InformationWeek

September 25, 2000

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Backlash

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The situation tested her family as well. Her husband, a retired Navy man, was pressed into managing the home full-time--a complete role reversal he neither anticipated nor relished. He remained supportive of Reese's career, as she had been of his, but he was still stressed about what it meant for him and their two sons.

Finally, Reese left for another firm, this time making a thorough investigation before signing on. One month into her current job as a consultant for Collective Technologies, Reese calls it "the best company I've ever found." Whether it's equipment and tools, support, or other resources, Reese says all she has to do is ask, and the firm is right behind her. She's also able to work from home, and Collective Technologies even adjusts work schedules to accommodate family events.

And Reese's previous employer? It not only lost a valued IT expert, it also lost one of its clients, who preferred Reese's work over the firm's brand name.

IT workers aren't the only ones affected by burnout in the Internet economy. Nontech users within fast-paced Internet startups can be equally affected by IT demands and pressures. Karl Sowa, VP of enterprise development for wwwrrr.net, a Minneapolis Internet education company that licenses teaching tools to schools, has tales of his own nightmare job. A few years ago as the director of marketing at GeoCities, a company that sets up communities for individuals who want to publish personal home pages, Sowa saw the company grow from just a few employees to 170.

As the seventh hire at the fledgling company (GeoCities is now part of Yahoo), Sowa had many jobs. He designed the ad server, laid out technical specs, and set up the print server. He worked seven days a week, sometimes 90 hours in one week. "When I got home, I couldn't even finish sentences," he says. And then there was the sleeplessness. "Sleep is what you need the most, but your mind is racing so much that you can't," he says.

Karl Sowa Photo by Sal Skog To avoid such a situation at his current job, Sowa attempts to manage his staff of 40 so that no one group is overburdened. For example, Sowa tells his employees, "If you ever find yourself sitting at your desk and think you've been asked to do something dumb, then immediately come talk to me."

Communication, open-door policies, and good leadership are key if companies want to keep their IT staffs intact, say IT executives and experts. "The worst thing to do is isolate yourself, which is an issue we as managers struggle with today as our lives become busier," says Prudential's Landon. "People will tell you their issues if you put out the psychiatrist's couch."

Some IT workers cite another potential stress-reliever: location. Mike Nolan, a senior project manager at Home Box Office, says his staff rarely has problems with burnout, partly because they're located in rural Iowa.

Nolan says not having to deal with long commutes and congested traffic makes for a better quality of life than that of colleagues who work in offices in crowded metropolitan areas such as Atlanta, Chicago, and Dallas. "Our hours are as long as anyone's, but it only takes five minutes to get home," he says. The result: low turnover.

Even companies in hot technology regions such as Silicon Valley have begun to wise up by offering stress-reducing perks to employees. High-tech employers of all sizes in the Valley allow telecommuting, build child-care centers, provide free passes for public transportation, and even open satellite offices to ease commutes for workers. This month, Cisco Systems plans to open a $10 million child-care center for 440 children at its headquarters in San Jose. Internet firm Respond.com, in Palo Alto, provides employees free notebook computers and subsidizes a second desktop PC.

Non-technology companies that depend heavily on IT also offer programs to help IT workers better manage their work and personal lives. For example, brokerage firm Charles Schwab & Co. offers telecommuting, flexible scheduling, sabbaticals, and concierge services that help employees coordinate home repairs as well as plan events, says Randy Ynegas, director of human resources for Schwab technology innovation. "One woman in IT used the services to help plan her wedding," he says.

Of course, one reason for the kinder, gentler Silicon Valley is that the region doesn't want to continue to lose scarce IT talent to other, more lifestyle-oriented areas of the country such as Austin, Texas. "Employers are finding in this tight job market that there's nothing more important than a satisfied employee who will remain with the company and remain productive," says Ruben Barrales, president and CEO of research firm Joint Venture Silicon Valley Network. "The whole issue of stress and making work more attractive for employees is becoming more widespread than ever before."

IT workers are getting savvier, too. After his bad experience with a previous employer, Credit Suisse's Miller says he learned to interview prospective employers more than they interview him. "Once you've been to hell, you don't want to go back," he says. "I want to know where I'll be sitting, who I'll be working with, what the environment is like, how the company works, and how it gets things done."

While companies' efforts to alleviate IT stress are admirable, many still don't get to the heart of overwork and the needs of stressed-out workers, says Beverly Goldberg, VP of the Century Foundation, a think tank in New York. "Companies have to accept that workers can only do so much," she says. "They can provide concierge services, child care, more money, more options--but at a certain point, people can't do more work."

S-B Power Tool's Appelhans recognizes this. "One of the reasons we haven't offered any of those [concierge-type] programs is that people might perceive them as ploys to give up downtime," he says.

While it's unlikely that the demands of IT and the Internet--and the resulting stress of the IT work style--will decrease anytime soon, some believe major changes are at hand. Carnegie Mellon's Florida says it may well be the next generation of IT workers that brings the technology work culture back to sanity. A lot of Florida's students view the Silicon Valley lifestyle as too sterile. They want a more balanced life, one that allows them to pursue interests beyond the world of IT, such as sports and music. At some point, "someone will get up and say, 'It's not cool to work so much,'" Florida says. "It'll be a generational phase--an informal, societal recognition."

The good news: The shift may already be under way. "What's new is that we're beginning to think about it, we're aware of it, and we want to do something about it," Florida says. That's sure to be music to the ears of IT workers everywhere.