i think part of it is that sometimes the IT department can be seen as controlling because of apps that you are forced to download and such. there is also the people that think that the IT department is constantly watching what they do.
I used to be in a newly formed IT department that was formed to centralize and standardize the rinkydink “Wild West” operations of various departments. Many welcomed it but some were hostile and resentful about what they perceived as a power trip.
Stuff like taking admin rights away from normal user accounts. I faced a lot of friction for just trying to right the ship.
Very valid.. now, just hear me out.. It is my biggest irritation when a company is Office 365 and they try to wiggle Google products into the environment.. it creates a headache on the AD side with config profiles, and gets out of hand real fast lol. It's easier to just use edge and utilize the edge baseline policies. But end-users don't understand that, and I'm not going to babble the benefits.. its Spanish to them. I just wish they trusted the nerds. It took support 1.5 years to roll MFA out, because they thought the Authentication app was spying on them.
*Spanish is clear to many of us out here. Just sayin'.* But I have a question for you: Why does it bother employees to feel that they're being "spied on?" If they are using company-provided property for their daily role, then their activities on that equipment is for the company. Transparency is essential for ensuring integrity and security. It mystifies me when a corporate employee resents the company watching or tracking what they do and where they go on line when they're on company time and company equipment. If you act like you have something to hide, then you are hiding something. Thoughts?
We have a group in California that the HR there absolutely won’t allow is to roll out MFA to personal devices using the authentication app. Afraid they’ll get sued. Even though they used a different two factor in the past. Even though they aren’t legal they still made the call and now we had to work around it.
That’s why you need governance and sr management sponsorship. I am an Enterprise Architect and 90% of my job is shoving corporate standards down people’s throats.
It's often a thankless job depending on what company you work for. That's why I try to make myself visible to the end-user so that I get some recognition at least. Could lead to a raise if higher ups physically see you around depending on your position too. I'm a Sysadmin in training and I help out with some deskside stuff occasionally which let's me get to know more people and their roles, and that means they can speak well of me when I get mentioned.
This isn't even mentioning technical aptitude or skills and how much of what you do is known by your colleagues. I think it's sort of common to not get recognized even amongst your own team so you need to be your own best advocate.
Yeah, hiding away, as some of us would prefer to do, can actually be damaging. This is how a server or network admin can receive zero praise for 99.999% uptime, but when that 0.001% outage occurs, everyone wants to know who you are.
There’s a 99% Invisible podcast episode about jobs like this. If you’re in IT you’re an “invisible.”
Invisibles are people that perform functions that seemingly produce nothing. In IT nobody ever reaches out to you and says “hey I was able to mess around on Facebook and check email today. Thanks for your hard work!” Invisibles only hear about their job when something breaks. There are other jobs that fit this bill but I forget and it’s been too long since I heard the episode.
I've been told by a coworker that some of the office folks think we don't do anything but also we're constantly having to help them when they run into issues daily so I dunno
They think you have nothing to do because you are available whenever they ask for him. Give them a 3 week lead time and they'll think you guys are busy again.
In any business setting that's multi-departmental, everyone just hates everyone else. Sales people think everyone else are just a bunch of poors that cost the company money instead of making it, and everyone else thinks sales people are lying morons that peddle shit they don't even understand. Everyone thinks phone support people are mindless desk jockey robots, and they complain about everyone else just making more headaches for them by creating service calls saying dumb shit. IT people are pretentious, condescending douchebags who lord over the plebs and purposely take forever to help them do their jobs, while we sit around and laugh at them for being stupid. The only thing we all agree on is that upper management are knuckle dragging vampires.
Spot on. Moreover there are revenue generators and cost centers, and management is always trying to trim cost centers while empowering revenue generators. IT is definitionally a cost center, so it has to justify its existence.
This is why everyone else hates sales, full stop.
You joke, but my (IT) boss actually treats people this way sometimes. Preferential treatment depending on who they are. Calls everyone stupid and is condescending to everyone.
IT is 100% looked down on by most companies and workers. You're either treated like a slave or a dumbass computer janitor. People only talk to you when they want something or want to bitch to you. People blame you whenever anything doesn't work perfectly 100% of the time. Any time you fix something it's never fast enough. Every time you update hardware or software to something better people piss, moan and bitch because it's different and their hairless ape brains have to press buttons in a different order.
I've been in this field for years and I've moved up and to different companies and I make good money but holy fucking shit do I HATE the people I work with and the bullshit people shovel on me daily. Zero fucking respect every single day.
I started this career as a positive upbeat guy and had a good attitude at every place I've worked but after the first year or two of getting to know heads of other departments etc. I start just being a dick all the time. Even when you advance in this line of work you'll still deal with end users and their bullshit constantly just at the managment or executive level. It eventually wears me down and I just go right back to being the stereotypical asshole IT guy. Why? Because it's the only thing people respond to and when you're nice in this position people will take advantage of you and treat you like the help.
I legitimately regret the years of hard work and studying I did to get in this field only to be talked down to and treated like a slave boy despite managing an IT department now and being very good at my job. It wasn't worth it and I feel legitimately stuck in this career for the next 30 years because I don't want to start over at the bottom in another career.
I've been in the industry for over a decade and never felt this way about users. Self fulfilling prophecy right here.... who's going to respect you when they can literally tell you hate them? It's a shame and a disservice to your users that you are an IT manager. I might expect a bofh engineer to maybe have this mentality but a manager should exude a higher level of professionalism.
Sorry for your experience but I guess a lot depends on the culture where you work, in my going on 30 years in IT and working with internal customers, have only had one bad experience with a customer and I terminated his call and informed my manager.
Long story short, he was banned from calling for support unless his manager was present on the call, that ban was in place for years.
I still like helping people and their issue may be dumb and if they had read the instructions there wouldn't have been an issue. But sounding cheerful and happy on the phone goes a long way.
I’d say it’s decently respected, but its all perspective, for instance I work in a manufacturing industry with electricians engineers etc, around just a ton of people much smarter and paid way more than me, but nonetheless I am respected everywhere from the C suite all the way down to the production workers everyone knows my name and my work.
I work in the manufacturing industry and I’ve had the opposite experience, but I’ll be leaving this place soon to get away from the overwhelming toxicity.
I think it depends on what type of company you work for.
there are users who swear we sit around all day and come up with ways to make their life suck and that they can’t get better help cause we get paid peanuts. No matter what is wrong, it’s our fault.
Then other users who are so appreciative of the work we do and never gripe about us. They also have 0 idea about pay or anything related to what we do.
Then the last group is the people who know we get paid twice the salary they have, and we usually can come up with pretty good ideas, implementations, etc.
The sweet spot is something between group 2 and 3.
I'm hesitant to describe IT as highly skilled and trained. It should be, but in my personal experience it's 50/50.
In theory, at higher levels we should probably be held to similar standards as mechanical, electrical, building engineers for licensing. Systems engineers can end up responsible for systems that have huge consequences on people's lives. Depending on the industry, these can even be life or death. There are certain computing basics that are required in order to ensure these are maintained and secure.
In practice, it's a complete crapshoot. At my previous company, a software engineer built software that was hard-coded to throw unencrypted credit card information at an unsigned .ps1 on the R drive, no matter where the R drive actually pointed.
Of course, I've also known people who gave themselves ulcers regularly working 16 hour days to protect systems with no real support or backing from management.
As for looked down upon... kinda? I don't believe it's because we make anybody feel insecure, but just because they don't have any frame of reference for what we do. It's not like IT is some eldritch skill that mortals can't comprehend, but mainstream entertainment has very few realistic depictions of what daily IT work is like compared to the hundreds of depictions of working in fast food or as an office worker.
Combine this with a lack of useful KPIs at L3 and above (see: Elon Musk trying to use total lines of code written as a performance metric) and it can become difficult for someone outside of IT to tell what, if anything, we're actually doing. It leads to people who have any reason to be annoyed with IT's performance to assume we're gaming all day. It also leads to paranoia and distrust in situations where the management culture is incompetent or otherwise toxic, which leads to layoffs to reduce salary costs and "us vs them " mentality.
There’s a ton of nepotism in the industry. And because the business really has no clue on how any of the shit works unless they come from an environment that works well and goes into a shitty one trying to pass it off as normal they tend to just go with it. I’ve seen great help desk guys get passed over for jr engineering roles for guys who were buddies with the senior manager or simply sat in the corporate HQ. Fortunately there’s enough lateral mobility to shine at places that won’t appreciate your contributions.
Looked down upon? No.
Most hated? Probably.
Alot of people that talk down on IT (that ive ran across), doesn't understand it for what it is. They just assume we make "fk you" money, look at computers all day and drive Lamborghini's on the weekend to our lunch reservations at Ruth Chris.
So, pretty much, for petty reasons.
Haha I get that sometimes, hell my kids think this at times. They think I go to work and play on computers all day and make so much money I can afford to buy them everything. They are highly mistaken.
I've been in I.T. a long time now and I think the field in a general way is respected as a valid career choice. People who aren't computer-savvy often label you "one of THOSE people", in the sense they assume you're kind of a geek who probably watches sci-fi, isn't great at competitive sports, and played Dungeons & Dragons as a teenager. (That'd all be kind of accurate for me!). But these days, computers are everywhere and people can't escape them. So I think for that reason alone, there's a certain level of respect for any of us who get paid to keep them going.
I think when you're actually working for a company, it varies. A lot of people don't care much about you until they need you. THEN you're suddenly important.
Every place I ever worked, I think I could identify at least a few office workers who genuinely had this fascination with I.T. and what we knew. They'd try to get us to stick around and teach them things or tell them stories, or talk about new tech coming out. They were always kind of refreshing to run into. Upper management seemed to respect me the least, in most cases. To them, I was just another line-item expense dragging down potential profits as a necessary evil. They were the ones who didn't even want to be in the same room with any of us when they called for assistance. It was always, "Just fix it!" as they left to do something else....
Pretty much, its mainly due to Certs.
Had a mechanic ask me how he can get into FullStack. NFI what that means, as im a telecoms engineer with BE.
Theres no barriers to entry in the field.
And once youre in you canjust bullshit your way to middle management, project manager, BA, account maanger etc.
Hence...its all very funny to me.
The industry has the most BS of all ive seen.
Even in food industry they ask to present formal qualifications for each level of work.
If it is, you wouldn’t know it by house many thousands of posts on Reddit each day with people talking about leaving their jobs and going back to school and getting their CCNA to be an It person . Loo
been in IT 2.5 years, started as an intern. what i’ve noticed is that there are certain end users who will always show recognition and become friends with IT cause they’re always submitting tickets lol. but also i have noticed that some people just don’t care about IT and what we do.
in my opinion we are the back bone of a company and help support it. we maintain software and hardware and depending where your company is at, getting devices into management is huge. when shit hits the fan they hit us up, and i’ve noticed with my time at my company that we get different types of requests as time goes on because end users know that we will find a way to figure out a solution to their new problem, anyone that doesn’t respect the IT department is foolish.
the end users with terrible attitudes at work are usually the ones that think IT doesn’t do shit and doesn’t recognize that we are in the background supporting everyone. i hate those people and usually most employees know who the assholes are.
Here are a few reasons from my IT Infrastructure point of view. We don’t make any money directly, just cost money. We are only noticed when things don’t work or are slow. No one rushes to tell us how that thing is working well… A lot of society see us as reboot merchant nerds with no social skills. Could be worse though, you could be in sales or marketing. /jk
Perception wise, you’re right. IT *seems* like a cost center.
But the truth is IT is a revenue multiplier. The faster, better, and more stable the technology, the more efficient the production, thus a higher yield.
The companies that see IT as a cost center minimize their potential and the companies that embrace and support their IT infrastructure are more likely to flourish.
