Survey Complete

Well, the IT Admin Job (dis)Satisfaction survey is done, and I'm currently reviewing the results. There were 334 responses to the survey, which is just tremendous. We should definitely get a feel for what other admins go through, and what our work environments are like. To whet your appetite, here are the most popular answers:

1) I deal with:

Server software - 92.8% (309 responses)

2) I am on call

24x7 365 (all the time) - 43.5% (145 responses)

3) I am the primary point of contact in the event of any failure of the IT infrastructure

True - 59.8% (196 responses)

4) The number of users (total) supported in your organization

200+ - 52.1% (174 responses)

5) The number of people providing support to those users

2-4 - 41.0% (137 responses)

6) The number of serverss (physical and virtual) in your organization that are administered

200+ - 21.0% (70 responses)

7) Number of people administering those servers

2-4 - 43.4% (145 responses)

8) Total number of WAN network connections in your organization

2-4 - 30.8% (102 responses)

9) I am...

a) overworked
Agree (118 responses)

b) unappreciated
Agree (107 responses)

c) paid sufficiently
Disagree (129)

d) Happy that I am in my job role
Agree (179 responses)

e) Enjoying my job
Agree (176)

f) Seeking other employment
Disagree (112)

10) Do you think that most people in your position have it better or worse than you do?

Worse - 64.0% (208 responses)


Now, it's important to keep in mind that the raw survey results are just that: raw. There are some untruths that looking at these results might lead you to believe. For instance, you can see that 52% of people have over 200 users in their organization. You also see that 41% of respondents say that there are 2-4 people supporting their user base. This might lead you to believe that it's very common for 2-4 people to support 200+ users, but in reality, when you filter for people who have 200+ users, you see that over 67% of them have 5 or more support people for that user base. 24% of the 200+ people have 10 or more support personnel for their user base.

One thing that struck me was that almost without exception, people thought that others had it worse off than they themselves do. My asking that question was my equivalent to the computer asking Spock how he felt. I wanted to end with a question that might throw people off a little bit, and now I'm glad I did. It's an interesting metric, and people consistently felt despite how overworked and under-appreciated they were, that other people had it worse.

Anyway, I'm working on a much more in-depth report on the results with all sorts of interesting findings (including the one metric that might change an unhappy person into a happy one, and it has nothing to do with money!). Thanks, everyone, for your responses!