Basically I’ve been running my employer’s IT helpdesk for 10 years. In those 10 years I’ve gotten some (minor) raises and perks, but never a promotion or job title change. I just “failed” my second year performance evaluation which comes down to “we know you’re already overworked and understaffed but we need you to give 150% daily, every day”.
As a result the opposite has happened and I basically don’t GAF anymore. I close maybe half of the tickets I used to because I just can’t bring myself to care anymore. Also, if after 10 years nothing has fundamentally changed, it would be madness to assume it somehow magically will.
Thing is, I used to be very enthousiastic about my field (IT) but lately I’ve fallen completely out of love with it. Every single month there are changes and evolutions to the many tech stacks we use and I just can’t be arsed to keep up anymore. The enthousiasm has been completely replaced with mostly apathy and a side dish of simmering resentment.
I’m not immediately afraid of getting shitcanned because:
- there’s a lot more work to do than there are hands available to do it
- company has been looking for people for my role for over 5 years but never hires anyone
- I’ve been there a decade which would mean making me redundant would cost the company a pretty penny in severance
- no one currently employed there would want to take over my job duties. In IT, the helpdesk is the lowest of the low. Always has been, always will be.
Regardless, I’m in my 40’s now with one degree that doesn’t have anything to do with IT and without joking, I would rather die tomorrow than keep doing this until pension age. Any of you have decent tips or examples of where someone in my position could aim to end up for the second half of my life’s career?
If money were no object (it is) I would go back to college and pick up archaeology/history. That was what I wanted to do as a child but I had to give it up because “it wasn’t a realistic life path”, dixit my parents and every counselor I spoke to in that era.
I don’t even work fulltime right now and still I feel like I would want to spend those 2,5 days a week doing something marginally less painful, like stick my dick in the oven.
I’ve been trying to land an IT job for over 20 years now, to no success.
Count your blessings; you’re living my dream. I rather be as burnt out as you and have a half decent income in a stable position, than continue working the same shitty fast food and retail gigs I’ve been stuck with since 2003. I’m tired of job hopping; quit yours and give it to me.
You only have 100% to give.
If you regularly are expected to give more, that is the new norm, which is a symptoms of poor scheduling and bad management.
Strong case of anhedonia, misght have to consider a lifestyle change or slowing way down
Been there, thankfully for only four years (if I remember right) I unfortunately hit burnout right after I signed a contract for a house, so I was stuck. Internal IT support. Due to turnover and company acquisitions I went from the second newest member of my team to the third most senior in two months. The userbase we supported quadrupled while we shrunk to 1/4 of the department size when I was initially hired. Then we had over a year where no new hires lasted longer than 6 months. They didn’t add new slots for additional headcount until after I left.
Things that helped (but to be abundantly clear they did not solve the problems):
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Most companies have something somewhere in their employee handbook or company cult-ure stuff about being honest. So start being more honest than they want you to be. Don’t name names, don’t be an ass, but set expectations. “I understand your frustration, but we are severely understaffed. We have not had an increase in headcount for the last five years. I will handle this as soon as possible, but it will take at least [amount of time].” "I apologize for the delay. We only have three people on the team who have been here more than a month. We handle all internal IT support calls, routing tickets in the ticketing system, and manually handle almost every access change request for the company. If you are unsatisfied with the speed of our service, please contact [manager or hiring person].” If you make them have to listen to all the shit you’re responsible for, some people will stop treating you like the only thing on your plate is their problem.
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Never ever ever go above and beyond. If your shift is over you are out. If that means something doesn’t get done “on time”, you make that shit the responsibility of the next person up your management chain and let them know. “What is more important, taking calls, properly logging the ones I took, or setting up accounts and access for new hires?” that sort of shit. That means being very outspoken about the amount of time things take, and proactively warning management as soon as it is obvious that you can’t accomplish everything. Remember the magic phrase “How do you want me to prioritize this?” if they give you some wishwashy “it all has to be done” bullshit? “I appreciate your trust in my abilities to prioritize my workload. As previously stated, there are not enough man hours to meet every deadline. I will let you know what deadlines will need to be adjusted.”
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Lack of staff to meet business needs is never the fault of the staff trying to meet the needs. It is always the fault of the people not properly staffing. Chances of change are slim, but change will never happen unless you allow the people responsible for the mess to feel the pain of their poor decisions.
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Heroic efforts to get something done never go unpunished.
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Get everything in writing. If they won’t put it in text, then you do it. “To confirm our verbal discussion: [shit they said out loud that they know would make legal’s head spin, like telling you to stop logging the overtime hours]”
Beyond all that, like others have said, do the bare minimum and start planning your exit. Do not take any of the stress home with you. You’ve already said they do everything to avoid paying severance, so turn it into a game of chicken so you can keep your pay while you apply elsewhere. With ten years experience, you have them by the balls.