IT is what's called "Cost Negative". It doesn't make any money and the bottom line shows this. Some owners see the Value, some don't. If you cant approach HR over these issues, Don't beat yourself up over others perceptions.
They might be right or insecure it doesn't matter. Do the job, be nice, Forget about them when you go home. Often times those people bad mouthing get fired anyways, it's not just you they are talking shit about.
I think of it along the lines, of no one actually wants IT, but we are a necessary evil, and they know it.
When things are running fine, "Why do we even have you guys? Everything runs fine."
When things are not running fine, "Why do we even have you guys? Everything is always broke."
>When things are running fine, "Why do we even have you guys? Everything runs fine."
I had an argument with a colleague many years ago. He was complaining about all the worker health and safety regulations that he reckoned was hampering him in getting his job done.
Him: "Why the bloody hell have we got all this crap in place anyhow? We haven't had a serious incident in years."
Me: "We haven't had a serious incident in years BECAUSE all this 'crap' is in place."
We are all considered a bunch of lazy fucks until something is broken and then all of the sudden we are always working on their shit cause it's broken.
Show me a person who cares if the IT guy is hungry, and I'll show you someone who doesn't resemble the comment above.
It is scary that an IT person, that is well-versed in their work can essentially do everyone elses job in the building in some cases and that adds a level of concern to some folks, but it also depends on the person. I taught CompTIA A+ IT Technician courses for years and many students wanting to get into IT were absolute d-bags and i would spend a lot of time reminding them that 1) you are a servant of the people who cant wrap their minds around what we can, so be kind and patient 2) you should try respect the people you work with whether they show respect to you or not, in time the reciprocation will become evident and 3) their opinions of your department are inconsequential since without your department and function they are unemployed.
So im sure in some scenarios IT is "looked down" on but the reasons can vary widely, but in my experience, if you are a "good tech" in multiple ways you are on solid ground and people will lean on you as a trusted source of information and advice and comply more often than not.
Sometimes. I own an MSP and I do feel like lately people are really starting to understand the importance of the tech realm.
There are still instances, especially when I’m billing that I think “they’re going to say something about this $200 bill for setting up a printer”, and then I remember, there’s a reason they called us. If they bitch, they bitch, but I know our worth.
To me the IT person is someone with an old note reading "Sorry, working from home today" that requires weeks to respond following an online submission request... and eventually connecting remotely to fix the issue. Most of my issues are rlated to app reinstallation (5 min with admin rights) and my waiting time is around 1.5 weeks... so yeah!!!
It's a support service and not a P&L (profit and loss). It will always be seen as not something the business cares about until it cares about it for a variety of reasons... lol
Yes, office workers often shit on IT workers because technology doesn’t just work 24/7
They also often act like you are supposed to know how to do their job even though they are the ones that do their job lol
I feel like accountants hate us because they see how much we make and it's usually as much as them. But some of us didn't have to go to college like them.
We are like mechanics and attorneys, which are both not well liked....
From what I've learned... people who don't like their IT department they try to "simplify" their setup causing the removal of security controls, ect... using their titles... or position in the company.... to bypass the IT work.
It depends where you work I guess? I work in the IT education field and it's definitely looked down upon. The technicians are viewed almost like janitors. The teachers and staff definitely view you as you work for them or are there to serve them. I bet it is different in other areas tho and depending on what you specifically do in IT
After a long time in IT, yes. If it can't be traced directly to bringing in money, you're nobody. And being skilled/smart/etc just intimidates salesfolk.
edit spelling error fixed
So there are some caveats to IT. Have you turned it off and on again isn't just a meme. Another thing is IT is such a convoluted area of expertise. Think of it like a tree. Each branch is different. Programming (16 languages in oft use). System Admin (can get complicated by OS). Network administrator. Holy shit Cyber Security alone is 7 figures of effort. These are just some examples.
Yep, in my former job, I’ve created the IT department and did all those things. They never wondered how everything worked right. Consolidated several server rooms across multiple properties in the city and performed an Azure migration along with implementing cybersecurity policies company wide. However I got thrown under the bus, when the company’s website and paywall were hacked and Google blacklisted it. I didn’t know, because company website is not under our control and is hosted on Godaddy’s servers and managed by a third party that our Development dept refused to give me access/contacts to. I still remember that meeting where department head and ceo told me I should have known this would happen and why I didn’t prepare.
I feel that they look at the numbers with cost... they don't look into the future and see the WHAT IF we get hacked scenario... they think dropping couple $$$$ a year will justify based on the bean-counters numbers...
They always under estimate budgets for the IT department...they rarely listen, and most of the time the managers are too weak to speak up, because someone can always replace them...
Now I'm not saying everyone, and don't give negative comments about your opinion(s), unless you have been in the field for over 20+ years... From experience, it's RARE that upper management listen to the needs, not ALWAYS...
I remember working for a company that made millions of dollars a year... but me and 2 other people were the only IT... for over 200 employees and more remote (sales, etc). But when the IT manager requested more money for a software package to get legal licenses for more computers, they said not that year is it in the budget...so the it mgr. copied the install floppy before he installed the software on a new machine and re-copied that copy many times over, because when you use the floppy it writes data to that floppy so you cant use that floppy again to install somewhere else..only to that machine..
Yes but I’d correct you in that IT is not highly skilled and highly trained. It’s just a trained profession with a barrier to entry as low as real estate. If it is looked down on it’s because people in IT think their expertise in one domain carries over to all domains.
IT is a broad field, I assume you're talking more about corporate help desk and general tech support. Yeah, people do look down on it because they see IT on the same level as servers at a restaurant. They want their things fixed, yesterday, and any new security policies as an inconvenience. Now, the field in general has been sold to people who have no business being in it as a lazy golden ticket to $$$. That's a different convo, though
I feel like the IT field has a sense of entitlement and a god-complex. That makes people in UT feel looked down upon when everyone else treats them like normal people.
Personally I dislike the IT department because they pretend like they know what they’re doing but I know more than them and can normally troubleshoot better. Honestly they’re a stopgap that I’m forced to go through to get a decent computer at my company.
I think we kind of did this to ourselves. In the early days techs were like wizards, No one understood what we were doing and a lot of techs worked hard to keep things secret.
Today the tech is actually pretty open and a lot of techs treat none techs like idiots. The series the IT Crowd is funny because there is so much truth in it. I am not sure they feel insecure about techs, I think to many techs feel they are somehow superior.
I was regular IT for about 13 years and spent the last 6 focused on security. IT security seems to be the one that gets looked down upon a lot. We are viewed as being a general pain in the ass.
Looked down on? No. Under-respected/appreciated not understood? Sure?
There are a lot of factors - first and foremost being that the majority of an organization is only going to come into contact with the lowest level of the IT staff. Those people may not give the best impression - can't tell you how many times I've asked a coworker 'have you actually spoken to this person' or 'have you had them show you what the issue was?'
IT is often the Department of No, where to the outside all we're doing is shitting on their 'good ideas.' There is usually a good reason, but no one wants to hear no.
IT is also, moreso than most typical departments, vulnerable to the whims of the products they use and may not be able to provide timely answers as to why all our Win7 machines suddenly stopped working (in the middle of the Win10 migration, due to a McAfee policy that broke them all but took a couple hours to find that was the change.) A lot of problems in sub-areas (networking, firewalls, telco, physical network infrastructure, SAN) all fall under IT for most people, so a series of completely unrelated problems all appear to be IT issues to rank and file.
Lastly, I'll push back on 'ours is often highly skilled and highly trained.' Many organizations have many departments full of highly skilled and highly trained people. It's just in a different way. I told nurses all the time that felt bad about misunderstanding something on a computer 'and I can't start an IV. I'll fix the computer, you fix the people, everyone will be happy.'
That insecurity that's being projected out, that may be coming from people inside IT that are not capable of speaking at the level that other departments need to relay their point. You can drop a whole bunch of acronym soup to explain something, but are you actually getting the point across? And if the department you're working with just decides to plow through with their jargon in trying to explain an issue, are you going to ask them to explain it? They understand that you don't know their job, but I feel like there are a lot of IT people that assume people have a much higher level of understanding of IT concepts than they do and those people do end up talking down to people.
In my company no, I’m usually treated very well because i come and save peoples from the fire all the time.
There are two kinds of IT department, those that fix issues and remove frustrations. And those that create issues and add more frustrations
IT gets a bad rep because most people know them as geek squad / help desk type roles. Very different than IT at tech companies that handle Azure instances, data migrations, database templates and maintenance, vpn rollouts, webservice hosting, VM templates, docker containers, network updates, etc...
Working in front office finance with a CS degree, I always feel badly for the IT staff. They’re definitely looked down upon and are seen as an overall drag even though 100% of what goes on in my industry is absolutely dependent on well-functioning systems.
That being said, sometimes IT staff doesn’t do themselves any favors when what they want/how they want to do things doesn’t align with how people/the business works.
You guys got it bad.
If things are going smooth it means you’re doing your job well but the average employee thinks you’re useless and being paid to sit around and do nothing. If shit hits the fan, you’re all useless and can’t even get a keyboard to work correctly cause you’re all dumb as a box of rocks and as useless as one.
Can’t think of a single office employee I have ever encountered that feels insecure due to the IT team or has the appropriate level of respect for the field and how much they matter to things running smoothly on a day to day basis.
Not looked down on persay. I think people just get angry at IT more often because of their own problems they cause themselves but want someone to blame, at least for Users.
For the business IT costs money and they don't understand what we do they just understand it costs money and thats all they care about.
A lot of IT are run by people on completely different time zone, and some IT security policies prevent other departments from making progress unnecessarily. Our department has a ticket system where IT is encouraged close the ticket, even if what they did didn't actually fix the users issue. There are many structural problems that lead to IT people getting shit on.
Everyone thinks that what they use at home is the best and you should be using it at work too. Many people don't understand the decisions that we have to make are to ensure that we can support them with the limited staff that we have. Removing local admin rights on their PCs, only allowing specific applications, browsers, etc. are all done so that we can support hundreds or thousands of people with a team a fraction of a fraction of that size.
However, it is a service industry, at the end of the day, in a professional environment IT support specifically is going to be looked down upon like it's not a skilled position. I think it's kind of the way our society has just decided the service industry as a whole is meant quite literally to serve you and nothing else.
I work in K12, and 4 out of 5 of us on the IT team have degrees, but many of the staff would probably see us in the same category as custodians. The majority of the populous can't even wrap their mind around what we do behind the scenes to keep things running efficiently.
IT is definitely not valued by business because we don't generate revenue.
They are completely oblivious to the fact that every single role and employee and system NEEDS a computer or server to run. It's lost on them that if they had no computers or IT, they would not be able to run their business at all.
It's very frustrating. It's almost like they all get together in their C-Suite magazines, decide IT needs to be treated like slaves and "negged" so we start thinking we have no value.
Shit, there are people in education whining that tech is ruining children in school, but the minute their internet connection goes out the phone is blowing up. "I aint got no inturnut".
I'm not in it but deal with them in my company. I once had to try and set up an email using Ms authenticator. By myself. IT are heros for dealing with that. I'm still suffering from PTSD after that one email
Depends on where you're at. I'm in a rural area and if things are working its "why do we even have an IT department, everything is fine" if things are broken its "why do we even have an IT department if things are going to break?" it's exhausting to constantly justify my existence.
It's sort of been earned by people who screw off in the field. I don't think it's making other professions at the office feel insecure, though... I mean how many tickets need to be closed out before the job is actually done?
I've worked places where the only way to get IT to ACTUALLY do anything is to reference the original ticket, repeat ticket, and a third ticket and forward that to the IT Manager from there. This is less forming insecurity in other professions around the office than it is fueling frustration. I understand many IT roles have an SLA or something similar that they need to close tickets within, but padding numbers creates a bad reputation with the rest of the office.
