IT Worker-to-User Ratio Survey? 80
Breid asks: "This year has definitely been a career nightmare for IT pros. Our own company has seen our staff trimmed to near nothing and frankly, the workload is beginning to stretch people to the breaking point. With performance reviews coming up I want to make some statements to upper management concerning personnel and compensation. You can find plenty of salary surveys, but I haven't seen statements regarding the size of staff involved. And IMHO, workers on a 5 person staff supporting 200 need some compensation adjustment vs a 20 person staff supporting the same user base.
At this point (for all of you still employed), what's the IT worker to workstation ratio look like? Or is anyone aware of any statistical data compiled about this?"
Right now where I work. (Score:3, Informative)
1 dba, 2 admins... 200+ servers, 2 DS3 lines, 8 T1's, 120 people local 1100 people worldwide.
They wonder if they can cut one of the admins cause it is slow around x-mas....go figure.
Re:Right now where I work. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Right now where I work. (K-12 schools) (Score:1)
Re:Right now where I work. (Score:2)
Aren't the Slashbots always telling us that Unix is so superior because one admin can look after so many more machines that an NT admin?
So which is it? Should the admin/server ratio be low or high? You can't have it both ways my friends.
Re:Right now where I work. (Score:2)
Windows nt40, 2000, Red Hat, Debian, and Solaris.
I think that just about covers them all in the datacenter.
out on the floor, 95/98/nt40/2000, linux, and Mac osX.
Outside of some warp and BeOs, we have a pretty strong mix of everything.
fun fun (Score:1, Informative)
Last job - 1 year ago: 1 to 30
Last job - 6 months ago: 1 to 5
New job - now: 3 to 100
New job - soon: 2 to 100
5 IT staff to 20 user ratio? (Score:1, Informative)
I got the occasional bonus ($50 Travelers Cheque or something like that) and the occasional free T-shirt.
None of this was worth working for the flaming hemmoroid I had as a boss, which is why I left.
Re:5 IT staff to 20 user ratio? (Score:1)
5-400 (Score:2)
past three jobs (Score:2, Informative)
1999 Advertising/PR/design/new media (purty websites and flash):
IT dept. of 4 people for 120 employees.
2000 New media/games development:
IT dept. of 3 people for 100 employees.
2001-2002 ColdFusion development/Python software:
IT dept. of 2-3 people for 30 employees.
Joe Grossberg
http://josephgrossberg.blogspot.com [blogspot.com]
admin = human too (Score:3, Interesting)
2001: 4 admins, 1 admin/manager, 500 workstations/servers
2002: 1 admin, 1 admin/manager, 150 workstations/servers
Now: 0 admin, 1 admin/manager, 200 workstations/servers
2003: 0 admin, 0 admin/manager, 200 workstations/servers
Guess what...
PS: The last two weren't fired. They stood up and left!
Re:admin = human too (Score:2)
Re:admin = human too (Score:1)
metrics (Score:2, Insightful)
other factors can cause the need for more people include:
1) really old machines
2) complex and/or special user software
3) bleading edge tech
4) really slow users
5) etc
these factors should be included in any stats
1 per 20 (Score:2, Informative)
All IT people are not created equal (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:All IT people are not created equal (Score:2, Interesting)
We have ~200 workstations, mostly PC but some Mac, and we're headed for Linux as much as possible. Server side we're 13 Suns (Ultra10-E5500), 2 NetApp filers (talk about low maintenance!) and 8 Win2K. For those machines, we've got 1 UNIX admin, 1 admin/manager and 3 Windows admins. These folks also do our telephone admin work, user training, asset management, and "whatever else comes up." We have two guys who do nothing but network and security administration (56-site WAN, keeps 'em hopping). We've also got three big-gun programmers since I'm allergic to outsourcing and we can't get things we need off-the-shelf.
By comfortable, but not too comfortable, I mean that we have time for long lunches, don't ever turn down vacation requests, have time to send people for training, and let 'em read trade rags at work. Our jobs are mostly 40 hour jobs. Our turnover is incredibly low, and for two out of the last four years, we had NO ONE leave the department. That all said, we have lots of projects, and unsophisticated users who keep us hopping most of the time.
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Re:All IT people are not created equal (Score:2)
That is management's attitude. Any chimp can do what we do. We need a union.
Re:All IT people are not created equal (Score:1)
mng design (Score:1, Informative)
burn um out
hire a new one at a lower cost
burn um out
hire a new one at a lower cost
depends on the situation... (Score:4, Informative)
It all depends on the situation and circumstances you are in - depends if you are working in high-tech (ie intelligent users, power users), or at a financial firm. It depends on the overall commitment to IT your company has - do you have predominatley new equipment, or is it mostly old crap that is patched together with duct tape and bubblegum. Do you have strong management, or are you constantly having to re-work issues due to poor planning? Are the admins any good, or is one or two of them constanly covering for the other screw-ups on the team? Etc....etc...etc...
Each situation is completely different. Bottom line is, if you are competant, and are overworked, your ratio is too low. The problem is how to get management to see that - I eneded up leaving my last situation because of this exact issue, and management refused to correct the situation.
Regardless, good luck!
Re:depends on the situation... (Score:1)
Re:depends on the situation... (Score:1)
2:70 (Score:2, Informative)
Rough guess (Score:2)
approx 1 : 40 (Score:2, Informative)
Local:
1 admin, 43 workers, 80 machines
Global:
8 admins, 245 workers, 300 machines
Depends on the environment. (Score:3, Interesting)
What I've seen in small to mid-sized companies is that properly run IT departments typically have one or two admins per 50 users up to around 150 users. After 150 users it's one admin per 100 or 150 users. The IT head count may be slightly higher at companies that are very reliant on IT or have round the clock operations.
Now, if the company does in house development, then that's a whole other story. It all depends on what your business is and how much development there is. I've seen development depertments that were 50% of the company even though IT was not their core business. I've also seen 2000 user companies with 2 developers.
Our numbers (Score:2, Informative)
3000 users, all on thin client
50 servers
200 control workstations, in an industrial setting
We are running a pretty tight ship here. Admin-wise, everyone is happy and well-compensated. We usually lose a tech every 18 months. Occasionally during busy periods, we hire 2-3 techs to help cover the overnight factory shifts.
The key is eliminating PCs. No PCs == less surfing, no extra software installs, etc.
Laptops are the only exception, and even then they are generally supported by the user community. People pick their laptops... bigshots can spend $1500-2500 every 18 mos and regular employees get hand-me-downs or buy a 600-1500 machine.
Re:Our numbers (Score:2, Funny)
Where I work... (Score:1)
PC Support: 2 Admins, 300 Employees.
UNIX Support: 3 Full-Time, 2 Contractors, 250ish Boxes. Mostly development and production look-a-like testing environments.
overworked? (Score:3, Insightful)
number numbers numbers... (Score:1)
right now.. (Score:2)
2 (and a bit) admins, 1 programmer
12 servers, 250 users spread across Europe, US and Japan
One more number for the pile: (Score:2)
Here... (Score:1)
Here's ours (large corporation, my office) (Score:2)
Why opensource rules (Score:2)
1 admin
1 programmer
1 support guy
1 boss
1 customer
They just happen to be all me.
Just one perspective (Score:3, Insightful)
2 Support staff / 50 users = Happy productive users, proactive support, bliss. Environment stays ahead of the upgrade curve. Support staff has time to understand current business practices and provide value-added enhancements.
1 Support staff / 50 users = Users OK, support staff fights fires big and small at a good pace. Environment stays fairly static, but current enough.
1 support staff / 100 users = users angry, less productive, small fires get ignored. Training and proactive support is only a dream.
With that said, 5 people for 200 users is 1 support staff per 40 users. That's not so bad! Are these people all doing the same job? Are the 200 divided among different departments? If so maybe you can each take your own 40 or so users in 1 or 2 departments as "Primary" and the other 160 as secondary. If you can divide them by business function and develop closer relationships by each concentrating on 40 people, your job will likely get easier. At least it will get more rewarding as the same 40 people come to rely on you and respect you more and more. Not only that, but you get to know your users better and decide which users to teach instead of just fix every time. This works great if you have good people. In the past I have more than doubled my "free" time by including 5 minutes of training with every support call. After a while they mostly fixed the small problems themselves. Three cheers for empowered users!
If it makes you feel better, I know 2 guys who are the sole support for 600 users, and have been for almost 2 years. Guaranteed nobody is happy with that.
My Ratio (Score:1)
Numbers (Score:2)
Manufacturing company: 2 admin/programmers for 150 people, 4 servers, 60 workstations. (Programmers are amazingly effective admin, as they can script solutions others would just repetitively apply).
Software company: 1/2 admin/programmer for 5 people, 4 servers.
Large University (Score:2)
6,000+ Faculty, Staff
25,000+ Students
100-150+ Central IT Staff (plus a couple dozen "freelance" IT withing various departments).
150/(25000+6000) ~= 206 Employees / 1 IT Staff
IT provides groupware, Mainframe batch data processing, file services, workstation deployment and maintenance, helpdesk, custom apps (on Mainframe), HR+Payroll+Student systems, and much more!
Re:Large University (Score:2)
and of course, our level of IT support for students is lower than the level provided for Faculty and Staff......
