Two-thirds of IT managers lose sleep from the stress of their jobs, with many reporting severe physical symptoms, a new survey shows.
I saw an IT manager lose it once.
It took place over the course of a week. I recall him walking around muttering to himself for several days, a glazed look in his eyes. By midweek he had stopped shaving and was wearing the same clothes. I’m pretty sure that by then he wasn’t even going home to sleep. Worse, my polite request that someone fix the sticking right-click button on my mouse was met with callous indifference.
The next Monday, the IT manager wasn’t there. He hadn’t officially quit; he just stopped showing up. Soon I learned there had been a database meltdown that jeopardized years of valuable subscriber information, and that the IT manager, after days (and nights) of grappling with the crisis, just snapped and walked away. (Which was a relief to me, since I was worried the thing with the mouse had pushed him over the edge.)
Most IT managers undoubtedly can relate to that kind of intense job-related stress. When the system crashes, a whole bunch of bad things can happen – data becomes unretrievable, communication is interrupted, ecommerce ceases. And you have to keep it all going – or else.
Strategic Challenges
Truth is, the pressure of keeping an enterprise running in the digital age is a huge responsibility that can trigger acute anxiety among IT professionals. So much so that most network managers suffer physical effects.
According to a survey of more than 200 IT pros by transaction processing software vendor OpTier and TechWeb Network Research, two-thirds of the responding IT managers say their concerns about application performance keep them awake at night. And one out of four respondents reports some kind of stress-related physical problem such as nausea, ulcers, headaches, migraines, weight gain, nightmares, muscular twitches and heart arrhythmia.
But operational issues are just one cause of stress for IT managers. Perhaps even more angst-inducing are the strategic challenges, which often are made more difficult due to poor communication and mismanagement. For example:
43 percent of the survey’s respondents say their organizations’ business priorities have not been explicitly aligned with IT (In this day and age! Perhaps a trip to bITa Planet would help.)
39 percent have problems collaborating with other departments
35 percent say service level requirements are unclear
32 percent cite lack of visibility into IT transactions
21 percent listed all of the above as workplace issues
Dr. Terry A. Beehr, professor of psychology at Central Michigan University, says IT managers are in "a classic high-stress job, with low levels of control but high expectations from the organization."
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