Last week I posted about choosing the work environment in IT that’s right for you. We discussed what it means to find a job in IT that’s a perfect fit, how to deal with a tough job market, and how to plan your career for the long haul. I hope that my insight and suggestions were helpful.
Today I’d like to tackle another aspect of choosing the right job in IT. We’ll take a look at the pros and cons of where you choose to work from a salary and mental health stand point. We’ll also examine some of the differences in job expectations and how they vary from business to business.
IT Job Expectations That Vary
In some work environments the leverage against technology is so high and so critical to the success of the business, that your responsibilities may be quite high and the role quite demanding. Compensation is often higher to meet that higher responsibility, but for some people the stress and the pressure are not worth it, regardless of the compensation level.
As an example, an online retailer (let’s assume a large department store chain) that has both physical locations for shoppers to go to as well as an online presence, depends on both for its business. While it really doesn’t want to have issues with its online operations and it would become negatively impacted if its online operations suddenly came to a halt due to technology issues, it could continue to operate and make sales even during this impact of their infrastructure. There would be some sense of urgency to get online operations back up and running as quickly as possible, but the business is still running (though at an impacted level) and making sales.
An internet retailer that only has an online presence will totally cease to exist if its online operations suddenly came to a halt due to technology issues. A loss of online operations totally prevents this business from making any sales and revenue from them.
Between these two businesses there are two very different levels of urgency to get operations back online.
The higher potential for loss of sales and revenue for the business drives a higher level of severity for a problem; more management will be involved, more stress introduced and higher performance expectations will be needed from the technical staff to respond to the issues and to get them resolved.
If you think that you would thrive in this type of environment then you should seek out positions that demand this type of preparedness. If on the other hand, you’re the type of individual that cannot react well in an emergency situation (you cannot think clearly, you don’t work well under the glare of management, etc) you’d probably want to stay clear of these environments.
The bottom line — you need to consider the type of pressure you can work under and the demands and responsibilities of the role you have in that particular company. If the demand and expectation levels are too high for what you can manage then you need to consider a similar job role in a different work environment — one that is better suited to your personality type.
Role Responsibilities: Clearly Defined or Blurred Lines?
The other item to consider is how well a company is making out “doing more with less,” especially in the current economy.
Job responsibilities have always been in one form of change or another and there is nothing quite like the restructuring of potions and responsibilities in a tightening job market to accelerate those changes.
As one example, you might have taken on your role in your company when it didn’t involve interfacing with customer contacts and that has changed subtly as the position evolved or the company itself has grown. In a situation like this, where dealing with people directly is not your most favorable thing to do, you need to take stock in the changes and decide what to do.
Whether you retrain yourself to better deal with the changes in the new role or you decide to look for other positions that were more like the way your job used to be is going to depend on a couple of things.
In one case, you have to decide whether the change is something that is occurring in just your place of employment or if it’s an industry wide change. If the change in role responsibility is occurring in similar roles all over, then it’s a paradigm shift that will generally be found everywhere over the course of time.
The other factor you may consider is whether or not the change is really that drastic and if it’s going to make you completely unhappy in your new role. A certain amount of change can be good and it may allow you to grow and gain additional skills in the subtle changes of responsibility right within your own role.
If you think about it as cross-training right in your current job then you may find that you take to it well (or “well enough” to keep it as a positive change) and it allows you to add new skills to your resume. Those might be helpful come review time or in the unfortunate scenario where you might be laid off and looking for work.
The bottom line — change in the IT field is often relevant, beneficial and a complete part of the constant evolution of the industry. The better and more flexible you are to subtle and even sudden changes in business drivers, duties, and responsibilities, the better your position to maintain your job and to excel within the company.
Remember, the one constant in the IT field is change.
I hope you found this information useful. I’m always looking forward to your feedback on this and any other articles I have written so feel free to drop in some comments or contact me directly.
Additionally, I welcome any suggestions for topics of interest that you would like to see here.
Discussion
No comments or trackbacks for “Working in IT: Role Responsibility and Job Expectations”Post a comment