... just all of it. Until you get to someone who is above Tier 2, you're basically talking to animals.

Do yourself a favor, find a different fucking career. It's fucking soul crushing. I run my own business in NYC (formerly worked on Wall St.) and that gives me the freedom to ignore most of the things I listed, but a) I still do occasionally and b) hot fucking DAMN do I need to do a fuckton of running around to find new clients.

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Jake_With_Wet_Socks@reddit

2 years for ME and every day is still fun as hell! Coming from construction

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JayrenCekissXIV@reddit

I work a government IT position that’s work from home. I’m retiring with this if they’ll let me.

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Basic-Brain-7446@reddit

Dude i'm 29 and people thinks i am 35+, i guess this answers your question

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bungee75@reddit

In the field for almost 30 years. You have to distinguish between a job and a profession.

I love what I'm doing I love tech (you know it's coming), but people will get you every time.

Yes equipment and software will be frustrating sometimes, but in the end you can resolve issues one way or another. People on the other end will make our break your work experience. I think that some 101 psychology classes would greatly benefit me before I started.

I switched jobs several times and only the last switch was because of the toxic work environment.

So if you like tech and constant learning then field is great, you'll have to learn how to handle people and recognise when it's time to switch jobs.

Here are my 5 cents.

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ycnz@reddit

North of three decades for me. I still love computers. I've been learning fluxcd at home lately, and just swapped the RJ45 to SFP+ adapter in my firewall to a lower power model this afternoon

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soundwavepb@reddit

IT would be wonderful if it wasn't for the users and managers.

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Chemical-Diver-6258@reddit

not really we are 3/5 day in a week drunk in office ;)

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amorfotos@reddit

My goodness. You, OP, asked if being a sysadmin is depressing. And the bulk of the (sub)comments explain why it is...

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r0ndr4s@reddit

Pretty much what the most upvoted said but I would add awful coworkers and management not caring until last moment doesnt help at all.

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CheekyChonkyChongus@reddit

Sees title

YES.

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ShadowInReddit@reddit

Just think about this, alot of the job is negative. We really only are needed when things are broke and really are only noticed when things are “not working correctly”. Even though we always help, theres a big negative aspect that comes with our job. You have to focus on helping and remember to have customer service skills that matter more than your IT skills a lot of the times. I work with guys who are angry a lot and it’s just because they feel they are respected or treated correctly whether or not it’s pay or recognition.

Listen I’m not here for an award, I’m here to do my job, help people and use my skills to help. I’m not sure why ppl take shit so seriously, deep, and get all bent out of shape. Not every IT department is the same, some environments are toxic, others are chill. It’s usually what you make it. What’s great is you can always move on and go somewhere else, what sucks is that you can always move and and go somewhere else.

As for not escaping, I mean draw boundaries and make sure they are known. Don’t just yes man everything or you are going to stress yourself out. Tell them you will look into it and get back to them with some results/answers. Currently on our team, I do one weekend a month on-call for the weekends.

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UnexpectedAnomaly@reddit

Sadly it's no different from any other job. It has on call however a lot of my non IT end users also have to field calls from their bosses or other coworkers all the time. The main advantage to another career is having more of a defined job role but I think all of the other drama would apply. Unless you can find a night shift IT gig those are gold.

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Deceptivejunk@reddit

It really comes down to what level of IT you work in, but a core concept in a lot of fields is that people only come to you with problems. It can really burn you out after so long

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primalsmoke@reddit

You got to want to continuously learn, some people want to have something that requires a one time training or clearly defined functions. Also corporate culture can affect how you enjoy a job.

I could not have worked IT for a government agency, having talented developers as end users was great, they always had the strangest issues.

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musingofrandomness@reddit

It is a job for people who like puzzles and deep rabbit holes.

The interaction with people distracts from and complicates that. You will often find the happiest IT folk spending their time in a backshop away from customers and out of sight of management and some of the most miserable in highly visible positions with a lot of customer interaction.

The only other real driver of dissatisfaction is a lack of challenge. If you have solved all the puzzles and everything becomes mundane, it is boring. Nobody wants to do a job that can be accomplished with a shell script. It seems great at first, but then the boredom and lack of job security catches up.

Money is nice, but takes a backseat to the above. You could easily have very content IT people paid relatively little if you gave them a challenging backshop job and didn't hassle them too much. Otherwise the money serves to compensate for the overhead.

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LForbesIam@reddit

Started in IT before the dawn of html internet where we used Archie and Gopher and newsgroups to communicate with the very small group of us.

Still loving my job. Plan to work until 70. There is no much new technology to learn daily. You can never get bored.

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YourTypicalDegen@reddit

I agree with a lot of people in here saying it depends where you work. Most of the places I’ve been have been fine or great. IT can be, fun might not necessarily be the word, but eventful. It can keep you on your toes and doesn’t necessarily get boring because there’s always work and change (but for some people, this may be stressful). Out of the five or six places I’ve worked, there’s only one I hated and even was fired from. Didn’t let this get me down though, and now I’m at the best company I’ve ever worked for. Probably the only thing that’s continued with each place I’ve worked that I really don’t like is the on-call. Sure the pay can be good, but I just really can’t find any justification to have to be on an on-call rotation and set aside any plans to be around my computer all day.

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AmiDeplorabilis@reddit

Veteran of 30y, in various capacities...

Do I like IT still? Yes... and no. But that's been my answer for almost 30y; I seriously contemplated leaving IT 8y ago because it was just another hamster wheel. Depressing? Not really, but I often ask how much it's worth, effort-wise. Same thing, different day, with a twist, and to mix it up, different day, same thing, with a new twist. Put in my day, then walk away.

Sure, it's gratifying to solve a problem... demoting and decommissioning a server when it's predecessor(s) haven't been properly demoted or decommissioned, and having to hunt and scrape logs and configs to find those buried references; but it's not nearly as gratifying as accomplishing something useful at home that I'll be using for the next X years.

Sitting all day, cooped up and huddled in front of a screen, versus being physically active... and since it's winter, opportunities to do constructive things outdoors are limited, awkward and messy due to weather (rain, snow, cold, darkness... sometimes all of the above).

If your wife tells you that you don't come happy, there's a clue...

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djaybe@reddit

Over 30 years in IT and I'm still obsessed! AI has really amped up my passion the last couple years. It's definitely not for most people but like anything else it all depends how you look at it.

I do acknowledge this might be a disorder.

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Stiletto@reddit

It can be. There are some weeks where there are problems piling up faster than you can fix them, even worse is when you put a significant amount of time fixing an issue and it still doesn't get fixed.

