The Extreme Job, Defined

Extreme jobs are everywhere. They have emerged in accounting and manufacturing, finance and medicine, entertainment and the law, as companies struggle for mastery in a global economy, according to the CWLP. It's the CIO's job to keep a company's computing and communications lines constantly humming — along with the workers who rely on these tools.

Customers expect systems to function perfectly all the time. Business leaders expect problems to be resolved instantly. Typical CIOs respond to these demands by playing the hero, doing whatever it takes to meet the challenge.

These realities — along with intense competition for top jobs — have combined to create a workday with no real beginning or end.

The unpredictability of the IT environment also keeps CIOs on their toes. A vendor issues an unscheduled upgrade. Servers crash without warning. Out of nowhere, a hacker unleashes a distributed-denial-of-service attack. CIOs need to make sure that they and their staffs are ready for anything that comes their way. This preparedness has a consequence: long hours.

Just ask Raymond Dury, CIO of Fifth Third Bancorp in Cincinnati, a holding company that operates more than 1150 branches in the Midwest and Florida. Dury sets the IT agenda and facilitates business strategy to achieve corporate goals. A big part of his job is enabling the processes and people required to efficiently manage customer transactions 24/7. He estimates he works 55 to 60 hours a week. Much of this time is spent managing on-time delivery of projects and ensuring the quality and reliability of systems, including some 12,000 ATMs belonging to Fifth Third and others.