Slashdot Mirror
Management To Blame For IT Worker Shortage?
MrX writes: "In this story about a study on CNet news, it says the labor shortage in IT is more a management problem then anything else.
'The unhappy truth, the study points out, is not that there are few people available to do IT work, but that once they are hired they are often poorly managed. In addition, many IT jobs are ill-designed and boring, leading many employees to become dissatisfied and leave.'"
He's got some interesting theories. Most of them are crap, but I can forgive that. What confuses me is this statement:
"IT has a culture of its own, and it's a culture that's usually detrimental to keeping workers happy," Cappelli says. "It's amazing that IT management practices simply run counter to how human resources people feel employees in all other kinds of jobs should be managed. Organizations should apply basic management principles to keep IT people satisfied and engaged in their jobs."
Now, I know we have our own culture. But beyond that first statement, it's all very vague.
He seems to be implying that the demands of our culture result in us disliking our jobs. How does THAT follow? I need some specific examples, but hee doesn't offer anything.
He seems to be saying that the best way to keep IT employees is to treat them like assembly line workers. I don't get it. I'd never accept a position at such a company, so they'd have a hard time retaining me.
Furthermore, companies with deeply entrenched corporate culture like IBM are having an awfully hard time retaining young IT workers. And they see the problem as being specifically because IBM culture isn't a good substitute for the usual IT culture.
So is this guy talking out of his backside or what? Like I said, I want examples and reasoning, not just an opinion.
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
regardless of whatever your personal feelings may be, keep in mind that the group issuing this "study" is McKinsey & Co., which just coincidentally happens to do a lot of management consulting...
a professor at wharton was paid to come up with this, which (1) gets the professor's name in the paper for re-stating the totally obvious, perhaps with some half-assed stats to back it up and (2) helps drum up demand for mcKinsey, who will (for a huge fee, of course) restructure your job descriptions in marketing legalese, stir the pot a little, issue a nice shiny report with pretty graphs (perhaps [gasp] with a PowerPoint presentation too!) and leave everything underneath almost exactly the same.
these guys are just advertising how badly their services are needed by every company in existence.
it is very self-serving, and both cnet and now slashdot have fallen for it. or, more likely, they dont care that they are providing free publicity for a paid advertisement, because it caters to their audiences exactly what they want to hear.
you didnt fall for it, did you? are these observations really that illuminating to any of you at all?
unc_
You are right. I had a friend in a company I worked for that often said he could "teach my mother to program, but I'll never make her a programmer."
Sure we complain about management for valid reasons, but the ones who dig the work try to find THE JOB instead of going off to dig ditches. I tried that and for a winter I did construction, but fun as drywalling is, it lacks the puzzle solving thrill that coding has. We do what we do because of who we are. And there aint many of us.
Now on comes the tv commercials for ITT tech and different certification programs offering the potential of tons of money if you just complete their course. I can see people in the go nowhere jobs saying, "Hey, that sounds like a good idea!" and joining up. I've also seen these same people who were taught programming but were never programmers.
So maybe the people are leaving in droves, the question is, did these people ever have the ability to fill the holes they temporarily occupied, or was it just another slacker pipe dream?
i think somewhere along the line it became a model for management... :)
eudas
Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed.
With all this discussion of managers, I figured I might as well jump in and give my 2 cents.
I work for a worldwide corporate, having left another job because of poor management, ie I was too good and thus could not be promoted and the payscale was set for my job position.
I took a 25% paycut to move into my current position, lost 2 weeks of vacation and now actually have to work... Strangely I am a lot more happy than I was at old job.
But even here there are problems, half my time is spent in meetings, I have a constant streams of distractions that prevent me from working on code, etc. I am accomplishing the job, as the corporate mentality expects it to be done, ie 8-5, no flextime, no work from home etc. So while I am happy, to a point I think that things could be better managed.
Which brings me to the reason I am responding to this message. I started a Computer services business about 3 years ago thinking that I could do it better. 6 months ago I started recruiting people. We currently have 14 people and business is picking up.
Recently I placed an ad for a senior developer with the following specs.
Position: Senior Developer
Requirements: Ability to work in a heavy coding environment, 4 years C Programing, 10 years Programming methodology
Pluses: Windows and UNIX experience, HTML, Java, Database design
Payrate: 70K+ DOE
Contact: Rebecca Jackson
Phone: 404-217-1498
email: jackson@cyberdawgs.com
Does anyone care to comment on the ad, give me pointers as to how it should be set up to attract the type of person I want?
I want a senior programer that can take a job from ground level up to running. Someone that knows how to organize the information and put it together.
This position is likely to develop into a lead developer position where the developer would manage between 2-6 programers.
My business is small and thus this represents a major expense for me, however being a senior programer myself, I am fairly certain of the requirements of the position and have tried to be as flexible as possible.
Anyway, comments are appreciated.
Lando
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
There are some sectors of the industry that are tolerably served. There are a lot of C++ and VisualBasic programmers out there. (Not all great programmers, but there are some.)
However, the moment you stop dipping the ladle into what M$ oriented education system pours out of the pipeline (or sewer,) you run into some real shortages.
Also the geographic distribution leaves a lot to be desired. While I might find some Smalltalkers on the West coast, since the company is in New Yorl City, I'm sucking wind...
I have lived in Kansas city (cheap,) in Atlanta (not so cheap,) and many places in between and I have lived in Canada (the dollars less, the taxes comparable but the cost of health insurance won't kill you,) and in the 'States, (but I had to almost double my salary to get a decent fraction of the life style I had out in the mid-west.)
The disparity in salaries betwen the coasts and the center of the continent and across borders, never mind oceans, is responsible for a lot of false appearances and income estimates.
Yes, MIS (mis-)management is partly to blame, but they're also subject to the vagueries of geography, salary and expectations.
I'm sure that lots of people would envy my salary and immediately reconsider when they hear that I can't really afford a car here. (Then again in New York City, you can pretty much get away without ownning a car. We pity the commuters.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
There's also the fear that "if not you, who else?" It's quite often the case that if 'you' don't step up to the plate and manage a project, the f**kwit that management decides to put in instead will drive the project to self-destruction within a few months.
--
The gift of death metal does not smile on the good looking.
No. I'm one of those people who doesn't care. I couldn't care less about computers. I'm in it for the money. I still do a good job, because I want to continue to work for my outrageously high hourly rate. That's how the market works. I don't have to like what I do to be good at it and make lots of money.
Sometimes it's not the company, but the locus of control. The company I was applying for was in a small office of no more than about 100-150 people. So although the overarching company was quite large, the part that I would have been a part of had the feel of a small company where everybody knows everybody else.
The part I hate most about large companies, aside from their objectification of their workers is the schizophrenic company mentality, where even though you're in HR and I'm in IT, we fight and throw red tape at each other because we both hate our jobs. What sense does it make for a company to fight amongst itself?
Granted, it's not possible to get away from all of this, but it is possible to lessen it some. And for you to say that all companies are driven only by profit, and that there isn't a situation where an employee could have a rewarding experience, is exactly the type of cynicism that i was talking about in my original post.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
If you're curious about how this happened, you can check into the Separation of School and State Alliance or read NY State Teacher of the Year John Taylor Gatto's new book The Underground History of American Education .
The IPCC has purposely engineered a massive scientific fraud.
The quality of life issue has to be the one were IT workers have their managers by the balls. If they are having so much trouble finding IT workers, then that means we are in the driver's seat, right? So why don't we organize together to strike for a 40 hour work week (at the smae pay rate).
You know, over a hundred years ago people died for the 40-hour work week. It's a shame that so many contemporary tech workers have forgotten what it was like to have free time for their families, friends, lovers, hobbies, and LIFE.
It's not like this stuff needs to be coded right away. The silly CEOs can wait a few more months to squeeze millions out of people. As soon as the economy gets bad they'll start laying IT people off left and right. If you think that your company really cares about you, wait until they ask you to start packing because the company has to make a profit.
In my experience (20 years):
25% of all programmers hired are not "technical" and want to move into management. This tends to inflate the IT numbers, reduce the number of actual workers and cause artificial shortage. For instance, I work in a 6 man team and they had to farm me out to do a project for a 22 man team because only half their "developers" could code. The other half were actually "analysts" who spent their days trying to find someone to do some work for them. Then they whine and moan because they are understaffed. Not to mention the 3-4 programmers who refuse to do anything but bleeding edge stuff for their resume or COBOL/CICS/IDMS because they are "too old to learn anything new".
And don't get me started on sissyboy managers who nod their pointy heads when the clueless VP says "Let's do this in Java. I hear Java is really good". Then pointy-boy has to find Java people. Any manager worth his beans would code it in PL/SQL and tell Capt Clueless "Yeah, it's in Java". Like some VP can tell Java code from ROT13.
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
What shortage? We get tons of people that apply for our IT positions here... farmers, lawyers, teachers, child-care workers, nuclear waste disposal engineers, israeli air force pilots... Yes, these are -actual- applicants. What's sad is that these are some of the ones that make it through the first screening... yikes.
Actually it's pretty obvious to me that the fact that we never bring these people into the profession is precisely why there is a shortage. If you search monster.com for intro level jobs doing anything IT, you won't find any. "Junior level DBA wanted" or "C++ programmer with 0-2 years experience wanted" just isn't out there. The problem is that experience and talent are only weakly correlated and the clueless fools (managers, HR dolts, and recruiters) would rather have an idiot with 5 years experience than a genius who programs for fun in his spare time.
I'm willing to bet that within 6 months at least half of the folks in your list could be earning money for you. Sure the training will cost a little, but it's ok to pay entry level people less to offset this.
Hire the one that seems "smartest" with a good work ethic; offer them half of what you would someone more experienced; pay for them to go to a training class in everything you think they should know; make them agree to reimburse training costs if they leave within 2 years; Give them a 20% raise every six months for the first two years.
My guess is that if you advertised these things you'd have some extremely gifted applicants who want to change fields and would probably be highly competent MUCH faster than you think.
If IT workers are smart and their employers are stupid, then the IT workers should start their own companies and, using their superior knowlege, wipe the floor with their former employers. If you can't work with'em, beat'em.
This reminds me of one of the first web development jobs I applied for. It was in 96 and they wanted someone with at least 3 years experience. "Oh," I said, "they want one of the original CERN physicists to put up their business card on the web."
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
Well, IMO, it's time employers are FORCED to play fair and give up their extremely abusive practises.
The work environment will force them to work with the workers, eventually. Guys like this can only cry for so long before they go out of business or their business flees to the effective employers that retain the skills developed within their own company.
BTW, I have changed my mind from my post above, in this thread, offering to send a resume. I would not work for this guy if I got to be corporate security VP AND chief pilot.
Visit DC2600
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
The whole lunacy of this "shortage of workers" crap is that the workers don't want to relocate to where the work is. There are plenty of highly skilled people located all around the US of A - these people are just too damn smart to relocate to the high-cost major metropolitan cities. For example, I live in Saginaw Michigan. I refuse to work in Detroit - where all the "high tech" work is - because my cost of living would essentially double. Insurance costs, fuel costs, housing costs, these are all reasons why there is a "shortage".
When these high tech companies begin to finally realize that the high tech workers actually are smart enough to stay from these cities will they realize that there never was a shortage of workers to begin with.
In example, I was offered an opportunity to join HP's embedded appliance project. I turned the job down flat because it required a relocation to San Francisco - one of the highest costs cities in California. They didn't even want to consider tele-commuting (or even relocating their operation to a more reasonable cost location). Their loss as far as I am concerned.
Ron Gage - Westland, MI
...to get shot down.
Some of the most underqualified, lazy, and just generally dumb people I have worked with in this industry were educated in foreign countries. It's not just the U.S. that turns out people with over inflated senses of self esteem.
That said, I'm sure the U.S. turns out at least their fair share, if not more. As you alluded to, I think a large part of the problem is all this PC 'Everyone is special' crap. Some people are better at some things than others. Deal with it. If you're not qualified to do your job, you should get canned, whether you're a nice guy/girl or not.
A "Hardcore IT" person can learn to use any platform, anywhere, anytime to meet his/her goal(s). They know that the computer is just a tool, and that some things are easier to use than others, but all of IT was built by humans to be used by humans.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
I've had to deal with enough "technical recruiting" companies that they're not getting off the hook. If businesses really cared about the kinds of workers they were getting, they'd do more than call up Rent-Warm-Bodies Technical Staffing and say "We'll pay you $500,000 to get us some people."
The recruiting companies don't care about good matches, additional skills, or paying decent wages with benefits. They want to place people fast and collect the difference in pay.
The companies that use the recruiters don't want to pay for benefits, hire people for the long term, invest in training, or spend the time it might take to find the right person for the right job. They want to pay someone else to do all of that for them.
What the unfortunate workers run into is that they have little training, less pay than a real employee, poor benefits, and an extra layer of management to deal with. Why should they work hard to keep the company strong when they see no benefits like stock options, employee recognition, or raises and bonuses?
Want a fun week? Put a resume with hot techie buzzwords up on some web site and see how many "placement services" jump at you. Then try to get some details about the job. Heh.
--
how to invest, a novice's guide
Alternatively, wait until I do it and come work for me. :) I don't care how old you are as long as you do quality work.
I started off my IT carrer working for the US Air Force as a computer tech. a few months later I got a offer for the US Army. I took it for the money. While working for the Army I was treated good by my boss, but others had no respect for our automation office. Just this week I took a job working for a German compay called netdesign-wt.de (please visit our site!) They offered me a free BMW 314i for personal use (they pay my gas), cell phone for personal use, and a laptop. I also work a relaxed 40 hour scedual, get 1 month paid vacation, and other goodies. Do you think that I miss the Army? No.
hmm... for fun I enjoy launching DDoS attacks against 127.87.42.5
I'm trying to hire Router engineers and UNIX hacks, and there is a real genuine shortage out there. If there were so many badly managed, boring IT jobs there would be many more candidates available looking for something better.
IT is doomed to suffer this fate for some time. I recently left a company where the IT department will not stop bleeding, employees were leaving at unbelievable rates! But the company is throwing more and more money at the new employees, creating a market gap between the old and the new. Thus, the old must leave. It's a cycle right now, not as simple as above, but with more elements like these below:
1) Mismanagement:
This is common, we're hired to come in and fix the problems that "management" can't. We're given deadlines of 3 days for a project that will take 6 months or a deadline of 3 months for a project that will take 6 hours. How can you respect this? These people are making more money than you? Time to leave.