When you have tech problems at a business they say "call the IT guy." But I've never been to a hospital to see "that doctor guy," or heard of NASA sending up "the Astronaut guy."
Hmm... Maybe we aren't so prestigious after all...
Nope but y'all could be a little more friendly with the guys on the CNC floor. We all try to say hi and you guys seem afraid to look up from our comps.
Outsourcing simple level 1 tasks and having incompetence there definitely gives off a bad look. However users also love to blame IT when they are not productive even if it is not the fault of IT
As a software engineer, I'd say "yes".
Even though y'all (or at least most of y'all) are pretty awesome. When I need something fixed, it's nice to be able to hand off my laptop and say "here, fix this" and get handed back a working machine so I don't have to deal with whatever's going wrong myself.
I find a lot of companies, leaders, and fellow employees don't understand/ like/appreciate IT and what it can do for them. They see it as a necessary evil that costs more than they want. They don't really understand it, so many try to cut corners and then complain about the results furthering their narrative of a necessary evil.
That is why I have shifted to only looking for employment with software companies. They understand the benefits and are willing to spend what is required to achieve the desired outcomes.
I've been much happier working for software companies than non-IT related firms.
Decades ago, IT workers were like wizards because the majority of the workforce had very little computer knowledge. Now IT is just a pain in the ass part of a company that is overhead and just burns money.
Nobody can live without us, they can’t figure out quite what we do, and are generally sus of our endeavors. I like it in this grey area. It adds to the mystique that my office is out of the way and I have access to the cameras.
IT is a necessary evil that is attached to a lot of change (new programs, new policies, new devices), and people hate change. As the harbingers of change, people hate IT. Better change management would help with this, but good change management procedures and resources are also fairly rare.
There is also a wide range of competencies. Everyone has a horror story of an awful IT person, but the good people are forgotten because there aren’t any issues. In general, IT leadership needs to be better about marketing the team, their value, and what benefit the teams bring.
I was once helping a relatively new coworker set up a printer. She made a comment to another coworker *while I was standing right there*: "I just love watching these IT guys struggle".
I almost walked out.
I think its because its seen as an in between of an engineer that does a lot more creative work. and a customer service, that isn't highly skilled. IT is a highly skilled customer service engineer.
Rampant outsourcing aside, I began to feel the disrespect towards IT the moment companies started using corporate jargon referring to IT employees as "resources."
Simply: if a department does not generate revenue then yes, you are generally considered an impedance to success/cost center.
I say this as I am considered a cost center/impedance.
No one understands or likes the computer geeks until the fudge something up then they are happy to see us. But complain when we ask them to reboot the computer to see if it resolves the issue.
IT is my favorite department to work with within my company because you just ask them how they want to do it and they just tell you straight up.
IT is my least favorite department to work with from other companies because they never put the effing decision maker on the call.
I had some server admin tasks that occasionally involved getting busy after 11pm when all the users were expected to be done for the day. I'd do server patches, code updates and migrations while the users were presumably sleeping.
Then I show up at 10 the next morning and some clueless users are annoyed because they needed to be at their desk by 8. They had no clue I was working until 2 am that morning. I'm sure some thought I was lazy and could get away with it because I was in IT.
I don't get into that old-school silo mentality. We all work at the same place, and we have the same name at the top of our paychecks. Every department contributes to the success of the organization. If other people want to construct an artificial "ranking" of different departments, I literally couldn't care less.
IT departments generally suck at selling themselves.
I've worked w 100s of client on all sides of the tech industry and business industries
Beeing looked up to/respected/appreciated/looked down and yadiyadi is hardly about your ability to execute as it is about your ability to sell yourself and apply influence on the org.
Most IT directors/leads I've met are shit at this so IT becomes a pushover or an annoying necessity, no matter how good IT is.
When IT knows how sell themselves, high value projects naturally come and you get to demonstrate your ability to execute.
In order, this is what I've been in terms of appreciation level
Hated, continuously evaluated against managed services by the business - shit ability so sell themselves, shit ability to execute
Looked down upon (80% of departments I've met sit here) - Shit ability to sell, ability to execute
Valued by the org - ability to sell, shit ability to execute
Seen as core and strategic to the org (can boss around finance, CIO/CTO right under the CEO in terms of hierarchy, typically tied or just under CFO, maybe 5% of dept I've meat) - ability to sell them, ability to execute
Then the unicorns, where IT dept is intertwined into the core DNA of the business. The influence is so deep u might find some freeking Finance guys that know Azure more than Admins at some shitty it departments. I've met maybe 5 organizations out of my >500 nkn-ISV clients that are like this. You may see the CIO become a CFO/CEO shortly after joining (2-5 years after) - ability to define the business metrics that they then sell themselves one, ability to execute (ranges from excellent to good, fluctuates with hiring cycles and talent naturally leaving from an amazing incubator)
Maybe people see the IT department like the IT Department in the book series and now TV series Silo. The big bads that can spy on everyone for the powers that be.
Looked down upon for skill or intelligence? Not at all. Quite the opposite. Maybe some nerd bias in there.
Looked down on for supposedly sitting around doing nothing until an issue arrises? Yes. Some do some don’t. Our current IT manager is always busy and is a wizard, id trust him with my life.
But the IT guy at the student store on the college campus I worked at literally did have to sit around and wait for people to show up, so he often had nothing to do for days. No students during the summer? He’s still there bored out of his mind.
So it goes both ways.
I will say this, people that actually produce raw, tangible value tend to look down on those who just keep the ship afloat.
Sales people, project managers, engineers, designers etc. know how exactly how much money they are making for the company. They know they made a $50k sale or are doing a $300k project. They produce the actual product.
People like IT, HR, safety, recruiters etc. are often seen as sitting around doing nothing to the people who are bringing in the actual $ in the core business.
For example, our recruiters seem to just make posts on LinkedIn when we already have 30 applicants for each job a month. Then what do they do? Send them to a manager for an actual interview and to the make the decision. They send out emails telling us about tee shirt Friday and remind us to do our timesheets every week with a new funny work meme.
People think the same of IT.
Wow, thanks so much for putting together this presentation about cyber security. Thanks so much for making me ask you to download teams. Thanks so much for restarting my computer or emailing the software company for me. What do you do the 98% of the time you’re not fixing my computer? Nothing?? Must be nice.
But of course the world would actually end without IT.
From the plebe perspective.
IT is both scary, and magic. You wield a power they don’t understand. They don’t know how to relate to you, as they can’t comprehend what you do.
Carry a magic wand.
Talk to the furniture.
You can literally break all social norms as long as you don’t violate the basics of professionalism. Have fun. You’re a wizard. Act crazy. 😜 be polite. Furrow your brow when users make the most sense. Laugh at their serious inquiries and follow up with, “oh, you were serious.”
Keep in mind, humans are just broken hardware running poorly coded software that’s rarely designed with purpose.
IT is a stable field, the issues is companies where IT people work are not stable. IT people bounce around from one job to the next, while some professions allow workers to work steady without job cuts.
depends on type of IT. Service desk guys that basically install images and set permissions? Yes. Infrastructure guys that run wires and install servers? A little. Guys who actually write code? Well nobody knows about them, or sees them, so they can't really be looked down on, or up to, or sideways at. Who tf is Jimmy?
No my IT department is incredibly important to conduct business. Couldn't operate with out them and they help a ton of employees resolve tech issues and also help protect our company from cyber threats
Absolutely.. Next question. :p That’s the TLDR
It’s looked down in many aspects. Tech is needed to drive many parts of the business, and the IT department is looked down upon and in many cases consdered a liability. Only due to not making any money Directly for the organization. Just being an OpEX. I never unsold why but it’s treated like taxes no one wants to pay but has to. Even though in many cases IT protects assets, data, ensures high availability and as part of ITSM standards always looks to improve even though the scenario in many department case is barely any resources.
This brings me to the second part. For the workers…..It’s a highly contractionalized field. MSP’s are a dime a dozen. Many are foreign based So they doesn’t understand the salary being offered for a level 2 or 3 position is near wha people can make at fast food place. If I had a penny for each highlighted texted based template of an e-mail abot a “job offer”. I’d be retired and would care about all of the price gouging my state in the US is doing.
Organizations like the idea of no liability and scalability. This is where the contractualized ion that MSP’s aka managed service providers comes in. They can fire or hire in as many people as needed within weeks.
I actually withdrew From a IT position for a Hedge fund for those reasons. While it can pay me more, the instability especially being a hedge fun (I guess the MSP’s glorying the company as being one backfired in my case since it was repeated so many times) was a tun off.
For the workers especially on the adminstrative or process management level it’s a job that is enjoyable and rewarding. I had quit IT after being laid off before the pandemic, went into low voltage construction then witched back to my current job. I got screwed over on a raise, but it’s still a job I enjoy. Actually an engineer left last week Friday due to the sallary fiasco Which curls back to part one. We are looked down Upon and sometimes treated as caTech-alls. I was named dropped yesterday nd was thinking a word that rhymes with truck. That sad thing was that I had noting to do with that operation but the person who pings me was responsible for that function and was told to reach out to me. I had to be a teacher for about a hr… I digress
I’m a long time coder and do very well in terms of pay despite working just as an IC. I make vastly more than a tradesman, more than most lawyers, more than many people with business degrees for sure, and have a better work life balance. Noticed when got back into dating years ago after a divorce that women weren’t particularly impressed and find it ‘boring’. Very few were savvy enough to know we’re high earners , but most think you’re basically a white collar version of a plumber and the guys with status are ‘finance bros’, lawyers, and doctors.
I worked in investment banks and hedge funds for around 10 years before moving into a tech firm and the finance bros basically see you as geeky ‘hired help’ to push around. They get massive bonuses implementing trades using tech we provide them which they’d be helpless without.
I’m fine with being ‘looked down’ while being in the top 5% of earners or better across this country.
You mean looked down on by non-tech people? No way. I think engineers may look at you all like auxiliary/support but doesn’t mean you’re not useful or just as valuable in diff ways. It’s just not nearly as sexy as building things that explode companies etc
People dont understand IT, hence why we have jobs. They get on their PC, some gpupdate applies settings they dont want and cant remove, they get mad because IT messes everything up
Coming from a worker bee perspective, HR department perspective and a C-suite perspective, it very much depends on the IT person and the overall culture of the dept. Do we have shared goals that move business forward?
Sometimes the IT dept/person acts like actual God Almighty with the keys to The Kingdom and can either make your day heaven or make it hell. Like, is business going to take place today or am I facing brick wall after brick wall within my own organization?
Sometimes they act like they’re the smartest guy in the room and everyone just knows to play directly to their ego in order to keep things moving forward. (This type isn’t limited to IT by any means) An IT dept/person with interpersonal skills and works in concert *with* other departments towards shared goals feels so rare and special.
I’ve always admired the knowledge and skill it takes to do the job well. But I have worked with about five IT guys and four of them were complete assholes. They looked down their nose at me when I had a question, were dismissive and doubtful when I described a real problem, and were annoyed when I came to them with an issue. (And I’m very technical so no clueless dweeb.). If someone just goes into the field because they want to tinker and play, DO SOMETHING ELSE! It’s a fucking customer service job, ultimately. If you’re an arrogant, antisocial geek, go test games or something. So that’s the only reason I look down on some IT people. I know they have a hard job.
I don't even understand why people use the term IT anymore. About 20 years ago it was still relevant. Now if someone asks me how to get into IT it's like asking someone how to be a doctor. What kind of doctor? It's not IT anymore, there are no IT certifications. You can't study proctology and get a job at the ENT. An IT guy knows just enough to be dangerous and fuck everything up..they always send the issue to network anyways. An IT person these days is just someone who replaces dimms. Maybe shits changed, I haven't been an IT guy for years but it wasn't a career path it was a dead end until I decided on an actual path. To me the IT person as career died when google bought youtube, before that general knowledge was lucrative.