Extra points if you can align things to put yourself on some project where you have an excuse to stay off answering the hotline. That was the biggest contribution to my bad mental state: taking calls from people who are always mad and see you as a safe outlet.
None of the anger of the users you support is your fault. If they have complaints, it’s management’s fault for not properly hiring enough manpower, and not setting proper priorities for the team. Just keep track of what you’re doing and when so they can’t claim you weren’t working.
God, i fucking love pulling the prioritization shit when everyone is dumping shit on you.
“Why did this not get done???”
“Well, Jamie gave me a new task and named it top priority. You have made it clear that i am not able to prioritize tasks myself so yours was bumped. If this is an issue you will have to speak with them about it.”This is great advice, and all points I’ve learned as well over the years in IT. I worked help desk as a T3 for a bit and it’s sucked. Even when people were not asses (honestly most weren’t, they were generally professional but frustrated) the shear amount of effort to fix small things was awful and it kept me from working on projects I wanted to actually put time towards. I now work in cybersecurity compliance and essentially just tell everyone they need to fill out more paperwork, slow down processes, and then tell them no. It’s soul crushing. But I like my company and the people I work with (this hasn’t shared been the case everywhere I’ve worked).
For OP:
I think the keys are write down everything, and account for all of your time. If you helped someone there needs to be a record of it. Without metrics your management can’t get you more help if they want to, though it sounds like they don’t want to. Those metrics also give you the ammo you need to defend why things are slower than management wants, or why customers are unhappy.
I am also a big proponent of a strong work life balance. I work 7:30 to 5, at 5:01 I lock my PC and am done for the day. Problems will still be there in the morning, or in Monday. I try hard not to complain shoot them or think about work much outside of that 7:30 to 5 period.
Finally, consider your life plan. Where do you want to be in 5 years? 10? 20? You have to begin with the end in mind, otherwise you wander aimlessly and never get traction towards your goals. For me it’s moving towards management so I can effect better changes in my workplace and company, for others it’s being a true SME that knows everything about a specific topic. It’s likely not working help desk still though (as you note it’s the bottom of the IT barrel, or the trench’s as many call it; good for getting a foot in the door and cutting your teeth, but a really shit career). If you want to stay in IT, then it’s worth specializing. Learn AD, networking, PKI, software deployment, virtualization, or whatever skill interests you, and learn it hard. Then make yourself indispensable (which it sounds like you’ve already done with help desk). Those skills are portable, and most enterprises need them and will pay well for them. That gives you the leverage to negotiate better pay, benefits, working conditions, etc. with management. But don’t be afraid to look elsewhere. Keep your resume polished and apply to things that look interesting. Our world isn’t our parents, it’s a rare company that rewards following the 40 year tunnel. It’s expected that you will jump from company to company and job to job to move up, and IME that helps with avoiding the burnout since at least the people and surroundings change.
To add to this: I would hope your company has some sort of policy regarding conduct (HR almost always has something in the employee handbook about treating one another with respect). Clarify in writing with your supervisor about what kind of conduct is unacceptable, and start enforcing it to the letter whenever you have to take a call. “I understand this is a frustrating issue, but I won’t tolerate further abuse on this call.” When they curse you out, you hang up. If they have a problem with it, they can call your supervisor. If your supervisor has a problem with it, you report it to HR (yeah, HR isn’t “on your side” generally, but they also want to prevent lawsuits, so in this case their best interests align with yours).
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checked out a decade ago and still not fired?
Check out even harder
It’s a job of a decade
They are checked out now… not for a decade
Automate that shit, don’t tell anyone and get some passive income.
Get a second job and collect two incomes until your fired from the first one
I checked out of my IT job of 15 years. I was throughly depressed with it all. I had a fair amount of website experience and got a few clients who pay regularly for their website and support. I sold all my crap, bought a great laptop and I travel full time now and sometimes I use trustedhousesitters in between just traveling. I’ve never looked back and I’ve been doing this for over 6.5 years… I’m 51 now.
Perhaps what I’m saying is it’s never too late to follow your dream, mine was travel, yours might be something else. Just go for it.
Do you make money while traveling, or did you change to a low cost lifestyle and are living off savings/investments?
I about break even. I started off with savings, but now I just use my income. It’s still cheaper than renting an apartment in the center of Amsterdam though.
This sounds like me a few years ago.
I loved IT work when I started but the job, the positions, the customers, and my bosses sucked it out of me. I couldn’t see myself staying in the job. As each day passed I got more and more depressed and miserable. The only plus side was I was earning a bit of money.
I was also at the age (late 40s) where it was probably too late to change careers. Even if I did, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do.
