Do you love your work?

[Structural Integrity]

I just read this news article (It's Dutch, so don't bother when you can't read Dutch) and it states that the work conditions are midieval-like in the Dutch IT sector (this not completely true according to some replies to the article). The stress is enormously high, and employers demand from IT-ers that they follow courses the whole time to keep their knowledge up to date.
Also do most employers underestimate the knowledge of the IT-ers and sometimes overestimate the possibilities/abilities of the IT world.

Since I'm studying for IT-er myself (programming, networking, etc etc, you know the story) I was rather shocked (well, not the right word for that) to learn that when I'm done studying I'll probably end up in a stressed out world.
I like programming very much, and my heart lies in the IT-world, but I don't really like to work under stress. I love to learn new things, but they really have to be things that I'm interrested in.
Ever since I've started to program in my free-time I was always sure I've chosen the right study, but now, I'm not that 100% sure anymore.
To be honest, I've always been naive enough to think that when I finished my study I could do (read: program) whatever I wanted, that the jobs were for picking up.

Now, I'd like to ask you how you experience your work, and if you REALLY love it. If it's true that you have to sacrifice much of a personal life and that the pressure from management are really that unbearable? Or are the advantages from being able to study and learn new things ALL THE TIME bigger than the disadvantages?

[Gayle29uk]

I'm happiest working under pressure so front line support suits me fine

[Structural Integrity]

Originally posted by Weeks
are you considering going into games dev then?

cant decide myself, think i may do as it is the least ****e computing job i can imagine atm.

although i'd also love to work deveoping a linux distro.

but there is greater room for mental creativity in game dev maybe. hrm. then again i may be working for some evil corp doing another fecking FPS.

To be honest, that was what I first thought of when I chose my study. I wanted to create games.
Sadly my study doesn't really cover that part (hell, not even 3D programming, it even lacks a decent deep course in programming, it's all basics) but I'm SERIOUSLY catching up in my free time (or at work, I work 40 hrs/week on OpenGL/3D_maths now, while instead I should be making embedded webservers )
I WILL NEVER go into embedded programming.... there is simply NO ROOM for creativity. When you make a user app you can always put a neat feature here and there. But embedded programming... no!

Anyway, where-ever you end up working you will ALWAYS have to do what your boss wants you to do. If you want to use your creativity you might want to end up in a small company where you aren't just a number in the database. Disadvantage of that is the profit-margins are usually slim, and there isn't a HUGE team to compensate for YOUR lazyness. The rewarding part is that you can probably put your own name under the thing you developed, rather than the companies name.
Also, with the current bad economy, there is quite some internal competition between IT-ers (so I heard/read).... Who can suck up to their boss the best and manages to keep his job.

I have also considdered making my office in my parents garage and do free-lance work for stupid companies that don't have the people to develop certain software... You will have more control over your work then, but probably won't be able to drive a big Mercedes....

The way it looks now it's always the "money VS love for the work" issue that is bugging me. Personally I'd love to work for myself, doing whatever I want to, making less money, but mostly having fun in what I do. I love that warm fluffy feeling in my tummy when someone tells me they love the things I made. If it was up to me I could live on warm and fluffy feelings in my tummy.
But on the other hand, it's the mentality of the western culture to make as much money as possible, no matter the job....
I know what my parents/family would like to see: a successfull guy who makes a few 100k/year (how realistic is that, PFFFT).

[NEWSBOT3]

Originally posted by Gayle28uk
I'm happiest working under pressure so front line support suits me fine

pressure ?
heh
what pressure ?

all the stress i get in my workplace is from customers, team leader couldnt care less as long as im working..

[mikay]

The days of being Jeff Minter, Archer McLean, Eugene Evans or any of those other whizkid games designers are long gone. Nowadays games designers design the games & coder do what they are told.

I spent several years working in-house for a distribution company and that had interesting moments. It's interesting because you get to see inner workings of how the business works. The problem is after a while everything's basically the same and becomes very boring. Mostly it ends up being report writing or debugging.

I now do a hardware ops/support role and mostly I love it. The role's split between reactive work (it's broke) and proactive work (security, high availability strategies, capacity etc...). Every day is literally different.

I have done hardware development type work in the past and I've got to say I find it dull because you are stuck with the same thing for however many months.

Dunno about software but in a hardware/admin type role ppl are desperate to learn more. Ppl will change jobs or even take cuts (ie go from contract to permie) because of the opportunity to learn new stuff. Really if you want big bucks you have to know more than everyone else.

As far as pressure, sorry but I dunno if you can avoid it in IT. Things have to work and there are usually hundreds or thousands of users who get p****d off if it doesn't. Gayle's right tho, because of the sheer scale & importance this can be very gratifying.

One good thing is if you can get good enough to go contracting (much more difficult than it was) you do get a lot more variety of work but usually with even more pressure

[Miserableman]

I'm with Weeks on this one, games development is the path I want to take, but I find the idea of OS development very appealing too.

[mazzelaar]

I love my job most of tyhe time
I am a sysadmin - the power is worth the pay cheque alone

btw - I know the guy who wrote worms - he drives a lamborghini and buys crap trance records

sysadmin is a quite good job ...
I do that in school atm, we have a pupil based administration where quite some ppl with a good knowledge work in.
when we mirror our comp data and it takes a bit longer, we also have to work longer just like our admin ,... so we'r kinda fully integrated into the work.

If you work in small groups and try to find ur own security loops etc, it's a quite interesting job eventhough i wouldn't like working in this branche for my whole life.