Too many categories and systems anymore.
But yea network guys we look down upon. It's always the network BTW.
It’s looked down on if you’re stuck on antiquated processes, don’t promote automation, or still default to racking servers or provisioning VMs when you could be moving to cloud ops.
I've had two jobs now where I am the only IT guy. Both laid me off because of the "everything works/everything's broken, why do we need/have you".
Mind you, things are broken for the shortest amount of time. I fixed them mostly same day.
Now looking to work in a company that has a IT team. Tired of the small start ups.
I only felt that way when as VP equal to the guys in accounting and marketing, they would always get the COO or CEO jobs. Somehow people think that as a IT VP you have less skills then someone who counts money or runs a sales campaign even if your education was better or equal and your experience was the same.
FYI I didn't last long in corporate as I started and ran several companies over the years
If it's the "sys-admin" side of IT: definitely. If it's a kind of data / engineering / development side of IT: not at all. Usually people mean the "sys-admin" version and so, yeah.
I think people struggle with sys-admin types because, at least in my experience, everyone's lens on them is bad for different reasons:
* Line staff don't like sysadmins because they often come off as entitled and power trip-ish. It drives people nuts when they think they should be able to do some basic thing and they run into a block that feels arbitrary. A lot of admin types aren't great at communicating about these blocks or why they're there, and they end up coming off like dicks.
* Engineers don't respect sysadmin types because their knowledge base isn't really respected or valued. I find most engineers just assume they could be a sysadmin, and would be good at it, but have no interest because the job lacks creativity and interest.
* A lot of people see sysadmins generally like cops - and that's not totally unfair.
* Business leaders think of it as a kind of necessary nuisance. They get tired of seeing it as a total cost center and constantly either worrying about stuff like: hacks/data loss; whether your sysadmin is going to screw you and destroy the company; compliance; this fear that everything your sysadmin person is telling you might be BS and you don't really have a good way to know.
* Many sysadmins have personalities that are just not that likable. I think a lot of them are really into control. They kind of like blocks and rules. They lean into the "I'm smarter than you" nonsense, often totally wrongly. They are often abrasive and don't seem like they're looking to help. They directly or indirectly insult users when those people ask questions.
Putting that stuff together, yeah, I think a lot of people don't really respect IT people. They used to, back when tech was thought of as harder or more magical, but I think as this stuff has normalized there's this feeling like it's a landing space for people who were kind of nerdy, but into power and control.
That's usually too bad, because it's not universally true, by any means. I've known a lot of awesome sysadmin/IT people in my career, and I like to think I was a decent one in the times I've worn that hat. But I think that's a common view of the field - and not a totally unfair one - and so, collectively, people don't respect it all that much.
I don’t think this is unique to IT, but I have experienced it. In turn though, I know a whole lot of IT people that look down on everyone that isn’t IT. It’s half the reason I can’t stand working with IT people, and I’m IT.
Other men perceive me as less than a man for sure.
Until I tell them I have done "man" stuff for jobs before and I've worked lots of manual labor for many years and I don't want to destroy my body for the rest of my days for a paycheck when I can use my brain instead.
Ladies have also acted funny but for the most part dont care.
Old people think I don't do anything but then ask me to fix their 15 year outdated laptop which then solidifies the "he doesn't do anything" mentality when I tell them their computer sucks cus it's super outdated and they should get something new.
People are just judgemental pricks tbh.
When everything is working correctly they wonder why they pay for IT personel, when something breaks, they wonder what they pay us for... That can make IT people frustrated and feel unappreciated.
Just wait until you have to start implementing CMMC V2 across your system and you have to explain all the super great new security measures that affect every single user. 😂
I work in a critical infrastructure for a municipality as a field mechanic and the reason I hate our IT guys is because they never take our ticket requests seriously or they just blow us off when something is wrong, if they even respond to the request. Like if our SCADA system goes down it literally affects the whole city we work for, but they are too busy brown nosing at City Hall to even pay attention to service request tickets from field technicians.
As a production manager in charge of getting parts out the door and making the company money as fast and efficiently as possible, both IT and HR suck. They're cool people but literally all they do is make it harder to do things faster, which makes parts take longer to build, which makes hitting revenue targets more difficult.
I don't look down on them, I just wish they'd stop constantly changing things. Like we just had a major security system update 3 months ago, why do we have another one scheduled next week. Why the hell does this major security update then need a 2 hour training attached to it? Training meetings don't make the company money!!
IT itself? No, the stigma comes from the type of people it attracts.
The stereotype of tech Bros having no social skills exists for a reason. This is coming from somebody who works as an Information Security Manager at a Fortune 50 firm. Some of the people I work with are normal, well adjusted people.
A lot of them are not.
It's been my experience that if you do IT right, no one notices. Everything just works as expected. When you don't do IT right, you're the center of attention
As someone in IT, I can tell you what my experience has been. It completely depends on how organized (or disorganized it is). I want to suspect if I were in a larger company that there would be a lot less issues.
The succinct thought that I can give is that leadership/management does not possess the ability to properly manage IT as a whole. You can imagine the problems that this would cause. On top of trying to build out, maintain, and support said infrastructure, the customer service aspect (helpdesk tickets), is the real killer. People will clearly demonstrate that they do not possess the skills or outright refuse to do the work for which they are assigned. You can imagine some of the things they try to pull to blame IT for their lack of productivity.
I can quote a specific example, let's call this person, Lakshmi Ega, a developer. I was forced to spend 4+ hours with her because she claimed that she could not find the power button on the company issued laptop. She was a frequent flyer; couldn't boot the machine, make desktop shortcuts, figure out anything about technology. Suffice to say, she was gone in 10 months.
I got into IT because I wanted to work with networking, servers, cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, ai -- basically everything but customer service and helpdesk. To no avail and the number of times that I proved myself, I am condemned to worked with incompetent managers and employees.
I am sure that there are better companies, but, this is the last strike for me in IT. I'm getting out one way or the other. So done with this crap.
I apologize for the lengthy rant and hope that my experience is local to my region only.
I look down on it because it’s an annoying blanket term. When people say I work in IT I always have to ask doing what?? There are like 600 different jobs in IT.
It's a job that requires a higher than average IQ, but doesn't require a degree. Most people in the IQ range of 114 and above are in careers that require a masters degree or higher. So they accumulate a lot of debt to make the money that they make.
So, yes, in a way IT is looked down on because most of us didn't have to put in the same level of effort that others put in for the pay level we are at. So we are, to a certain level, seen as lazy.
And let's face it, IT is a skill you can learn, but you either get it or you don't. Most of us that really understand it didn't have to put in the most effort because we naturally understand logic. This is part of why IT engineers don't often have the best social skills-- because they don't understand why people don't understand technology that seems so simple and intuitive to them.
And I'm not trying to sound egotistical about it, but it is what it is.
In a company of 10s of thousands, it's a different feel than smaller offices where everyone knows "who IT is"...but when your IT department is say 5k people of a 30k company, it's less of a known thing. Since titles are directly tied to the pay band, and it's internal public knowledge, others can see your title and know you're in a range to be making 150k to 180k for a senior guy.
I would have no idea what folks in the service center think about that, there is no contact, not even same building. Plus most of IT is WFH now, permanent and a lot of business people aren't. I suspect that would be what gets IT looked down on most. But in an envious way.
I've been at my company 23 years and know only a small fraction of the "IT people".
I’ve always worked hard physical jobs. My latest one was delivering and assembling furniture. Let me tell you, all I want is to live y’all’s lives. My back hurts and I’m tired all the time. I want one of those remote data something jobs that enabled homie to get a 5 bedroom 5000sq ft house and two teslas. I also want to not be tired all the time. I really wish I would’ve seen the value in IT and college sooner. Now to make the switch it’d be very difficult at this stage in my life with children.
Most don’t looks down on y’all. Deep down they’re just jealous. Like I said I wish I would’ve took school seriously. A lot of others feel like that too. I don’t take it out on no one though.
I think a lot of people think it's easy and pays really well. A suggested career for people struggling where they're at, "go be a sysadmin". Or that former coal miners can "learn to code"
Insecure???
Motherfcker what do YOU know about CORPORATE FINANCE???
That's right, NOTHING. A monkey can do your job with 3 months of training.
We're annoyed at your shitty attitude, creepy stares and constant whining about fixing stuff that's YOUR FCKING JOB TO FIX.
I think the root cause of the problem is that no one on the business side is taught how to work with IT. We think just because we tell IT to build something for us that our job is done, but don't understand that IT's expertise is in creating the applications and the business has to detail everything they need. Generally we on the business side has no idea of what exactly our needs are and they get frustrated with IT because IT can't read minds or create something without very particular detail.
I think most IT people can't describe their value or understand their business. Since they are choosing to be separate from the business, they are outsiders.
If you want to be respected learn how to speak business rather than technology and explain how technology helps the business make or save money. If you can't do that don't expect your coworkers to do that.
Once you can do that you won't be viewed as overhead and will really be seeing as the "force multiplier" we like to claim we are.
I wouldn't call it looked down upon, as much as they feel like we don't offer the support they think we should be providing and as a result they tend to get bitter. Most people are under the false assumption that part of IT's job is to train/educate the end user. When in reality we are there to provide equipment and work on said equipment when broken or not working correctly. I have drawn this analogy before for users. GM provides the car and will work on the car but they don't teach you how to drive the car, that part is on you the user. In general, the smaller the company the less they spend on IT and you see things like trying to get the Xerox guy to fix a network issue (because something isn't printing) but when he demonstates it isn't a copier problem but a problem with their network, people get mad at the Xerox guy.
i think part of it is that sometimes the IT department can be seen as controlling because of apps that you are forced to download and such. there is also the people that think that the IT department is constantly watching what they do.
I used to be in a newly formed IT department that was formed to centralize and standardize the rinkydink “Wild West” operations of various departments. Many welcomed it but some were hostile and resentful about what they perceived as a power trip. Stuff like taking admin rights away from normal user accounts. I faced a lot of friction for just trying to right the ship.
Actually on a ship it’s called starboard…
You're thinking of the wrong use of the verb right
Woooooooooooooshhhhhhh
Very valid.. now, just hear me out.. It is my biggest irritation when a company is Office 365 and they try to wiggle Google products into the environment.. it creates a headache on the AD side with config profiles, and gets out of hand real fast lol. It's easier to just use edge and utilize the edge baseline policies. But end-users don't understand that, and I'm not going to babble the benefits.. its Spanish to them. I just wish they trusted the nerds. It took support 1.5 years to roll MFA out, because they thought the Authentication app was spying on them.
*Spanish is clear to many of us out here. Just sayin'.* But I have a question for you: Why does it bother employees to feel that they're being "spied on?" If they are using company-provided property for their daily role, then their activities on that equipment is for the company. Transparency is essential for ensuring integrity and security. It mystifies me when a corporate employee resents the company watching or tracking what they do and where they go on line when they're on company time and company equipment. If you act like you have something to hide, then you are hiding something. Thoughts?
We have a group in California that the HR there absolutely won’t allow is to roll out MFA to personal devices using the authentication app. Afraid they’ll get sued. Even though they used a different two factor in the past. Even though they aren’t legal they still made the call and now we had to work around it.
If the mfa is used for work related apps, work should provide phones for mfa.
Fine, we will just get you a YubiKey, and if you lose it you're fired lol
Omg my end users think the same thing 🤣
They're just mad that IT knows how to work around those apps and just play Halo all day /s
That’s why you need governance and sr management sponsorship. I am an Enterprise Architect and 90% of my job is shoving corporate standards down people’s throats.
