Most Stressful IT jobs

What are most stressful and least stressful IT jobs?

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Most stressful: The one where you have to buy Carl's JR for your fellow coworkers because you don't know how to do your job.

MontagueVandervort

iBrokeIT wrote: »

Most stressful: The one where you have to buy Carl's JR for your fellow coworkers because you don't know how to do your job.

Thanks, I just spit out my water lulz, hysterical.

cyberguypr

/thread thanks to iBrokeIT

Mike7

Both stressful and relaxing: the one where your manager does not understand what you are doing, never receive complaints about your performance and always get good feedback from your users. It is stressful because your manager thinks you are not doing anything.

kalimuscle

iBrokeIT wrote: »

Most stressful: The one where you have to buy Carl's JR for your fellow coworkers because you don't know how to do your job.

HAHAHAHHA

Gold !!!!!

It doesn't matter how stressful the job is !

How you handle the stress is what matters !

NEODREAM

iBrokeIT wrote: »

Most stressful: The one where you have to buy Carl's JR for your fellow coworkers because you don't know how to do your job.

We have gone meta!

vuedoolor

I didn't get the joke

Anyways back on topic which IT positions are more stressful than others?

Database admin, pc tech, sys admin, etc

I'm new here so just wondering

kalimuscle

Job titles as well as your salary has NOTHING to do with stress.

This heavily depends on your work enviroment, your managers/co-workers, reality vs their expectations.

All jobs come with some form of stress oneway or the other, but how you handle the stress is what really matters !

jamesleecoleman

I didn't get the joke too. I had to look up the place.... still don't get it.

I can tell you right now that there's a lot of pressure when there's only one IT person that has to do five or six different things and is only able to call in for support when needed. But of course the call in has to be approved.

Mike7

jamesleecoleman wrote: »

I didn't get the joke too. I had to look up the place.... still don't get it.

See http://www.techexams.net/forums/jobs-degrees/126506-underperforming-employee-who-keeps-buying-team-food.html

ajs1976

Others have mentioned these points already. 1. how you handle stress. 2. Management

dontstop

There is no such thing. Your question is as variable as asking "who's the perfect partner", many different factors come into play. You could be working as a Developer in a Silicon Valley startup with millions/billions on the line and be having the time of your life, you could also be a solo Network Admin at a small school and stressed out of your brains.

I would never advise looking for a career path on such a fallible metric.

MontagueVandervort

I'll add another thing here. You know what makes a job (or anything in life) stressful? ........................ Expecting it not to be stressful.

JoJoCal19

Aside from iBrokeIT's epic answer, the most stressful depends HIGHLY on the individual and as such, there is no specific answer. For example, the most stressful to me is Help Desk. After having had a call center job early in life, there's nothing as stressful as taking call after call with no break or breather, and having your time continually monitored and metrics being pushed down your throat. Other's might find project management, or sales highly stressful but I find them to not be really stressful. In general though, I'd say BCP/DRP folks and incident management folks have pretty stressful jobs because when SHTF they are FULL GO. And BCP/DRP essentially have the success of the company during/post disaster on their shoulders.

DatabaseHead

From my experience, the job where the manager is incompetent or the manager is not a working manager.

Operations where the manager can't do the work, doesn't provide mentoring or requires to be "back filled" all the time in regards to the task, project etc are the worst and consequently the most stressful.

jdancer

Going back to the OP's question.

How about doing help desk support for executives.

They always want it done yesterday.

cyberguypr

I've been in IT 16+ years and when I did support I found executives to be an order of magnitude more understanding, patient, and cordial than people at the bottom of the org chart. At least for me it remains true to this day. YMMV.

YesOffense

cyberguypr wrote: »

I've been in IT 16+ years and when I did support I found executives to be an order of magnitude more understanding, patient, and cordial than people at the bottom of the org chart. At least for me it remains true to this day. YMMV.

I'd have to agree here. For the most part they've even been restrained in sharing real frustration (in my experience).

Mike7

Have to agree, it depends on the manager. Had a technically incompetent manager who told me he was selected because his 'EQ and IQ is higher'. On the other hand, i have managers who are not technically strong but are eager to communicate and understand.

