However I do believe that taking a defeatist attitude towards the problem solves nothing and helps noone. Sure most of the things I mentioned are tough to do, but the are certainly worth striving for. Rather than saying “well there is nothing I can do so I am not going to try”, you should instead do everything in your power to reach the goals that I outlined, you may not even get close on some (or even most), but your employees will appreciate the trying, and you may get further than you think.

I look at it this way, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take, and that’s true in everything in life. If you never try you will never know what you may have achieved, and how difficult something is has nothing to do with it.

The job attracts those who like working with machines and systems. But the bulk of the job isn’t doing that so much as handling the mismatch between systems and people. And because of time and schedule pressures to consistently deliver something real to the business, the work never ends.

Pay people what they’re worth? Few companies–for any of their non-core employees–do this. Unless your skill is directly tied to the company’s key revenue source, you will be a non-core employee.

Interesting work? There may be that, on occasion, but your worth to the business is in keeping the business running. Most of the time, that’s not ‘interesting’ in the way that you mean above.

Flexible? It may happen, but if so, it’ll be mostly by accident. You’re in IT, people in many different departments depend on you. Those departmental work cycles vary. When Finance needs you most, HR may need you less. When Support needs you most, Legal may need you less. Nevertheless, their varying cycles of need pretty much ensure that you will constantly be responding to one set of rising departmental needs all of the time. And if you’re in the middle of a core product development cycle, the intensity will rise for all departments.

Friendly and open? As in the real world, you’ll get a mix. Some people are naturally open. Others can be persuaded. Still others will refuse. If you need a disproportionate mix of the latter type in your group (perhaps because they’re the best at their job), you’re not going to have a friendly group (at least as perceived from the outside.)

Hire people better than you? Human insecurity, the dearth of real talent, and the pressure to fill critical open reqs, combine to make this a non-option in most environments.

A career path can work–for a few. The inevitable narrowing of managerial and technical hierarchies within any company mean that only a few will grow through the ranks.

Opportunities to learn and improve? Many large firms offer very weak training–most of it is useless ‘compliance’ training–which is a turnoff for the dedicated. Most decent training is expensive–either in terms of the registration price, travel, time away from work, etc. Even if you try to train in-house, you’ll need to use your best people to train (otherwise the value of the content is useless to attendees), and they’ll need to develop training materials, refresh it, debug it, test it, etc.

Yes, I do admit I’ve pointed out all of the negatives in my response. But these are altogether too common. _That’s_ why IT turnover is so high. These won’t change. _That’s_ why IT turnover will stay high.

I would work until I died.