10 Most Hated Jobs - 4 Are In IT

[ilconsiglliere]

4 are in IT, who would have thought  , hey it could be 5 if you include the electronics technician.

40% hate is not so bad 

http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/113308/10-most-hated-jobs-cnbc

1. Director of Information Technology
4. Senior Web Developer
5. Technical Specialist
8. Technical Support Analyst

6. Electronics Technician

[unix]

I don't believe this.... Coming from mainstream media. No home depot? Fishing boat in Alaska? C'mon.

[Walter Mitty]

I don't believe this.... Coming from mainstream media. No home depot? Fishing boat in Alaska? C'mon.

I'm not following you.  Are you saying that home depot and fishing boat in Alaska ought to be high up on the list of most hated jobs?  Maybe most of the people who would hate those jobs aren't doing them.

[unix]

It's obvious there are a lot more dirty, menial labor jobs that ought to be much higher on the list of "most hated jobs" than IT. The fishing boat job has been rated the most dangerous although I hear they pay good coin, as do coal mines.

Sitting in the office, shuffling paper from one side of the desk to another... beating on the keyboard, and making at least 40-50K/year (and often much more)?  C'mon.  they make it sound like they are busting rocks in the coal mine.

most of US would love to have that kind of 'most hated job'.

[Walter Mitty]

I saw a section on PBS news last night or the night before where they were exploring loss of status and stress levels. 

It turns out that status is right up there with food, clothing, shelter, and health as a primal need.

Their take on it was that egalitarian societies, like northern Europe's, produce less struggle for status than US society.  That is why people work so hard in the US.  I'm not so sure I buy that last bit.

But I have long felt that status, or more precisely loss of status,  was one of the greatest stressors there is.  So why don't the people on an Alaskan fishing boat feel the loss of status acutely?  Because they don't come into contact with the people who would deprive them of status.

My status?  Retired person.  There are some people who treat retired persons with contempt.  But they are pretty easy to avoid. 

[Carrie Cobol]

I can agree with that.  I've long thought it ironic that we don't have an English word for "schadenfreude" since we clearly understand and use it almost daily in this culture.  It's almost a hobby for many people.  Is there much difference between laughing at someone who falls on his face (because "sucks to be you, dude") and sneering at someone who works a job that gets his hands dirty?

[Walter Mitty]

Hey, we don't have an English word for Weltschmertz either.

You be careful among them English.

[HiredGunn]

I saw a section on PBS news last night or the night before where they were exploring loss of status and stress levels. 

It turns out that status is right up there with food, clothing, shelter, and health as a primal need.

Their take on it was that egalitarian societies, like northern Europe's, produce less struggle for status than US society.  That is why people work so hard in the US.  I'm not so sure I buy that last bit.

But I have long felt that status, or more precisely loss of status,  was one of the greatest stressors there is.  So why don't the people on an Alaskan fishing boat feel the loss of status acutely?  Because they don't come into contact with the people who would deprive them of status.

My status?  Retired person.  There are some people who treat retired persons with contempt.  But they are pretty easy to avoid.

The article I read connected low status with abuse of power.  Abu Ghraib being the primary example.   I used it to help me understand interactions with the HR gal during her attempt to convert me.  A phrase I heard long ago was 'those with little power tend to exercise it frequently'.

I think it is very important.  I think it is one reason I like my current gig so much.  I know that at two previous companies where I was just a contracted staff DBA of a big stodgy company I felt no status at all - Invisible.   I like it here because I feel like the quarterback.   Since the other guys quit 6 months ago I am 'it'.  I grew into the role and wrapped my arms around everything and its noticed and commented on.  Now I have a word for that feeling.

Meanwhile a buddy is pushing me to interview at his startup, I see they just got 15 million in funding but do 70 million revenue annually.  He says the hours are low and rate is is good and they need a stud DBA.

So the next question is - exactly what might the status of that role feel like ?   I wonder how to even probe for that sort of thing during an interview.  Power and control questions I guess.

[The Gorn]

I read these comments about status (a subject very near but not necessarily dear to my heart) with great interest.

Here's how I see it:

Status implies not only social prestige but worth and usefulness. To be jobless is to have (in our culture) absolutely no status.

The larger the organization by which you are employed, and the higher your "pay grade", the greater your status. I see the status conferred by a job as being a sort of multiplicative "product" of the size of the company with the level of the job. So a given job at a certain functional level has less status in a very small company than it does in a large organization.

Also there is a "cool" factor associated with companies, the recognition of each one as a leader or not in its category. This is the way that the IBMs of the business world traditionally hooked new graduates - IBM was big, and classy. It still is both, and that still counts for a lot of wage slaves who are indentured to their consulting jobs.