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enforce1@reddit

The ones that like it aren’t bitching all over reddit. IT is fine, it’s no more frustrating or dumb than any other job.

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Vagelen_Von@reddit

See the apple TV show Severance and consider them lucky.

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fadingroads@reddit

I've been at it for a little over a decade.

Ive worked all kinds of odd jobs, from paper routes to kitchens, even a night club bouncer at one point. IT and your enjoyment comes from your industry and your scope. Some factors you can control and others can be due to bad business practices or poor worker protections.

Everyone's experience in IT is variant because it can be as mundane as a few office machines getting an internet connection or as complex as a vast network of locations, each physically or virtually interconnected with various technologies supporting them.

I've worked in IT for retail, not for profits, ISPs, banks and other specialized industries. Every single job was different from the next and they all inevitably hit a point of stagnant growth (either budgetary or responsibility). Ideally, you want to find a job where your growth is not only defined by you but potentially endless. I want to clarify, I don't mean you and only you knows and does 'everything' but that you start at one facet of a position, learn it, get promoted and delegate your job to a junior or team while you learn the next thing.

If you love learning new things and are passionate about technology, it's very hard to get bored. If you do it right, not only do you become less stressed as you advance (automation is your friend), you learn other non-IT skills that keep you marketable in other facets of business and can make valuable pivots later.

If someone tells you IT is depressing, it's possible their specific job is depressing. I would happily be humbled by someone's 'tier 1' request despite being overqualified vs. work 30mins in a kitchen hands down.

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ordinary-guy28@reddit

IT: If things go well, job and life goes easy. If something breaks, forget weekends or work hours :)

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ass_breakfast@reddit

The key is finding the right company/fit for you. A lot of people ignore the fact that a job interview isn’t just for them to grill you. It’s for you to interview them as a company as well. To see if it’s what YOU want. Don’t take a job that doesn’t seem like a good fit. Obviously easier said than done.

I’ve been in IT for almost 10 years. I love it. Best career I’ve had. It has its ups and downs like any job. But it beats working construction. They work their ass off.

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mikmeh@reddit

I've never been depressed, stressed yes but never depressed. 25 years in

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x-Mowens-x@reddit

I like it. 25 years in, very few complaints.

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ScreamingVoid14@reddit

To add on to others, it sometimes sucks because "success" often does not leave you with anything tangible. It is hard to point to a payroll department that is working 5% faster and say "look what I made." This can be mitigated by picking up a hobby that leaves you with physical "I made that" item.

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mexicans_gotonboots@reddit

Personally I LOVE IT. If I hit the lottery I would continue to work in IT until I retire. That being said, I’ve hated the place I work at. You work with everyone in the company including very toxic people. If you are nice they take even more advantage of you. I’ve mostly worked in entertainment and man this industry eats joy u fast.

Long nights, no love for when things are great and all the hate when things go wrong.

The trade is a constantly evolving and thought provoking trade that I love….you just end up depressed because of your environment.

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LukeBlodgett@reddit

I'm 15 years into an IT career and I really enjoy it. Thing is I'm in a unique situation where my manager values what I do and I have a ton of autonomy and control over all of our networking, servers, and cybersecurity. Having a manager who trusts me and gives me budget to work with, I have been able to setup an environment that doesn't have many problems. This allows me to focus on improvement projects, alerting, and automation. In turn the job gets less and less stressful by the day.

I have worked in super stressful IT jobs where I was not appreciated or was given almost no budget. That sucks, and makes people burn out. Even in those jobs though just focus on what you can do to make things better with the resources you have, and then when your resume looks good make a jump to a better company. I think your ability to look at the bright side and consistently improve your skill set and credentials no matter how shitty the environment is will lead to better and better opportunities.

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lildergs@reddit

IMO, nah.

I don't think it's worse than other common careers in the pay grade.

I see people dogging on the fact that people outside IT have a loose understanding of what the job actually is, but IMO that can be viewed as an advantage. I've found a great deal of freedom in the general public's lack of understanding of the field. The average person isn't opinionated about how you complete tasks as long as their need is fulfilled.

In my experience what bums people out the most is that they forget that IT is a job because they have a fundamental interest in technology. Treat it as a job, don't over-invest emotionally, and be grateful you're able to pay bills via a career you actually have some interest in. Many people are not as privileged.

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MudKing1234@reddit

Boundaries and an understanding of the big picture overview will help you put unrealistic demands in check. But you got to be smarter than everyone else you work with.

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tebor8@reddit

I quit the industry this year as I couldn't stand shitty management and shitty co-workers anymore. The same cast of characters were always at every job at every level, and I couldn't fight off the doom any longer. As bad as end users could be, they ended up being the best part of the job for me.

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TheQuadeHunter@reddit

I think it's what you make it. Company culture affects things in a big way as well, but the nature of the job itself is perfectly fine.

Personally, I think people who are content with their job and where they're at are people you won't find complaining on this sub much. So, you're going to get an out-sized view of the industry by reading stuff on the internet.

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fiskeskjaer@reddit

I love it. But that's because i love working with it and find it interesting. I like solving complex issues and find it satisfying to do so. But you have to be constantly updating yourself. There needs to be an interest and desire to learn more, or else its a real struggle. But don't get me started on printers..

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No_Error8708@reddit

One of my bosses had a baseball bat that sat in a case with a plaque underneath that read "in case of printers..." Gave me a chuckle every time I went into his office.

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bpilleti@reddit

It is if you stay for long, Keep moving and exploring until you find your tribe.

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PixelSpy@reddit

Depends. I was promoted out of HD a little over a year ago. If I was still there I would absolutely be miserable. It's a shit job, people are rude and ungrateful, pay is meh, even when working with internal users.

System admin, don't talk to people anymore, work from home, just fiddle around with networks and servers all day. I'm on call more urgently, can't travel too far off the grid, but it happens so rarely I barely consider it a downside.

It's a good job as long as you don't stagnate. Keep moving and keep getting promoted. Help desk is a stepping stone, unless you're a masochist.

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BBizzmann@reddit

This sub is mostly fully off technical people, it can be draining with the scope of different technology businesses want you to implement and then ultimatly support long term.

I would look for specialized application roles, lots of jobs where you only support or work on one specific piece of software. When I talk to these IT people, it feels like they have the scope and knowledge of a typical end user but they make IT money.

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slippery@reddit

Retired at the end of 2023 after a 38 year IT career. I loved the challenge of the problems. I had four major phases: mainframe programmer, networking, linux admin, Ruby on rails programmer. You have to spend a lot of time upskilling. Pay was well above average. I enjoyed most of it, except the oncall BS. There are a lot of worse careers.

