Sneak discovered this week that IT professionals get a very hard time at work. New research from IT support firm Connect found that a quarter of them in SMBs suffer from physical or verbal abuse at work. In addition, a third said they have suffered from sleepless nights or headaches as a result of IT problems at work, while 59 per cent spend between one and 10 hours a week working on IT systems outside normal hours.

Now the last couple of stats could probably be applied to any job, but the first one? Ouch. Given that info, it's probably not surprising that a quarter said they would rather have a different career.

But now the flip side. IT workers can also bite-back, especially if they think they have been badly done to. A disgruntled IT worker was this week convicted of hacking into his former employers' network and planting spyware on his ex-colleagues' PCs, after he lost his database developer job.

The lesson to learn here is probably treat your staff nice, because hell hath no fury like an IT professional scorned. Or it would be if the guy in question hadn't lied about his qualifications and experience when he applied for the job in the first place.

09 Jan 2009