Almost half of IT Directors want to leave the industry, says new research report from Connect

43% of IT Directors in the UK said their greatest career aspiration was to leave the IT industry altogether, while only 1 in 9 IT Directors wanted to be the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, according to a new research report entitled 'The Departed', published today by Connect Support Services . The research report also found that over half of women IT Directors (53%) were keen to exit the world of technology.

The survey was conducted by an independent research company on behalf of Connect and consisted of in-depth interviews with IT Managers and Directors at 151 UK companies in a range of industries.

Key findings from the research include:

- The greatest career aspiration for 4 out of 10 IT Directors was to 'leave the industry altogether', 19% dreamt of 'discovering an IT innovation', 17% would like to 'work as an IT director at a cool company' and just 11% aspired to be the 'next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates'.

- 38% of IT Directors believe they are seen as the real person running the business though a similar number (37%) thought they were small but vital part of the food chain. 3% believe their bosses were not sure if they existed or not.

- On average, IT Directors work for 42.3 hours a week, with one in five (22%) putting in over 50 hours a week;

- 40% of the IT Directors surveyed by Connect believed that tackling everyday IT problems was their biggest headache. For smaller companies with under 50 staff, email and internet downtime was a major worry for companies with 20% identifying this as their primary concern;

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Mark MacGregor, CEO of Connect, which commissioned the research said:

In most organisations, IT Directors are under huge pressure to deliver robust systems on limited budgets and meet the future needs of the organisation. The evidence of this survey is that this pressure is having a major impact on IT Directors - with almost half wanting to leave IT altogether. Companies need to find better ways of giving their directors smart solutions to relieve this major day to day pressure.

The survey of 151 IT Directors was conducted by The Survey Shop in October 2007. Full details of the survey can be found at: