Most Tech Executives Are Unhappy With Their Jobs, Survey SaysMost Tech Executives Are Unhappy With Their Jobs, Survey Says

Does your boss seem grouchy or depressed? It could be because IT executives are the unhappiest with their jobs, according to a new survey.

Nearly 60% of IT executives say they're not satisfied or somewhat unsatisfied by their jobs, according to a survey of 2,149 executives by ExecuNet, an executive career networking firm. Of those surveyed, 140 were tech executives, including VPs, CIOS, and other top-rung IT managers. Only 41% of tech executives said they are satisfied with their jobs.

Of everyone surveyed, human resources executives and chief financial officers/comptrollers are the most content with their jobs, with 67% and 63% respectively saying they are satisfied with their current positions.

Sales executives are only slightly more content with their jobs than IT executives. Forty-two percent of sales execs said they are satisfied with their jobs.

So what's bugging the boss? Across all functions, the top job complaints include limited advancement opportunities (13%); lack of challenge/personal growth (13%); differences with culture (10%); and boss not a good match (10%). Only 9% of all executives cited compensation as a top reason of being unhappy with their jobs.

For IT executives, there is a combination of factors fueling their dissatisfaction at work, said ExecuNet founder and CEO Dave Opton in an interview. "In the IT world, these are usually people with a high level of intellectual curiosity," he said.

"A lot of their job satisfaction comes from the exposure to and ability to work with leading edge technology, but they don't always have that opportunity," he said.

That's because IT executives are also faced with stresses that involve the more mundane but no less-important aspects of their job, including the pressure for IT to help cut costs and increase productivity. "Those pressures are pretty high," he said.

On top of that, "the biggest challenge IT executives face is translating the needs of users to those who are creating the solutions," he said.