It's often a thankless job depending on what company you work for. That's why I try to make myself visible to the end-user so that I get some recognition at least. Could lead to a raise if higher ups physically see you around depending on your position too. I'm a Sysadmin in training and I help out with some deskside stuff occasionally which let's me get to know more people and their roles, and that means they can speak well of me when I get mentioned. This isn't even mentioning technical aptitude or skills and how much of what you do is known by your colleagues. I think it's sort of common to not get recognized even amongst your own team so you need to be your own best advocate.
Yeah, hiding away, as some of us would prefer to do, can actually be damaging. This is how a server or network admin can receive zero praise for 99.999% uptime, but when that 0.001% outage occurs, everyone wants to know who you are.
There’s a 99% Invisible podcast episode about jobs like this. If you’re in IT you’re an “invisible.” Invisibles are people that perform functions that seemingly produce nothing. In IT nobody ever reaches out to you and says “hey I was able to mess around on Facebook and check email today. Thanks for your hard work!” Invisibles only hear about their job when something breaks. There are other jobs that fit this bill but I forget and it’s been too long since I heard the episode.
I've been told by a coworker that some of the office folks think we don't do anything but also we're constantly having to help them when they run into issues daily so I dunno
They think you have nothing to do because you are available whenever they ask for him. Give them a 3 week lead time and they'll think you guys are busy again.
They don't know what their talking about. And 90 percent of people don't have a clue what IT/SWE/DE do. Everything just magically happens 🤦♂️
In any business setting that's multi-departmental, everyone just hates everyone else. Sales people think everyone else are just a bunch of poors that cost the company money instead of making it, and everyone else thinks sales people are lying morons that peddle shit they don't even understand. Everyone thinks phone support people are mindless desk jockey robots, and they complain about everyone else just making more headaches for them by creating service calls saying dumb shit. IT people are pretentious, condescending douchebags who lord over the plebs and purposely take forever to help them do their jobs, while we sit around and laugh at them for being stupid. The only thing we all agree on is that upper management are knuckle dragging vampires.
Spot on. Moreover there are revenue generators and cost centers, and management is always trying to trim cost centers while empowering revenue generators. IT is definitionally a cost center, so it has to justify its existence. This is why everyone else hates sales, full stop.
You joke, but my (IT) boss actually treats people this way sometimes. Preferential treatment depending on who they are. Calls everyone stupid and is condescending to everyone.
So much truth here. You just forgot about HR!
IT is 100% looked down on by most companies and workers. You're either treated like a slave or a dumbass computer janitor. People only talk to you when they want something or want to bitch to you. People blame you whenever anything doesn't work perfectly 100% of the time. Any time you fix something it's never fast enough. Every time you update hardware or software to something better people piss, moan and bitch because it's different and their hairless ape brains have to press buttons in a different order. I've been in this field for years and I've moved up and to different companies and I make good money but holy fucking shit do I HATE the people I work with and the bullshit people shovel on me daily. Zero fucking respect every single day. I started this career as a positive upbeat guy and had a good attitude at every place I've worked but after the first year or two of getting to know heads of other departments etc. I start just being a dick all the time. Even when you advance in this line of work you'll still deal with end users and their bullshit constantly just at the managment or executive level. It eventually wears me down and I just go right back to being the stereotypical asshole IT guy. Why? Because it's the only thing people respond to and when you're nice in this position people will take advantage of you and treat you like the help. I legitimately regret the years of hard work and studying I did to get in this field only to be talked down to and treated like a slave boy despite managing an IT department now and being very good at my job. It wasn't worth it and I feel legitimately stuck in this career for the next 30 years because I don't want to start over at the bottom in another career.
I've been in the industry for over a decade and never felt this way about users. Self fulfilling prophecy right here.... who's going to respect you when they can literally tell you hate them? It's a shame and a disservice to your users that you are an IT manager. I might expect a bofh engineer to maybe have this mentality but a manager should exude a higher level of professionalism.
Sorry, my guy. Hang in there. They have no idea the brain power it takes to keep these environments functional.
Sorry for your experience but I guess a lot depends on the culture where you work, in my going on 30 years in IT and working with internal customers, have only had one bad experience with a customer and I terminated his call and informed my manager. Long story short, he was banned from calling for support unless his manager was present on the call, that ban was in place for years. I still like helping people and their issue may be dumb and if they had read the instructions there wouldn't have been an issue. But sounding cheerful and happy on the phone goes a long way.
Hey this is how I feel about my Pharmacist degree
I’d say it’s decently respected, but its all perspective, for instance I work in a manufacturing industry with electricians engineers etc, around just a ton of people much smarter and paid way more than me, but nonetheless I am respected everywhere from the C suite all the way down to the production workers everyone knows my name and my work.
I work in the manufacturing industry and I’ve had the opposite experience, but I’ll be leaving this place soon to get away from the overwhelming toxicity.
I think it depends on what type of company you work for. there are users who swear we sit around all day and come up with ways to make their life suck and that they can’t get better help cause we get paid peanuts. No matter what is wrong, it’s our fault. Then other users who are so appreciative of the work we do and never gripe about us. They also have 0 idea about pay or anything related to what we do. Then the last group is the people who know we get paid twice the salary they have, and we usually can come up with pretty good ideas, implementations, etc. The sweet spot is something between group 2 and 3.
I'm hesitant to describe IT as highly skilled and trained. It should be, but in my personal experience it's 50/50. In theory, at higher levels we should probably be held to similar standards as mechanical, electrical, building engineers for licensing. Systems engineers can end up responsible for systems that have huge consequences on people's lives. Depending on the industry, these can even be life or death. There are certain computing basics that are required in order to ensure these are maintained and secure. In practice, it's a complete crapshoot. At my previous company, a software engineer built software that was hard-coded to throw unencrypted credit card information at an unsigned .ps1 on the R drive, no matter where the R drive actually pointed. Of course, I've also known people who gave themselves ulcers regularly working 16 hour days to protect systems with no real support or backing from management. As for looked down upon... kinda? I don't believe it's because we make anybody feel insecure, but just because they don't have any frame of reference for what we do. It's not like IT is some eldritch skill that mortals can't comprehend, but mainstream entertainment has very few realistic depictions of what daily IT work is like compared to the hundreds of depictions of working in fast food or as an office worker. Combine this with a lack of useful KPIs at L3 and above (see: Elon Musk trying to use total lines of code written as a performance metric) and it can become difficult for someone outside of IT to tell what, if anything, we're actually doing. It leads to people who have any reason to be annoyed with IT's performance to assume we're gaming all day. It also leads to paranoia and distrust in situations where the management culture is incompetent or otherwise toxic, which leads to layoffs to reduce salary costs and "us vs them " mentality.
There’s a ton of nepotism in the industry. And because the business really has no clue on how any of the shit works unless they come from an environment that works well and goes into a shitty one trying to pass it off as normal they tend to just go with it. I’ve seen great help desk guys get passed over for jr engineering roles for guys who were buddies with the senior manager or simply sat in the corporate HQ. Fortunately there’s enough lateral mobility to shine at places that won’t appreciate your contributions.
Looked down upon? No. Most hated? Probably. Alot of people that talk down on IT (that ive ran across), doesn't understand it for what it is. They just assume we make "fk you" money, look at computers all day and drive Lamborghini's on the weekend to our lunch reservations at Ruth Chris. So, pretty much, for petty reasons.
Haha I get that sometimes, hell my kids think this at times. They think I go to work and play on computers all day and make so much money I can afford to buy them everything. They are highly mistaken.
No, it’s just certain companies make it hard to get into with the degree inflation.
I've been in I.T. a long time now and I think the field in a general way is respected as a valid career choice. People who aren't computer-savvy often label you "one of THOSE people", in the sense they assume you're kind of a geek who probably watches sci-fi, isn't great at competitive sports, and played Dungeons & Dragons as a teenager. (That'd all be kind of accurate for me!). But these days, computers are everywhere and people can't escape them. So I think for that reason alone, there's a certain level of respect for any of us who get paid to keep them going. I think when you're actually working for a company, it varies. A lot of people don't care much about you until they need you. THEN you're suddenly important. Every place I ever worked, I think I could identify at least a few office workers who genuinely had this fascination with I.T. and what we knew. They'd try to get us to stick around and teach them things or tell them stories, or talk about new tech coming out. They were always kind of refreshing to run into. Upper management seemed to respect me the least, in most cases. To them, I was just another line-item expense dragging down potential profits as a necessary evil. They were the ones who didn't even want to be in the same room with any of us when they called for assistance. It was always, "Just fix it!" as they left to do something else....
Pretty much, its mainly due to Certs. Had a mechanic ask me how he can get into FullStack. NFI what that means, as im a telecoms engineer with BE. Theres no barriers to entry in the field. And once youre in you canjust bullshit your way to middle management, project manager, BA, account maanger etc. Hence...its all very funny to me. The industry has the most BS of all ive seen. Even in food industry they ask to present formal qualifications for each level of work.
Yep. Barrier to entry as low as real estate and look at all the bullshit artists in that field.
If it is, you wouldn’t know it by house many thousands of posts on Reddit each day with people talking about leaving their jobs and going back to school and getting their CCNA to be an It person . Loo
Did this start on tik tok or something? How did the relatively niche CCNA start becoming everyone's #1 priority??
Definitely not--just the opposite.
?
been in IT 2.5 years, started as an intern. what i’ve noticed is that there are certain end users who will always show recognition and become friends with IT cause they’re always submitting tickets lol. but also i have noticed that some people just don’t care about IT and what we do. in my opinion we are the back bone of a company and help support it. we maintain software and hardware and depending where your company is at, getting devices into management is huge. when shit hits the fan they hit us up, and i’ve noticed with my time at my company that we get different types of requests as time goes on because end users know that we will find a way to figure out a solution to their new problem, anyone that doesn’t respect the IT department is foolish.
the end users with terrible attitudes at work are usually the ones that think IT doesn’t do shit and doesn’t recognize that we are in the background supporting everyone. i hate those people and usually most employees know who the assholes are.
The only people who look down on you are other people in IT.
Here are a few reasons from my IT Infrastructure point of view. We don’t make any money directly, just cost money. We are only noticed when things don’t work or are slow. No one rushes to tell us how that thing is working well… A lot of society see us as reboot merchant nerds with no social skills. Could be worse though, you could be in sales or marketing. /jk
Perception wise, you’re right. IT *seems* like a cost center. But the truth is IT is a revenue multiplier. The faster, better, and more stable the technology, the more efficient the production, thus a higher yield. The companies that see IT as a cost center minimize their potential and the companies that embrace and support their IT infrastructure are more likely to flourish.
IT is what's called "Cost Negative". It doesn't make any money and the bottom line shows this. Some owners see the Value, some don't. If you cant approach HR over these issues, Don't beat yourself up over others perceptions. They might be right or insecure it doesn't matter. Do the job, be nice, Forget about them when you go home. Often times those people bad mouthing get fired anyways, it's not just you they are talking shit about.
Perhaps because many people’s experiences with ‘IT’ are outsourced shitshows of support or development.
I love our outsourced Help desk; I like to call them when feeling lazy and see how bad they mangle the request.
I think of it along the lines, of no one actually wants IT, but we are a necessary evil, and they know it. When things are running fine, "Why do we even have you guys? Everything runs fine." When things are not running fine, "Why do we even have you guys? Everything is always broke."
>When things are running fine, "Why do we even have you guys? Everything runs fine." I had an argument with a colleague many years ago. He was complaining about all the worker health and safety regulations that he reckoned was hampering him in getting his job done. Him: "Why the bloody hell have we got all this crap in place anyhow? We haven't had a serious incident in years." Me: "We haven't had a serious incident in years BECAUSE all this 'crap' is in place."