2) Lack of Learning
You walk into an environment ready to help the company move to the next level, organize, commenting code, making it modular, smaller, efficient, structured. But it's the same code and there are new technologies out there. The technical "classes" are useless because what you really need is hands-on baptism by fire learning! But you never get that chance because another department who has done it before gets to do it again OR the company hires a consultant who "knows" the technology to come in and do it for you so you can support it. How do you get to learn it? Time to leave.
3) Poor Work Environment
You don't hold meetings so you don't really need an office, right? You don't move around much so you don't need that much space, so a 5x5ft cubicle is okay, right? It's better if you can communicate other programmers if they are sitting really close to you, right? That New Jersey office space is far cheaper, and you don't need the prestige of the Wall Street office like the salespeople, right? Wrong. Time to leave.
4) No Recognition
Because the people you work for need to go to even more simple business people who couldn't possibly comprehend why it took you so long to hand code everything from scratch because they wouldn't use open source for "security" reasons, they don't even bother mentioning your name. You could have written thousands of lines of code each day, no debugging necessary, other programmers in awe as you pound on the keyboard and it doesn't really matter. Why? Because upper management has no idea if you were good, stellar, poor, or committed fireable offenses in your code. They are more likely to reward the customer service rep on the phone who saved a $200 account...because they understand it.
5) Pigeonholing
You've developed a great specialty, you are the fastest and most knowledgeable in your area in the company. I hope you enjoy it! Because now you're going to do that same work for the rest of your time at the company. Time to leave.
6) Corporate Apartheid
Why? No, WHY do companies insist on putting IT on a completely different floor, building, city, state than the rest of the company or departments? I know it's annoying to have some gimp come over and ask you the Sun networking professional how to make an equation in Excel, but at least they can become more technical and improve the company. And information flows both ways, we like to learn what the hell the business is doing!!
7) Lack of Expert Recognition
Attention management: The grass is NOT greener on the outside. Sometimes it is, but that is a last resort. Many times the best place to look for a technical solution is to ask your technical staff. Yes, you can even pull them off that Priority #1 project to strategize about the technical future of the company as opposed to getting blindsided by new technology.
8) The good, the bad, the ugly
All it takes is hiring one shitty IT person. YES, they do exist, there are many. Hire one and the rest of them wonder why the hell they are around that place making the same salary as the idiot in the next cube. Time to leave.
I wish I could isolate all the factors and start creating a new model that companies could go from and improve all of our working conditions. But I think that we are in times that require an accelerated learning curve that nobody can keep up with except for those of us in the fray. The pace of change in our industry promises to keep management and non-tech people out of comprehension of our contributions for years to come.
All we can do is to try to lessen to gap and keep it from widening too much. Mix the tech and non-tech employees, treat them with the same amount of respect. Ask if you can improve their job. Do their reviews on time. Send them home if they work late all the time, kick their asses out the door so they don't get burned out. The usual management techniques will work.
Jayson Pifer
Never go to sea with two chronometers; take one or three.
The shortage is in many cases artifical because companies want churn. It may not be so much that it is bad management as it is an actively pursued methodology. The company only wants you for a short term project and wants you to quit of your on free will within 18 months. The employeer has no interest in anything except finishing one specific project and doesn't want any long term financial obligations such as retirement, options vesting, etc. From management's point of view they have their cake and get to eat it too. IT personnel are disposable use once throw aways. You want to know why it works the way it does... follow the money trail.
The main problem is that there comes a point where every IT worker learns enough English to realize what the management has been saying the entire time.
At that point, he leaves and makes millions of his own.
Oh my god, I've got a huge pile of money, but I hate my life because all I ever do is work?
None. Anybody I know who has a huge pile of money and who doesn't want to work...doesn't have to.
How many people do you know in ALL fields who wake up at age 40 saying I've got no real cash in the bank, and I hate my life because all I ever do is work? The trick is to amass the huge pile of money so that you CAN stop working when you have the epiphay...
And read /. a lot. Like I'm doing right now. The thing I hated most about my previous job was that my immediate boss had way too many things to manage, and way too many meetings, and didn't have enough time to give me anything useful to do. In my current job, I'm waiting on stuff (mostly third party software) for some Sun boxen I've been putting together.
Not that it matters much to me yet, but all three of the managers responsible for each of the computers are hard to find, and seem to always be in meetings.
"We must be getting work done--we're certainly having enough meetings!"
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
From what I have seen thus far in my work experience, the people who get promoted to managerial positions are rarely the team players or the competent workers who know how to get a job done well and keep it fun. The people who get promoted are the people who impress their boss by putting a minimum of time and effort into getting their job done or being a part of the crew and a maximum of time and effort into playing politics.
What shortage? We get tons of people that apply for our IT positions here... farmers, lawyers, teachers, child-care workers, nuclear waste disposal engineers, israeli air force pilots... Yes, these are -actual- applicants. What's sad is that these are some of the ones that make it through the first screening... yikes. Question, do you guys find that most IT people like to be specialists, or do they seem to prefer a wide variety of problems to tackle? Or do you get equal numbers of each kind of person?
Easy solution: Don't do that. Seriously, I'm 27 and work a strict 40 hour week. Sure, I could probably be making a whole lot more money, but I love my free time.
Well that's one thing I really don't understand. The company depends on the technical people a lot more than they depend on the managers; the company has a small chance of functioning without the management, but no chance without the techs (in IT, that is). So why is it that management always makes so much more and gets so many more perks?
The lack of programmers in the industry can be attributed to:
1) Bad Management
2) A industry wide conspiracy to get cheaper labor from other countries
3) Lack of trained proffesionals
4) Decrease in graduates of computer science at colleges
5) Decrease in computer falcuty at colleges
6) Lack of living space in areas where IT jobs are abundant
OK, that's not a complete lists, and I'm sure we can find examples and statistics to back up each. So yes, it's true, and yes, it's a load of crap. There is almost never a single factor to situations such as these.
The same problem exists in Australia, for exactly the same reasons, that is employers generally aren't prepared to invest in their own people, but want someone else to pay for the training/experience they want to use. I'm about your age (although I have much less programming experience - I'm a cartographer by trade), and, in a country where employers are whining about a skills shortage I was unemployed for nearly 3 months last year. Fortunately my current employer *is* prepared to pay for skills development.
What a long, strange trip it's been.
I've been through the scarcity of good managers. In the four years that I've been with my company (an integrator in Utah), I've been through three managers. Each successive manager failed more miserably than the last. As fate, with its cruel ironic wit would have it, I am now the fourth manager.
Whereas the other managers had the desire, but not the ability (i.e. not a clue technically), I have neither the desire nor the ability (albeit my ineptitude stems from lack of tolerance and understanding of the business aspects of IT management.) At the same time, I am expected to be as productive as I was prior to my ascension to the executive throne.
I thought that by assuming a management position, I'd be able to serve as the voice of my subjugated brethren, that I'd be able to (here it comes) make a difference. I have been promised from the start the support I'd need to "make things happen," and to make my vision incarnate.
Life just doesn't work that way.
Is it my fault? That's not for me to say (I tend to have a distorted view of reality). But at the same time it suggests that perhaps it's not entirely the fault of management either, that perhaps it is a cultural phenomenon so pervasive that it would be unfair to call the situation "wrong." I'm tired of trying to find someone or something to blame. I'm tired of being asked "what can we do to fix it?"
The answer is not 20 hour work-weeks, with daily back rubs, foot massages, and 50% pay raises. That would be nice, for a while, but then the same malaise would ultimately resurface. The problem seems socially rooted, borne primarily of isolation, but now I'm going off on another tangent....
Miscommunication or lack of communication gives me major headaches when I'm trying to work on a project. Once, I tried to tell the project manager that we needed new boards or different software because the software we used needs 64 bits of data when our boards could only give 32 bits. The manager insisted that I make it work, anyway. I told the manager that I could not get 64 bits out of a 32 bit chip. I was removed from that team shortly there after. I was glad to leave.
Managers not only have to realize the limits of their employees but also the limits of the environment and tools that they have to work with. A friend of mine works with 20 developers that need to use a piece of software that only has 1 licence. One. Management refuses to buy any more. They all need to use it everyday for several hours at a time. Needless to say, they don't get much done.
Another friend works in a networking department and they cut his team down from 10 to two people. Two guys keeping the entire network up. I'm glad I don't own THAT stock.
Right now, I am the sole coder on a support team for an application we bought that is used corporate wide by everyone. Just me and 75,000 lines of code that I didn't write. Thank god for grep. Did I mention it uses recursion a lot? Naturally, the application does not mirror the processes of the company so Management needs major modifications done to the app so it fits in better to what they already do. Great. Now I have to re-write a quarter of it and add even more. Well, at least I'll be familiar with those lines. Now if I can only convince Management to stop telling various departments to use my development server instead of production. Maybe then I'll be able to work on the code changes with out getting e-mails about it not working.
Right now the only thing that keeps me going is the money and my love of coding.
You are completely correct! In my case, I've at least attained an Associates Degree. I was extremely frustrated with my last job (as a Systems Engineer at a law firm, one hint, NEVER work for a law firm!) and started looking for a new job after a year. What brought this on, a change in management. This law firm decided to hire 1) an IT manager that knew NOTHING about technology, and 2) a Sr. Systems Engineer that had no management skills but had decent tech skills. This created an impossible working environment. It took me 8 months before I found a job that would take me, and the only reason why I got the job (I think) is because I had an inside recommendation. I had no certifications, I had an associates degree, but I know a ton about practically every operating system out there, and a ton about hardware and networking. I felt I was a prime candidate for many of the jobs I applied for, but I was turned down for those that had "paper" certifications, or also known as, no skills at all. Sure, I'd interview at these places, and they'd grill me with all sorts of questions about different architectures and troubleshooting situations and I'd answer quickly and correctly, but yet I still didn't get the job. Go figure. Now I work for a consulting company (not head hunter, totally different) and I TOTALLY love my job. Sure, the project manager is a pain, but I never have to see him thank god. Other then that, I basically make my own hours, get to go all over the US, and since I have nothing really holding me back, this is PERFECT for me. Im just wondering what I'm going to go through when it's time for me to start looking again.
End Of Line
Hmm, I must have it good then. I sling code for a living, and the only time I work more than 40 hrs a week is when I'm trying to make up the hours if I took some time off. :) Oh, and if I do work more than 40, I get paid for it (at regular rate, not overtime, but it's still nice).
I'm not sure *why* people work 60 hour weeks? Are you trying to get ahead? Brownie points? My advice: when the clock hits 5, leave. You might get to enjoy life more and you won't have a heart attack when you're 35.
I see articles like the all the time and I wonder: what constitutes the "IT" field? I work at a Linux company with five people, and seriously doubt they're counting me... with the influx of small open-source companies now accurately are these small companies being counted?
:)
I don't really consider myself an "IT" worker, so maybe we're not being counted at all, which could be because more and more "IT" type people are migrating to open-source companies with very different goals. I'd much happier hacking in perl then installing Netscape on somebody's computer, but that's just me
I have no backing for either of these claims, but just thought I'd throw them out there. Flame away...
"But then you don't have seven years experience in web design, or five years experience in Java..."
I remember a classified add I read in the newspaper back in 1996 which was requiring for their company's open position someone with 7 years of Java experience.
I hope they got the right person.
Heh no they go insane and wander around gibbering madly.. G
:)
:)
:)
Seriously, I have really contemplated becoming a mechanic. I take pride in anything I do, and with maybe a few months of actual work experience I am sure I would be able to do most any job. I can read
I find working on cars very satisfying (in the same way writing programs is satisfying). I dont mind getting out and getting dirty, ive tore apart an engine and put it all back toghether just following a couple of books and a little advice here and there.
Point is just because someone can do IT work doesnt mean tahts the only technically skilled jobs on the planet...
If I pull to many more 80 hour weeks I may be one of those insane gibbering fools.
Some of the time id almost rather have a job turning wrenches as opposed to the crazy startup environment, but the work experience, and doors this job opens will keep me here, plus I really do enjoy the work when its not to much
I really find it hard to believe some of you folks just like have nothing to do all day, come take about half my work load...
Jeremy
If you have that much ability, the talent to back it up and are only making $45 than you are indeed getting fucked in the ass....I live in a small metropolis that averages on the low end of the IT pay scale but programmers here make better than that, hell, all i do most of the time is stare at network monitoring software, occasionally build a tunnel and on rare instances configure a router or two and I make more than that. Get your resume out there...I recommend dice.com it gets numerous responses quite quickly.
First, some perspective: I'm a Canadian in the U.S. on an H1-B visa, so I'm rather interested in there is/isn't an IT shortage and foriegners do/don't take jobs away from Americans arguments.
Sometimes, I have to interview, or size up potential candidates, as one of many interviewers. I'm shocked at (a) how mediocre most are, and (b) how lax my coworkers are at accepting them as "good enough, because we won't find better". Only once have I pulled my manager out of the final interview with a candidate to tell him, "Don't let him leave without an offer" (which is very unusual).
One of my stock questions is this: "Write a function to accept an array of items, and sort them according to some ordering appropriate to the type of the items. You may use any language, and types of items (integers, floating point numbers, strings, etc.), but you will have to explain the complexity of the function in 'big-O(n)' notation. It doesn't have to be the most efficient algorithm."
I'm sufficiently versed in most programming languages, and know most common sort algorithms, to evaluate the result.
Guess what? 95% of the candidates can't do this!
I usually expect a bubble sort in C, C++, or Java (but BASIC, Python, or Fortran, would be O.K. APL or COBOL would be cheating, and I doubt that I'd see an Assembler implementation, but I could deal with most of those too).
Like I said, a bubble sort, with a discussion of the O(n^2) behavior would be great. (In practice, you'd use a commercial routine, or take the time to code an O(n log n) one). A properly coded Shell sort would also work (but not gain any extra points), and if you mention Ford-Johnson, you'd better be able to (a) provide an implementation, and (b) know the first few numbers for which it is optimal. Smartasses get marked harder, IOW. But most can't even provide a bubble sort!
So, I'd have to agree that there is a shortage of competent people, but a surplus of those entering the field for "easy money".
Face it, very few can do what we do.
You could've hired me.
Write us back in a year and say whether the corporation actually cared or not. IMHO a corporation is a corporation, in SV or the Ruhr, and they won't actually care in the long run. But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong...
I don't think that's really true, there are a lot of good (yes, good) corporations out there that do really give a damn, you just have to look to find them, or sometimes you just get lucky. I'm quite happy with the company I'm working for right now (We're hiring - go to www.urbanite.com), I'm treated like a person, it's well managed, and I get to do stuff I like to do, if I ever lose interest in it, I get to pick something else to do. Probably the closest you can get to an ideal work situation outside of doing consulting. I could probably make a little bit more money if I went elsewhere, but still, they aren't gipping me, and you get generous preformance-based raises if you deserve them.