An employee is "assigned" greater status than a contractor by HR, by most peers, and by society. Temporary labor - temps - are of relatively low social status. Sic: if nobody will hire you permanently, you must be lousy and suck.

One can say that only assholes label fellow humans in this way but there's an awful lot of implicit labeling that goes on in society.

If you are aware of this and you believe you are marginalized and it matters to you, then it can eat you alive.

[Walter Mitty]

I read these comments about status (a subject very near but not necessarily dear to my heart) with great interest.

Here's how I see it:

Status implies not only social prestige but worth and usefulness. To be jobless is to have (in our culture) absolutely no status.

I pretty much see this the same way. 

I've spent a significant part of my life n Latin America, and I tend to evaluate things through that prism. 

When I compare poverty in the US to poverty in Latin  America, I'm going to say that American poor people have it better with regard to a host of material things:  food, clothing, shelter, health care, transportation, communication, education, and entertainment.  A lot better.

But not status.  The sense of being "status deprived" among the poor in the US is more acute than it is among the poor in Latin America.  To some extent this is external:  the way you see yourself is conditioned by the way others see you.

Rich people in Latin America are not enlightened by any stretch of the imagination.  But there is one thing about them:  they need the poor, and they know it.  Every rich person in Latin America will tell you, very privately, "if it weren't for the poor, I would have to go out and work."

The poor in the US are not needed by anybody.  At least, that's the perception.

The larger the organization by which you are employed, and the higher your "pay grade", the greater your status. I see the status conferred by a job as being a sort of multiplicative "product" of the size of the company with the level of the job. So a given job at a certain functional level has less status in a very small company than it does in a large organization.

Also there is a "cool" factor associated with companies, the recognition of each one as a leader or not in its category. This is the way that the IBMs of the business world traditionally hooked new graduates - IBM was big, and classy. It still is both, and that still counts for a lot of wage slaves who are indentured to their consulting jobs.

DEC was much smaller than IBM, but among DECies, it was seen as classier.  That perception may not matter to you, but it made an enormous difference in my life.  To some extent, it was based on arrogance.  But there was also some reality there.  The work was cool.

[Walter Mitty]

Not only was the work cool, but the coworkers were cool.  The computers were cool.  The culture was cool. 

There was a lot of self deprecating humor inside of DEC,  but that humor was just evidence that internally, a lot of us were comfortable with our work environment. 

That started to change in my last year of employment at DEC, and that was one of the reasons it was time for me to move on, although I only realized that later.

[Walter Mitty]

An employee is "assigned" greater status than a contractor by HR, by most peers, and by society. Temporary labor - temps - are of relatively low social status. Sic: if nobody will hire you permanently, you must be lousy and suck.

In the seventeen years of my self employement after my FTE career, I've been both a "consultant" and a "contractor".  I know this distinction can be mangled by too many words, and both you and I have beaten this topic to death in previous discussions.  But in this context, here's what I mean:

When I was a consultant, I had higher status than the FTEs I worked with.  When I was a contractor, I had lower status.  This affected everything.  The quality of the PC provided.  The location of my cubicle.  Whether I was expected to change they way they do business.  What kind of ging away lunch they held for me at the end of the gig.

And when I thought I was a consultant, and they thought I was a contractor, there was a large amount of cognitive disconnect.

[Walter Mitty]

One can say that only assholes label fellow humans in this way but there's an awful lot of implicit labeling that goes on in society.

If you are aware of this and you believe you are marginalized and it matters to you, then it can eat you alive.

We all label people, whether we want to admit it or not.  And most of it is implicit. 

Our own culture is mostly implicit and invisible to ourselves.  When it becomes visible and explicit, that's when it can be changed.

I'm actually going through a severe sense of marginalization right now, in my retirement.  And it's not among my former colleagues.  It's in all the other areas of interpersonal dealings.  One of the ways I held myself in high regard through most of my adult life was that I considered myself smart. 

That may have been  a defense.  Be that as it may,  I get very little external reinforcement of that self image these days.  Some people around me don't consider me smart.  Or they consider me smart, and they don't like that.  I'm having to rely increasingly on internal resinforcement, and less and less on external reinforcement.

I've expressed all this very personally, but I don't think I'm the only one.

[HiredGunn]

no job = no status

True.

But not status.  The sense of being "status deprived" among the poor in the US is more acute than it is among the poor in Latin America.  To some extent this is external:  the way you see yourself is conditioned by the way others see you.

There is a name for that too - External Validation.

Even after eradicating that on a personal level it is still required professionally in a group setting ( as pack animals ).

[Walter Mitty]

One can say that only assholes label fellow humans in this way but there's an awful lot of implicit labeling that goes on in society.

“There are two kinds of people in this world - those who divide everything into two and those who don't”