Where I work.. (Score:2)
Re:Where I work (Score:2)
A lot of times IT staff to user ratios are not a reflection of how much work there is but what the user expectations are. If IT staff have to respond to every call *right now*, you need a lot of staff. If users don't expect same day response, you can get away with less.
In my school (Score:1)
Re:In my school (Score:1)
Different school each day of the week, about 20 computers at each. It seems to work more or less okay. Before I started their tended to be one teacher per school who was more techy than the rest and ended up having to chase around between/during lessons fixing other people's problems instead of teaching.
Lack of technical support in primary schools is a common problem here though.
1st level support... (Score:2)
A bit different but.. (Score:2)
When I started here six months ago there were four sysadmins and two juniors. I thought it was just my company's directorial incompetence (and I'm not dissuaded from the view that they're incompetent), in a way it's comforting to see that others are in the same boat, not that I would wish redundancy on anyone of course.
Most of you have it easy. (Score:1)
with a complete IT staff of ~200 (incuding managers)
programmers 80
systech 8
admins 5
~8 VMS
~5 SCO
~12 Unixware
~12 Linux
~15 other.
The last few years have seen us shrink by about 50% The worst thing is all the travel for the systechs, they are on the road now about 80% now.
Actually its not so bad, As we are a MUMPS/CACHE/COBOL shop, we don't need as many people/machines to support a large user base as you would with C or
Thankfully we don't do anything serious with Micro$oft. That really helps.
lb
My current gig (Score:1)
1:250 (Score:2)
I work for a public school district... (Score:1)
- About 550 PCs (mostly old crap held together with duct tape and a prayer running 9x. Most of which _have_ to run about 30 different kinds of POS children's "educational" software)
- 6 servers (reasonably solid, but old-ish. running NT or Linux)
- About 170 full-time users (employees) and 1700 part-time users (students)
- Plus about a dozen big network printers, about 150 inkjet printers, 5 (slightly different) digital phone systems, and a website.
All supported by.... Me. For a little over 30k a year. Whee! Be thankful you aren't in k-12 education in the Pacific Northwest. As far as I can tell, this is pretty typical.
We're a small IT contractor (Score:2)
So the ratio? Two IT techs for somewhere around 500 users. At least, that's what I'm guessing.
OK, so systems aren't "managed." We don't write policies and procedures. We don't give reports to upper management. Most of our users are fairly unconcerned about internal security. We don't give training on individual programs; our focus is networking, however we do support other software when we need to where we can. In that sense, our workload per user is fairly light.
1:1 here! (Score:1, Funny)
Wait, I'm both the admin _and_ the full-time employee.
No boss, I'm not browsing /., I'm doing technical research! You don't know anything! What're you gonna do, fire me?
slap!
Yes dear. I'll stop wasting time and get back to work now.
complexity (Score:2)
50 Users, 2 offices (ny, la) 4 part time IT staff (Score:1)
We spend most of our time dealing with a few very specific issues (such as a citrix metaframe server), chronic problems and problem patterns (often caused by user-installed and virus-like downloaded software, containing adware), and a few very troublesome users. These troublesome issues and people consume most of our time, while the rest of the users rarely need any help.
I'm grossly overwhelmed. (Score:3, Insightful)
420 Users of which...
250 are full time staff that we support.
And doing the support? Me. That's it. 1:250. And I not only do desktop support, but I also aid in account creation, manage the IT systems budget and 4 year hardware replacement plan, handle telephone technical support and trouble shooting and deal with anything else that pops up.
And yet my direct supervisor doesn't see a problem with this ratio. It's a wonder I haven't been killed by my users yet...
*sigh*
Went through this to justify a position last year (Score:4, Informative)
In a nutshell, the formula is:
HR = W/500 + U/1000 + C/15 + A/50 + L/25 + V
where HR is total IT staff required, W is number of workstations, U is number of users, C is workgroups (clusters of users, basically--physical sites is how I count it), A is the number of supported applications, L is the total licenses required, and V is the number of distinct vendor platforms to be supported (operating systems, basically). That is about as good a predictor as I could find, although it's not magic--you can still have variations based on the specific requirements for the department.
Using that, I get a figure of 3.8 FTE; in reality, we have 2 FTE and a consultant who may as well be another.
It's nice to think that your salary would go up if you were making do with less and getting the same results, but in practice you pretty much get stuck with industry standard in your area, unless you get particularly astute employers who know the value of what they are getting out of you.
Hope that helps!
Take a vacation so they realize how much you do... (Score:1)
I told them it was a bad situation... if I ever left, or got sick, etc. they were screwed.
They realized they were short staffed (even if just for redunancy) when I took a vacation and suddenly nothing was getting done. More importantly it made *them* look bad to their bosses. Then they finally realized they needed to hire a "clone" in case I was out, sick, left, etc...