DatabaseHead

Mike7 wrote: »

Have to agree, it depends on the manager. Had a technically incompetent manager who told me he was selected because his 'EQ and IQ is higher'. On the other hand, i have managers who are not technically strong but are eager to communicate and understand.

I wouldn't of worked very well with him. I have come to the conclusion that I am not capable of working with incompetent management. Probably why I bounce so much.

aderon

I'd say it's almost entirely about company culture and expectations and nothing to do with what your job is and only minorly about how much work you have to do.

Most Stressful: Somehow becoming lead tech of a product I knew literally nothing about and having to answer questions from 20-30 tier 1's on a daily basis about how it worked.

Just knowing that you were going to let down 20-30 coworkers on a daily basis every single time you went into work was downright awful.

I quit after like 2 weeks? lol.

Least Stressful: Maybe my current one? Or the one before that. Basically it's about having a supportive team who has your back. If I feel like I'm in it all alone, I tend to get stressed.

DatabaseHead

aderon wrote: »

I'd say it's almost entirely about company culture and expectations and nothing to do with what your job is and only minorly about how much work you have to do.

Most Stressful: Somehow becoming lead tech of a product I knew literally nothing about and having to answer questions from 20-30 tier 1's on a daily basis about how it worked.

Just knowing that you were going to let down 20-30 coworkers on a daily basis every single time you went into work was downright awful.

I quit after like 2 weeks? lol.

Least Stressful: Maybe my current one? Or the one before that. Basically it's about having a supportive team who has your back. If I feel like I'm in it all alone, I tend to get stressed.

Aderon good post

Similar situation, where two seniors 10+ years of experience bounced and now I gotta fill them shoes..........

It's tough man very tough.

triplea

Mike7 wrote: »

Both stressful and relaxing: the one where your manager does not understand what you are doing, never receive complaints about your performance and always get good feedback from your users. It is stressful because your manager thinks you are not doing anything.

I cant remember typing this?

p@r0tuXus

ibrokeit wrote: »

most stressful: The one where you have to buy carl's jr for your fellow coworkers because you don't know how to do your job.

lolololololol

shochan

I would say...being an in-field network engineer, it's basically going in blindly into a new network that you are unfamiliar with and wanting to make changes or recommendations, but then not knowing exactly what you could be breaking if you do make that change. Then whenever you do make the change & it does break, and then comes the repercussions from the office mgr/ceo/your boss on why it took down the network/server/etc. Then you are trying to explain what happened OR blaming Microsoft/patch/support call you were on with. There is no worse feeling when you go in thinking this is an easy task, then it turns into a disaster. Just remember, create a backup OR rollback plan before you implement it, because being proactive instead of reactive is much better solution! Planning has a whole lot to do with being successful in IT.

NOC-Ninja

being jobless is stressful.

ira.a

iBrokeIT wrote: »

Most stressful: The one where you have to buy Carl's JR for your fellow coworkers because you don't know how to do your job.

*dies* (I had an employee who matched this perfectly.)

ira.a

-Working a job with no documentation and extremely limited training. (Nearest person who understood what you do is literally on the other side of the Earth and doesn't help you.)
-Users (including managers) who expect you to do everything their project doesn't want to do that day or because they have a limited budget.
-Getting yelled at because other people's poor planning is your fault. (Expectation = you should've been psychic about their project deadline.)
-Answering non-emergency issues outside of work hours, on PTO, etc because people are bored and demand answers because they're "important."

I could go on...

TechGuru80

ira.a wrote: »

-Working a job with no documentation and extremely limited training. (Nearest person who understood what you do is literally on the other side of the Earth and doesn't help you.)

That definitely is a stressful situation especially since policies and operating procedures vary by organization, I've seen many people leave organizations because they have little to no guidance and then are expected to reach full potential.

ccie14023

Most stressful: Cisco High Touch TAC, routing protocols team. Oh my goodness. (See my blog for stories about TAC.)

Least stressful: In-house network architect. Just tell people what to do and let them deal with implementing and troubleshooting it...