What's the most stressful industry for IT work?

I hear a lot of stress working at a MSP, maybe financial industry. Thoughts? On the flip side, what's the least stressful? Public/non-profit organizations?

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UnixGuy

It will all depend on your direct manager, they can stress you out even if there is nothing to do, but industry wise, I found MSP/Service Providers to be the most stressful. It was more stressful than the financial industry for me anyway

backtracker

Day traders, financial.

LordQarlyn

I've always heard financial sector was the most stressful. Especially when outages occurred, every second the systems were down meant lost money. From what I've heard it was even more stressful than military sector where failing to do the job or restoring outages can mean lost lives.

shodown

I would say MSP. I've worked in DoD, Defence, Federal, Financial and found the MSP to be the most stressful. I was doing Tier 3 VoIP support at the time and we would just have problem after problem. The MSP model is to just staff enough people that they are working a full 8 hours and charging as much as they can get from the customer. Often times the MSP bids for work and the lowest cost wins. Quality is just one of those things that I've seen escape most places in IT.

shochan

Agreed, MSP's!

Now, if you are young (in your 20's), and a go getter, an MSP is an excellent way to gain valuable experience though. However, I won't work at another one.

gespenstern

MSP. I've been a lot to financial, MSP/MSSP and healthcare.

DatabaseHead

MSP generally are chop shops, meat grinders. It's all about sales and billable hours, staff utilization.

Managing claims system on the health care side is a really close second.

networker050184

UnixGuy wrote: »

It will all depend on your direct manager

That's accurate from my experience. If you have a good manager that shields you from the stresses raining down from upper management you're golden. If you have a boss that doesn't shield you or just adds to the stress any job can be a nightmare.

Mike R

networker050184 wrote: »

That's accurate from my experience. If you have a good manager that shields you from the stresses raining down from upper management you're golden. If you have a boss that doesn't shield you or just adds to the stress any job can be a nightmare.

Definitely true, there is a huge difference between a boss and a leader.

JoJoCal19

MSP can be tough due to grinding and also cost cutting if you get a cheap MSP. The other would be hedge funds as they seem to tolerate next to no downtime.

jwdk19

I've worked in DoD, construction, healthcare, k12 and university IT departments. Currently in industrial manufacturing. IMO industrial IT by far.

DZA_

I agree with most folks on the board: MSPs. I currently work in the financial sector but since I am in more of the senior position I don't see as much as the stress probably as a tier 1 help desk would. I've heard horror stress stories from a former coworker who use to work under lawyers and that ain't a pretty sight either.