I decided to take a risk and open my own business - a pinball arcade. Huge risk, but if it worked it would probably be fun.
I spent 3 years collecting machines and learning how to repair them. I worked to reduce my personal overhead so I could get by earning less (which is freeing on it’s own). I was still working the horrible IT jobs, but since I had a new direction it didn’t seem to bother me as much. There was a light at the end of the tunnel.
3 years ago we opened the arcade and luckily it’s been working out. I love coming to work now. I love 99% of my customers. Some days I spend half the day playing games with people in the arcade. I’m earning a living and our sales keep going up as we add more things to the arcade.
My only advice is to find something that will make you happy and work towards it. You don’t have to stay in a job you hate.
What was your exit strategy if you where unable to work?
If your miserable in whatever situation you’re in. Leave.
It’s usually possible to walk away. There are exceptions, like if your sainted mother is disabled and needs your income for her supply of oxygen tank, but I walked away and usually recommend walking away.
Hey, what’s up. I usually just lurk because I can’t keep myself from getting into stupid discussions and wasting all of my time getting angry, but I feel like you do when it comes to work and I thought I’d share. I’ll be deleting my credentials after responding, because of a lack of discipline on my end, FYI.
So I’m in a type of system administration. Not your run-of-the-mill IT shop, it’s sort of in the direction of devops and provisioning classic on prem environments. There’s also other stuff, some of it challenging because of technical complexity, some of it challenging due to brain dead QA procedures and corporate inflexibility.
I also feel like I ‘did my time in the trenches’ in the past when I worked IT help desk, but having seen the other side, advancing your career into more technical roles will not offer any salvation. It’s the same bland, corporate controlled, big tech dominated horse shit patch and pray dance. You learn a new thing only for it to be superseded or abandoned, or worse, rolled over from a permanently licensed product to a subscription. In this field there is no such thing as perennial knowledge. The only place experience has any hope of sticking are the soft skills. It’s building on quick sand.
That’s why life feels like a treadmill. Even a bigger pay check won’t offer much in the way of contentment. It’s fun for a while but you get used to it. If you can make due with what you’ve got now, more money won’t offer a way out.
If you ask me, which you kind of did by way of this post, modern life fades into meaninglessness easily. There is not much connection between the actions you take and the results unless you perform manual labor or better yet, a craft. That’s why a lot of people in the IT field have hobbies like woodworking. Personally I like motorcycle riding and maintenance. At least when I’m done reassembling a carburetor the result is a running engine.
I guess what I’m saying is, if you have a job that pays the bills, you should be fine not giving a flying fuck about your job, your employer or the efficiency of your coworkers. Do the bare minimum you need to do in order not to get fired. Your job is just a means to an end; you are employed in the service of yourself and your loved ones. If the CEO of your company could generate a quarter point on the NYSE by stabbing your grandma to death, then they will. If you’re anything like me, you define work as anything you do solely for the economic incentive. Treat it as such. Behave like the Homo Economicus every institution expects you to; take what you can, give nothing back. Let go of the idea that work should be fulfilling; our current economic system simply isn’t built for anything but ruthless extraction of value. Anything you do consider fulfilling is almost by definition a cost. That’s okay. Really.
Build the mental fortitude to accept your lot, which considering human history is not actually that bad. We have easy access to high quality food, shelter and leisure time. Slack as hard as you can get away with; read books on company time, work on personal projects, play games or just stare off into the clouds. When you clock out, slam that door behind you and pretend like your employer does not exist. Don’t lose your job or give it up until you have a solid plan to switch into something else, but always remember that a job is by definition something nobody would have done unless there were economic rewards.
I recommend starting with some (e-)books about Stoicism (e-books are easy to hide in a window on your work display); there’s ancient wisdom in there that makes it easier to stop giving a shit about the things that don’t matter, in this case the meaninglessness of what you do for a living. It will help you focus on the things you can control; how you view the world being one of them.
I mean you’re parents weren’t wrong that archeology wasn’t a realistic life path. Maybe start watching YT videos about archeology while you are on the clock?
You get severance and a pension?!
Well, the pension’s mediocre at best and 20 years away, so I’m absolutely not counting on it still being there when I’m of age. Severance is only if you don’t quit or get fired for cause, and the company’s notorious for making people quit rather than firing them.
If you’re in the same job for ten years you’re over worked and under paid
Quit and find the same exact job and you’ll still be happier.
IT sucks. Solving problems with technology is fun. Once it’s your job capitalism sucks all the joy out of it.
What hobbies do you love? I like plants and being outside so I fantasize about getting a part time job at a nursery.
Anything you could pivot too? Pay will likely not be comparable but if it isn’t soul sucking it might be an option.
No idea on experience. You may have to start at the bottom unless it’s something that you can prove competence with, without a degree.
