Need some reassurance

Does anyone else here absolutely hate their job as much as I do? I'd kind of like to know that I'm not alone. Lately I've seriously been thinking that an IT desk job may have been the wrong decision for my career and I'm exploring other opportunities. I like doing the work and everything, it's just the job is burning me out. I won't bore you with all the details, but a few weeks ago the City of North Platte (my employer) regained control over Lincoln County's IT work again after their only tech person resigned suddenly. So our workload went from being comfortable to overbearing in a matter of days. And since I'm the guy on the bottom of the totem pole and doodoo rolls down hill, I was put in charge of it all. I understand why the county person quit too, her network is in shambles. I've been spending about 11 to 12 hours a day over here for the last two weeks almost starting from scratch rebuilding servers and dealing with SOB elected officials. I've just gotten fed up with all of it and I want out. Anyone else have this problem, past or present?

Don't have much I can reassure you with. I do roughly the same thing you do (I'm the only IT person in my company) so I do literally everything. And I absolutely love it. Plus they just altered my hours so now I'm 7AM-5:30PM Mon-Thu and have Fri-Sun off. 3 day weekends, yeah!

I'm the only IT guy here too. I am bored out of my mind at work. I just need a prject to keep me focused and motivated. Sounds like you just got what I need. lol Wanna trade?

There's three of us and between the city and the county we've got over 450 computers and about 30 servers total, and I think somewhere around 20-25 dsl circuits each with their own firewall appliance. The things that are just plain and simple broken with the county are things that didn't just happen over night either, they have been persistent problems for months. I'm just getting burned out is all and I think I could use a major change of scenery. I honestly don't know how the previous person could have let things slide down hill as bad as they have. We use to run that network a year ago and everything went perfectly smooth. My biggest worries then were having to go around and make sure automatic updates were turned on at every computer and stuff like that. We've been calling that server room the junk pile instead of a server room is how bad stuff is. But in a mere 13 minutes it will be time to go home and I'm not staying late tonight!

Well good luck to you. I know I always feel better after finishing a hard project then an easy one.

I have managed to get some tings done. Like they county has a measly 5 servers, but only one has a tape drive for backups. But for that one drive there are only 4 tapes. The commissioners put a freeze on our spending until they make a decision on whether or not they hire a new person, but I got some key people on my side about the lack of tapes including two judges and voila! I've got a whole box of tapes on the way now.

And in the register of deeds office they have this gigantic scanner and the computer it is attached to hasn't worked since April they say, so I rebuilt it. But wouldn't you know that the company that supports their fancy software and that scanner are not in business any more, and it is an old fashion SCSI scanner. But I managed to jerry rig it enough to make it work.

I do have one domain controller/dns server/wins server/file server/print server (all one box!) that has a bad motherboard according to the dell tech support, it has 4 gigs ram but for some reason it is only acknowledging 2 gigs, we think a bad controller or something. It's still under warranty and the new board is set to get here Friday, so it looks like I've got some overtime this weekend too.

Whilst there may be alot of discomfort in the job, so long as you stick in and work away at it eventually you will reap the benefits. If your employers are good to you and understand what is involved they will appreciate it in the long run. Besides, after all the work eventually you are going to have a setup where it becomes very managable.

What would you consider doing outside of IT work?

Actually I've kind of been thinking about doing some military service. More accurately, I want to be out of this place by this winter. I'm an army brat, I grew up in a military family. My dad spent more than two decades in the army so I guess its in my genes. But for the greater part of his time he did a desk job though and that is what I want to avoid.

I guess you should go out and seek what you enjoy.

But I'm sure you will reap rewards from this job later on... get your reputation with the IT business a bit up. I bet you'll get a good amount of cash too.

That's exactly the same thing I went through a month ago ... I absolutely couldn't take my job any more ... and I applied for some other posts at other companies, and at the very first one I found a job as a web developer ... And that is exactly what I want to do ...

Just make sure that you think it through before you just get up and quit though ...

I feel the same way about my job as you do about yours, Mike - though it ain't the same line of work at all.... but I'm really tired of it, we're constantly fire-fighting and always swamped with work and yet none of what we do seems to matter at all, in the global scheme of things.

as far as military service is concerned I'd advise against it - no offense to those who support it, but somehow any line of work that has being shot at as part of the job description just intuitively seems like a bad idea to me.................

I beg to differ about the being shot at part. I don't have a death wish or anything, but the idea of growing to be a really old man just sitting around waiting to die is not very fun sounding. If I have to die I want it to be while I'm on my feet being active and moving around, not just sitting in a rocking chair staring out a window. Even accidently driving my jeep off a cliff or something would be better than getting to be 95 years old and doing nothing.

Yeah true dat. Of course you could do lots of fun things with your life and then be a 95 year old man dying after a life full of excitement.

The nasty thing is that getting shot at doesn't always include dying. How about just having a leg blown off? Plus half a face....

Don't get me wrong - I'm not trying to be a downer here, and I'm sure a career in the military service can be very rewarding, and many people will never get shot. But it is something to consider....

Buy a farm and some cows. If it doesn't kill you first, it might make you healthy enough to love to be 95. It will definitely keep you active.

Death and dismemberment could happen to anybody anywhere and at any time. Really this biggest downside that I can find so far is that I will have to shave my beard off, I haven't been bare faced in 5 years.