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first_lvr@reddit

What is driving me mad is that the tech industry believes that this position is an operative role

It is not, we have to research, study, debug, run diagnostics, etc to find a solution to a “simple” problem

My stupid work decided to go with the SLA and no one has been able to fulfill those times, customers get tired and users lose hope, eventually losing Leeds and contracts. All because upper management doesn’t have a clue how our systems work, blaming us and changing people constantly in our area, while they continue enjoying bonuses

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0h_P1ease@reddit

i like it. only because i really like troubleshooting and being lazy.

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No_Error8708@reddit

It all depends on the company you work for and who you work with.

For example, my most recent job.

I started working underneath an IT manager that actually invested his own money into a CBT Nuggets account for me (I didn't find out until he got fired and I went out for beers with him). Thanks to him, I got 2 CompTIA certs under my belt. He was awesome to work with and I had grown exponentially under his care.

The guy they hired as the IT Director (while Manager was still there) is a complete clown. This guy makes 6 figures to finger point and has literally told vendors and clients that he isn't a "tech guy" and proceeded to refer all their questions to Manager and I.

One day Manager told Director "no" one too many times to his stupid requests. (Example: turning off MFA for the entire company). Got fired. Without so much as batting an eye, Director told me that managers responsibilities were now mine. No raise, no bonus, just a once in a while message in Teams asking what I wanted from Starbucks as a thank you for making sure the company ran as far as IT is concerned.

I love my job. I love puzzles and figuring things out. Even if it's stumbling onto a solution to a 4 day old issue while fueled by spite, caffeine, and nicotine.

If it wasn't for some of my users and full on friends that I've made while working here and the fact that I have a family to support, I would have quit or eaten a hollow point for breakfast a long time ago.

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bebearaware@reddit

I'm 20+ years in and speaking as a complacent sysadmin that has no desire to go into management. At this point there aren't many surprises and you'll find yourself weirdly bonded with people over things like Nokia firewalls from 2002. It's also not particularly difficult, there are few things that have popped up that I really struggle with. Basically it's a pretty easy job and if you can find somewhere that treats you well, it's not a bad one.

The most annoying thing I deal with day to day is the lack of control I have over software updates from the big vendors.

I'd say it's no more depressing than accounting.

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WannabeAsianNinja@reddit

Its a great job if you like to be in a cubicle and talking to people or out and about and talking to people. It really helps with your people skills and learning how diverse the range of common sense is or isn't in everyday folks. You'll come across the gamut of personalities from regular staff all the way to c-suite to the board/shareholders.

My job is 90% repetitive from imaging computers, unlocking accounts to even helping set up 2FA to training everyone in basic internet safety.

In all honesty, I studied hard to get where I am and was disappointed that I only feel like I use 5-15% of what I know. I'm trying to deal with supervisors and directors who don't seek to understand or care that I'm trying NOT to do extra work and pushing for a voice in projects that will affect my job negatively in the long run. These days I'm in meetings and email threads doing my best to make my directors and departments VPs understand they need to have us in the loop when making their decisions instead if letting us find out with restricted access or customers calling about an application that was pushed without notifying us.

My current job is only depressing because I'm doing my job while being a manager because my current manager doesn't know how to say no. I'm not planning on staying here forever and absolutely welcome a change but at the same time, its not the worst job I've had and im getting paid fairly decently.

So the depression comes from having to do multiple peoples jobs because they don't care, don't know and trying to have a social life outside of work which is hard where I am at the moment. I'm stuck in an ok position but it feels like a slight step up from a dead end job. Its easy(ish) but sucks the soul out of any creativity because people just don't seem to care about making things better for themselves or other people.

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torind2000@reddit

Yes

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msacks_@reddit

Short answer: Yes.

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LWBoogie@reddit

Nobody comes to it saying "Hey my computer is super speedy and the Internet is awesome", they only come to IT with a problem/issue. If you can stomach that dynamic for a couple decades, do IT. Otherwise focus on Security and/or Ai.

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bad_brown@reddit

No concrete answer for this. Lots of variables that could make a job shitty or not shitty. I work from home with rare need to step on-site, I set my own hours, prioritize my own tasks, and can let off the gas if I need to, or I can go nuts and get projects done if needed. That flexibility and new tasks and projects have me having fun still in my 20th year.

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Silvf0x@reddit

Honestly, I love IT but what I fucking hate to high hell is that clients do not want to spend good money on IT. They see it as an expense rather than an investment in their business.

Then, when things inevitably fail because they cheaped out, they come crying and want you to perform miracles.

Like right now, I have a client who I have been telling for months that their server is suffering because of heat in that it is not properly racked nor cooled. Their server is just sitting in one of their offices, jammed in a corner... now, the server is fried because they didn't want to spend a few $$ to rack it and ensure it is in a cooled location.

Instead of a few hundred bucks for a rack, they now are up to replace the whole system at multiple 10's of thousands of dollars.

Tough shit, I told them multiple times, and they ignored me.

Play stupid games...

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c2seedy@reddit

Yes to all

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sleepmaster91@reddit

Depends on the job

I started in a medium-sized business as a helpdesk technician. Got to learn lots of things but I hit a plateau around 2-3 years in. I knew every issue by heart, had no real challenges, always doing the same old stuff day after day it became so boring I had no fun doing my job anymore. Not to mention I was WAY underpaid then COVID hit and I was fed up so i started looking for another job

I found a job at a MSP and the difference is night and day. I get to do MUCH more stuff (i'm a tier 2 tech), I get involved in projects I learned how to manage a fortigate, do switch configs, vlan setup, backup management, manage hyper-v replications, server migrations and SO much more ! I never get bored because we have many customers with different environements. For some people MSPs are too much at once but for me it's just what I needed so you just have to find the right job for you

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_TR-8R@reddit

I'm in a weird limbo phase between green and veteran. I started with no experience or degree six years ago and just finally got into a serious non-junior sys admin position.

I think it comes down to a few things

where you work
Having empathy for users as human beings vs letting your limited interactions condition you to believe everyone is stupid and helpless
Financial compensation

I can honestly say I am finally at a place where I'm paid reasonably well, have the luxury of a very positive relationship with the leadership at my company and fortunately am very good at getting along with even the crankiest users. I'm the happiest I've ever been at any IT position so far.

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Sudain@reddit

It's not the work itself but the bloated bureaucracy surrounding the technology that will murder your soul.

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rdldr1@reddit

It depends on WHERE you work. Also depends on how much bullshit you are willing to accept.