I think people's opinions are just heavily tainted by the sheer amount of BAD corporations that are out there that run sweatshops. Just look around, there are good companies out there.
Just my $0.02
I'm not sure about everyone else, but all I want in my job (at the present moment) is to be presented with a list of tasks at the beginning of the week and a list of due dates. Right now I'm expected to manage the budget, research and purchase new hardware/software, manage our file server and 4 print servers, build new computers, set goals for the company as it concerns me. This is not what I want to do.
If I wanted real responsibility like this I would have gotten a degree in management or something. I do not mind working FOR someone. I merely don't want to be responsible for every little detail. I like what I do, which is support the end user and make things work. I don't want to be the entire IT/IS department (which, at the moment, I am) which is NOT what I was hired to do, nor am I making anything near what would make it worth it.
Anyhow, that would be my two zorkmids.
Preach it brother. I think you have hit the nail on the head. Part of the problem is on us though. We bent over and took it for all those years, making employers think it was acceptable...
...but the vast majority of people don't retire...The problem with working for companies and getting rich off of it is that it eventually becomes the end, not the means to the end.
Yup. I work for a mediumish law firm and there are dozens of rich guys who can't let go. One is taking a week-long vacation to the Bahamas...and he's taking a laptop computer with him, so he can stay in touch with the office.
Attorneys at my firm START at $80K/yr, and it's in a mediumish Midwestern city where the cost of living isn't too high. Attorneys who are fiscally responsible can be millionaires within ten years (compound interest and all that). I don't see any quitting...
As someone who was paid less than the person under me I can understand this article and I agree with it. Companies do not invest enough in their non-chargeable staff. IT managers put your staff though training, give them a few fringe benifits and don't let them feel like they are contributing to the firm but let them contribute to the firm and you will have happier more productive IT staff.
I know it's not fashionable to look at things from the enemy's perspective, but has it ever occurred to you folks that the reason there are so few good managers is that managing people is hard? Let's try looking at this from a couple of different perspectives.
Where are you going to find good people to do all this? Where do you find someone who can keep both the technical details and the corporate goals in mind, who's reasonably intelligent and has a decent set of ethics and yet doesn't mind sitting in rooms full of Machiavelli wannabes and Just Plain Dumb people, and who's willing - all to often - to do all that for less money than some of the people "under" them get paid? There really is a shortage of quality people in the industry, but it's not a shortage of hands-on techies; it's a shortage of managers who aren't scum or morons or both.
I whine about my job as much as anyone, but I honestly don't think there's anything I could find myself doing in my prized role as an individual contributor that would be worse than being a manager. It is necessary to have someone else to do all that stuff, but I'm damn glad it's not me. Next time you feel like a few minutes of manager-bashing, spare yourself at least one second to give thanks that you have a better job than they do.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
Huh? $200K, 8.5% tax sheltered, retire at 65. 6.6 Million.
Play here! for more info.
I don't know exactly what micromanagement is (thankfully!), but I think it's when your boss is watching your activity down to the lowest detail. One quote I like from Dilbert regarding this is: "I think, therefore I am. But I'm micromanaged, therefore, I'm not."
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
During the last recession a few years ago studies like this were warning us that we would all work in multiple careers over the course of our lives.
What is wrong with this? I'm a DBA, and to be perfectly honest with you, if I was a DBA or Unix System guru or whatever at age forty I'd drop dead of a heart attack at 41. Unlike some people here, I have no time to read Slashdot at work and have plenty of things to do.
IT jobs are stressful. When major systems die or have problems at 3am, somebody needs to fix it! NOW! I see nothing wrong with turning into a farmer or a gourmet cook or even a politician later on in life!
When I tell my extended family, most of whom are unionized blue-collar workers and civil servants, that I love my crazy job they stare at me like I am insane. But at this stage in my life, I am in the right place, I'm learning alot, and when that changes I will leave.
People flock to the computer industry because they want to make a good living; it is no secret that the high-tech industry has fueled economic expansion of the last two decades. But many of my co-workers are 'just there', they have no passion for their work, no curiosity about what makes stuff work. These people cannot be happy in their jobs, and will leave someday and pursue other things.
My question is: Whats wrong with that?
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
When you get right down to it, the first 80% of coding (which takes 20% of the time) is fun, since that's where the design decisions and experimentation goes on. The last 20% (80% of the total time) sucks, because it's churning out the boring bits of the code, or driving yourself nuts debugging.
Unfortunately, 80% of your career goes into doing 20%-work. By the time you get to the fun stuff, you're cynical and sick of it.
Sounds like you're working in the wrong field. If you don't have a passion for problem solving, and them implementing your solution, you're not, IMOHO, cut out to be a long term programmer.
For me, solving the hard or challenging 20%, and then, watching it work well is what gives me satisfaction in my job.
It's like I've always said. The two things you need in order to run a perfectly good company into the dirt is first a powerful human resources department, and secondly, someone with an MBA in charge.
Wow,
Thats the tail shaking the tiger.
Don't you people understand that IT is a support organization. No, I don't think its fair that the IT departments are underfunded and often understaffed, but you don't generate revenue for the companies.
I realize that if you fail to perform your job, you can have a huge impact on a companies ability to generate revenue, but I reiterate, you don't generate revenue. Sales and Marketing are driving corporate revenue and thats something that you are never going to do.
As a tech in a big corporation, I have to admit that I am sick of talking with IT personel that are either incompetent or disinterested in doing their jobs. Most of these guys make more money than I do and I spend a lot of my days cleaning up the incompetent work.
The trick is to be confident and realize the potential within yourself.
:) I'm about to be 23, been doing this stuff since I was 8. I don't write code on the high-levels, however (I do perl, sh).
You are my exact mirror last year.
Last year I was making around $50K slaving for a start-up that had me hog-tied this way and that. I actually left for 2 weeks for an E-Commerce thing but found that I couldn't handle Perl full-time and crawled back.
Now I'm at a Fortune 500 (albeit bored, but I've got plenty of other opportunities I'm working on), and I make over $100k a year. True, I'm a contractor, but the salaried positions I'm looking at equal this amount.
It's all about realizing your talents and going out there with a "You want me, you can't live without me" attitude. I got lucky with a sorta-friend hooking me up with a contract where I learned just how useful I really was. I went from there to several other places and learned the same thing. Now I'm just trying to find the exact company for me to make my permanent home.
It's about confidence. You need to think of yourself as being a $80K+ per year employee, but you've just been waiting things out.
If you are as good as you say you are, you'll be on the top in no time. It just takes a little drive at first and it's all momentum from there.
Living next to a major city helps a LOT. hit Computerjobs.com and Monster.com and post your resume and skillset.
I went away from the traditional route of resumes and put my skills and ambitions first. See an example here
Life *does* get better than this.
Maybe if this gets read by people at the company I work for, I'll get fired. Though I am not sure I really care.
I am leaving the company name out, if you know phiber optic carriers, you'll know who I'm talking about.
I am only including real first names of some of my (x)co-workers.
(if you guys are reading this, sorry if you didn't want me to use real names)
_BEGIN RANT_
I work for a large phiber optic carrier in Northern Virginia.
I was originally hired by the company as a Perl Programmer / Web Developer, under the title of Engineer II.
*Everything was going well, until*
A few weeks pass, my then, current, awesome manager, Nicole, quit, due to some management changes. A few weeks after that a DBA in my department quit. A few weeks after that, the SysAdmin, Nate, (who's claim to fame is not knowing Windows) quit.
At this point I was introduced to my new manager, a highlevel project manager, who worked in the Ohio and Texas offices. I had a short meeting with him, where he asked me if I'd move to Ohio or Texas. I bluntly said, "NO", then I said, "No, wait, I'll move to Ohio for $500/yr an Texas for $250/year. You see, I have no friends nor family there, so you'd be paying me to stare at the walls in my house for long periods of time." (no offence to anyone that lives in these states, they're just not right for me).
Anyway, he said that that probably could not be done. A week after that, my other SysAdmin went back to school. Well, that was my entire department.
I waited around a bit, then was notified that the project is turning into HTML/ASP. Well I'm not really into learning ASP, but I told the manager that, "I would be happy to take some ASP/SQL/IIS classes."
I didn't hear back from him for about a week, mind you that during this time, I didn't hear from anyone. At this point, I am wondering if I still had a job, or they were pulling an Office Space move. I continued receiving my paycheck, so I guess I was still employed.
When I did hear back, the message I received was:
So, do you want to move to Ohio or Texas?
I replied that I was still not interested, when can I get that training. A while passes, and I receive an e-mail, on a Tuesday, the message was dated Monday 12-noon. Unfortunatly, I was sick on Monday. The message announced a meeting at 5pm.
Who the hell schedules a meeting at 5pm, and sends out announcements at noon?
Well that's the last I heard of this manager for a few more weeks. Then he e-mails me again stating:
You can get training if you move to Ohio or Texas.
What the fuck is that?
I don't e-mail back, I post my resume on Monster and Dice, again.
Shortly there after, there was a promotion of one of the people in the building, to Director (Chris, you rock). He asked me if I'd be interested in working for him. I said that I don't know how I feel about the company at this point, so I'll consider his offer.
Recently, I start getting harassing e-mails stating that I am on the "Hot List" for people not doing ABT time sheets. I had actually asked for support doing the time sheets, to no avail.
The next e-mail I get is:
Where are your ABT time sheets?
I need to make arangements for you to move to Austin, please e-mail me.
At this point, I have come to the concusion that this guy is the biggest asshole I've ever met.
I e-mail back:
I am not interested in moving to Ohio or Texas, unless you have accepted the salary terms which we discussed. I feel quite abused by your constance insistance of me moving to Ohio or Texas, I have never been treated so unprofessionally, in my life.
That was today.
I'll go in late tomorrow, and see if I'm fired.
If I am, I'll go talk to my lawyer.
So I hung out there for 2 months, with nothing to do, I have been talking to several recruiters and doing some interviewing. I am very picky as to where I work, so I have not found something yet.
Maybe I'll work for the other manager, maybe not.
_END RANT_
If you, my manager are reading this...
I hope this isn't entirly too unprofessional, but "FUCK YOU!!"
--
you are not what you own
it's a sig, wtf?
I went to a four-year college and do not feel that a) my time was wasted, or b) I came out with an overinflated ego. I realize now that college did not teach me how to do computers, it taught me how to be a human being in a lot of ways, and also gave me the bare tools to be able to teach myself any technology that I would care to pick up.
The problem that most people out of college have is that:
- The system insists that to get a job, you must have a 3.0, or 3.5 or higher GPA. Period. I did not graduate with a 3.0 or higher. And because of this, there were IT companies that wouldn't even look at my resume, let alone give me a chance to prove that I knew something or was trainable. I came to like companies that did not use numbers to define me.
- The advertisements for job openings offer such odd and hard-to-get requirements, you must try and fabricate anything you can to get those on your resume somehow. I hadn't had formal, professional HTML design, but had done it for a few years for myself and others, so I put that down. I had a one-semester class in Smalltalk, so I put that down. I once taught the IP protocol to a hamster, so I wrote that down. Egos are often driven by the industry's demands on what you have to have. Honesty would be a big help here.
All in all, I wouldn't count my years as lost. I work for a Ma&Pop company because it's friendly, it's my best option right now, and I'm doing ok. I want to learn before I'm thrust into a job that I'm far too underqualified for.However, the push to have good grades is still very high, so colleges inflate the "average" level up to a B, B+, or A- and suddenly everyone is doing well. Amazing.
Blog,Twitter
Everyone claims to be a 'straight A student' and yet I see so much mediocrity.
There's a reason for this. The school system teaches facts rather than thinking skills (espcially critical thinking). So you have a bunch of yahoos who go through school who can memorize a few dates and do good on tests, but have no practical experience. At one point in time, this may have not been a bad thing. Times have changed drastically though, and the educational system has not caught up. This is a dangerous time to have a faulty educational system.
--
Frankly that's a load of bullshit. A well picked team will mostly run itself. Give it an objective and a realistic deadline and set it to go. The problem is that the managers are more concerned with being seen to be doing short term stuff so they can show how effective they are being to the higher ups. It's how they get promoted.
The reason that they get the offices, pay and other benefits is that they are the ones who decide on the distribution of these things. And you don't move into management out of some magmanimous belief in helping your fellow man.
.sig
"and if you mention Ford-Johnson, you'd better be able to (a) provide an implementation, and (b) know the first few numbers for which it is optimal.
...
Face it, very few can do what we do."
Face it, very few know who the fsck Ford and Johnson are. Competent programmers know how, when and where to reach for knowledge or mentoring. No one can possibly carry around every algorithm and supporting thesis material in their head. Ask me as part of an interview to whip such stuff out of my orifice to somehow prove myself to you and I will be excusing myself without hesitation or regret.
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
Any tips on getting work like that in Germany? It sounds like you found a great job over there (too bad you couldn't take it).
For all the reasons you said, I would love to be able to work in Germany, even if only for a while. I've been looking for a way to spend time over there, but it's not easy. I never had time to be an exchange student, and now I have to find a Real Job(tm).
I've been to Germany a few times and I love it. I love Austria too. My German is getting rusty, but I always wanted to be fluent (I also want to learn Italian and Spanish eventually). Any hints would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.
Chad Glendenin
If we teach a guy how to code HTML, and give him a job, and create a cottage industry around that job - then the whole thing can be cratered by a college edumacated coder who writes something like HoTMetaL.
From a business perspective, sure, let's make a buch of cogs and sprockets for the corporate machine. But from a humanitarian perspective, people should be taught how to think - so they could learn new skill as the world evolves around them.
What sort of prospects does a trade-school grad, taught to fix carburators have in a fuel-injected world? How about an internal-combusion engine rebuild specialist in a city full of Honda Insights??
People need a broad enough education to be able to choose their job - before their job chooses them.
The REAL jabber has the /. user id: 13196
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
Part of it is that the sales and marketing people make money in the eyes of the higher-ups and the IT/support staff take money. Probably has a lot to do with bosses understanding the sales side better, but a lot of it is the herd mentality. Some one with clout once said that every sales person you add to your force is another person out there bringing in $$$ while every person in the "support" side takes money out of the coffers. Things will change when one of the lemmings change the direction of the herd.
