Thankless task: 55% of IT admins say colleagues fail to acknowledge support

More than half of IT admin staff (55%) are not thanked by colleagues for carrying out essential IT tasks on their behalf, a new poll has shown. 

ManageEngine, the real-time IT management company which carried out the survey, has released the results in conjunction with the 16th System Administrator Appreciation Day on Friday 31st July, as part of a campaign to give staff in other roles an insight into what a system administrator’s job entails. 

Debunking a few common myths, the poll of over 2,000 IT workers revealed a few perceptions were actually true: 44% said that being a geek was written in their DNA, while 38% said they left their private persona at home and morphed into a geek at work. 

However, despite having a reputation for working long hours, 46% of the system administrators surveyed claimed to be party animals and around half (48%) worked within a 9-hour day.

“While some myths were busted, it was a surprise when some turned out to be facts”, said Vidya Vasu, head of the ManageEngine Community. “For instance, 55% had messy desks and the majority conformed to the ‘geek’ stereotype.” 

To help colleagues thank hard-working system administrators, ManageEngine has created a series of free eCards. To send one or download a full infographic of the myth-busting Sysadmin survey, visit http://bit.ly/1G94vtv.

ManageEngine welcomes Sysadmins to participate in the below contests:

Caption the GIFs contest - ManageEngine is running its Caption the GIFs contest through July 31, 2015. More than 350 syadmins have captioned GIFs so far at https://pitstop.manageengine.com/sysadminday/index.html#Contest. Ten lucky winners will each receive a $20 Amazon gift card.

IT-Q game - Designed to test the IT IQ of sysadmins who double as wordsmiths, IT-Q may also be played by those unfortunate souls without the swagger or technology chops to make it as sysadmins. The game is available at https://pitstop.manageengine.com/sysadminday/index.html#Game.