If working as an IT pro were easy, everyone would do it, right? As an IT pro, you juggle a dizzying variety of tasks, responsibilities, and priorities. You're systems, database, network, and storage administrators; application developers; purchasing managers; programmers; trainers; consultants. (Or, as one survey respondent wrote, "All of the above. I'm the sole IT person at my organization.") You confront crises, disasters, emergencies, urgent situations, and "special requests" on a daily basis. If you ever see a day in which you're able to cross every item off your to-do list, you'll wonder whether you've died and gone to heaven. You keep business moving, ensure that communication flows, and bar the gates against the bad guys. And you do all this in an environment of complex, constantly changing technology, budget cutbacks, corporate downsizing, clueless users, and demanding corporate and regulatory requirements. You're a special breed, with a unique set of employment circumstances.
Off to Work You Go
The overwhelming majority of our survey respondents, a whopping 90.1 percent, report that they work full time. Slightly more than 85 percent have worked for their current employer for less than 10 years. The majority response—44.6 percent—to the question Approximately how long have you worked at your present company? is 1 to 4 years. The next highest percentage, for 5 to 9 years, is 27.2. And 13.5 percent of respondents have worked for their current employer for less than 1 year.
The remaining responses present an interesting picture: 13.9 percent of survey respondents have worked for their current employer anywhere from 10 to 39 years, with the majority of this group—representing 6.7 percent of respondents—answering 10 to 14 years. One respondent, whom we can only describe as loyal and who represents a statistically insignificant (which is not to say literally insignificant) percentage, has worked for his current employer for from 35 to 39 years.
Some 37.7 percent of respondents have worked in IT from 5 to 9 years. Six intrepid souls, or 0.2 percent of respondents, have been IT pros for 40 years or longer. A hefty 70.8 percent of respondents have worked in IT from 5 to 19 years. Only 0.9 percent of survey respondents, representing 23 IT professionals, were unemployed at the time they took the survey.
These figures highlight a relatively youthful career path that is expanding in response to the steady worldwide proliferation of computer and information technology in business, industry, and the home. The US Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics bears out this interpretation, predicting that employment of computer systems specialists, which includes most job titles held by IT pros, will increase more than 36 percent by 2012, much faster than average for all other occupations that the Bureau measures. One IT pro who responded to our survey expressed it this way: "We're on the cutting edge of new technologies, and those technologies are expanding at a tremendous pace. There will be more jobs than qualified personnel to fill them, leading to high wages and a secure (though competitive) future for those who can continue learning and adapt to the rapid change." Another respondent painted a slightly more poetic picture: "As the needs of the world evolve, so increases the need to manipulate information in more creative ways. The computers we use today will someday point skyward."
What's in a Name?
Our survey asked respondents to identify their job title from a list of 18 choices, with an additional category of Other. Almost half of respondents, or 49.5 percent, identified themselves as holding one of the following three titles: systems administrator (20.9 percent), IT director/IT manager/purchasing manager (15.4 percent—hereafter called IT management), or network administrator (13.2 percent).
The Other category caught additional job titles from 11.3 percent of survey respondents. The top three titles in terms of number of responses are systems analyst, with 13 responses; systems engineer, with 13 responses; and network engineer, with 11 responses. Some of the more interesting and unusual individual responses include back-end server support; combination Help desk and DB admin; freelance writer/editor/columnist; customs officer; intranet application developer; Web site developer; drovers dog (I get all the crappy jobs); chairman, board of trustees; student; a little of everything; secretary; satellite station engineer; and the emphatic HELPDESK.
Titles are often just a collection of words. What really defines the work you do are the tasks you're responsible for. From among the survey's list of 21 job-responsibility categories, 7 stand out clearly as most relevant to a majority of respondents. In descending order of importance, the seven top job responsibilities for all survey respondents are providing end-user support, administering IT systems, administering the network, deploying desktop hardware and software, providing systems analysis, administering applications, and training end users.
The Rubber Meets the Road
Here's where things get interesting. Looking strictly at job responsibilities, most IT pros appear to share common tasks associated with administering and analyzing systems and the network, supporting and training end users, and deploying and administering hardware and applications. Seems straightforward and even mundane when you view it that way. But ask IT pros what their current priorities are, and you see a task-specific shakeout that emphasizes the urgent and the mission-critical. When respondents identified their top five current priorities, network and systems management and supporting end users garnered 63.2 percent and 49 percent of responses, respectively. But rounding out the top five current priorities for all respondents are upgrading and migrating an OS, with a 39.3 percent response rate; finding information to solve IT problems, with a 38.9 percent response rate; and securing the network, with a 36.1 percent response rate.
At the other end of the scale, the lowest five priorities point to tasks and concerns that are easier to set on the back burner when more pressing problems command attention. Only 11.4 percent of respondents cite management and personnel problems as one of their five top priorities. Supporting vertical applications follows at 9.6 percent. Regulatory and privacy compliance is a surprise member of this list, with only 9.2 percent of respondents identifying it as one of their five top priorities. Evaluating Linux against Windows weighs in with 5.5 percent of respondents, and at the very bottom is total cost of ownership (TCO) and ROI, at 4.6 percent. Occupying the midrange of current priorities are evaluating and purchasing new hardware and software, patch management, desktop deployment, upgrading and migrating applications, and managing database infrastructure.
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