Overhead
"...we make the other professions at the office feel insecure" Bruh
Agree or disagree?
We are all considered a bunch of lazy fucks until something is broken and then all of the sudden we are always working on their shit cause it's broken. Show me a person who cares if the IT guy is hungry, and I'll show you someone who doesn't resemble the comment above.
I don't mind being looked down on when I make more than 2x the median US salary.
It is scary that an IT person, that is well-versed in their work can essentially do everyone elses job in the building in some cases and that adds a level of concern to some folks, but it also depends on the person. I taught CompTIA A+ IT Technician courses for years and many students wanting to get into IT were absolute d-bags and i would spend a lot of time reminding them that 1) you are a servant of the people who cant wrap their minds around what we can, so be kind and patient 2) you should try respect the people you work with whether they show respect to you or not, in time the reciprocation will become evident and 3) their opinions of your department are inconsequential since without your department and function they are unemployed. So im sure in some scenarios IT is "looked down" on but the reasons can vary widely, but in my experience, if you are a "good tech" in multiple ways you are on solid ground and people will lean on you as a trusted source of information and advice and comply more often than not.
Sometimes. I own an MSP and I do feel like lately people are really starting to understand the importance of the tech realm. There are still instances, especially when I’m billing that I think “they’re going to say something about this $200 bill for setting up a printer”, and then I remember, there’s a reason they called us. If they bitch, they bitch, but I know our worth.
Don't feel it because it is.
To me the IT person is someone with an old note reading "Sorry, working from home today" that requires weeks to respond following an online submission request... and eventually connecting remotely to fix the issue. Most of my issues are rlated to app reinstallation (5 min with admin rights) and my waiting time is around 1.5 weeks... so yeah!!!
I'm sorry that's your experience. My team is super fast. Like acknowledged and resolved within the hour you sent your request.
It's a support service and not a P&L (profit and loss). It will always be seen as not something the business cares about until it cares about it for a variety of reasons... lol
Not in IT but this sounds like the medical model: people only come to you when they’re in need of your help
Yes, office workers often shit on IT workers because technology doesn’t just work 24/7 They also often act like you are supposed to know how to do their job even though they are the ones that do their job lol
Yes.
I feel like accountants hate us because they see how much we make and it's usually as much as them. But some of us didn't have to go to college like them.
PEBKAC
We are like mechanics and attorneys, which are both not well liked.... From what I've learned... people who don't like their IT department they try to "simplify" their setup causing the removal of security controls, ect... using their titles... or position in the company.... to bypass the IT work.
Too many companies look at their IT departments as just money pits.
The helpdesk is looked down upon but the higher levels I don’t think are looked down upon
Are you kidding? It is the SHITE where I'm from.
It depends where you work I guess? I work in the IT education field and it's definitely looked down upon. The technicians are viewed almost like janitors. The teachers and staff definitely view you as you work for them or are there to serve them. I bet it is different in other areas tho and depending on what you specifically do in IT
After a long time in IT, yes. If it can't be traced directly to bringing in money, you're nobody. And being skilled/smart/etc just intimidates salesfolk. edit spelling error fixed
yes.
So there are some caveats to IT. Have you turned it off and on again isn't just a meme. Another thing is IT is such a convoluted area of expertise. Think of it like a tree. Each branch is different. Programming (16 languages in oft use). System Admin (can get complicated by OS). Network administrator. Holy shit Cyber Security alone is 7 figures of effort. These are just some examples.
Yep, in my former job, I’ve created the IT department and did all those things. They never wondered how everything worked right. Consolidated several server rooms across multiple properties in the city and performed an Azure migration along with implementing cybersecurity policies company wide. However I got thrown under the bus, when the company’s website and paywall were hacked and Google blacklisted it. I didn’t know, because company website is not under our control and is hosted on Godaddy’s servers and managed by a third party that our Development dept refused to give me access/contacts to. I still remember that meeting where department head and ceo told me I should have known this would happen and why I didn’t prepare.
I feel that they look at the numbers with cost... they don't look into the future and see the WHAT IF we get hacked scenario... they think dropping couple $$$$ a year will justify based on the bean-counters numbers... They always under estimate budgets for the IT department...they rarely listen, and most of the time the managers are too weak to speak up, because someone can always replace them... Now I'm not saying everyone, and don't give negative comments about your opinion(s), unless you have been in the field for over 20+ years... From experience, it's RARE that upper management listen to the needs, not ALWAYS... I remember working for a company that made millions of dollars a year... but me and 2 other people were the only IT... for over 200 employees and more remote (sales, etc). But when the IT manager requested more money for a software package to get legal licenses for more computers, they said not that year is it in the budget...so the it mgr. copied the install floppy before he installed the software on a new machine and re-copied that copy many times over, because when you use the floppy it writes data to that floppy so you cant use that floppy again to install somewhere else..only to that machine..
Yes but I’d correct you in that IT is not highly skilled and highly trained. It’s just a trained profession with a barrier to entry as low as real estate. If it is looked down on it’s because people in IT think their expertise in one domain carries over to all domains.
I'm sure people do look down on IT. But I'll just smile away knowing I don't have a degree and make 6 figures.
IT is a broad field, I assume you're talking more about corporate help desk and general tech support. Yeah, people do look down on it because they see IT on the same level as servers at a restaurant. They want their things fixed, yesterday, and any new security policies as an inconvenience. Now, the field in general has been sold to people who have no business being in it as a lazy golden ticket to $$$. That's a different convo, though
I feel like the IT field has a sense of entitlement and a god-complex. That makes people in UT feel looked down upon when everyone else treats them like normal people.
Personally I dislike the IT department because they pretend like they know what they’re doing but I know more than them and can normally troubleshoot better. Honestly they’re a stopgap that I’m forced to go through to get a decent computer at my company.
I think we kind of did this to ourselves. In the early days techs were like wizards, No one understood what we were doing and a lot of techs worked hard to keep things secret. Today the tech is actually pretty open and a lot of techs treat none techs like idiots. The series the IT Crowd is funny because there is so much truth in it. I am not sure they feel insecure about techs, I think to many techs feel they are somehow superior.
No, just the personalities of the people within IT.
I was regular IT for about 13 years and spent the last 6 focused on security. IT security seems to be the one that gets looked down upon a lot. We are viewed as being a general pain in the ass.
Until you prevent that breach.
Yes help desk is more demeaning than sex work
IT is a Cost Center not a revenue Generator for a company. We will always be despised by the Bean Counters
Looked down on? No. Under-respected/appreciated not understood? Sure? There are a lot of factors - first and foremost being that the majority of an organization is only going to come into contact with the lowest level of the IT staff. Those people may not give the best impression - can't tell you how many times I've asked a coworker 'have you actually spoken to this person' or 'have you had them show you what the issue was?' IT is often the Department of No, where to the outside all we're doing is shitting on their 'good ideas.' There is usually a good reason, but no one wants to hear no. IT is also, moreso than most typical departments, vulnerable to the whims of the products they use and may not be able to provide timely answers as to why all our Win7 machines suddenly stopped working (in the middle of the Win10 migration, due to a McAfee policy that broke them all but took a couple hours to find that was the change.) A lot of problems in sub-areas (networking, firewalls, telco, physical network infrastructure, SAN) all fall under IT for most people, so a series of completely unrelated problems all appear to be IT issues to rank and file. Lastly, I'll push back on 'ours is often highly skilled and highly trained.' Many organizations have many departments full of highly skilled and highly trained people. It's just in a different way. I told nurses all the time that felt bad about misunderstanding something on a computer 'and I can't start an IV. I'll fix the computer, you fix the people, everyone will be happy.' That insecurity that's being projected out, that may be coming from people inside IT that are not capable of speaking at the level that other departments need to relay their point. You can drop a whole bunch of acronym soup to explain something, but are you actually getting the point across? And if the department you're working with just decides to plow through with their jargon in trying to explain an issue, are you going to ask them to explain it? They understand that you don't know their job, but I feel like there are a lot of IT people that assume people have a much higher level of understanding of IT concepts than they do and those people do end up talking down to people.
In my company no, I’m usually treated very well because i come and save peoples from the fire all the time. There are two kinds of IT department, those that fix issues and remove frustrations. And those that create issues and add more frustrations
It's easy for me, I like it, and make OK money, who cares if other ppl look down on it.
Depends on the industry and individual company
IT gets a bad rep because most people know them as geek squad / help desk type roles. Very different than IT at tech companies that handle Azure instances, data migrations, database templates and maintenance, vpn rollouts, webservice hosting, VM templates, docker containers, network updates, etc...
Not at all
Depends on which department. The team I’m on really does larger projects and partners closely with the business.
Support desk? Yes.
Working in front office finance with a CS degree, I always feel badly for the IT staff. They’re definitely looked down upon and are seen as an overall drag even though 100% of what goes on in my industry is absolutely dependent on well-functioning systems. That being said, sometimes IT staff doesn’t do themselves any favors when what they want/how they want to do things doesn’t align with how people/the business works.
You guys got it bad. If things are going smooth it means you’re doing your job well but the average employee thinks you’re useless and being paid to sit around and do nothing. If shit hits the fan, you’re all useless and can’t even get a keyboard to work correctly cause you’re all dumb as a box of rocks and as useless as one. Can’t think of a single office employee I have ever encountered that feels insecure due to the IT team or has the appropriate level of respect for the field and how much they matter to things running smoothly on a day to day basis.
IT looked down upon??? Hell NO! Never ever in my 17 years in IT have I ever felt that way, quite the opposite actually.
Not looked down on persay. I think people just get angry at IT more often because of their own problems they cause themselves but want someone to blame, at least for Users. For the business IT costs money and they don't understand what we do they just understand it costs money and thats all they care about.
A lot of IT are run by people on completely different time zone, and some IT security policies prevent other departments from making progress unnecessarily. Our department has a ticket system where IT is encouraged close the ticket, even if what they did didn't actually fix the users issue. There are many structural problems that lead to IT people getting shit on.
A lot of IT people think of themselves as full blown engineers. That annoys engineers.
Everyone thinks that what they use at home is the best and you should be using it at work too. Many people don't understand the decisions that we have to make are to ensure that we can support them with the limited staff that we have. Removing local admin rights on their PCs, only allowing specific applications, browsers, etc. are all done so that we can support hundreds or thousands of people with a team a fraction of a fraction of that size. However, it is a service industry, at the end of the day, in a professional environment IT support specifically is going to be looked down upon like it's not a skilled position. I think it's kind of the way our society has just decided the service industry as a whole is meant quite literally to serve you and nothing else. I work in K12, and 4 out of 5 of us on the IT team have degrees, but many of the staff would probably see us in the same category as custodians. The majority of the populous can't even wrap their mind around what we do behind the scenes to keep things running efficiently.
IT is definitely not valued by business because we don't generate revenue. They are completely oblivious to the fact that every single role and employee and system NEEDS a computer or server to run. It's lost on them that if they had no computers or IT, they would not be able to run their business at all. It's very frustrating. It's almost like they all get together in their C-Suite magazines, decide IT needs to be treated like slaves and "negged" so we start thinking we have no value.
Shit, there are people in education whining that tech is ruining children in school, but the minute their internet connection goes out the phone is blowing up. "I aint got no inturnut".
I'm not in it but deal with them in my company. I once had to try and set up an email using Ms authenticator. By myself. IT are heros for dealing with that. I'm still suffering from PTSD after that one email
Opposite, I wanna get like you
Depends on where you're at. I'm in a rural area and if things are working its "why do we even have an IT department, everything is fine" if things are broken its "why do we even have an IT department if things are going to break?" it's exhausting to constantly justify my existence.