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wtfbigpineapple@reddit

Depends on your IT leadership, the work you do, and whether you are happy with your compensation. I have always enjoyed the work, but here and there I’ve had a difficult boss (they might say the same of me). During those times, the compensation and supportive coworkers kept me at that job.

Try not to get complacent, keep your resume current, never stop learning, and have some fun.

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CartridgeCrusader23@reddit

Just get a state job and you’ll be fine

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InvestigatorCold4662@reddit

I fucking love my job, dude. I’ve always enjoyed doing it. I get paid to watch YouTube and bullshit with my friends all day. Sure, there’s the computer part of it but I’m on the computer regardless.

The people can get weird and pushy sometimes, but the work is fun and challenging. I like it honestly. The pay has always been enough for me to do I what I want to do. There’s endless ways to move up through the certification programs, etc. and you can work from anywhere. It’s a good gig, bro. I’m the only one of my friends that’s been consistently employed these past couple decades. It’s easy to find a tech job. (Note: a job. Never said a good one)

People bitch about every profession. At the end of the day, it’s our job to make sure other people can work. It can feel daunting at times, but it’s also very rewarding. I dig it, bro and I think you will as well.

Welcome! FNG always buys first round so I hope you brought some cash.

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sweetrobna@reddit

If you work for a company where IT is a competitive advantage, where the IT dept is more than a few people it is completely different than the stories you hear about here where no one has any idea of how things work.

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Remindmewhen1234@reddit

I love it.

Been in IT since the early 90's. I like figuring out how to fix things and also how to improve what's running.

Mostly you hear how people suck. Well that's because people don't know how to manage people.

You have to empathetic. Have to be.

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justinDavidow@reddit

Do we have anyone here who is a veteran in the field and actually likes it?

I'm going on 22 years professionally; 28 years overall; and I come to work with a smile and a spring in my step every day.

what I've been seeing posted online, this field is terrible long term.

IT is one of those jobs that is almost entirely what you make of it.

If you're creative; looking to work with people to solve interesting problems; and reinvent yourself every 6-18 months: IT makes an incredibly rewarding career.

If you expect "smart people to tell you what to do"; your job will either be automated away or you'll keep doing it for 15 years because sometimes person-time is cheaper than engineer-time.

IT really depends on what your goals in life are; if you like to help people solve problems: IT is an incredible field. If you want to be "known" in the IT community for some major project or tech: there are hundreds of key areas that always need people. If you want a "stable 9-5 job that includes 0 on-call work"; IT might not be the best field for you. (not to say such jobs don't exist; but they are rare and tend to be on the lower paying side!)

Overall I love the field. 20 years ago; I wasn't really thinking about or planning to stay in IT long term, but I'm sure glad I did.

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SirLoremIpsum@reddit

Is IT really that depressing?

Depending on where you work - you can put that title in any field tbh.

I do not believe IT is any different to any other field be that construction, trades, accounting, legal.

You're hearing from IT people, cause tha'ts what you know. But go to the kitchen subs r/ KitchenConfidental

Go to the mechanic subs r/ Just rolledintoTheShop

They all talk about burn out, people leaving, wages, poor conditions.

Some of them even come to IT! And IT people go to those jobs.

I don't think you can tar a whole profession, an industry as varied as "IT sysadmin" to be depressing. I mean its mostly just the world we live in hahaha.

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saracor@reddit

Been doing this since the 90s. I like my job but I've also moved up into technical management so it's not the same as pure sysadmin. I try to make the job easier for my team because I've been there with a shitty job and I get that a good team makes it a lot better.
I will say, don't become too attached to any one place. Companies will drop you like a hot rock if things go bad. Don't take it personally and learn what you can, when you can.
There will always be good times and plenty of stupid users and petty management. Just ignore and make the best of it.

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KindlyGetMeGiftCards@reddit

It's a thankless job, well not always. There are a heap of other jobs that are thankless when the people go above and beyond, think garbage person, nurse, police officer, when they aren't doing their job you know about it, if they are doing you may not notice.

Think about it another way, your journey to your school/work, how was it today. If you said OK nothing interesting, everything was working as it should, if the roads were full of pot holes you notice that, but most people don't notice when the roads are smooth, so most people complain when it's broken not complement when it's working. That is why we as an industry we tend to focus on the small wins and things outside of work.

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Anlarb@reddit

Not depressing in itself, its just the workforce in general that is depressing.

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1singhnee@reddit

IT is amazing when everything is on fire and you’re the only one that can fix it. Or when you’re building and configuring new systems. Otherwise it’s boring and frustrating. That’s my ADHD take anyway.

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SayNoToStim@reddit

It becomes depressing because when someone can't do the basics of their job, it becomes your responsibly.

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LowDearthOrbit@reddit

I enjoy day-to-day work supporting my assigned applications, departments, and hardware. I don't enjoy navigating through and around the bumbling management and political pissing matches of my organization.

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RetroWizard82@reddit

Went from being a cop at a shit heel department doing IT on the side for fun, to getting my associates and certifications with a focus in network administration, and I've never felt more rewarded by a job. People come to you for help and they think it's magic when you fix the simplest thing. I used my network design skills to create fail over tunnels to ASE sites for the rare service interruption. I could go on but it comes down to where you work I think.

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rcp9ty@reddit

It's not depressing. We are just the best at vocalizing our thoughts and problems online. Dentist - everyone hates coming to you, lies to you about their maintenance, bitches about the price of care that is decided by insurance not them. Mechanic... Cars are neglected so much in America. Nurses.... Let's change another diaper and bed pan or deal with people bitching that they can't have a glass of water and let's walk into a room with a dead body on occasion. Gynocologist - one made this joke to me " what does a gynocologist and a marine biologist have in common" ... They both look at crabs all day and smell fish. Waitress... Let's work in a country where wages are below minimum wage due to tip laws and still deal with people giving 0% tips because they are teenagers that don't understand the problem. Retail guest service... Get paid minimum wage to have people bitching about their problems with stuff they bought and yell at you about policies you don't control. Construction.... I have more than one coworker at the moment that is missing body parts due to equipment malfunctioning. Do I hate crawling on sticky floors, getting sheet rock in my eyes when lifting ceiling tiles, having people call at odd hours with stupid questions that could wait until the next day. Yes to all. But there isn't enough money in the world for me to look in a mouth all day, deal with the bullshit commission structure of mechanics, deal with dead people and diapers like nurses, go back to a retail job, lose fingers to a piece of construction equipment or slice my face open when a grind wheel explodes while trying to smooth out something, look at STDs all day... Well you get the idea. A job is just money in.

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blind_rebel@reddit

If you think it's depressing now, just wait until AI is your boss.

