I have worked in IT all my life, from the jack of all trades to specialized technologies.... on call all the time, i have had my fair share of events where 60 people swarm my desk as i type away and talk on the phone trying to resolve the issues.... my view of this....

other people can have the anxiety... i am here to do my job to the best of my abilities, i get paid to do that, i get paid to be on call, so i will do that... i have projects that i know will fail, projects that i am struggling to meet the timelines for and problems that i can solve, and problems that i can't solve... last I checked, that is IT period.

If you have real issues with anxiety and coping with this "crushing pressure" go work in another industry, IT isn't a walk in the park and if you can't balance work/personal and your own emotions, IT isn't for you.

Sure that sounds harsh, but again, in IT, get used to it.

They chose the perfect time to do the survey, most companies I have ever known someone at would do it in Dec/Jan for Calendar year, Mar/Apr if their fiscal year ended then, or Oct/Nov if their fiscal year ended then. So in my view it is an expected 66% NO. I hate it when information like this flows around. 100% of people agree**

** - Survey of 10000 people with 1 respondant

But if companies put in position mandates "Other duties as assigned" which can include monitoring others. I think that it is good to watch what is going on but not to the extent of social networking sites and GPS etc. I personally monitor the enterprise for mob behavior such as a 400% spike in internet traffic with people watching the world cup or streaming radio. I then crunch the numbers and show what the cost of said traffic is to the business and let the business decide if it continues or if I stop it.

My job is to ensure a stable and high performing network for the enterprise, part of that is watching what people are doing and stopping things that can degrade the stability or performance of the network as a whole. I don't look at it as monitoring co-workers, I see it as monitoring the network, what I am paid to do. The fact that humans are the ones generating the traffic doesn't matter, I really don't care who is doing it, just that it is being done.

We aren't here to single people out (unless asked to), just do the job that we are paid for.

3 cell battery it came with gave me 40 mins tops. Got the 9 cell and now i get 8 hours of working time, 1 hour less if i am watching videos.... i can't complain, it does pretty damn good... my netbook gets a little more, around 9 hours but all it does is surf the randomness that my wife makes it

I recently was forced to part with my old IBM System 36 and corresponding hard drive that was 350lbs and the size of a dishwasher. The system 36 was the original 700lb model 5630. They were used as end tables but didn't fit with my wife's tastes. I am proud to say that I was able to get the box up, with connected terminal and actually pulled data off of it (printed) in 2005. I was challenged by some friends to make it work to show it could still be put to use and damn it, the yellow paged manuals I still had made it easy.

My tech hoarding earned me some extra income as I won the bet making it work. So don't throw it out, your tech buddies will pay good money to watch you fight with 20 year old tech.

We have a password policy as well, with the no repeating characters, previous 10 passwords not allowed, not allowed to change the password twice in 48 hours, must have special character, upper and lower case and numbers, can't contain any part of user id or name, must be 9 characters in length, must start with a letter...... and that is just the domain password, rules for internal systems are just as crazy but some don't allow special characters etc so you are forced to maintain 50 passwords and user id's even though LDAP is the "only standard moving forward"

I sit next to the security teams, on password change day I yell and then remove the piece of paper on my cube's name badge and replace it with the updated passwords. They don't like me. I have proved that leaving your user ID and password at sight level at your cube doesn't mean someone will use it.... so far

Monday - 65 - no one was in on the weekend to complain about temp
Tuesday - 70 - the people around me blow enough hot air to raise it 5 degrees
Wednesday - 78 - the combination of building maintenance and the hot air cause it to rise to sweat shop levels
Thursday - 72 - the thermostat is in my cube so i take control and make it at least decent
Friday - 70 - no one ever shows up for work on friday so i can start to make the temp dip

And it is all "men" around me, but the bitch fest about the temp is like a group of 3 year olds

The key is that they stated they were missing deadlines and producing poor code. I don't claim to work a solid 8 hours every day, I probably do more like 6, but I make sure to meet all deadlines to the best of my ability. If that means sometimes working 5 days, 8 hours productive a week I do it (sometimes many more hours but may not be productive). My boss sees that I do this so when there are no deadlines he doesn't mind if I piss off work for a day here or a few hours there.

If work objectives are being met, fine. If they are not, management needs to step in and find a way to get the workers to get the job done. Not forcing solid work as that will fail, but finding a way to make them more productive by giving them some freedoms to control their own schedules and still get the job done.

Work ethic is a huge deal for me, it pisses me off watching people talk about hockey and not get the job done but if they are getting their jobs done, I am the first to jump into the conversation and have a little fun at work.

I love the fact that /. allows ads to be disabled. I enable every once and a while and click around just for fun.

What I really dislike are the ads that take up 80% of the screen such as the new CNN ads for Lexus and Mac that expand if you accidentally hover over them and take up the whole screen. The honor system works if you prove that you aren't trying in your face ads. I don't mind the occasional flashing ad in a small section of the screen, chew up my whole screen or have some loud audio and I visit the site a lot less. Show me your product or service and I will make a personal decision. Jam your ad in my face and I won't even take the time to see if you really are 1000 times better than your competition.