Most stessful IT Job Position

TechGromit

Cert Poor wrote: »

I volunteered to take on 2-3 people's workloads and ended up working 80+ hours a week and doing entire migrations single-handedly.

You have to give management push back when they ask too much from you. It's OK to work a few extra hours and show initiative and motivation, but don't let management take advantage of you. It OK to put in a couple of 60 hour weeks when working on a project to meet a deadline, but when this becomes the norm, instead of the exception, you have to tell management straight up. Either push the completion dates for the project or hire more staff, you not working insane hours for months at a time because they have unrealistic expectations. If you allow them, they will work you till your dead, send flowers to your funeral, and the card will say, "Thank you for all your hard work, but it was really inconsiderate of you to die without giving two weeks notice so you could train your replacement."

LonerVamp

I think this question is entirely dependent on the company environment. Poor management, team dysfunction, poor documentation/mentoring, little support, 0 budget, old junk sitting around waiting to fail, and a no-fail attitude in the workplace? These contribute to stress more so than any particular IT duties. Even Support and Help Desk can be easy if the team and environment is structured and staffed well. If I had to pick one though, third-party incident response and forensics could be stressful in these ransomware times.

TeKniques

Well ... having had several roles in IT I would say the most stressful for me is actually being a manager. Managers get a bad rap because I think the visibility to those that are not in management is "they are just in meetings all day". It's not fun when being in meetings all day you have to also ensure deadlines are met. On top of that there's managing internal conflict on the team (there's always someone who causes issues), managing the budget, managing projects, managing vendors, managing across and up to other managers, doing leadership training, having weekly 1-on-1's with your boss and staff, etc.

But hey, at least the money is good

snokerpoker

I'd say my current role is the most stressful I've had. Senior Network Engineer for a consulting company.

I'm responsible for basically several customer's entire infrastructure- From servers, network, security to the desktops. I'm on call 24/7 and the staff under me- Helpdesk, Desktop, and NOC all escalate tickets to me all the time. I have customers who all think they are my #1 client that want to call me or discuss items or want status updates. Account managers who get projects signed off and over promise. A dispatcher who is constantly on top of me trying to keep my calendar filled with tickets/projects. Management wants 100% billable time and to study for certs (For the most part) on our own time.

I understand some, if not most of this is caused by my employer. So far i'd say this is the most stressful job I've had.