I'm a geek - I spend a good piece of my free time infront of a computer, or reading about them. I have about 5 years of good experience (I started 8 years ago, but learned slowly at first) but I have little actual working experience. I find myself getting certified so that I can tell employers "hey look I'm not lying to you, I do have some experience here". It's unfortunate. Unlike stuff like medicine, it's easy to learn all of the same stuff as you would in university/college from books - you dont actually need college or university. The only advantage that I really see comming out of my paying for tuition, is access to big computer labs to fool around in.
Why move people into job positions where they get to do less of what they do best?
Because sometimes it's necessary to have someone who knows and understands a product and a set of technologies running a project in order to avoid the wholesale destruction that a clueless PHB can wreak on it in what is often a remarkably short amount of time.
--
The gift of death metal does not smile on the good looking.
I'm not in an IT field, I'm with a software consulting company specializing in embedded systems. It's a small company ( 60 ) total employees. The great thing about the company is that everyone (including the President) is an engineer first. Everyone that works here has a hard science degree or an engineering degree. Those that own stock in the company (it's privately held) founded and still work for the company, and they treat their employees well. It's an exception to work more than 45 hours in a week, comp time, flexible in/out times, and oh yes, lots of mountain dew. I turned down some higher paying jobs just to work in this environment.
I'll turn 48 next saturday. I've been a programmer, since I was 19... Last time I looked for a job it took me 2 years to find a company that would hire me. The time before that it took me 2 weeks. The difference? My beard turned gray while I was at my last job. Funny how that happens.
I'm highly educated, and have up to date skills. I have a wide range of experience. I have shipped a LOT of real products to real customers. I'm willing to work for a reasonable salary.
The kid in the next cube with 2 years experience, NO formal training, who has never shipped a finished product, regularly gets offers for 20% to 40% more than I currently make. I apply for the same jobs and don't even get a rejection email.
Most of the programmers I've known over the last 29 years have given up trying to work as programmers. Not that they don't want to. It's just that it is very very hard to get a job as a programmer if you are over 40.
I can also tell you I have experienced what happens when you get "daddy" tracked in a job. All of the sudden you can't get a raise, can't get any more training, suddenly it isn't in the companies "best interests" to send you to conferences. "What, just because your kid is on the way to the emergency room you think you should be able to leave before 10 P.M. tonight? Remember, we hired YOUR, we didn't hire your family!"
I don't know why I so stupid as to stay in this business. I can tell you that there is NO shortage of IT talent in the US. There isn't really even a shortage of CHEAP It talent in the US. There is a shortage of IT talent that is stupid enough to work 80 hours/week for a fixed (small) salary, no benefits and NO RESPECT!
stonewolf I'm no ghost dog
The air is cleaner in NJ than in Manhattan (smell of the swamplands notwithstanding, i don't live round there) and the fact that it's easier to get to if you live in Jersey, makes Jersey quite attractive for IT people. Besides Bell Labs, we have shitloads of tech shops all over the place. I can see the reasoning behind why a Jersey shop would be considered inferior to a NY shop, but other than that, fuck you NY yuppies. *ahem*
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
I start at company X as a contractor, no big deal, it comes with the territory, I am hoping to go permanent as I just got married, bought a house, etc, and would like a bit of stability, as I now have *gasp*, a life.
I BUST MY ASS.
I BUST MY ASS.
I get hired on to a permanent status, at a pretty good salary, considering all I have is experience, no certs, no school, etc. I continue to bust my ass, since, phenominally, I like my job, I like the people, get my own hours, etc.
I get a review. My manager lauds my abilities to keep people happy and do a good job, says that I am a bit of a smart-ass at times, but not in a bad way. He then proceeds to give me a 22 CENT raise. Add 22 cents per hour to 42K/yr and what do you get? Thats right, Jack Shit.
During said review period, another contractor comes on, has very little experience, but can kiss ass in a way that is God-like. When it becomes apparent that I am not very happy with my raise, he begins to butter up said boss, and is soon hired on. He is given more money, more stock, and is basically made to be my boss. Bear in mind that I am NOT allowed to apply for this job since it will conveniently be filled 2 weeks before my required one year tenure in my current position.
So, to sum up, my manager gave me a shitty raise for hard work and the 5 years of experience that I currently have, and gave the "6 mos of experience in Windows 95" ass-kisser the job that I wasn't even allowed to apply for.
To sum up:
1: Piss-poor management, have a little respect for the fact that I make your sorry butt look GOOD for YOUR bosses, yet you don't want to let me get training in something new because "It doesn't relate to your current job"
2: The Shitty IT person mentioned below rears his ugly head again. It's people like him, who are simply out for the oodles of money that everyone says is in this field that are making it worse for the rest of us. The reason we (read: Slashdot community) do what we do is not for the money, it's for the challenge. Granted, money is nice, I like money, it helps me pay my mortgage and trite little things like that, but it is NOT the be-all, end-all reason that I do what I do. [/rant]
"See, we plan ahead! That way, we never have to do anything now."
been working part time with companies for 4+ years now... and everywhere I go, I've been bless with Managers who tell me what to do, when to do it, and don't freak out if I can't get something done. Every now and then, just when I'm about to freak out from frustration, they give me something incredibly trivial (but still necessary) that needs to be done just to stoke my ego. And two out of three managers didn't mind me playing Blizzard games on the job. The other manager would actually appreciate it if I played Quake 3 more often, but it makes me motion sick... That's at my current job, where I a chess table sitting outside my cube and everyone is welcome to decide the next move against me. Open source chess. ^^
My honest belief is that IT peeps think management is bad because the IT people in question are anti-social. I'm incredibly anti-social, I don't get along with anyone who doesn't have an aim sig or icq #. But I can be polite, and eventually I realize that the people who annoy me at work aren't annoying to me anymore, because something changed inside me.
If you think that the management is bad because they make you work long hours, then don't work long hours. You are a prize, you are rare, you are valuable. They could train everyone in computer science, but only a few will actually be any good at it. If they want to mess with you, up at leave. monster.com if you don't think that's a good idea.
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
I can agree that IT jobs can be boring. They can also be LOW PAYING at the same time! I worked as a computer operator (what a waste of time). It was so boring and low paying. I just HAD to quit to consider my future for a while and try working for myself. I'd say I'm a computer geek and worked on computers for 10 years now, but dropped out of college before finishing my computer engineering/science degree. I'd say I've wasted my life pursuing a computer career. I still like computers though %P
:)
I'm now frustrated with my life! I can see what some others mean about people who are not computer geeks studying computers in college but don't really have any interest in computers other than making some money. I can say, and my girlfriend would probably readily admit, that I have far more practical programming and other computer knowledge than she does, and she has a masters degree in computer science and is now currently working on her doctoral dissertation for business/computer science! When it comes to how to use Linux, Windows or programming, she has to always get my help. These people just do book learning and barely have to ever really touch a real computer and use real software. A real computer geek learns some theory in class, but then spends a lot of their own time hacking around with a computer learning actual practical things. I can see how people could go all through college and have all the theory from dry old books then be asked to sit in front of a computer and do something and not have a clue. Instead, they have to rely on some college dropout like me, who doesn't get paid crap, to actually get anything done. Well, I'm just a bitter loser I guess! Enjoy your boring sorry jobs while your stupid idiot managers tell you what to do. Maybe I'll end up working at McDonalds soon and whatever I know is useless stuff that will be obsolete tomorrow. Soon people will be obsolete technology!
-- CompTechNews Message Board: http://comptechnews.com/ --
Tell ya what. All those IT people are just a drain, a metaphorical hole in the payroll. Why don't you do the shareholders a favor, can them all, and let your VBCs share price skyrocket once those unencumbered Sales and Marketing droids *really* get things moving?
I once worked for a company with a similarly boneheaded strategy. The closed down the small division i was in not long after I left and outsourced all the work. They ended up with poorer service as they no longer had dedicated people whose only priority was that company, and paid more for it. From your perspective, they eliminated a "profit center" which wasn't profitable, yet they *lost* money in the process.
You, and manglers who think like you, need to understand that everyone plays an important role in the company's success (or you shouldn't have them on the payroll). Every morning when the cleaning staff goes through to empty out the trash I think to myself how its good that they're there to do this, that it's *important* that it be done, and it's more economical than having people who make high salaries carry their own trash can to the dumpster each day. I respect and appreciate them because they do something important, and do it well and reliably, yet they aren't recognized as contributing some certain dollar figure to the bottom line. Rest assured, they do.
Your IT department is no doubt much the same. They aren't recognized as contributing to your bottom line, but they do. The dollar amount would be determined by closing it down and watching the results. You *have* an IT department because you can't be competitive without it (your information infrastructure would gradually collapse). You have janitorial staff because, similarly, you can't be competitive without it. You aren't going to tell your new 6 figure project manager his duties include taking out the garbage if you really expect him to stay. For the most part, you can't expect your workers to stay if you don't provide basic workplace services.
Sales and Marketing is also more aptly described as Smoke and Mirrors. As a consumer of goods, I don't give a damn about the marketing pitch. Honestly, that's the crap I have to wade through to get to the substance I want. When I buy my next car all the glitzy ads will have gone to waste. My decision will be based on my own experience with manufacturers and third party reviews. S&M has a role, certainly, but the belief that they "drive corporate revenue" is naive. They *contribute*, but do does your receptionist, your janitor, your security guard, your manager, your CEO, and your IT department.
The problem is not with the way management treats IT people, it is the way companies treat IT. It is a specialised field which should be left to the experts. Only professional software services firms can provide the following to IT people. Professional Growth, Professional Pride, COnstant training on new technologies and specialised treatment for specialised task force.
Just as miners are treated differently and the wall street types are treated differently IT professionals are different. How can a company whose main line of business is selling industrial equipment provide career growth and professional growth to the small IT dept in the basement. Instead of looking to provide better facilities and treatment to IT people it should look to outsource the entire IT to a services company. I dont think that companies hire mechanics to fix their employees cars. They go to the nearest garage. The IT services companies have evolved specialised atmospheres where technical people are kings. I work in one such company and the typical compensation for the support staff such as admin or finance or hr is much lower than the technical guys. Technical guys are treated with special care. They have help desks which will help us take care many little things such as arranging for parties, arranging for accomodation for my personal guests ect. All this so that I can concentrate on my job.
It will also solve the problem of constant training for employees and feeling left out in an environment where everybody is discussing how company A will survive the market crunch and the IT guy is discussing how linux will affect Windows. As far as employees of company A are concerned linux can go take a walk, they are more worried about other things such as their jobs.
O this learning! What a thing it is - William Shakespeare
I can contest to this. At my last position I wasn't respected and was worked like a dog. My opions didn't matter. What I thought was best for the company was tossed aside. The poilicy I drafted wasn't followed. No one listened to me until they couldn't figure out the problem. I was a simple fix-it-for-us-when-we-need-you-anytime-during-the- day-yes-this-mean-24/7-network-monkey-gi mp-boy-and-keep-quite
/. until my eyeballs hurt.
When I started I was told this was a management level position. What BS. I was a support tech for the LAN. If they told me this was what they had in mind for me, I wouldn't have accepted the position. All they wanted me to do was build a stable, secure, LAN, and get the most out of me as they possiable could for the least amount of money then replace me with a bunch of cheap clueless interms to support what I built.
When I ask for a pay raise, they told me I would have to move closer, basicly so I would be thier gimp boy. I wanted to move out of my parents house anyways, I took the paid raise. Instead of just calling me in for IT crap, they started to call me to build these desks. I guess it's becuase I could build them twice as fast as anyone else there. They tricked me by call me up on a 3 o'clock pm on saturday saying that the network was down. It was becuase they loosed (unpluged) the damn uplink to the router.
They called me in a few more time to do wierd stuff on my weekend. Hello! I worked sixty five frigging hours for you assholes this week, can I have a day off?!
I got pissed and an turned my cell phone off one weekend. I decided to come in anyways, Sunday after the X files for about an hour to setup some computers. I walked into the door as soon as I did the VP and CEO jumped on my case about how I should get voice mail. I siad the flat out, I hate phones, and I hate voice mail even more. No way in hell jack. I'm a geek, email me.
They wanted to do some stupid demo with MicroSoft NetMeeting and email that they couldn't do becuase of a firewall. I told them, just use two laptops to do your little demo. They wouldn't listen to me. They piss farted around with netmeeting for hours trying to get it work with the ipchains firewall until I failly said "no, I'm not messing with this crapp any more. Use the damn laptops for your demo. I'm going to finsh the work which I came here to do and go home and sleep." I told them how to get on the other side of the firewall, and warned them they won't be able to access anything the way it's currently setup." Did they listen to me? hell no.
That night I went to sleep at 2 am. At 8 o'clock my cell phone rang. I was pissed, I knew who it was and I knew what they were calling about. Five mintues later it rang again, this time I deciced to pick the phone up. Sure enough, the guy was still on the other side of the firewall complaining becuase he couldn't "see the network". After telling him just move the cable to the other socket and reboot a dozen times, I had to come in to do it for him.
At 9 o'clock I made it in. Other people were moving machines around and a NT machine decided to become the PDC, and my samba server didn't have enough to power kick it off. SMB was down for an hour waiting for all the NT crap to time out. The guy blamed me for it. He also blamed me for having to buy a hub. I waa thinking to myself "WTF, there's 1,2,3,4 FIVE! RJ-45 connectors in the room, and there's a hub sitting in my office in plain sight." I got yelled at, treated to be fired, and told [a new guy they just hired] could do my job, he knows Linux. The kid only delt with two network applices machines running linux (he told me "it was a mess") using nothing but web interfaces for three months. He didn't know jack about Linux or networking for that matters. When I was talking to him asking basic questions or explaining the network setup, he gave nothing but stuned blank stares. What really got me was a few people in the office wondered how I could do everything in the office by myself. I just told them, I just that damn good.
I was pissed. About everything. I can't belive I was having my job treated. I never worked so hard in my life for a company just to be pissed on like this. If they just listen to me, none of the BS would have happend. Once I fixed all of their fuck ups, I took the rest of the day off and read
Two days later, I left that hell hole. Two weeks after that, they hired two "Sr. Network Monkeys", a "Lead Network Monkey" (SysAdmin), and a "Techincal Support Monkey Team" for the 200 servers. God knows how many people just to do what I was doing!!! I think the total is like 10 or 12. Most of them are interms with no knowleadge getting crap pay, if they even get paid. Of course they double thier staff, but shit! The "Lead Network Monkey", my friend, and my self could rule over thier network like Nazi leaders using Debian and OpenBSD.
