The poll, run by online learning provider SkillSoft, interviewed a total of 3,000 IT professionals and found that a staggering 97% claimed to find their life at work stressful on a daily basis.

Four out of five stated that they "feel stressed before they even enter the workplace", while a quarter have had to take time off as a result of stress.

The poll appears to highlight poor IT training as the reason for the stress with one respondent complaining "I spend most of my day fielding calls from people who don’t even have a basic knowledge of computers and printers. It is amazing the amount of time I spend teaching people where the on-off button is. And when I do actually find a technical problem to solve, I have my manager breathing down my neck wondering why I have a backlog of complaints."

The poll was run in response to a recent Gartner report which claims that the untrained or under-trained desktop user will cost an organisation five times more to support than a well-trained worker. Of course it also plays on the classic IT / Business interface tensions.

Here's a full list of the top ten stressful professions:

1. IT
2. Medicine / Caring Profession
3. Engineering
4. Sales and Marketing
5. Education
6. Finance
7. Human Resources
8. Operations
9. Production
10. Clerical

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