Unhappy IT professionals: Future Tsunami

IT has expanded its reach to every segment that you can think of and so the need of IT professionals. They are in demand heavily and are responsible to run your business flawlessly. They work hard to make your business going. But when they are discontent, they can be harmful also.When angry, IT professionals are no less than ticking bombs and can do any harm to the company irrespective of the past preferences.The incident will shed some light on what harm angry IT workers can pose to the companies if not happy? Few years back, the workers at the offices of PaineWebber UBS faced some thing very terrible. The computers of all the employees were showing the same disc error, courtesy one logic bomb. The logic bomb was implanted by a then serving system administrator who was unhappy about not receiving the compensation that he was promised. The incident is a strong indication of what harm the angry workers cam pose to the flourishing and well to do company. The man was then put behind bars and was asked to serve the sentence for long 8 years.But, it was too late as company had already suffered more than $3 million in damage before it was back to normal.There are many other cases that narrate stories of IT workers which are less of revenge but more of them cracking under stress. Consider either way, the discontented workers tattered by terrible stress and impossible demands pose a great threat than ever.But the question that strikes most is why people who are always in charge of keeping the things going can damage it? What made them to create such a chaos?The outcomes are nothing just the burst of pressure and surging demands that boss puts on the workers irrespective of the constraints. Above that, in dot crash situation like now, they are more under peer pressure and tripled workloads. The employers are cutting the staff and piling the work on few thus demoralizing them and making them upset and furious.One more incident will clarify what havoc they can do. One international and market analysis firm was losing its mails but not all. The problem was a recently fired techie, who to take revenge had set the servers to automatically delete messages coming in from overseas.The reason is just not pressure, but it is something deeper. It is lack of appreciation and respect from their seniors. The loyalty quotient that is demanded from employees, employers lacks them often. To save, their money if crunch is widespread they can hand pink slips to the employees who are on payrolls and can opt for offshoring. This year in recession, estimates show that 8 percent of IT jobs have been offshored. Gartner Research has predicted that figure will rise to 30 percent by 2015.Apart from lack of appreciation and loyalty factor, the problem runs deeper. Team mates and supervisors work, talk and even think differently. The general notion that is followed by business people are,” techies are just lying to them.” But real world things do not work this way.At the end of the day, this discontent and lack of understanding can easily boil into a major problem.Till now it was just problems and more or less we know this, but the challenge is how to keep your IT people happy and avoid them wreaking havocs.The very first rule is trying stepping in their shoes. Take care of the technical aspects and think like geeks. They know their business well and try to commend them for that rather than pushing them. Always remember, without IT, there is no business. If IT people are unhappy, will they use that power to drive business toward their own ends.The second option is try avoiding them like commodities and trust that the people you have hired are much intelligent to handle the responsibilities.