A month later I found my current positon. I'm making 60k a year, less work, less stress, able to hire people when I feel I need help (none of this, "I need help, please hire someone" oh no! All I have to do is say "I need help, hire this guy"), working with good people (no assholes here!), in a cool building (where I can smoke anywhere I damn well please outside), working my own hours, never called in to do wierd stuff, complete control of the network, able to choose what OS I want to use, order my own supplies, get true respect from my peers, and they pay for health ins! My boss isn't just a manager but a friend that understand the IT field and where's it headed. He understand the stress IT people go through. I love my job.
MarNuke
I had a couple of good managers while I was in the Army (not IT work - map making). They were technicians who'd worked their way up (the shitty managers were often young blokes with a shiny new degree and a commission). I haven't found too many since, although the bloke I work for now is pretty good - like the better managers I had in the Army he looks after his people.
What a long, strange trip it's been.
One of my stock questions is this: "Write a function to accept an array of items, and sort them according to some ordering appropriate to the type of the items. You may use any language, and types of items (integers, floating point numbers, strings, etc.), but you will have to explain the complexity of the function in 'big-O(n)' notation. It doesn't have to be the most efficient algorithm."
Guess what? 95% of the candidates can't do this!
Many similar experiences here. You'd be surprised how many people applying to be embedded developers are clueless about my first question: write a piece of code that wait until the most significant bit of the 8-bit register at address 0x2000 to be set. Very few get past my second: Discuss the impact of a busy-wait loop such as
while( !( *(volatile char *)0x2000 & 0x80 ) );
on a real time system.
Some companies are very willing to train people, but one can't expect to be taught trignometry if he or she has never bothered to memorize the multiplication table!
You bind any two or more objects together, and you better use good rope. Elsewise they come apart.
Soylent Green is people!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
You are not the first person to point this out, but, to be honest, I've never understood this logic. Isn't everyone in the organization needed? If any one group suddenly quit, wouldn't the whole organization go down?
For instance, if the sales folks stopped selling, we go out of business. But by the same token, if the IT folks stop developing, the sales folks have nothing to sell, and we go out of business. Same result.
Since every worker is needed to do his or her part, what difference does it make if one group is playing the part of the revenue-makers, and another group is playing the part of the cost center? If either group quits, the results are the same.
It's that "cost center" mentality that drove me nuts, for it directly led to the odd concept that sales folks were more important than the IT staff. They weren't. We were all equally needed.
________________
________________
Private Essayist
There are plenty of european equivalents to monster.com out there, just check them out. I don't have any specific URLs, but something like Yahoo Germany would be a good place to start.
:)
I know this sounds funny, but how I got my offer was just by posting my resume on my page, and letting them come to me. If you have the qualifications that people are looking for, then they will come to you. You don't really need to do any job hunting yourself since there are so many managers out there dying for employees.
Make sure to mention you speak german on your resume. Make sure to mention that you've lived overseas and that you're not going to freak out with culture shock if a company pays to relocate you. (And you should expect to be paid a certain amount to offset or eliminate the cost of moving overseas) But you won't believe how much goodwill you can buy yourself by being culturally open and willing to learn foreign languages. Americans have a bad international reputation for being lazy snobs when it comes to language and culture. Break that stereotype with whoever interviews you, and you get a schload of brownie points.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
Until recently I would have agreed with this article. I hold an IT job and until we got a new MIS manager I wouldn't hardly do anything (except read slashdot). Some days I would do pretty much nothing all day and others I would be working my a$$. The days when nobody would need support help I would sit around doing nothing and it was very boring. My bosses were all people who knew absolutely nothing about computers.
:).
Recently I got a new MIS manager (who does know something about computers thank god) and suggested I start writing an intranet site, which I've been working on for the last couple of months, constantly maintaining and fixing bugs for the stupid people at my work and all kinds of fun stuff.. But don't worry, I still get a decent dose of slashdot every day
Granted, I'm only working part time and for a non profit, I know they can etch a little more out for my salary. I love my bosses, but it's the management above them that I really hate. But pay could make me temporarily happy. Enough time to get all the things they need done.
The management underestimates how IT is important to the company. And likes to make technology decisions without any of the IT staff present.
Anyway.. enough ranting.
Basically the environment is really good. The pay sucks (I work in San Francisco). I am young and I have a lot I want to do. (DJ, Snowboard, Travel, etc) I am afraid i'll end up in a crappy situation if I look for another job. I've had 2 previous jobs which I hated the environment. And I only work part time because I'm in college. :(
I realize that if you fail to perform your job, you can have a huge impact on a companies ability to generate revenue, but I reiterate, you don't generate revenue.
Well.. that's not entirely true.
Say I'm support for contact management software. All the sales people use my software. Each sales person enter information on their accounts. Now, it's my job to take care of that information. If I write software to take that info and do fax blasts, I'm generating revenue that the sales people don't even touch. It doesn't stop there though. Anything I do to streamline any systems in-house is revenue generating because it frees up time for more sales calls. If I figure out how do do more processes paperless, I'm saving money. Saving money is as good as profit.
Let me rephrase that. Anything I do to cause more revenue to be generated should be looked at as generating revenue. Understand? You don't have to talk to customers in order to make the company a profit.
The problem isn't that IS doesn't generate revenue. I do that. I do that everyday. The problem is that the revenue generated isn't always trackable. I don't get a raise because it isn't obvious who did it.
Hence, my current underpaid situation.
_______________
you may quote me
Three words:
Chasing
The
Bucks
Why else?
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
Right on. You are just a kid... try being my age and going for a tech job of any kind. Screw the politicians and this dumbass 'shortage' of qualified people.
jyuma
that's pretty slick....
:)
impressive, a job posting on slashdot.
jon
-- http://www.cerastes.org
you said it buster... americans may be very good at getting money under their control, but the motivations for doing so are not too great...
consider the hundreds, if not thousands, of miserable, highly-paid investment banking analysts who give up years of their lives to do what? to make lots of money. i KNOW that more than a few of those people would rather be doing something else, but they want the money so badly that they can't see anything else.
maybe volunteering more at local charities/missions would do a world of good for people whose lives revolve around money?
jon
-- http://www.cerastes.org
Come on man, you asked for it---10+ years experience w/ Cisco, Nortel, Solaris,Linux,HP-UX *BSD, degrees, certs, live in the NYC area, looking for a new job, have worked in Telecom, Military, Internet & aviation. Willing to travel & work OT---
Well, completing a college degree shows the person has completed something that takes some amount of effort to complete. College also tends to make a person more well-rounded. That's not always the case, but if I have a choice of who to work with non-degreed or degree'd, I'd choose degreed any day. When I get a vacant stare from someone when I mention, say, some concept typically taught in a basic Algorithms class, I can't help but get irritated. When I have to explain how a linked list works, something is wrong.
I wouldn't outright rule out non-degreed people, but no other engineering profession would allow non-degreed people to do work, why should software engineering be any different?
The REAL problem is the rampant age discrimination in this industry, plain and simple.
There are plenty of older, experienced, DEGREED folks out there who have a tough time getting decent salaries. How can that be, if we truly have a shortage?
Okay, yes, my First Post was pretty inane, but what did this one do to get smacked down so hard? Anyone care to enlighten me on why I received two -1s?
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
schweet... another one like me...
i'm an econ major, but i care about computers a whole lot more than i do about current ratios and income statements and cash flow and leveraged buyouts. investigating format string bugs or writing time-saver scripts is SO much more interesting than reading about equity valuation and the term structure of bonds.
now that i'm starting the job hunt, i'm apprehensive of what kind of opportunities there'll be for an econ major with little/no formal CS training... it's hard to explain a lifelong passion for technology to a recruiter.
jon
-- http://www.cerastes.org
In addition, many IT jobs are ill-designed and boring, leading many employees to become dissatisfied and leave.'"
So what, they drop out of the IT field completely and go dig ditches or flip burgers at McDonalds?
Come on, even if there is lots of turnover (and there is lots of turnover), this doesn't affect the total labor pool for IT... other than a small amount of friction for people who are inbetween jobs.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Uhh, dude? How can I email you? Your email address is "unlisted" in your Slashdot user profile..
Alex Bischoff
---
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
I mean, how hard iz it to git these new fangled computermibobs to werk? Any dern fool can do it. Jest giv 'em some mountain dew and lock em in a closet fer a munth er too. How herd is thet to manage?
You know, it's quite often a case that (at least in large corporations) Steph knows how to play the political games required to get noticed by higher management, whereas our faithful coder keeps his head down, doing excellent work, never 'networking' (ugh) with management from other business areas, and consequently never being noticed.
It's a little too much of a generalisation to state that "management is composed of people who were too dumb to be passed up for promotion." I've been working in the industry for well over a decade, and I've had some excellent technical managers (OK, OK, I've had the completely f*ckwitted PHB's too, I admit it!)
--
The gift of death metal does not smile on the good looking.
This book needs to be standard reading for any chowderhead managers who can't figure some of this stuff out for themselves...believe it or not, many can't.
ie, developers NEED offices with doors. That's, right, those things that close. Instead, what happens? Manglement gives themselves the best offices first, and of course the people who need the most quiet and most configurable environment get what? Yes, cubes. I've seen offices that contained ONE "manager" that could have easily
been broken up into 4 or 5 good-sized offices -
that could have been given to developers, and probably housed 8 to 10 of them. No, instead it has to be a land-grab by upper management to show all the other primates in management they have status (developers typically don't see stuff in the terms that the typical manglement drone does).
Management needs to treat developers more like artists than clerical staff. Developers are not data-entry people, and their job involves more than just typing. I know this may be a revelation for middle to upper management, but this is true.
It's not about status. It's about keeping your workers happy and productive, and cubes don't lend themselves to either.
And if you are too damn cheap and/or stupid to ditch the cubes, then turn off those f'ing fluorescent lights, GOD DAMN IT! Why is the absolute worst lighting for computer work so common in the workplace?
I'm having a rough time finding a new job. Okay, I am an MCSE, but when the company pays for training and test, why not? Admittedly I basically slept through most of the classes. (Leaned nothing in TCP/IP except a better way to figure out subnetting on paper. Learned like two minor details in the Accelerated NT course, and learned what IIS couldn't do in that course). I'm not huge on programming, but I do play with PERL and shell scripting. I have done some basic stuff in VB just to work with OO and understand what it is. I've been playing with Linux for about 5 years. I can do all the basics, and have setup several servers for doing web, mail, ftp, dns, etc. etc. I have about 4 years experience managing NT servers, I've done a couple years work managing HPUX and IRIX boxes. I think I have almost all the ins and outs of dialing in using any MS product (seems every job I get I end up managing a RAS box... not that I mind... they never crash once I get them setup the way I want).
I think I sound like a fairly promising individual to an employer, but I rarely get called back. I'm really only on my 2nd "real" IT job. I did a couple years consulting for a TelCom company, which I really enjoyed, but the contract ended and nothing new had come up. Now I work for the gov't. Ugh! I'd like to get back into consulting , but I'd like to get a little farther out of debt first.
Sorry about my rant there, back to my original point. Why not post an opening, ask for the resume, and instead of putting X years of work experience with Y, ask 6 or so questions on the kind of work they will be doing. I for one would be more than happy to spend 30 minutes answering a few questions for a job I was really interested in.
...I think most americans would have a blast if they went as long as they didn't take their cultural imperialism with them. (I.e. they shouldn't expect to speak english, or do american things)
;)
That's funny, I know several Europeans in Sillycon Valley complaining because life isn't exactly like it was back in France, or Germany, or wherever
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
No, the qualified ones straight out of college or high school get hired extremely quickly. I've met quite a few older, much more experienced programmers, sysadmins, or whatever who cannot get jobs because their experience means the company has to (in theory) pay them a higher wage to keep them around.
I'll admit there are a lot of wanabee IT workers, but there are even more wanabee managers. And unfortunately, the later usually get hired.
-RickHunter
That certainly has been true in my experience. It was rare to find a good manager, one who made going to work a pleasure. Usually I had to merely take pleasure in doing a good job despite management's efforts or the corporate politics.
When a developer finds a good fit with a clued-in manager, they tend to stay. For all the rest of us, the PHBs eventually get us disgusted enough to move on.
As for undervaluing the contribution of IT, that was always the case. Sales & Marketing were the stars, always, and IT was an afterthought. That was true both in corporte culture as well as management opportunities. The sales guys, no matter how idiotic they were, got to move up the ladder far faster than the best of the IT staff. I always attributed that to the VPs not knowing what we did but actually did understand what the sales guys did.
These idiots are beginning to get what they deserve if IT staff are leaving in droves.
________________
________________
Private Essayist
The place I'm at now, for example, I turned down a boatload more money to come here because they actually care whether we're alive or not. It's 5:30, and one of the people I work with asked why I was staying late.
and it's because I feel like doing so, nobody's forcing me to; in fact, I get thanked that I put in more than 40 hours.
We just took on a new developer, he's probably in his 40's -- doesn't know C, but we're going to teach him.
Point is, research places. Good ones, just like good employees, are hard to find. But they're out there.
(and, yes, we're looking for people)
If a woodchuck could, would it be too lazy to?
Its true. At one of the Job Posting sites, I remember seeing a poll for Job Satisfaction and 95 percentage were of the opinion that they were not happy with what they are doing.
Talk about a biased sample. I would expect that most people who are reading job listings are at least somewhat unhappy with their current jobs. If they aren't, then why are they looking for another job?
Hmmm... The whole laissez-faire thing you are talking about is a uniquely American phenomenon. The US population is more anti-government than that of any other nation I have known. The whole American constitution is anti-government and however much Americans complain they have less government interference in their lives than most other Western nations. (Eg. in the UK I had to pay the government for health care and yet when I used that health care I was made to feel I was wasting government money that could be spent on someone more needy. At school the default is to be forced into xtian religious services because Britain has a state religion.) Yet the the US has a singularly bad education system (easily demonstrated by recent international surveys). This makes me very unsure that the cause of the state of US education is the excess of government interference. As an armchair psychologist I'm tempted to blame it on the litigation obsessed culture (you can't criticise a student too badly or you'll get sued) and the whole psychological self-help thread that has run through culture in the US for at least a century (eg. documented by William James) which puts feelings of self-esteem above actually doing anything worthy of esteem. But these latter opinions should be taken with a pinch of salt as I haven't really studied the issue.
--
-- SIGFPE
My boss is horrible at managing things. All His Workers Do Is Read Slashdot All Day Long And Work On Their Own WebPages.
Oh Wait...
You are SO right! I remember I started programming an Intel 8086 in BASIC and Assembly Language when I was about 10 years old. I did it because I loved it. I did it despite what other people thought.
