Image:Shutterstock AI/Shutterstock.com
A recent poll found that while around 60% of our members aren’t logging excessive hours each week, nearly 30% are burning the candle at both ends. Between surprise outages, late-night pings, and ticket queues that never seem to end, work-life balance in IT can sometimes feel more like a fantasy than a goal.
Inspired by "Is there really such a thing as work-life balance in IT? " by Steven Vaughan-Nichols, I’m asking you to weigh in with this week’s polls.
So, let’s find out how you’re really feeling—and what you wish could change.
If you could change ONE thing to improve your work-life balance, what would it be?
- Fewer after-hours emergencies
- Less workload / better staffing
- More flexible schedule
- Clearer boundaries between roles/responsibilities
- Better management/support
- Disconnect from work tech after hours
- Other, tell us below
How would you rate your current work-life balance in IT?
- Excellent – I’ve got it figured out!
- Decent – Not perfect, but manageable
- Meh – It’s a daily struggle
- Terrible – What’s ‘life’?
- It depends on the week
- I’ve made peace with the chaos
- Other, tell us below
Got tips for maintaining your sanity? Or a horror story to share? Drop your experiences below—let’s compare notes and maybe pick up a few survival tips along the way.
Related:
22 Spice ups
We don’t get paid overtime, so we don’t do any overtime. Very occasionally we will need to do some out of hours work, so we get time back in Lieu, and we generally take it back within the next fortnight so that nobody forgets about it.
17 Spice ups
while in homeoffice, the commuting part disappears.
It worked like something of a ramp-up and tear-down script to me and helped getting set up for work, and clearing the stage afterwards.
much harder to achieve at home.
ok, the ramp-up coffee at home is way better, and you get a tear-down gin&tonic directly after dropping the pencil, but that’s not quite healthy in the long run…
14 Spice ups
Although many have embraced the home office life or hybrid of a few times a week in the office, many executive managers still cling onto the you must drive into the office mentality, which for some is a 1-2 hour drive. I get it some positions require physical office presence but many do not. Does the programmer or database admonitor really have to drive into the office sitting at a cubicle and then driving home?
9 Spice ups
I don’t think it should be required, but I also think it depends on the individual, and the setting. If you don’t have a quiet place at home to work, it can be easy to get distracted, and it takes time to adjust to that setting… just like to online classes or something. Some people seem to be very poor at motivating themselves in a setting like that, and so for some people it might be better to come into an office.
… I think it should be the worker’s choice though. As long as you get the work done, it matters little where you are. And the employer should be giving feedback about that part of it… being committed to the job, getting things done, etc.
Some of my very best employees in the past were working from home, getting tons more done than many of the people that were working from the office, but I have had others that seemed to do very little and would miss meetings because they decided to run to the store or something (non-emergency). As with any job you have to find the balance so you are fulfilling your commitments and are available to your coworkers during scheduled times.
10 Spice ups
2ndSon
(2ndSon)
6
Work life balance is fine, it’s the life part that’s tricky lol. Trying to figure out adulthood/socialization in a small town isn’t easy. There doesn’t seem to be too much to do for someone who doesn’t drink, at least nothing I’ve found (or nothing that isn’t at least $50-$100 for an evening “event”).
9 Spice ups
I’m happy to stay on the bottom rung of the ladder if it means that I can shut down every day at 5 and not have to think about work. So, no tips here since I leave work at work.
8 Spice ups
No I don’t. I work in Azure/GitHub ~75% of the time, and 20% of the time I work on IoT devices that are remotely deployed. The ONLY thing I can’t do from home is program a new IoT device. But my boss prefers to yell across the office to summon people rather than call or email them with a question.
My only problem with my current work/life balance is how strictly scheduled it is. My breaks are at 10, noon, and 3. If I’m busy at those times I don’t get a break. Sadly, troubleshooting a failing app service or writing a function to calculate pump flow doesn’t always fit into nice 2 hour chunks.
