The average IT admin displays many physical characteristics, such as hair loss, pale skin and dark clothing. This seems to be a bit of an industry trend, but why. Why does the IT staff have these specific characteristics?
Choosing IT as a career path is quite different than many other choices. Yes, it’s rewarding and many enjoy the work environment. However, it’s also very demanding, exhausting and challenging. While this might apply to many jobs, it’s exaggerated with the IT admin career path.
The Machines
While IT admin choose the career to work with machines because they love them, it’s also very possible they will come to hate them. The same machines keeping IT workers employed are a huge part of their stress. They have to be updated constantly, monitors around the clock, backed up, restarted and a million other necessary function. The machines are great, but they can also cause a ton of stress.
Server migrations are another part of the job, which usually means plenty of caffeine and a long night. It can be a tedious process to make sure it all goes well, and if something goes wrong, it’s not a fun day at work.
The Long Days
IT workers often work until late at night and still have to be back at it early. When something goes wrong, they may have to come into work after going home for the night. On call IT admin can become very stressful and the 40 to 45 hour week isn’t normal. Instead 60+ hours is often the requirement.
The Bad Diet
Snacks, caffeine, to-go food and maybe the occasional home cooked meal make up the IT admins diet. Many in this career path miss breakfast due to upgrades, migrations, downtime, server issues, restarts or a number of other things. They may even miss lunch, dinner or find the closest vending machine to eat something they can call a meal rather quickly.
Less Time with Family
A 60+ hour work week already takes away from family time, but with an IT career, the work usually goes home, too. It’s a stressful job that makes many miss time with family, children, friends, hobbies and other important activities.
Handling Complaints Constantly
Rarely does an IT admin take a call with a positive message. Often, they take calls with complaints about something going wrong and they are expected to have a good attitude and fix it. Not all IT admins can keep that positive attitude necessary to provide great customer service, while fielding complaints.
Some callers don’t even leave the IT admin alone. Instead, they need to know every detail of what they are doing, which can become even more stressful. Sometimes, simple tickets can turn into a huge headache because of the person on the other end of the phone line.
The bottom-line, an IT admin is a bit of a thankless job, very stressful, yet vital for most companies. This is a position you can outsource to experts with plenty of experience dealing with machines, fielding the complaints and the many other stressful things going into it. It’s clear not everybody is cut out for the job, but some thrive in the IT field. Make sure your servers monitoring and your outsourced support come from those thriving in IT, instead of those stressing out constantly.
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