Back then, being a computer geek made you a pariah. Now, people perceive computer science as a trade-school-type path to wealth. Forty years ago, if you wanted to make money, you became a doctor or a lawyer. Now, you become a doctor or a lawyer or a techie.
Of course now, I can't find a job because no one cares that I am a real computer geek and that I learned all this stuff on my own. All they see is that I don't have a Computer Science degree (I went to frigging YALE, but apparently that doesn't mean anything to IT recruiters) and I don't have full-time experience (duh, I just graduated), so they ignore me, or offer me crap jobs, like night-shift NT babysitting for $16/hour.
The problem is, what are they going to do with that money-grubbing CS grad in two years when his list of skills becomes obsolete? They will wish they had hired a real geek like you or me -- someone who loves technology and is always learning something new for its own sake, not because it leads to more money -- but it will be too late. Maybe I'm wrong and it's just my own bitter bias.
ccg
>and under the American system, the greater your
>"obligation" (in terms of taxes) to provide for
>those less able.
Hey, you should try it up here in Canada. My Income Tax rate alone is over 40%. My total tax burden has to be close to 70%. I make more than 97% of the population and still can't afford to buy a house anywhere close to where I work. Once my wife finishes school, we'll probably move to one of the lower tax states - there's just no way to get ahead up here.
On the plus side, if I were to ever get sick, I would not have to pay to sit in line and die in the underfunded public health care system. I can drive anywhere I want (paying something like 60% fuel taxes) on an underfunded road network that is bumper-to-bumper 50% of the time. And I can always turn on the TV and see yet another rent-a-mob campaigning for increased government spending for their pet project of the week.
Sigh.
I met a geek a while ago, in fact, he told me about Slashdot. This is guy is WAY out. He's 21 years old, has no degree, talks about weird things, and is generally quite interesting. He finished high school and did really well, but decided not to go on to college, but instead studied for two certifications. On the course, he soon became bored with the pace of the certifications and did 2 extra certifications in the year-long course. He ended up with an A+, N+, MCSE and MCSD. (Even though he got the MS certifications, he hasn't used any Microsoft products in the products he created.)
So, when he was 19 he finished the course he was on and instead of going to work for a local MS shop that extended an offer to him, he went to work for an Equine institute. When I asked him why he took half the salary he could have, he exclaimed, he "just wanted to pet the horses"!!! Now, if that's not interesting, I don't know what is. He eventually went on to form an allainace with a top Equine official from another company, and wrote certain software (I'm not going to name the software or the individual, besides the fact that it has to do with E-commerce, because I don't want to "out" the individual because of certain other things), that has been a hit in the Equine industry, world-wide. He's now got more than $25 million dollars in his bank account. When I asked him what it was written in and what it ran on, he told me that instead of using Microsoft products, he decided to use FreeBSD 3.5, Apache, Perl, Python, and Zope, with some C modules, even though his "education" was in Microsoft products!! Later he was fired for having been caught having sex with the mares at the company he worked for, but the software he wrote had already raked in more than their original business. So, you see, while he doesn't have a college degree, he is strange, weird, and knows his stuff well enough to write a product that is widely regarded in Ecommerce business.The thing that's funniest about C|Net reporting on this is that it's almost universal consensus amongst Web/IT workers in and around San Francisco that C|Net is one of the worst possible places you could ever work.
I've met a lot of people who have worked there, and I've never met one who came away happy about it.
Breakfast served all day!
Funny Drew Carey quote from a rerun I saw recently...
Drew: "Oh, you hate your job? There's a support group for that... It's called 'Everyone', they meet at the bar"
I guess I've been lucky so far. I got my CS degree last May and went to work for a software company as an admin/developer, and am really enjoying it... I won't say I'd rather sit here at the office working then laying on a beach in Jamaica, but I also wouldn't say I hate my job... Cool coworkers, understanding boss, availability of diversions, etc, go a long way...
No, I agree. It's just that perhaps you develop a great, rewarding, productive relationship with your immediate team and management, and then the overlying corporation comes along and zeroes your budget because the marketing folks need a new printer. I think, cynicism or not, that you have to be prepared for that sort of thing. Now, if there's no overarching corporation.... ;)
I am quite civilized, and I should be brought a beer immediately. -- Bruce Sterling
I mean, IT managers are IT workers too. They've just worked a bit longer and/or have bit more ambition. That there is a shortage of competent managers supports the theory that there is an IT worked shortage.
Well, laissez-faire is a French word, so it can't be uniquely American...
Yes, the Constitution was written to have an anti-Government slant, but this country is careening toward bigger and bigger government every year, no matter if it's Demopublicans or Republocrats at the helm...
Well, our schools try to force *everyone* through school whether they might be more fit for a blue-collar job or not, and it might be comparing apples to oranges to compare our school system, with say, France, which makes people "qualify" for their version of high school. Also, it's a public school system, do all nations have public schools for K-12 range? I doubt it. So comparisons are suspect in my eyes, unless they take these factors into account. Do you have any cites for these sources?
And yes, I'm Libertarian.
It would be more productive to extensively train the managers to be competent in dealing specifically with bright and knowledgeable people, rather than ignoring a fundamental problem with IT work, which is that the more complex the work, the harder it is for managers to avoid being oafish fools about dealing with people who often are much smarter and more knowledgeable than they. This problem will only get worse as complex technologies continue to creep into every aspect of formerly simple products and services.
Hiring as a manager the venture capitalist's son-in-law or the college buddy is just not going to work anymore, not that it ever did ....
A truly excellent pizza parlor is a delight unto the heavens. Treasure the sauce and the toppings!
CoManage, Pittsburgh, PA. Network management; in a young (less than 2 years old) company of over 100 people, I'm on the young side at 32. We have enough parents in the company that children's movie night is a company activity once a month, and working from home one or two days a week is a common occurance. The works challenging; the work's interesting; and the management has a clue.
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
but I'm pretty certain XML has actually been around for a while. Isn't XML the format used to define HTML, or am I thinking of some parent format that I can't remember?
InThane
Instead of a shortage, it's more of an inability to keep people; that's one reason why it's so easy to get temp work.
Read the paper and check out the ads sometime; they have totally unreasonable expectations of what skill-sets they expect people to have. Just going through college is not enough; you can graduate from mine with a degree in Computer Science, and never learn C if you're careful, just Java, assembler, and maybe a functional language and something else, like SQL.
But then you don't have seven years experience in web design, or five years experience in Java, or a working knowledge of RPG, or something else equally ludicrous.
Of course, these requirements are padded, as are most people's credentials; but I'd much rather people said what they meant and were honest about the job requirements and the work environment. Lying to prospective employees is not a good way to start anything.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Never mind, open mouth, insert foot.
InThane
but that once they are hired they are often poorly managed
No kidding. This is a flaw with current executive management thinking. It's the old "if it ain't broke don't fix it" that causes us to work for piss poor managers. They see an IT worker doing a good job, and figure that he's fine where he's at, and that they shouldn't touch him.
Then you have Steph sitting around the corner, who simply doesn't have a clue. He keeps fouling things up, and costs the company way too much money.
So what happens? Steph gets promoted. Why is it, that in the IT field, the clueless are promoted faster then the insightfull? I can tell you why,... it's the old "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".
many IT jobs are ill-designed and boring, leading many employees to become dissatisfied and leave
No shit! And it's not that they're simply ill-designed. They're designed EXACTLY how the designers want them. Do they want an experienced IT worker who's been around the block, and can provide solutions? No,... because it would be a direct threat on management's credibility. And as I've pointed out, management is composed of people who were too dumb to be passed up for promotion.
The IT field is in a flux. Nobody knows how to find competent workers (college degrees, nor certifications gurantee competency), let alone know how much to pay them.
Want a serious approach to labor shortages? Free the radical limitations that our corporate executives have placed upon us. Refuse to require college degrees and certifications. Hire people, not resumes. And for god sakes, if somebody doesn't know what the hell they are doing, don't promote them, can their ass!
...and went into product management, so I could manage instead be managed.
When you get right down to it, the first 80% of coding (which takes 20% of the time) is fun, since that's where the design decisions and experimentation goes on. The last 20% (80% of the total time) sucks, because it's churning out the boring bits of the code, or driving yourself nuts debugging.
Unfortunately, 80% of your career goes into doing 20%-work. By the time you get to the fun stuff, you're cynical and sick of it.
Not to mention that many of the people who love coding so much that they stick with it that long have no management skills, but are expected to start managing because they're senior people. The last company I was at lost the best coder I've ever met for this reason -- they tried to get him to manage people, when all he wanted to do was code.
The hierarchies that work in other industries don't work as well for software. Every industry has a grunt labour component, but in IT, it seems that you're more likely to get out of grunt labour by switching companies or fields than by working your way up.
I can spell. I just can't type.
I was asked this question last time I was looking for a job. Since I wasn't really interested in that particular job (I'm more of an enterprise programmer, the job was smart-card programming!; only 15 working days leave? 10 of which MUST be taken at Christmas? Gotta be kidding...), my answer was written in C:
/* setup code */
qsort(...)
Would this pass the test? Yes, I know it's n.log(n), I know how to write one, but life's too short if someone's already done the hard work.
If I _have_ to write a custom sort, I'd haul out DDJ and Knuth and find the most appropriate algorithm. I don't walk around with the specs of dozens of sorting algorithms in my head.
don't you?
click here to incinerate homeless people
The best one around here was from someone with "three years of C" who was asked to describe what a certain piece of code did, and said something like "I think I know what it does, but I'm not sure what the funny star things are for".
IT workers are often very poorly managed. It's really sad, but it's not only the company's fault. There seems to be a general philosophy of "chasing the bucks" in the IT world that's based off of cynicism with corporations. I can fully sympathise with those types of feelings, but I don't necessarily think that they're the best way to go about things.
For example, when employers are constantly treating employees like dogshit, working them 65 hours a week, and trying to screw them out of the only 2 weeks worth of vacation a year that they're stingy enough to grant, employees lose respect for the organization that they're working for. If you love your job, and you like the people you work with, suddenly the pay isn't the only factor in whether you stay or whether you go. If on the other hand you hate your job and don't have any respect for where you work, then it's "Just about the bucks" and higher offers will cause you to leave with no regrets.
I've been working in American IT for a few years, and I'm totally sick of it. Recently, I got a job offer in Germany, making a lot less money, but offering a steady 40 hour work week, 4 weeks vacation a year, and the people I really liked. The corporation seemed to care whether I lived or died. So I turned down offers of $70,000+ to investigate that offer. Unfortunately, for personal reasons related to my family in the states, I wasn't able to take it, but had I been in a more flexible situation, I would have taken it in a heartbeat to have what I think every IT person wishes they had: quality of life
How many people do you know in IT who wake up at age 40 saying Oh my god, I've got a huge pile of money, but I hate my life because all I ever do is work? I know a lot of them. When employees cynical views of employers and the exploitative tactics that employers use against their employees rule the field, then yeah, you're going to have a lot of job hopping, and a lot of burned out pissed off disillusioned IT workers.
I'm in their ranks. Are you?
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
Rant - I don't want to create unecesary negativity, but I don't think that the shortage is going to get much better anytime soon. Maybe lots more people will go into the computer field and study comptuer science in colledge, but that won't do a fucking bit of good. I am taking computer science and engineering courses and I can't stand how everyone seems to be there because they think for some odd reason that if they complete four years of school and graduate with some kind of engineering degree that they are going to be showered with money out of nowhere. These people are not geeks by any means, and while that isn't something that is nessecary to you job, they have no true interest in computers. If there wasn't extra money at stake then they would look down on engineering as boring, technical and something they would never want to do. They don't see the big picture, and suck up everything they learn in their classes as the absolute truth and think that they don't need anything else which is very very wrong. So in a few years after lots of people start coming out of computer science looking for jobs they are certainly going to find them, and they're going to be horrible at what they do because they won't try to build on their knowledge because all they care about is money. Not to mention arrogance which is another story all together. I am not the only one who feels like this right?
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
I work with a senior guy, who is very valuable. We work at a "dot-com" with very little structure, everything is rush-rush-it's-due-for-the-demo-tomorrow. This guy is in his thirties, and he has, several times, LEFT THE PREMISES in the middle of a critical deployment to go coach a kid's hockey game. He doesn't even have a son on the team, I guess he just decided he wanted to be a coach. He says, "Oh, around 7pm I have to leave to coach, I'll be back at 10pm if you need me" and then JUST LEAVES. Guess who has to pick up the slack? Me. And I'm not nearly as good as him, and I end up calling him on his cell to ask him questions, and half the time he turns his cell phone off even though he knows we need him.
Now that's great and all, everybody knows you need to have a life, etc, etc. But what if I said that I need to have three hours off several evenings a week, just so that I could play Command & Conquer, because playing C&C is "important" to me. I'd get a lot of shit from my boss and wouldn't get looked on very well next time I was up for a raise, or asked for some paid training. I mean, do what's important to you, but don't expect it to reflect well on your career.
We have a senior DBA here from a South American country, he works constantly, and he just had a baby. He's always availible when we need him, and we need him a lot. In the country he's from, one of the head government people was photographed handing a bushel of cash money to an influential legislator. You think this guy wants to go back there? No, he's going to work long and hard because he wants to be here, not because he takes it for granted as a birthright that he only works a set amount and then can forget about work until a set time the next day.
If you count cancelled projects and endless proposals as wasted effort, then I bet 50% of the IT/engineering work in this country - at least at big companies - is wasted.
Small companies have it slightly better, but only because cancelled projects usually lead to layoffs or bankrupcy, rather than redeployment into another doomed project.
Germany has some of the most protective laws for workers in the world. In addition to your 4 weeks statutory leave, you'll get at least another week off because of public holidays (Feiertage). If your company has a good overtime system, as a lot do (work extra now, take it as holiday later), you may well end up with over 6 weeks paid holiday per year. A lot of companies will quote you an amount per month and then pay you for 13 months a year (ie: Christmas bonus).
Germany has it's problems too. One is beauracracy. Another is tax (although it's being reduced next year). You can expect to end up taking home as little as half what you did before if you're not careful. Also: the rubbish system will drive you nuts - you have to recycle everything.
That said, I live here in Germany and I like it. There are some nice things about Germany. They know how to make good cars (VW, Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Porsche are all German makes). German beer is not bad!!! Germany is geographically pretty much in the middle, so you can very easily drive around and experience very different cultures. Eastern Europe is cheap too. My favourite thing about Germany is that the Autobahns don't have speed limits in many parts (and I got a Porsche).
The IT industry here is also quite competetive too. Both IBM and HP/Agilent have large installations in Germany, but there are a lot of other smaller companies too.