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-SPOF@reddit

Been at it for 10 years, and I still enjoy it in my mid-30s.

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Fire_Mission@reddit

My first IT job was in 1990. I still find it interesting.

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borider22@reddit

we get to play with robots all day

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ranthalas@reddit

I've been in IT for over 30 years, 20 of that time in networking. I love what I do, and I have a great team to work with. Users are users wherever you go, and they will frustrate you and beat you over the head with their lack of knowledge and unwillingness to learn or even remember things. However, while they are the customer, they are not the entire job.

I think the key is to remember that, even if it's your career, it's just a job. It doesn't define you. That and never stop learning. There's always something new to learn, always a new, sometimes better, way to do things.

This field can be fun and exciting if you don't let it wear you down.

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HattoriHanzo9999@reddit

20 year vet. I still like it. It’s rough sometimes since the job requires continuous learning, but if you work for a decent place with decent leadership, that helps greatly. Our CIO knows what’s up, so we can actually budget for and do the things that need to be done.

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drcygnus@reddit

Depends what part of IT you get into. each has its pros and cons. anything helpdesk or systems admin will always be a crapshoot and shit will always break and you gotta fix it without spending a dime.

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digital_analogy@reddit

I had a boss who said, "The difference between a technical and non-technical person is a willingness to read."

Like others have shared, users will ask you to do all manner of things that aren't your job. A/V setups, audio recording setups, etc; if it plugs into the wall and exists anywhere near a computer, someone will expect you to figure it out for them because they cannot be bothered to learn. With the right management and a willingness to push back a little, this can be slightly mitigated. They'll still be some folks who approach you to teach them how to use the super expensive niche software they just purchased and you've never heard of. ;)

It's that laziness that has always worn on me in the job. If you can learn to shrug that off, it's not what I'd call depressing. Frustrating, though.

I found that moving more toward systems and/or network admin positions largely alleviated that. YMMV.

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draw13women@reddit

It really depends where you're working. I work in healthcare IT and it's a shit show most days but I dig it because I'm ultimately helping ppl help ppl. Silicon Valley and Finance would kill my soul. Just my 2 cents.

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NexusWest@reddit

Nope. Not from me at least.

But that being said, take all your reading with a grain of salt. Have you heard the phrase "the squeakiest gear gest the grease"? That doesn't just apply to your bitchy head of Marketing getting anything and everything they ask for, while you're stuck reformatting 20 year old laptops.

You very rarely hear stories from the people who are just chilling out at their desk, making 6 figures, and doing IT work. You will most certainly here every story about the in that loves to .

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BlindsydeGaming@reddit

Just remember that being good at something, does not mean you will be happy doing it. You need to decide if the money is worth it after you get into a position.

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speaksoftly_bigstick@reddit

20+ years here, though I am the last one to claim to be any kind of expert..

This field has its peaks and valleys like any other. The "bad side" is kinda like our "battle scars."

I have plenty of them, same as many people here.

But I also have a lot of stories about problems I solved, systems I developed, things I learned, and people I've helped who were genuinely grateful.

Yes it gets annoying and tedious. Just like the shiny veneer of putting a new PC together from scratch doesn't always get me excited like it did 15 years ago (but it still does, every so often, haha).

I'm sure a mechanic could generally agree to this sentiment as could welder or CAD designer or architect..

As I officially push past 20 years of doing this (in January), the odds are high that I've forgotten more than most of the younger up and comers know, as far as technical knowledge. But I still feel good when I accomplish something I set out to do or fix a problem that gets presented / escalated.

I also still suffer imposter syndrome frequently, so you younger thundercats take that for what it's worth. But I don't mind it so much anymore. I feel like (or at least hope) it keeps me humble.

Another thing I really enjoy in these later years is mentoring and seeing the gears click when someone I'm managing has that "aha" moment. That feels good. Passing on knowledge.

I don't have a degree or a single credit hour of college nor any certifications. I've learned everything I know from experience working my way up. It was the harder way and if I had to do it all again now vs when I started, I don't even know if it would be possible based on the market alone.

Don't put too much stock into others' complaints. When it comes to opinions, the old IT adage of "trust but verify" applies just as well; take them at their word but let your own experiences dictate your expectations.

HTH

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Konowl@reddit

It’s not that bad. I basically hide my knowledge and job from my family though. It got so bad my MiL would have a list of things for me to do when I visit. The I got accosted at a funeral cause someone had malware. I CHARGE PEOPLE FOR MY EXPERTISE and to expect it for free is insane. Only my husband daughter and parents get it for free - anyone else asks I tell them I’m a project manager. I hide my skills from half my peers too - I really don’t like trying to solve everyone’s problem.

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bubba198@reddit

Short answer: no

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Nik_Tesla@reddit

This applies to any job, not just IT, but it's all about your boss. If your boss is good, they'll not only protect you from bad upper management, but they'll make sure upper management knows of your successes, and they'll trust you to be an adult without micromanaging you.

People in IT might bitch about MS licensing, but what really bothers us to our core is a bad boss, or at least a spineless boss that won't advocate our concerns/recommendations to upper management.

Find a boss you like, if they can be a mentor as well, all the better.

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Drakoolya@reddit

The biggest thing that is driving me insane is stuff has become more volatile, at least for me. Updates and patches break things , zero days feel like they are released daily , Users don't want any downtime, Stability of the SOE is in the dump, random transient issues that are never solved but are annoying enough for the execs to lose their 4hit.

I love IT this constant state of buggy ,sloppy performance is doing my head in and makes me want to quit.

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Icy-Worth2040@reddit

I used to manage restaurants. IT is a fucking dream job compared to that.

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Mindless_Software_99@reddit

Most people have already addressed the major points to consider, but to add onto them..

You get educated in how to set up efficient and secure systems with your education, but when you finally get hired and actually get around to it you run into "we don't have the budget" or whatever other excuse they give for not investing in proper equipment. Then, when you get hacked or ransomwared you become the blame because "your supposed to keep us safe, why are we even paying you"
You get trained in the latest an greatest, but when you get out into the workforce turns out companies refuse to invest in upgrading their systems (cough Windows server 2003 cough)
Companies are willing to spend millions on vendor provided software with crappy support contracts (and/or crappy support) and the IT department is left to support what the vendor is supposed to support in the first place. Even when the IT department is able to fill in the hole, their company refuses to supplement with salary increases
Sort of on the previous point, those in charge for reason can't understand why offshoring is a bad idea and removing your entire IT department only leads to despair, but it happens and then they realized it was a bad idea so they reverse course and hire on IT who now has to come and cleanup the mess.