6 Spice ups
The one thing I would change to improve the balance is the recent trend (Q1’24 - present) to vacillate between flood or drought regarding new tickets. It feels like everything is reactionary rather than planned, and what comes with it is the sense of being perpetually on call.
Its even exhausting if (that is a big if) the queue is empty because it feels like you are waiting for the next deluge of tickets to be opened as response to something else. The unknown, rather than the regular and consistent, is impossible to strategize for.
This feels like being on the receiving end of a bigger problem’s effect than the affect of an external change pushing staff to react rather than plan.
I hope that this is a short lived trend rather than one to stick around for years.
4 Spice ups
zoidbergg
(Zoidbergg)
10
When I worked for a School District, this was very much the truth. Tight, closely monitored budgets, but sh-IT happens and you gotta fix it.
3 Spice ups
Because most of my customers have my cell phone number (because when I started, I didn’t have a soft phone or office phone), I often get text messages for things that could easily be sent via email instead. The issue I have is there is no OOO on text messages. So, when I’m on vacation, and I get text messages, I’m still having to toss those to someone to handle so I can get back to vacation mode.
In my brain, I mentally assign the priority in this way:
low priority, get to it when you can - email
medium priority, important - email or phone call
urgent, this can’t wait - phone call or text
my hair is on fire, drop everything - text, phone call, email, carrier pigeon (although the pigeon often gets lost).
So, when the customer sends me a text, I think it is urgent. But, the customer is asking me to move their computer to another desk in the office. Sorry, that is not my hair is on fire, drop everything.
6 Spice ups
Have you thought about getting a different number? Even a Google Voice number would be a good change… all of those texts could go to the Google Voice page and you could deal with them there instead.
6 Spice ups
I have been working on having a better work/life split. When I first took this job, it was a total mess. Once we got back on top of it all, I can stick to hours and ooo is rare now. Still a way to go, but it helps.
5 Spice ups
I would love to either switch to an at-home or hybrid solution, just to save on commute, be there more for my son, actually enjoy the house I spend all that money on…but right now, that’s not a hill I need to die on. It’s pretty comfortable here, if I’m honest.
7 Spice ups
mishap
(mishap)
15
It would be MUCH easier if my office was MUCH closer to home. I go in twice a week, but the travel is 45 minutes in the morning and, typically, 2 hours in the evening. Makes for an overly long day!
9 Spice ups
Barely surviving. 8 workers for 550 users across 30 locations. Need double that to help support the many different Applications used by each Department. Have the same amount of staff I did when I started here 19 years ago. Work has more than doubled along with the demands. Feeling burned out!
7 Spice ups
bob-13
(Bob_13)
17
I find that my “duties” include pretty much everything that no one else does, or doesn’t want to do. Like why am I the “guide” - we work in a secure site so all visitors are supposed to be guided by staff… even when they are not here for tech issues somehow I’m the one leading them more often than not.
5 Spice ups
I suppose it doesn’t help that I basically have no life to better balance with work? Maybe I need to work MORE?
Stress is the worst part. I’m not on call, I rarely work outside of the 9-5 Monday- Friday (though it’s really 7:30 am - 4 pm), so it’s not the hours, it’s what I can do with those hours (or not). Too much to do, not enough hours in the day and overtime is frowned upon, but if I need to…I can. Should I? I don’t think I should. Spring and early summer is the worst as they spend the budget. Tech projects galore all hitting at the same time.
5 Spice ups
jrblood
(JRBlood)
19
The one thing that I did change was getting out of an overloaded MSP job. Now I manage and make decisions for ONE company and their infrastructure. The experience I got from that MSP is invaluable and battle-hardened me, but after it changed hands and became bigger and mismanaged, it got to be too much. Now managing and maintaining one company’s network, knowing it so well, and being able to make the decisions is a BREEZE compared to before.
6 Spice ups
wyld
(cwik)
20
Living alone and having retirement on the horizon makes the work-life balance seem pretty even. When I get calls during off hours I’m typically not annoyed because there’s nothing else going on anyway.
4 Spice ups