There are a lot of non-Germans working in Germany in IT; the primary business language is English, so you have an instant advantage over a lot of Germans who can't speak it so well.
-- Steve
As a college student, when I hear about the conditions in the IT industry, it scares me.
I can understand where these things happened... when back in the day, young guys at start-ups had to work their asses off, 'cuz the only real compensation they got was stock options. Unfortunately, managers at larger companies, where the employees had less (if anything) to bennefit by the success of the company, heard about these practices, and started having the same expectations of their employees.
And y'all went along with it. It's understandable, since your average IT person is solidly a geek, and are either used to being pushed around (be it lingering from social rejection in HS, or from the abusive workloads that CS profs give out) or are 'unqualified' (in the paper-qualifications sense) and feel the need to prove themselves. Either way, we've built ourselves a reputation for doing obscene ammounts of work.
And now I'm going to have to go out into this world that you guys have allowed to come about, and I think back to my history classes, and the conditions for workers during the Industrial Revolution, before the gov't started enforcing workers rights.
Damn... maybe getting a job with the government wouldn't be so bad... at least they get to leave at the end of the day, 'cuz everyone expects the gov't to be behind schedule...
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
2. Lastly, Why in the hell would any knowledgeable IT worker go to work for someone else? Start your own damn business.
Burn Hollywood Burn
I hear you. I watched this shit happen to both my mom and my stepfather. Best as I can tell, when the economy is good there's always a shortage of people who are willing to be treated like shit.
Between /. and doing my own studying for the field I wanted to enter. That was all I did at my last job. And this one appears much the same way.
I swear to god, I tell this company my goals (they are a techie co) and how quickly I can get there, and how motivated I am, and they stick me in a job where all I am doing is billing out for them. They tell me that I need to sit on my desires and goals for 6 months while I bring in more money for them on a project where I don't want to be and isn't even remotely close to my goals (Unix Admin). I am debugging java code, and don't even know java-- and don't want to go in that direction yet anyways! Poor management of resources is the ailment this company suffers from!
That's what I hate the most. Especially if it happens after someone got training.
"Well, I gave them training, and they left, so now we can't train anybody else or otherwise they'll leave too"
Dilbert is so close to not being a parody or satire anymore that it's not even funny. That's part of the reason I became an independent contractor. (that and Rainier Technology laid off 45 workers including myself, thank you very much.) -
----------
ah honey, we're all resplendent - Bill Mallonee
but all of IT was built by humans to be used by humans
yeeahhh... sooo... how does that relate to Macs?
This whole “worker shortage” thing is completely idiotic. The problem is not that there is a worker shortage. The problem is that there is a slave shortage.
IT management comes up with some idea of what they think a position is worth. That is always some minimal amount — after all, if they don’t understand it, it must be easy. When they find their idea of the position’s worth to not be shared by the people who can actually do the work, they cry “worker shortage.”
Were they to try paying what the position actually is worth — easily determined by looking at supply and demand, the same as with every other position (or every other service, for that matter) — rather than what they wish it were worth, there would be no “worker shortage.”
It should be kept in mind that this is less of an article and more of a press release. It was written by "Knowledge@Wharton," the copyright is owned by the Wharton School, and the only source is the business professor who conducted the study. It is hardly an example of balanced journalism.
Is there a shortage of tech worker in the United States? Possibly. Are tech workers poorly managed? Possibly. Are there are significant number of open positions in the technology world? Certainly.
I would be more interested in reading the actual study rather than a predigested press release summary. The press release is designed to catch the reader's attention; the study may be a bit more interesting.
(Personally, I find it interesting that CNET runs press releases as "News," but that is a bit off-topic.)
--Sam
try looking at www.jobpilot.com or www.jobserve.com or monsterboard.nl Your best bet at finding work in Europe at the moment is: Netherlands (less than 2% unemployment, and everyone speaks English) and the UK. Austria, Luxembourg, Denmark would also be worth a look. Remember that you will need to get a work permit: given the skills shortage (hell, total shortage!) in NL, you're most likely to get the permit there.
...remember this next time you have to negotiate your salary or whatever.....
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
<RANT>
:)
In my last two contracts, I've spend three years doing my best to save poorly managed projects. It doesn't just apply to how the managers treat the developers. What is also as important, if not more so, is how management deals with the client. If management is consistently dealing with the clients in a less-than-optimal manner, then the end product will be less than the client expects.
This can have a huge demoralizing effect on the developers that worked on the project. There is nothing sweeter than to fulfill the client's every dream, and give them something that they didn't even realize they needed. (Of course, they better realize their needs if you are doing proper life-cycle development.
So, here I am, looking to not renew my contract. This time around, I plan on analyzing their development cycles much more thoroughly than I have in the past. Who knows, maybe I'll luck out and get a great environment.
</RANT>On a side note, I have found that projects went much smoother when I was around for the initial Analysis phase, rather than coming in during the development phase, and having to re-work previous "documents".
<SHAMELESS PLUG>
If anyone needs a Sr. Developer/Analyst that specializes in full-lifecycle development of three-tiered applications utilizing (gasp) Microsoft products, feel free to download my Resume.doc or Resume.rtf.
</SHAMELESS PLUG>
You quitting proves that the karma kap worked. The most annoying of the whores shut up. --CmdrTaco
As the Managers are going to say "Not So!", but I know plenty of people that can say it as true. There is a shortage, but a lot of managers (especially here in the midwest) tend to place more value on appearance than actual skill and merit. I am a male with long hair, and actually have not gotten jobs that I was more than qualified for, mainly because of that. The employers that have taken that chance have not been sorry however.
You say you want a revolution....
In my experience looking for IT people to fill positions at my company I feel we are in a serious shortage of people who are talented and dedicated. I have now seen the same tech position filled three times in six months and each time we get someone who's résumé looks great but apparently doesn't know the first thing about what they are doing. I keep finding people with Microsoft networking certs out the whazoo but with no natural talent for problem solving. The person usually lasts about a month and a half and then gets a job offer at another company for more money and I'm not sad to see them go. On the other hand, personally I got out of college with a computer science degree but no work experience because I had been doing internships and classes all college. I was looking for a job for three months, I mean looking, résumé's every day, phone calls, interviews. Finally a temp company place me in a data entry position and one of my co-workers spotted some of my code, not I make 55K a year an a half out of college. What got me the data entry job by the way was that the temp company had tests to see how good someone was at a language or program before they went out on a job. I wish they would do that for PC Techs because apparently these Microsoft networking certs are "pay your money, get your degree." One final note, the national turn around for a Computer job is about 18 months. However this is not, in my opinion, due to poor management. The first main cause is that jobs dry up after a year or so, for example, a bank needs a new program, so they hire programmers to write it. A year and a half later, the program is done and it's time for the programmers to move on. The second reason is that management is so busy throwing their money and time at new employees to fill those empty offices that they forgo raises and perks for their current employees. As a result theses employees are reduced to accepting offers form other companies in order to get their much-deserved raise. I make it a point to let me boss know every time I get a job offer and how much they are offering. It's my way of saying "hey I like it here but you better stay competitive or else I'll have no option but to watch out for myself." Just some thoughts on the matter.
Although I manage to be one of the most cynical people I know at times, I still tend to be very idealistic when it comes to technology. Judging from the success of ideas such as free software, I would venture to guess that most of you do as well. Especially if it's something I'm interested in or know it's possible, I want to just go ahead and implement it. The problem is that management generally wants to "prioritize" (triage) and "just get it working for now". This may well be a valid view, but I'm practically unable to comprehend it.
So yes, managers ruin everything, but a large part of the problem may also be that we got these jobs precisely because we're good at and love what we're doing. That means we have an emotional stake in seeing things done The Right Way, and management may have other priorities ahead of The Right Way. I sometimes feel it would be better if we had jobs in other professions and left coding as a hobby, just so we wouldn't have this kind of conflict.
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
So what's the solution? Professional Union/Guild??? Couldn't you just see that! Teamsters local 01001101 ;-)
The biggest problem at my place of employment is instead of working on technical issues -- i get subverted teaching people stupid stuff -- how to use outlook -- how to make a powerpoint presentation -- how to get latex to distill a file ... after awhile it becomes easier for the staff to ask me a question and have me show them -- then to pickup a fucking book to learn something ... whats more insulting is my bad management, which has expressly forbade anyone in my lab from going to FREE training courses given by the university, which is ludicrous, because now they're paying me to teach these people while out internal network is going to hell, what they could be learning for free.
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
Maybe we should bring in 200,000 temporary guest worker managers a year; instead of 200,000 temporary guest worker programmers.
I'm poorly managed but probably in a different sense than many of you are thinking. I don't have a bad manager--heck, I barely HAVE a manager. That's the problem. I spend a lot of my time haring off on things that either don't need doing or don't need doing by me. I've finally learned to just look blank when the tech support person comes over with questions about how to make NT work: "I dunno," I say, and go back to programming (on Linux, thank God). In some ways I like this (freedom, and not just to mess around, but to do the stuff that I know needs doing) but in other ways I hate it (no "roadmap").
In my previous job (as a "team leader") I tried to take a more active role in managing the programmer's time. I always had a mental list of every project each person (3 of them) were working on and a rough idea as to status. Once in a while (every couple days) I pop in and make sure my head matched reality. It seemed to work pretty well--I didn't have any complaints and even got one compliment (from a programmer). Just think of the team as a furnace that needs a constant supply of coal--boredom is 90% of the problem. (the rest is variety--color some of your coal read 8^))
--
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
I have seen several articles that report that IT professionals are leaving the industry. One article reported that something like 40% would not have gone into it if they knew then what they know now.
I often think of what I could do other than be a grunt programmer small cog in a big wheel. I love computers. But I hate the industry that chews 'em up and spits 'em out.
I think all the time that if I just save all those big bucks, I can afford the 75% pay cut that would put me in a sane industry. One where it is not assumed that a complex project with a short deadline can be accomplished for some extra pizzas, or that unrealistic goals can be achieved with cries of "More Productivity!" and corporate pep-rallies.
. Companies should take some of the resources spent on trying to hire small numbers of people with top academic credentials and instead develop ways to predict which employees will succeed ... on the other hand if they give me all the bandwith i need and a sweet setup... natural light might just be over-rated and never helps when you are trying to have a good game of UT.
I agree with this point basically cause I have seen that just by going to a top school does not make you the best for a certain job. A lot of times a good developer is one who has a more balanced background.... too much theory CAN be bad for you, and complete lack of it worse. I say this cause of a lot of ppl. with the great GPA's and awesome schools to back them up have not got exp. with different technologies and might not be as good as someone who did OK from a decent school but kept up with the outside reading (like slashdot). This is of course a difficult thing to try and predict at a job interview, and goes hand in hand with not trusting simple certifications... they are just a signal of someone knowledge and skillset, using that alone is a BAD idea. . For instance, programmers typically find themselves working in isolation on fragmented tasks that do not allow them to see the larger purpose of a project or to interact with other people. It may be of no small consequence that the offices of IT employees are often in a company's basement, the study notes.
Well a few things, have weekly meetings to talk about where the project is going and what each person is doing.. hence solving the first problem.. and whats this about being in a basement, damn that would suck!
Non-Deterministic Finite Automata
When you have clued in people, it works. When you don't, then you have nothing but strife as the technical people try to assert themselves over FUD.
}#q NO CARRIER
Let me rant a bit about how f'ing stupid many IT candidates are. I get their resume in which they claim to be Software Engineers or some such thing. They claim shell programming skills yet have trouble explaining how to list processes on a machine. They claim knowledge of 'Internet Technology' but don't know HTTP from TCP or a router from a NIC. They claim java programming but can't explain pass by reference.
There are plenty of these types out there. The qualified ones get hired extremely quickly. In the bay area hiring someone is like looking for housing.
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
You are crazy. The valuable senior guy you are talking about has every right to leave at 7pm. Hell, he's willing to come back at 10pm! If you had a non-postponable activity scheduled you would have every right to leave too. Of course, you may need to coordinate your schedule with your co-workers in advance. Hopefully this person did that.
Your work is not your life. Let me repeat that: YOUR WORK IS NOT YOUR LIFE! Employers need to understand this. If your employer doesn't understand this then its time to find a new job.
To understand what's right and wrong, the lawyers work in shifts ...
I guess the average age of slashdot workers is quite high, because I'm seeing a litany of "no one wants to hire older workers". Well let me tell you, that's total bullshit. Having recently graduated, I went through the job-search phase. I have several years of experience (I'm not talking about *hitty co-ops, I'm talking real design work). Here's what I got: "We don't hire new grads." "You're asking a lot for someone with no experience." "We don't want to hire overseas for someone who just graduated." I've been working off and on for the last 5-6 years here and there, and I've actually seen much more preferential treatment towards older employees - regardless of experience. Try to tell me that a 35-year old new grad with 2 years of design experience will make the same as a 22-year old new grad with 2 years of design experience. Then bitch about how no one will hire gray hairs.
Then, stop selling yourself as a *programmer*, and start selling yourself as at least technical lead, at most technical architect. I doubt you would be able to get the architect position without being at the level of a lead first, but this is the way to go if you want to avoid the managerial stuff.
Then, remember one thing: you're being recruited based on a) the position you're looking for b) data in your resume. Let me emphasise: in that order. If you're looking for a programmer position, no way in hell they're gonna say "Man! You're so great! Let us offer you a higher position with a higher salary". No, instead they will politely say "We're sorry, but you're overqualified for the position you're applying for. Good luck in your job search".
This is the way it works in US.
When I was in the posistion to hire somone for an IT/IS posistion 1/3 of the applicants LIED on their resume. Of the 15 I hand picked from over 50 resumes, only 3 could accurately tell me the following (notice one is an opinion, some of the canidates didn't know what a scripting language was!!!)
Add to that some pretty nasty assumptions that we would be converting our network to an ALL NT network because that was the wave of the future and you have a dismal showing for people that called themselves IT proffesionals.
This "shortage" is also caused by workers that refuse to adapt to changing technologies, and Management that refuses to train old employees that are willing to adapt on new technologies.
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
-Kriticism
-PARANOIA is fun. D20 is not fun. The Computer says so.
-The Computer
Coding freakin' shell scripts!
They just can't understand what a DBA is hired for. Unfortunately they're paying me a tremendous salary and I get out at 5PM on the dot each day. If only they knew - what a waste of money and talent...
Well one way they've "managed" me has been to hire kids fresh out of high school who stay a few months and manage to screw everything up just so I can go in and straighten it all up over the next month or so...
Unbelievable bosses. Don't any of them read Peopleware?