Don't get me wrong, I like the tech sector. The depressing part about it always is how human nature plays into it.

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thatohgi@reddit

There is enough in this field to pivot when you get bored. Learn networking and hardware, then software, then defend the castle, then maybe break into the castle, then decide you don’t like castles but you prefer books so you can pivot into GRC.

If you hate your job in this field you only have yourself to blame. Some jobs suck, don’t stay unless you like it.

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Cereal____Killer@reddit

Find your niche, I’ve been in IT for more than 25 years. I’m in operations, no two days are the same. I don’t like everything about my role but I like it more days than I don’t

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MidninBR@reddit

It is.

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Ok-Double-7982@reddit

"Do we have anyone here who is a veteran in the field and actually likes it?"

No.

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Ok-Double-7982@reddit

No.

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detmus@reddit

No.

Being part of a good team is possible and goes a LONG way toward having balance and saving your sanity.

Having a great boss is possible. They can build you up and insulate you from a lot of the BS. My current boss is a great person, and also knows how to run interference to keep people out of my way when crunch time comes.

If you’re bored, there’s always something to learn.

If you value people and meet them where they are, you can learn a LOT of amazing things from Esther in Payroll. You get the hookup on her candied holiday nuts, and other folks are randomly super kind because you took three seconds that one time to roll back their F’d up Excel workbook to a previous version.

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ThimMerrilyn@reddit

I never finished highschool or went to university. After 20 years I’ve gotten to the stage I make like ~220k inc. equity and am on good benefits etc… but holy fuck am I tired. I have worked and grinded so hard to get here and I’ve seen it all. But if I can maintain or even improve salary etc across the next 15-20 years I’ll retire really comfortably.

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progenyofeniac@reddit

I’m pretty jaded in a lot of ways. I regularly deal with corporate nonsense, pointless meetings, projects that get canceled halfway through. But I also do interesting work, get paid well, work with good people, and VERY rarely work an evening or a weekend that I don’t want to.

I’m maxing my retirement while working at home with my cats around me and while not wearing out my body in construction.

There are worse things a person can do with their life.

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anka_ar@reddit

I worked on IT for the last 20 years. Market changed a lot, job changed a lot. I miss old times, but also I love this. Really, I love to do IT stuff, I love to learn new things, meet people and keep learning.

Sometimes you don't like that company, that task, this team, but other than be a farmer..., I will never stop working on IT, even for free.

Is not the job, could be the company, but if you like computers, how to do things, how to fix things..., it is the best job, and I'm very proud of it at artisan level.

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david-yammer-murdoch@reddit

What do you do?

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william_tate@reddit

Not me

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h8mac4life@reddit

Nah it's fine, just people being little bitches.

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Fair-Morning-4182@reddit

After about 5 years total in IT I've realized it's probably not for me. I don't enjoy the day-to-day. I enjoy building systems and finding solutions to large-scale problems, but I don't like or really care about people. Maybe one day I'll get lucky and can work myself into a technical role and not customer service. I love deep, technical discussions but hate the lack of flexibility and having to talk to end users. It reminds me of when I worked retail, except now I'm responsible for 10X more. I feel that I'm responsible for so many things I can never really get any work done. I'm just fighting fire after fire.

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soulreaper11207@reddit

Not if you're into humiliation and degradation. Being treated like you're subhuman. Only important when your services are needed. And never have your opinions matter. "Oh that IT, blowing his top over something so easy," that , no Karen, was not easy and took hours. Also don't plan on having a healthy relationship if you're also on call. The kids and partner will blame you for not being there, but they'll happily soak up all your earned income.

So no it's great. Just peachy.

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Character_Deal9259@reddit

It can be. Especially when you are constantly pulled away from working on your area of expertise, or get handed things that could be handled by those with less experience (not ragging on those people as we've all been there, but there comes a point where you should be moved away from simpler tasks). As an example of this, I am the primary Cyber Security and Compliance resource at my company. Earlier today I was pulled aside to head onsite to troubleshoot a monitor issue, which ultimately just let to me replacing the HDMI cable. It was an issue that literally anyone else could've handled, and there was no reason for me to be pulled away from the security tickets that were on my board to drive 20 minutes up the road to troubleshoot that.

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OutrageousPassion494@reddit

A few things to remember that I used to hold on to:

You can only control how you react to something or someone. Things will break, people will panic and overact. Taking things personally isn't helpful long term.
Be as honest as you can when providing assessments to when something will be resolved. People may not like it, but it always helped me build relationships with "challenging" staff.
When having multiple issues, rank by most important and not by who is more highly ranked. The food chain mentally may help with the c-suite, however staff complaints can sink you just as easily.
You don't own the job and you're not irreplaceable. You can be replaced, even if the work doesn't get done as well.

Developing a thick skin is helpful. Not expecting compliments is also helpful. People rarely compliment if the systems worked perfectly fine each day. They expect it even if it's not a justified expectation.

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Arpe16@reddit

20 years in. There are ups and downs but I chose this career because I’m a huge nerd.

If you like your job you never work a day in your life.

In IT, if you don’t have this, don’t get into IT.

I do, and it’s made the difference in excelling my career to high 6 figures.

I’m under 40.

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ResidentWonderful640@reddit

By the time I realized how much worse I sleep knowing a phone could go off any moment that I'll have to answer it was too late to change career paths.

If I could do it again, I wouldn't.

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IdidntrunIdidntrun@reddit

The last 2 months I have been doing Intune stuff designing configurations and fleshing out scripts to remediate problems or scripts to do complex Win32 app deployments. I hardly take user tickets anymore. I really like my job minus the pay. Which is why I have an interview Wednesday for a job paying $40-50k more lol

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CantCaptcha@reddit

There are plenty of IT jobs that aren't any more depressing than any other job. I chose consulting and did it for too long, so now I want to shank all of my clients. Perspective.

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logosintogos@reddit

I've been a Unix sysadmin for about 23 years and I love it.

It absolutely has things that are frustrating, and people who will drive you nuts and piss you off.

But for me, constantly learning and evolving along with the technology has been a great source of satisfaction and accomplishment.

If you love technology, teaching yourself, and coming up with cool new solutions, you'll love the job. As I'm sure someone has or will say: it's what you make of it.

You will have jobs, managers, and coworkers you hate, but as long as you can keep honing your skills it'll be worth it.

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SnooLobsters3497@reddit

I got burned out after 20 years in IT after a string of managed service companies that were not run very well. Something about having customers who didn’t understand what they were paying for. I got tired of having to explain myself to an owner who saw the company as an investment who didn’t really understand the details either.