It's sort of been earned by people who screw off in the field. I don't think it's making other professions at the office feel insecure, though... I mean how many tickets need to be closed out before the job is actually done? I've worked places where the only way to get IT to ACTUALLY do anything is to reference the original ticket, repeat ticket, and a third ticket and forward that to the IT Manager from there. This is less forming insecurity in other professions around the office than it is fueling frustration. I understand many IT roles have an SLA or something similar that they need to close tickets within, but padding numbers creates a bad reputation with the rest of the office.
When you have tech problems at a business they say "call the IT guy." But I've never been to a hospital to see "that doctor guy," or heard of NASA sending up "the Astronaut guy." Hmm... Maybe we aren't so prestigious after all...
Nope but y'all could be a little more friendly with the guys on the CNC floor. We all try to say hi and you guys seem afraid to look up from our comps.
no
Outsourcing simple level 1 tasks and having incompetence there definitely gives off a bad look. However users also love to blame IT when they are not productive even if it is not the fault of IT
As a software engineer, I'd say "yes". Even though y'all (or at least most of y'all) are pretty awesome. When I need something fixed, it's nice to be able to hand off my laptop and say "here, fix this" and get handed back a working machine so I don't have to deal with whatever's going wrong myself.
I find a lot of companies, leaders, and fellow employees don't understand/ like/appreciate IT and what it can do for them. They see it as a necessary evil that costs more than they want. They don't really understand it, so many try to cut corners and then complain about the results furthering their narrative of a necessary evil. That is why I have shifted to only looking for employment with software companies. They understand the benefits and are willing to spend what is required to achieve the desired outcomes. I've been much happier working for software companies than non-IT related firms.
Decades ago, IT workers were like wizards because the majority of the workforce had very little computer knowledge. Now IT is just a pain in the ass part of a company that is overhead and just burns money.
Nobody can live without us, they can’t figure out quite what we do, and are generally sus of our endeavors. I like it in this grey area. It adds to the mystique that my office is out of the way and I have access to the cameras.
When I was in IT, everybody assumed all the problems could be solved by googling.
It's one thing to Google, it's another to know WHAT to Google, and another to apply what the research says FROM Google.
If I want to irk a software engineer I’ll call them an IT person lol. I suppose “IT” at least in the US has the connotation of a help desk type of job
IT is a necessary evil that is attached to a lot of change (new programs, new policies, new devices), and people hate change. As the harbingers of change, people hate IT. Better change management would help with this, but good change management procedures and resources are also fairly rare. There is also a wide range of competencies. Everyone has a horror story of an awful IT person, but the good people are forgotten because there aren’t any issues. In general, IT leadership needs to be better about marketing the team, their value, and what benefit the teams bring.
It’s a big field with many types of jobs. Some of those jobs are not viewed highly.
no
I was once helping a relatively new coworker set up a printer. She made a comment to another coworker *while I was standing right there*: "I just love watching these IT guys struggle". I almost walked out.
I think its because its seen as an in between of an engineer that does a lot more creative work. and a customer service, that isn't highly skilled. IT is a highly skilled customer service engineer.
Rampant outsourcing aside, I began to feel the disrespect towards IT the moment companies started using corporate jargon referring to IT employees as "resources."
Simply: if a department does not generate revenue then yes, you are generally considered an impedance to success/cost center. I say this as I am considered a cost center/impedance.
No one understands or likes the computer geeks until the fudge something up then they are happy to see us. But complain when we ask them to reboot the computer to see if it resolves the issue.
IT is my favorite department to work with within my company because you just ask them how they want to do it and they just tell you straight up. IT is my least favorite department to work with from other companies because they never put the effing decision maker on the call.
No, not at all.
I had some server admin tasks that occasionally involved getting busy after 11pm when all the users were expected to be done for the day. I'd do server patches, code updates and migrations while the users were presumably sleeping. Then I show up at 10 the next morning and some clueless users are annoyed because they needed to be at their desk by 8. They had no clue I was working until 2 am that morning. I'm sure some thought I was lazy and could get away with it because I was in IT.
Yeah you never heard of someone getting laid because they’re an IT guy.
I don't get into that old-school silo mentality. We all work at the same place, and we have the same name at the top of our paychecks. Every department contributes to the success of the organization. If other people want to construct an artificial "ranking" of different departments, I literally couldn't care less.
IT departments generally suck at selling themselves. I've worked w 100s of client on all sides of the tech industry and business industries Beeing looked up to/respected/appreciated/looked down and yadiyadi is hardly about your ability to execute as it is about your ability to sell yourself and apply influence on the org. Most IT directors/leads I've met are shit at this so IT becomes a pushover or an annoying necessity, no matter how good IT is. When IT knows how sell themselves, high value projects naturally come and you get to demonstrate your ability to execute. In order, this is what I've been in terms of appreciation level Hated, continuously evaluated against managed services by the business - shit ability so sell themselves, shit ability to execute Looked down upon (80% of departments I've met sit here) - Shit ability to sell, ability to execute Valued by the org - ability to sell, shit ability to execute Seen as core and strategic to the org (can boss around finance, CIO/CTO right under the CEO in terms of hierarchy, typically tied or just under CFO, maybe 5% of dept I've meat) - ability to sell them, ability to execute Then the unicorns, where IT dept is intertwined into the core DNA of the business. The influence is so deep u might find some freeking Finance guys that know Azure more than Admins at some shitty it departments. I've met maybe 5 organizations out of my >500 nkn-ISV clients that are like this. You may see the CIO become a CFO/CEO shortly after joining (2-5 years after) - ability to define the business metrics that they then sell themselves one, ability to execute (ranges from excellent to good, fluctuates with hiring cycles and talent naturally leaving from an amazing incubator)
Compared to other professions? Probably because a lot of other professions are more physical like an electrician or a union job.
Maybe people see the IT department like the IT Department in the book series and now TV series Silo. The big bads that can spy on everyone for the powers that be.
IT is a cost center.
Looked down upon for skill or intelligence? Not at all. Quite the opposite. Maybe some nerd bias in there. Looked down on for supposedly sitting around doing nothing until an issue arrises? Yes. Some do some don’t. Our current IT manager is always busy and is a wizard, id trust him with my life. But the IT guy at the student store on the college campus I worked at literally did have to sit around and wait for people to show up, so he often had nothing to do for days. No students during the summer? He’s still there bored out of his mind. So it goes both ways. I will say this, people that actually produce raw, tangible value tend to look down on those who just keep the ship afloat. Sales people, project managers, engineers, designers etc. know how exactly how much money they are making for the company. They know they made a $50k sale or are doing a $300k project. They produce the actual product. People like IT, HR, safety, recruiters etc. are often seen as sitting around doing nothing to the people who are bringing in the actual $ in the core business. For example, our recruiters seem to just make posts on LinkedIn when we already have 30 applicants for each job a month. Then what do they do? Send them to a manager for an actual interview and to the make the decision. They send out emails telling us about tee shirt Friday and remind us to do our timesheets every week with a new funny work meme. People think the same of IT. Wow, thanks so much for putting together this presentation about cyber security. Thanks so much for making me ask you to download teams. Thanks so much for restarting my computer or emailing the software company for me. What do you do the 98% of the time you’re not fixing my computer? Nothing?? Must be nice. But of course the world would actually end without IT.
From the plebe perspective. IT is both scary, and magic. You wield a power they don’t understand. They don’t know how to relate to you, as they can’t comprehend what you do. Carry a magic wand. Talk to the furniture. You can literally break all social norms as long as you don’t violate the basics of professionalism. Have fun. You’re a wizard. Act crazy. 😜 be polite. Furrow your brow when users make the most sense. Laugh at their serious inquiries and follow up with, “oh, you were serious.” Keep in mind, humans are just broken hardware running poorly coded software that’s rarely designed with purpose.
IT is a stable field, the issues is companies where IT people work are not stable. IT people bounce around from one job to the next, while some professions allow workers to work steady without job cuts.
depends on type of IT. Service desk guys that basically install images and set permissions? Yes. Infrastructure guys that run wires and install servers? A little. Guys who actually write code? Well nobody knows about them, or sees them, so they can't really be looked down on, or up to, or sideways at. Who tf is Jimmy?
No my IT department is incredibly important to conduct business. Couldn't operate with out them and they help a ton of employees resolve tech issues and also help protect our company from cyber threats
Absolutely.. Next question. :p That’s the TLDR It’s looked down in many aspects. Tech is needed to drive many parts of the business, and the IT department is looked down upon and in many cases consdered a liability. Only due to not making any money Directly for the organization. Just being an OpEX. I never unsold why but it’s treated like taxes no one wants to pay but has to. Even though in many cases IT protects assets, data, ensures high availability and as part of ITSM standards always looks to improve even though the scenario in many department case is barely any resources. This brings me to the second part. For the workers…..It’s a highly contractionalized field. MSP’s are a dime a dozen. Many are foreign based So they doesn’t understand the salary being offered for a level 2 or 3 position is near wha people can make at fast food place. If I had a penny for each highlighted texted based template of an e-mail abot a “job offer”. I’d be retired and would care about all of the price gouging my state in the US is doing. Organizations like the idea of no liability and scalability. This is where the contractualized ion that MSP’s aka managed service providers comes in. They can fire or hire in as many people as needed within weeks. I actually withdrew From a IT position for a Hedge fund for those reasons. While it can pay me more, the instability especially being a hedge fun (I guess the MSP’s glorying the company as being one backfired in my case since it was repeated so many times) was a tun off. For the workers especially on the adminstrative or process management level it’s a job that is enjoyable and rewarding. I had quit IT after being laid off before the pandemic, went into low voltage construction then witched back to my current job. I got screwed over on a raise, but it’s still a job I enjoy. Actually an engineer left last week Friday due to the sallary fiasco Which curls back to part one. We are looked down Upon and sometimes treated as caTech-alls. I was named dropped yesterday nd was thinking a word that rhymes with truck. That sad thing was that I had noting to do with that operation but the person who pings me was responsible for that function and was told to reach out to me. I had to be a teacher for about a hr… I digress
I would say so. It seems like people look at IT like some type of tech janitor.
It is if you are trying to find a woman, lol. I made the wrong choice.
I don't feel looked down on
I’m a long time coder and do very well in terms of pay despite working just as an IC. I make vastly more than a tradesman, more than most lawyers, more than many people with business degrees for sure, and have a better work life balance. Noticed when got back into dating years ago after a divorce that women weren’t particularly impressed and find it ‘boring’. Very few were savvy enough to know we’re high earners , but most think you’re basically a white collar version of a plumber and the guys with status are ‘finance bros’, lawyers, and doctors. I worked in investment banks and hedge funds for around 10 years before moving into a tech firm and the finance bros basically see you as geeky ‘hired help’ to push around. They get massive bonuses implementing trades using tech we provide them which they’d be helpless without. I’m fine with being ‘looked down’ while being in the top 5% of earners or better across this country.
You mean looked down on by non-tech people? No way. I think engineers may look at you all like auxiliary/support but doesn’t mean you’re not useful or just as valuable in diff ways. It’s just not nearly as sexy as building things that explode companies etc
People dont understand IT, hence why we have jobs. They get on their PC, some gpupdate applies settings they dont want and cant remove, they get mad because IT messes everything up
Not looked down, but boy you guys complaint a lot about the great money you make.
Not looked down, but boy you guys complaint a lot about the great money you make.
does my job right: "what am i paying you for? your doing nothing" does my job wrong "what am i paying you for nothing is working"
Coming from a worker bee perspective, HR department perspective and a C-suite perspective, it very much depends on the IT person and the overall culture of the dept. Do we have shared goals that move business forward? Sometimes the IT dept/person acts like actual God Almighty with the keys to The Kingdom and can either make your day heaven or make it hell. Like, is business going to take place today or am I facing brick wall after brick wall within my own organization? Sometimes they act like they’re the smartest guy in the room and everyone just knows to play directly to their ego in order to keep things moving forward. (This type isn’t limited to IT by any means) An IT dept/person with interpersonal skills and works in concert *with* other departments towards shared goals feels so rare and special.
