Working long hours in IT jobs isn’t anything new, but a recent survey by Spiceworks has quantified who has things the roughest.

For full-time IT staff, the survey’s 600 respondents averaged working 52 hours a week. Broken out, that’s 18-percent worked 60+ hours a week, 17-percent were 50-59 hours, 22-percent were 41-49 hours, and 44-percent enjoy working 40 hours or less per week. It’s not too surprising that it’s the smaller IT groups that are pulling the late nights and early mornings in addition to the regular 8-5 schedule. The smaller IT departments where there are fewer help desk techs and system admins tend to work more than 40 hours per week.

But the biggest determination of hour many extra hours worked each week is the company’s industry. At the high end, 72% of IT staff in construction and engineering firms work more than 40 hours a week, while their more highly regulated compatriots in education and government are well below 50% when it comes to working more than “full time” at 37-percent and 33-percent respectively.

(from Spiceworks IT Staffing survey)

What’s the takeaway from this survey? IT work involves long hours and since it touches all aspects of a business, it’s kind of where the buck stops. Can’t take down a branch office during the day to perform an upgrade? Then do it at 2 a.m. Something not working right, but it’s 5 p.m. Friday and Happy Hour is calling? Too bad, looks like you’ll be paying full price for drinks tonight.

This is why applying automation to routine IT tasks has such a high ROI. Uplogix can identify, isolate and solve network problems before you even know there’s a problem. So with Uplogix handling the first few pages of your run book, you can focus on the tough challenges. Like leaving the office before the cleaning crew comes by.