IT is never a revenue creating dept. and a lot of companies see IT as something they need that is incredibly expensive but that no one in leadership can really explain. I think this is why several Fortune 500 companies that I worked for had the CIO reporting to the CFO.

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North-Revolution-169@reddit

I really like it. It's very diverse with many options for branching out.

You can stay technical, manage projects, manage people, provide customer service, go into sales etc etc.

One reason I used to get depressed is because all I saw were problems. Things were always breaking in one way or another and I always felt they could be better. So many things everywhere and it became overland depressing.

I've since totally changed my expectations and have become very happy with "good enough". Good enough doesn't mean sloppy or shoddy, it means just good enough for me to be happy and not cause anyone else issues.

I've been doing this for 20 years and I couldn't imagine doing anything else.

Ya it's true that very few other people get or understand what we do or how we do it. That makes us modern day wizards.

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-Cthaeh@reddit

Every job can be depressing, and many are depressed.

This is everywhere. Find your groove, what makes you happy. I personally really enjoy solving problems. I love when my thought out, complicated plan comes together and just WORKS.

I also enjoy helping people. Which is a tough one for some people, and a double edged sword for the rest. Some will keep asking for more and more until you're helping them get into their personal Facebook or pick their home ISP. Sometimes I do it too, but sometimes it's ok to direct them to the proper support number.

All the usual stuff applies, time management, etc. Communication is king though. If you silently solve every crisis, there was no crisis.

The most frustrating thing to me, is people outside of IT thinking we don't do much when everything is working, and we are bad when it's not. How hard can it be, am I right? At the end of the day though, we are a pillar of today's infrastructure. You can always go somewhere else if it's too bad.

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dio1994@reddit

Honestly it is what you make of it. I've hated my job at points but not IT itself. I'm in a great place currently and love it. Good company, benefits, and people. It was a mess when I walked in but I'm getting wins, and that is rewarding.

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AmbassadorDefiant105@reddit

It's probably the most unfulfilling job there is unless you do it on a personal level

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supercamlabs@reddit

OP the game is what the game is...if you don't like it opt out and even then it's still not that much better....the destination is all the same you're still the hamster on the hamster wheel...do want to be a glorified hamster? Or finance hamster? or IT hamster?

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farkious@reddit

Stop listening to other people. Especially on Reddit. Why would you let what other people, who don’t know you, impact your mood. There is a very, very, very small sample size that give their opinions on Reddit and social media. There are millions of people in IT, quietly working hard (or not) and enjoying their career. You should be spending time discussing actually technical problems not debating whether an IT career is a wise choice. It’s the most pointless thing to discuss on this sub.

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PaidByMicrosoft@reddit

Yeah

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uptimefordays@reddit

It's like reviews or anything else, happy people don't comment online with anywhere near the frequency of their unhappy peers. Thus you'll see tons of negative posts and very few people posting wins or things they like about their jobs.

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No_Resolution_9252@reddit

When I'm doing IT I love it. Just quit a job and got a new one so that I could do IT.

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Particular_Archer499@reddit

I have been extremely lucky with my position. That is the biggest lesson I have learned on this subreddit.

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NATChuck@reddit

Yes

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Dependent-Moose2849@reddit

Nope been doing it since 2000 and I really hate it now people treat you bad like a janitor and take a dump on you other time..

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vitaroignolo@reddit

Every job has its ups and downs. On Reddit you have selection bias because barely anyone wants to come here and gush about their amazing job and even less people want to hear about it (upvotes/visibility).

Personally I like IT fine (10 yrs exp). I still have more days I'm kinda excited to go into work than not. It's not the thing I was destined for, but I don't see myself doing anything else.

The secret IMO is job hopping. Luckily with IT, you're generally developing very transferable skills and if you just keep moving onwards and upwards, it won't get stale. Just don't get complacent, develop your skills, and always be ready to try something new and you'll be fine.

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TheDeadestCow@reddit

I've been doing it for decades. The abject stupidity of users turns many of us into sarcastic black holes from which no joy can escape. Behind closed doors after fixing a user's problem for the tenth time I can often be found beating my head on my desk.

At the end of the day though, I'm not depressed. I just wish people would take more responsibility for their own job.

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PrimaryPractical365@reddit

The "like" degrades over time. It transitions to just a job.

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DigiQuip@reddit

The biggest issue you’re going to run into is a lot of people around you simply do not grasp the scale of your job. You’ll be under appreciated and because your department doesn’t make money it’ll feel like you’re not a priority.

Until something breaks and suddenly everyone is SUPER aware of your job.

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Nickolotopus@reddit

I like it. But I got in a little late. I was the "IT guy but not in IT" in every job I've had, then made the move to IT proper in 2019. But depends on the job. Working at an MSP isn't for me. I prefer smaller companies so I can get my hands into more stuff, but not too big of a company where I'm being bugged in my off hours.

You're going to get a lot more people venting on social media. But I really do like my job. Pay could be better, especially for my area, but I've had shittier jobs that paid less.

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SilentSamurai@reddit

At the end of the day it's a job to earn a paycheck from. Just like most people, there's a lot of things I'd prefer to do instead but don't pay a wage I could live off of.

The issue mostly comes from end users. Many cannot grasp the potential complexities of systems because in many of their minds, if Apple can fix an iPhone problem in a day so should their IT guy. And that mindset bleeds over into a lot of areas: "Yeah, IT Guy can set up a competitor website to Door Dash for us" "Well at my last company because my computer never showed me an error, it was managed properly so IT here must suck."

There's ways to tackle that, but I find the conversation is a bit exhausting.

Personally, I've found the best way to insulate myself from most user interactions is to specialize my knowledge.

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Special_Luck7537@reddit

If you are a one stop position for issues:

It's pretty much guaranteed that an error will occur through no fault of your own, yet you not only will be blamed for it, but will lose your job over it

Even when you do overcome the issue, and you want to talk to someone about how you solved it, nobody will be interested

It's pretty much guaranteed that you will have to work multiple consecutive shifts and not get compensated in any way for it. Best I ever did was nine consecutive shifts. Gotta thank you...

You will not be given the tools or education that you need, despite the fact that you will be expected to defend the company from ever sophisticated attacks

You will have vacation days taken from you, and will not be compensated for them despite your contract

So yeah, it sucks. But, if you like doing it, like solving problems, do not need positive feedback, and know when to say enough is enough and move on, you can do it as well .

The thing about it that I enjoyed was working with engineers and machinists - professionals that took their work seriously.

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NoRomBasic@reddit

Been professionally in IT since 1992, began as a PC repair technician in a white-box shop, worked my way up, and have been a CIO in my last 3 roles. Most of my career has been self-taught, and while I am always learning, reading, and taking courses, I have no advanced degrees.

