Survey: IT job satisfaction plummets

A new survey by the Corporate Executive Board finds that IT workers, like many other employees, are not putting forth the extra effort at work--a clear sign that something is wrong on the job. The survey ranks employees making a "high discretionary effort" at work; and that number plummeted in 2009 to 6.5 percent.

CEB, a non-profit, Washington, D.C.-based advisory firm, defines discretionary effort as an employee's willingness to go "above and beyond" their basic job responsibilities by helping others with heavy workloads, volunteering for additional duties and looking for ways to perform their job more effectively. About 10,000 IT workers were polled in this survey.

"The whole debate about whether IT matters and whether commodity IT work can be outsourced undermines the importance of the IT staff and is a cause of anxiety," Jaime Capella, a managing director in CEB's information technology group told InternetNews.com.

He also said the "leadership bench" is not as strong as it could be in many IT organizations. "As recently as five years ago, you had a layer of management that looked at IT as a black box they really didn't understand," he said. "I think it's starting to change, but it won't happen overnight."

For more on IT worker dissatisfaction:
- see this CIOupdate.com article