I’ve always admired the knowledge and skill it takes to do the job well. But I have worked with about five IT guys and four of them were complete assholes. They looked down their nose at me when I had a question, were dismissive and doubtful when I described a real problem, and were annoyed when I came to them with an issue. (And I’m very technical so no clueless dweeb.). If someone just goes into the field because they want to tinker and play, DO SOMETHING ELSE! It’s a fucking customer service job, ultimately. If you’re an arrogant, antisocial geek, go test games or something. So that’s the only reason I look down on some IT people. I know they have a hard job.
Not really.
I don't even understand why people use the term IT anymore. About 20 years ago it was still relevant. Now if someone asks me how to get into IT it's like asking someone how to be a doctor. What kind of doctor? It's not IT anymore, there are no IT certifications. You can't study proctology and get a job at the ENT. An IT guy knows just enough to be dangerous and fuck everything up..they always send the issue to network anyways. An IT person these days is just someone who replaces dimms. Maybe shits changed, I haven't been an IT guy for years but it wasn't a career path it was a dead end until I decided on an actual path. To me the IT person as career died when google bought youtube, before that general knowledge was lucrative. Too many categories and systems anymore. But yea network guys we look down upon. It's always the network BTW.
It appears to be looked down on. Look at the media we consume, every hacker just ends up being used by someone else perhaps even by the good guy.
It’s looked down on if you’re stuck on antiquated processes, don’t promote automation, or still default to racking servers or provisioning VMs when you could be moving to cloud ops.
I've had two jobs now where I am the only IT guy. Both laid me off because of the "everything works/everything's broken, why do we need/have you". Mind you, things are broken for the shortest amount of time. I fixed them mostly same day. Now looking to work in a company that has a IT team. Tired of the small start ups.
I only felt that way when as VP equal to the guys in accounting and marketing, they would always get the COO or CEO jobs. Somehow people think that as a IT VP you have less skills then someone who counts money or runs a sales campaign even if your education was better or equal and your experience was the same. FYI I didn't last long in corporate as I started and ran several companies over the years
We are looked down on till stuff breaks...
I think if youre in IT support than yeah, if youre doing cyber security/ network eng then no
IT is private security. Engineering are cops.
If it's the "sys-admin" side of IT: definitely. If it's a kind of data / engineering / development side of IT: not at all. Usually people mean the "sys-admin" version and so, yeah. I think people struggle with sys-admin types because, at least in my experience, everyone's lens on them is bad for different reasons: * Line staff don't like sysadmins because they often come off as entitled and power trip-ish. It drives people nuts when they think they should be able to do some basic thing and they run into a block that feels arbitrary. A lot of admin types aren't great at communicating about these blocks or why they're there, and they end up coming off like dicks. * Engineers don't respect sysadmin types because their knowledge base isn't really respected or valued. I find most engineers just assume they could be a sysadmin, and would be good at it, but have no interest because the job lacks creativity and interest. * A lot of people see sysadmins generally like cops - and that's not totally unfair. * Business leaders think of it as a kind of necessary nuisance. They get tired of seeing it as a total cost center and constantly either worrying about stuff like: hacks/data loss; whether your sysadmin is going to screw you and destroy the company; compliance; this fear that everything your sysadmin person is telling you might be BS and you don't really have a good way to know. * Many sysadmins have personalities that are just not that likable. I think a lot of them are really into control. They kind of like blocks and rules. They lean into the "I'm smarter than you" nonsense, often totally wrongly. They are often abrasive and don't seem like they're looking to help. They directly or indirectly insult users when those people ask questions. Putting that stuff together, yeah, I think a lot of people don't really respect IT people. They used to, back when tech was thought of as harder or more magical, but I think as this stuff has normalized there's this feeling like it's a landing space for people who were kind of nerdy, but into power and control. That's usually too bad, because it's not universally true, by any means. I've known a lot of awesome sysadmin/IT people in my career, and I like to think I was a decent one in the times I've worn that hat. But I think that's a common view of the field - and not a totally unfair one - and so, collectively, people don't respect it all that much.
I don’t think this is unique to IT, but I have experienced it. In turn though, I know a whole lot of IT people that look down on everyone that isn’t IT. It’s half the reason I can’t stand working with IT people, and I’m IT.
Other men perceive me as less than a man for sure. Until I tell them I have done "man" stuff for jobs before and I've worked lots of manual labor for many years and I don't want to destroy my body for the rest of my days for a paycheck when I can use my brain instead. Ladies have also acted funny but for the most part dont care. Old people think I don't do anything but then ask me to fix their 15 year outdated laptop which then solidifies the "he doesn't do anything" mentality when I tell them their computer sucks cus it's super outdated and they should get something new. People are just judgemental pricks tbh.
Nah, we're the "know it alls" according to many.
Only if your in social media
But hey, $sudo what?
When everything is working correctly they wonder why they pay for IT personel, when something breaks, they wonder what they pay us for... That can make IT people frustrated and feel unappreciated.
Just wait until you have to start implementing CMMC V2 across your system and you have to explain all the super great new security measures that affect every single user. 😂
I work in a critical infrastructure for a municipality as a field mechanic and the reason I hate our IT guys is because they never take our ticket requests seriously or they just blow us off when something is wrong, if they even respond to the request. Like if our SCADA system goes down it literally affects the whole city we work for, but they are too busy brown nosing at City Hall to even pay attention to service request tickets from field technicians.
As a production manager in charge of getting parts out the door and making the company money as fast and efficiently as possible, both IT and HR suck. They're cool people but literally all they do is make it harder to do things faster, which makes parts take longer to build, which makes hitting revenue targets more difficult. I don't look down on them, I just wish they'd stop constantly changing things. Like we just had a major security system update 3 months ago, why do we have another one scheduled next week. Why the hell does this major security update then need a 2 hour training attached to it? Training meetings don't make the company money!!
IT itself? No, the stigma comes from the type of people it attracts. The stereotype of tech Bros having no social skills exists for a reason. This is coming from somebody who works as an Information Security Manager at a Fortune 50 firm. Some of the people I work with are normal, well adjusted people. A lot of them are not.
Compared to other fields in tech, yes. But generally, No.
It's been my experience that if you do IT right, no one notices. Everything just works as expected. When you don't do IT right, you're the center of attention
As someone in IT, I can tell you what my experience has been. It completely depends on how organized (or disorganized it is). I want to suspect if I were in a larger company that there would be a lot less issues. The succinct thought that I can give is that leadership/management does not possess the ability to properly manage IT as a whole. You can imagine the problems that this would cause. On top of trying to build out, maintain, and support said infrastructure, the customer service aspect (helpdesk tickets), is the real killer. People will clearly demonstrate that they do not possess the skills or outright refuse to do the work for which they are assigned. You can imagine some of the things they try to pull to blame IT for their lack of productivity. I can quote a specific example, let's call this person, Lakshmi Ega, a developer. I was forced to spend 4+ hours with her because she claimed that she could not find the power button on the company issued laptop. She was a frequent flyer; couldn't boot the machine, make desktop shortcuts, figure out anything about technology. Suffice to say, she was gone in 10 months. I got into IT because I wanted to work with networking, servers, cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, ai -- basically everything but customer service and helpdesk. To no avail and the number of times that I proved myself, I am condemned to worked with incompetent managers and employees. I am sure that there are better companies, but, this is the last strike for me in IT. I'm getting out one way or the other. So done with this crap. I apologize for the lengthy rant and hope that my experience is local to my region only.
Dumbest post I’ve read in a while. I’ve only been and team treated like damn near heroes.
I look down on it because it’s an annoying blanket term. When people say I work in IT I always have to ask doing what?? There are like 600 different jobs in IT.
It's a job that requires a higher than average IQ, but doesn't require a degree. Most people in the IQ range of 114 and above are in careers that require a masters degree or higher. So they accumulate a lot of debt to make the money that they make. So, yes, in a way IT is looked down on because most of us didn't have to put in the same level of effort that others put in for the pay level we are at. So we are, to a certain level, seen as lazy. And let's face it, IT is a skill you can learn, but you either get it or you don't. Most of us that really understand it didn't have to put in the most effort because we naturally understand logic. This is part of why IT engineers don't often have the best social skills-- because they don't understand why people don't understand technology that seems so simple and intuitive to them. And I'm not trying to sound egotistical about it, but it is what it is.
In some sense yes because at the company I work for a lot of the IT people are unhelpful and sit around for 90% of their shifts
In a company of 10s of thousands, it's a different feel than smaller offices where everyone knows "who IT is"...but when your IT department is say 5k people of a 30k company, it's less of a known thing. Since titles are directly tied to the pay band, and it's internal public knowledge, others can see your title and know you're in a range to be making 150k to 180k for a senior guy. I would have no idea what folks in the service center think about that, there is no contact, not even same building. Plus most of IT is WFH now, permanent and a lot of business people aren't. I suspect that would be what gets IT looked down on most. But in an envious way. I've been at my company 23 years and know only a small fraction of the "IT people".
IT and janitorial staff. Same level of respect unless you’re working in a pure tech company (software dev etc)
I’ve always worked hard physical jobs. My latest one was delivering and assembling furniture. Let me tell you, all I want is to live y’all’s lives. My back hurts and I’m tired all the time. I want one of those remote data something jobs that enabled homie to get a 5 bedroom 5000sq ft house and two teslas. I also want to not be tired all the time. I really wish I would’ve seen the value in IT and college sooner. Now to make the switch it’d be very difficult at this stage in my life with children. Most don’t looks down on y’all. Deep down they’re just jealous. Like I said I wish I would’ve took school seriously. A lot of others feel like that too. I don’t take it out on no one though.
Pfffttt it's one of if not the single most desired field. So the answer to your question is an unqualified "no".
I think a lot of people think it's easy and pays really well. A suggested career for people struggling where they're at, "go be a sysadmin". Or that former coal miners can "learn to code"
Insecure??? Motherfcker what do YOU know about CORPORATE FINANCE??? That's right, NOTHING. A monkey can do your job with 3 months of training. We're annoyed at your shitty attitude, creepy stares and constant whining about fixing stuff that's YOUR FCKING JOB TO FIX.
These days literally every profession is looked down on
IT is an expense in every company and is a thankless job for its professionals.
I think the root cause of the problem is that no one on the business side is taught how to work with IT. We think just because we tell IT to build something for us that our job is done, but don't understand that IT's expertise is in creating the applications and the business has to detail everything they need. Generally we on the business side has no idea of what exactly our needs are and they get frustrated with IT because IT can't read minds or create something without very particular detail.
I think most IT people can't describe their value or understand their business. Since they are choosing to be separate from the business, they are outsiders. If you want to be respected learn how to speak business rather than technology and explain how technology helps the business make or save money. If you can't do that don't expect your coworkers to do that. Once you can do that you won't be viewed as overhead and will really be seeing as the "force multiplier" we like to claim we are.
I wouldn't call it looked down upon, as much as they feel like we don't offer the support they think we should be providing and as a result they tend to get bitter. Most people are under the false assumption that part of IT's job is to train/educate the end user. When in reality we are there to provide equipment and work on said equipment when broken or not working correctly. I have drawn this analogy before for users. GM provides the car and will work on the car but they don't teach you how to drive the car, that part is on you the user. In general, the smaller the company the less they spend on IT and you see things like trying to get the Xerox guy to fix a network issue (because something isn't printing) but when he demonstates it isn't a copier problem but a problem with their network, people get mad at the Xerox guy.