I can think of no other career that would have been as rewarding, both from a satisfaction as well as a compensation perspective.

Over those 30+ years I helped start an ISP, lead infrastructure and operations in a global enterprise, was CIO and part of team that steered a college through a closure and rebirth, and have been CIO of two public agencies.

I have traveled the world as part of my job, doing stints in China, Brisbane, Tokyo, and Limerick, as well as visted many, many other places and cultures.

And I have gotten to work with some of brightest and most talented people ever.

Yes... there have certainly been situations and moments that have sucked, there have been setbacks and periods (fortunately relatively short) where I was unemployed, and I have certainly met and had to interect with my share of assholes. Honestly that isn't career-specific.

But after 30 years I still love what I do and the people I get to work with.

With all that said, do understand that life is too short to do things that are no fun for you. If IT is just a job to pay the bills, it will likely eat you alive over time. Most of the people I have met who hated IT either hated it because the organization they worked in sucked (and that can be fixed) or they really weren't that passionate about tech. At the end of the day you gotta love what you do.

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Normal-Gur1882@reddit

I've worked in IT since 2011. 7 years in service desk and about 6 in systems operations.

I love it.

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DayFinancial8206@reddit

I used to deal with end users and now I don't and I love the field

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xb4r7x@reddit

Like any job, it's what you make of it.

The way I see it, there are two perspectives you can take.

1) Realize that what is easy/simple/common sense/whatever to you is not those things for everone else, or even MOST people. This is why you have the job you have. Take that realization and then feel good that you get to help people that don't understand technology the way you do. You will be happier, they will be happier, and you'll likely have a good, long, and happy career.

2) Fail to realize the above, become jaded, hate "users" and everything they stand for becuase they "don't understand the simplist things", and be an unhappy curmudgeon for your long and miserable career.

I chose the first option, and it's paid dividends. People were always happy to let me know when they were having problems, I was always willing to help, and I was able to advance my career quite a lot (started in Desktop Support, Now I'm a Senior Site Reliability Engineer at a major company and make bank).

So no, IT isn't really all that depressing, unless you let it be.

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whatyoucallmetoday@reddit

I’ve been doing various IT roles since the 90s. From help desk/PC deployments through Unix admin/infrastructure development to security compliance and management.

The job is like all jobs: it can be good. It can be bad.

Set boundaries between work like and real life.
Learn new skills and be proficient in multiple things. Learn critical thinking skills and problem solving. Google is a good source for answers but you need to understand what your problem is and what you’re asking. Being ‘on call’ can be part of the job but ‘on call all the time’ is BS and an example of poor management, setting expectations and/or infrastructure design.

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mankycrack@reddit

Been doing this for 12 years. It's what you make it, some people only want to see the negative.

Focus on helping people achieve outcomes and it's a very rewarding job, focus on 'annoying demanding people' and you'll hate it. You're there to support the business, not for you having fun with computers.

I personally have never enjoyed it more.

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obfuscate_please@reddit

IT is a wide net to cast. Do you have a specific job or end goal in mind in the field?

I've done almost a dozen different roles for multiple employers from call center, msp and help desk to network consultant and sys admin over the years.

Some of the entry level work was pretty depressing but they were stepping stones to a job where I work from home and make an actual lovable wage with good benefits. The job generally doesn't take a big roll physically and I don't have to worry that I can't work if I break an arm or a leg. I love what I do now but if I was stuck doing help desk for a decade I might jump off a bridge.

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starocean2@reddit

Im a vet. I love my job. Im proactive. I make sure everything works so no one has to bother me. I have tons of free time to do whatever i want. When im tired of building spare parts monster Frankenstein builds ill play games or watch youtube all day. It isnt always like thay though. Sometimes the work is all day every day for days at a time.

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Darkm27@reddit

I can’t imagine doing anything else but I’ve also floated quite a bit. General sysadmin, automation engineer, cyber security, now I’m in sales. All of these at various size orgs and mix of public and private sector.

This field has incredibly mobility and you can do an incredible variety of things. In my opinion far too many people sit in the same organization/role for far too long and just get jaded.

When you really boil down what we do, to have long term success in this industry you need to learn new things quickly and be able to break down complex problems to their simpler parts. When you professionally deal with constant change you shouldn’t be so afraid to change that you sit miserable for years somewhere that doesn’t work. It also tends to be the best way to increase your salary.

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cyberbro256@reddit

In addition to what everyone else has said, don’t forget the bias of online posts. No one goes online and talks about how they had a great day.

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d00ber@reddit

Honestly, it depends on the people you work with and how flexible you are. If you're willing to keep educating yourself whether by night class, online courses, certificates even to wildly different disciplines that make more money.. you'll be fine. I've had a longish career that's ranged from cabling, datacenter physical setups in the start, to helpdesk, started doing CSS/HTML work, then to technical support/desktop support, DBA got RHCSA and studied a ton to be a systems administrator, got my CCNA and moved to network engineer, became a systems engineer when that was a hot title and now I've had to learn to be a cloud applications support like office 365, API integrations..etc ..etc cause that's where the money is. If you're not willing to constantly learn and change, chances are your position will disappear or just start paying dog shit. Last if your management is bad, you're likely going to have a bad time, but unfortunately IT management is probably one of the most commonly poorly run things I've come across while working in this industry.

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GullibleDetective@reddit

Not depressing at all if you enjoy what.you do and if you are depressed strive to get out of the role that is making.you so

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superstaryu@reddit

It depends, some roles are better than others. How much you engage or tolerate office politics can make a huge difference to how much you enjoy the role. I've had so many colleagues get worked up over the boss or CEO making a decision they don't agree with.

In my current role, I have regular hours, a nice work environment, a good amount of control over what I'm working on. My boss is reasonable, my colleagues are friendly. The pay is a solid ok.

When things go wrong it can be incredibly stressful having an entire organisation wait for you to fix something. But there are also times when I get to be the hero (you deleted a file 6 months ago, I can probably get that back for ya).

You've got to be ok with learning new stuff in IT though, the stuff you're working on in 5 years time is going to be somewhat different to what you do today.

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ballzsweat@reddit

Sorry no, best to have a backup plan.

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Mehere_64@reddit

I've been in the industry since beginning of '07. I do still like it and can't think of a different job I would do. That said, the job market appears to be pretty tough at this time. There is a lot of talent out there.

Something to do if you can is get an internship in the field if you are not in the field already. Doing an internship really helps. Helped me get my first job when I graduated. I know others who did internships at places I've worked and that is how those people got hired on full time.