They are mismanaged therefore they quit, and when they quit they just go *poof* and everybody forgets about them therefore the total number of IT professionals goes down EVERY second and we have to impolt velly good quality IT plofessional flom India, yes mistell velly fine velly good price.
I think American business has become obsessed with Big Rules. (At one company I worked at recently, they actually called them that.) For example, consider wage inflation. Simple economics says that wages should be going through the roof, as employers compete with each other for scarce workers. But there's a Big Rule in place: HOLD THE LINE ON LABOR COSTS. HR gatekeepers have it in their handbooks; managers are lectured on the subject by executives, who in turn have their ears bent by the VCs, by consultants, and by various pundits. This Big Rule is, of course, applied most stringently to those who are most underpaid -- but that's another discussion.
No, I haven't wandered off topic. Here's the Big Rule that affects your ability to hire the intelligent schmo with the hopeless resume. FOLLOW THE PROCESS. This rule is necessary to the survival of big complicated organizations, especially when those orgs are developing big complicated technology. But it's often followed to the point of insanity, as any fan of Captain Action Item knows. Too many managers just don't have (or don't want) the freedom action they need to do their jobs effectively -- including the ability to take risks in order to handle staffing shortages.
__________
A big reason for this is that it is so easy to get an MBA. It does require work to get an MBA, but it is not as difficult as Computer Science, Law School, etc. Basically the problem is that a team of people are working at a job...someone should be the lead, and eventually that person can become a manager if they wish. That way they will know the process of the company, the members of the team, other contacts and tricks they have found while working there as a peon.
Unfortunately, in the real world, the management often comes from somewhere else, doesn't know anything about what their people are doing or how they work, and come in and cause tension. Also, most of the managers I have known have problems dealing with people in a diplomatic way, and they lack basic logic skills that are required to function in a business environment. When the managers are internal, they are usually sent to MBA school where they are taught what appears to be incorrect techniques and methods against common sense so they change to be incompetant at their job as well. Also, these people getting their MBA's are doing so because their management treats them badly and they think they can move up because of that. When they still get treated badly after getting their MBA, they go to another company and become an out of touch manager, or just decide management is not for them and that they will stay a programmer/admin/etc.
What Corporate America needs to realize is that I am more important than my boss, or his boss. It is harder to find someone with my skills, and so I should get paid more than the director and have better benefits. The problem is that we are organized in a pyramid according to who controls more people and the pay scale is adjusted for that. In reality, the importance of people would be better designed as a parabola. Us programmers and such that actually do the work are important and necessary for the company to survive. At the same time, the people on the very top that make the decisions are important as they provide guidance for the company. Middle management, for the most part, are useless individuals that only serve to water down and corrupt the communications between the workers and the board...
Personally, I am planning to work for a small company soon. There will be less benefits, but, at the same time it is a better quality of life when I can directly talk to the owner of the business and understand the direction the company should take, as well as the work that I should do.
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
Bottom line for excutives without development experience: All they see is a date slip. Your manager gets a few slippages and BOOM they are gone too.
Guess how your manager acts in the next project? Just like yours does now.
I checked your user information page and didn't find an e-mail address, nor do you provide an e-mail address with your message. If you are really looking, why not provide some contact info?
Then people like me who are fed up with the existing broker/headhunter system and HR departments would be able to network with you and who knows?
Feel free to mail me at my address...
I ahve worked at both very large companies, very small companies, and mid-sized companies as a technical worker.
I agrre management is definately a large problem. In my experience managment is too focused on the process of how things get done, rather than the end result.
So they are constantly wanting updates and reports as to what I did along the way. Instead of consentrating mainly on the final output.
This management style often prompts them to interject in the middle of the process and leads to scope creep and rewrites, etc.
Part of the need to manage in this style is the lack of a clear specifications. They don't understand enough up front to design what they want, and cannot anticipate the end result well enough so they have to keep "peeking over the should". Eventually the direction becomes clearer to them and they then jump in with changes.
It is very frustrating. Obvisously part of the blame is on the technical side, I am not communicating enough information up front. Part of the problem also comes from the upper levels by not sharing enough information with my dorect managers.
Another part of the problem is communication. Having all the communications tools doesn't do anyone any good if they are not used. My experience has been managers don't like tools. We have a web based forum to discuss adminitrative and technical issues. I post major milestones, and anything I think others would benefit from knowing there. The managers never look at it. They insist upon face to face meetings. I would not mind the meetings i they were asking for clarification and additional information, but they ask simple questions all of which are answered in the forum.
I used to work from home, but can't even do that now that we've grown and have added managers (not added techies though. . . ) since now I have to be in the office daily so I am accessible to all the managers. ARGHH!!!
This is more a rant than anything I guess, I don't even remember the original topic anymore. I hope it is at least close. . .
-MS2k
You generally can't write some awe-inspiring program and expect it to automatically sell itself. Someone has to go out and spread the word about your product, and generally the hardcore techs aren't so good at this. You have to know how to schmooze, and network, and pull strings until things, and do all of the human relations stuff to sell a product that, unfortunately, precious few techies can do well. The other thing that they do is help keep everyone on a timeline so projects don't meander on forever. Let's face it - there are plenty of projects that are dead in the water because there was no management to keep everyone humming along. This also takes lots of focus and work to do, and the new mainstream phrase "cat-herder" describes what a manager does pretty well. This is what managers and other higher-ups do - they help to keep things moving along and help to bring in cash. This is not to say that techs aren't important. Obviously, they are, because without them there would be nothing to manage and, perhaps more importantly, nothing to sell. What needs to be done, IMHO, is even out the perceived importance (and therefore compensation) difference between the two. It's really a symbiotic relationship between management and developers/techies/etc., and everyone needs to stop denying it. It's tough to watch management get all the kudos - and rewards - for a well-executed project. It's also tough to watch the crack, genius development team leave because management didn't recognize how valuable they were.
When I ran a development department I actually did a financial plan with a mathematical model about productivity and morale improvement if we hired a gorgeous assistant for the department. It showed we would easily make back the salary and more!!!
Didn't help. The CEO just would not go for it.
:-(((
- Paul
'The unhappy truth, the study points out, is not that there are few people available to do IT work, but that once they are hired they are often poorly managed. In addition, many IT jobs are ill-designed and boring, leading many employees to become dissatisfied and leave.'
Okay, and how exactly is this different from every other job in existence? Would you be suprised to find out the people who you precieve to be such poor managers also feel that they are poorly managed by those above them? And that their jobs are ill-designed and boring? I bet a lot of people would also be suprised to find out that if they were to become a manager, the people who work for them will probably consider them to be poor managers.
Mid-level managers are in a bad spot. Know why your manager "doesn't listen" to you? Because his manager doesn't listen to him, so he can't effect any changes. An organization can be no stronger than the person at the top. If the person at the top is a bad manager, you're screwed because his lack of management skills will force all those below him to waste all their time responding to his latest pronoucement of cluelessness.
S**t flows downhill, and it's pretty hard to turn it into flowers halfway down the hill.
Merde, il pleut encore!
Most jobs are rarely fun. That's why we say "I work at Company X..." rather than "I play at Company X...". Next time you talk to your boss, tell them "I'm having a great, super-nutty fun time!" and see how they react.
I spent almost one year (my Military Service) helping out in an organization whose purpose is helping people land jobs (it's kind of a charity, State-funded).
One of the things we were taught by the people working there, is that job-hunting ads are always exagaggerated. They ask for the very best they could desire, as unrealistic as it might be. And then they throw in some buzzwords, and then some more. But in the end, usually they need far less, and most often desire far less, as it will be cheaper for the employer.
So don't be fooled. If you like a job prospect, don't be afraid to apply, even if you satisfy less then half the requirements. Worst scenario they'll tell you "we don't need you", but you have a better chance at landing the job than you believe.
I totally agree. Especially when it comes to stock options. IMO, options are the easiest way to convince someone to stay somewhere longer. People start saying to themselves "Even though I hate this place, my options vest in only another year, so maybe I should stick it out, get rich, and then I can retire."
So they burn out waiting for their options to vest. Which is silly, because options are money that they don't have.
The sad part is that it's typically people in marketing who help define company strategy, and are therefore in a better position to determine where the stock will be. (Not that they always know, but they have the most access to the information.) Techies get so hyper-focused on getting the product to ship that they barely get the opportunity to see the larger picture.
I can spell. I just can't type.
Sounds good up gront until YOU get sued for sexual harassment for drooling infront of her becasue she mistakenly assumed you were drooling about her, not the slick new PS/2 you just got.
I admit right up front I have a bias in this matter because of my military background. First in ROTC, then as a junior officer in the Army, I went through thousands of hours of training designed to make me an effective leader.
How an organization develops leaders is a question that is seldom asked. There are plenty of large organizations that drill their managers in how to be a good member of the corporate team, but how many of them teach effective leadership techniques?
Leadership is a mixture of native ability and teaching - lots of teaching. It's not a formula. No leadership book is going to teach you everything you need to know about leadership. Going to some retreat where everyone goes kayaking or whatever, is not going to make better leaders.
Sustained, in-depth training and feedback is the only way for an organization to make effective leaders. When you have effective leaders, more often than not, people want to stay in the organization, whether they're IT workers, sales people, or truck drivers.
There's no magic bullet, but promoting people into management positions because they can write good memos or sell more widgets, or even program well is foolish. Leadership has to be cultivated - it doesn't just come with the territory.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Once I had some proof that I knew how to admin a Unix system, I had no problem finding a job. In fact, after a year, I am still here.
We have been searching for more people, fairly fruitlessly since before I started working here. We have somethign like 2 midlevel and 1 senior admin slots open.
We have seen so few qualified applicants. One or two, but they never end up comming to work for us. At best we find people who might make good junior admins (we already have 2 of those...and I am one of them).
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Does the American education system teach Americans anything other than how to boost their already overactive self-esteems? To judge from the resumes I've read you wouldn't think so. Everyone claims to be a 'straight A student' and yet I see so much mediocrity. Maybe American teachers need to wake up. It's not politically incorrect to find fault in a student's work.
--
-- SIGFPE
It doesn't take reaching 40 to realize
American work values really lag behind many European job considerations. There are bad managers everywhere but they can certainly have a field day with tangled webs of woe such as the US "health care system"...
I've worked both places and it _still_ shocks me how completely and totally money-seeking essentially RUNS everything in America. the majority are out to get every buck they can and (I thought this was a joke until I lived in the US and experienced it non-stop) people often do define themselves in financial terms. It is tiring and leads, however subliminally, to all kinds of unhappiness.
Americans really DO tend to get their identities from what they buy, whereas in general Europeans get them more from what they do. A generalization of course but even the most resolutely opposed American has to deal with this, every day.
Thus the tone of weariness form the posts already up here on this topic is entirely typical of the whole US working world and not merely IT positions.
The article mentions that IT workers are not recognized for their true value to the organization and I'll have to agree: too many upper level managers don't realize that their IT investment is a *stategic* investment as opposed to a cost center.
In an information-based economy your IT staff are crucial to the success (or failure) of your fundamental business. Treating IT as a cost-center classifies it as "something to reduce": hence the reluctance to train staff or increase base pay.
The real solution? Increase pay rates and put your brightest technical people at the same decision making level as their managers. When top performing IT architects/designers/coders (not managers!) receive pay rates on the same scale as their management counterparts (because they *produce* results), you'll see the best/brightest flock to the field.
I'm not expecting this to happen anytime soon due to the general cluelessness of old-line, non-technical, entrenched management PHB's but to hear them cry about their self-created IT shortage is just a bit too much when all they have to do is get out of our way.
Moderation in everything, including moderation.
Are you looking for someone that already knows everything in the world about router and UNIX hacking, or are you willing to accept someone that loves the stuff but has not gotten to use it "at work" yet?
Is the job in Northern VA (where I work now) or within 500 miles of Knoxville, TN? If not I would not be able to start before June of next year.
Are you willing to accept a home UNIX user? I have been running my own Linux/Apache webserver for a couple of years, after work. I am a Logistician and Functional Data Analyst, Lead and the only UNIX experience that I have right now was earned on my own.
There are tons of people like me out there, maybe we have not been paid to do what you want done by someone else, but we DO want to do that kind of work and are fully capable of doing it. However, the static we get is "your hobby does not count, you need specific work experience as an administrater of an AIX server using HPblahblahRAID5 and Apache 1.2.x with Oracle 7, 8 years of PGP (must know C and C++) and 7 years or more of Linux (yes, I have had recruiters say that a position required 7+ years of Linux specific experience, sorry I was not one of the pioneers).
Getting a UNIX system running in my Jeep and at home was generally a breeze, what is the big deal on messing with them in an office?
As a Logistician, I am required to integrate all sorts of data systems in order to analize the information properly. If I could not use multiple systems, I could not do my job. Whatever you have should not be too big a task.
BTW, another poster mentions an Israeli pilot applied for a job with them, might want to look into him. I am a former US Army Aviator and none of this stuff is as demanding as that job was.
If you had posted an e-mail address I would have sent you a resume.
Visit DC2600
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
How many times have you heard "I can't find anyone to help you" only to one day discover that management decided to actually spend some money on the hunt and instantly got 20 resumes?
With the burn rate at a lot of companies these days, the key thing is to get by with as few people as possible. Many of us end up doing the jobs of 5 or 6 people, working far too many hours (or refusing to) and "there just isn't anyone out there who is qualified" is always a "valid" reason for getting by with as few people as possible.
I'm not saying this is always the case, but it is definitely a contributor to the whole gestalt.
This is news? Geezus, this is old news. Hmm, lets point out the obvious. We have been mismanaged and bored for ages. Dont tell us were mismanaged, Explain to people how to fix it.
--- Always remember. 99.36% of all statistics are inaccurate.
If you're in the industry, you know that there's no shortage of IT people. There is, however, a huge shortage of _good_ people.
What we're seeing is a huge number of so-called programmers and developers being churned out in the thousands by cheesy technical schools. These people have no problem solving ability, and instead rely solely on their ability to memorize coursework.
These are the kind of people that put a programming language like Java on their resume. They don't actually know Java. They wouldn't know an algorithm if it bit them on the ass. They _do_ know how to use the Java class libraries to churn out something that works. In 5 years, they're going to need to be completely reeducated.
This isn't the fault of these people. This is the fault of an industry that is always looking for the quick fix, and the easiest solution. The inherent problem is that they're merely treating the symptoms of IT worker shortage without getting to the heart of the problem.
Companies need to stop looking for resume buzzwords and start hiring people with the ability to learn. Instead of hiring the trainee fresh out of his or her 6-month Java certification course, hire the guy with 10 years of C++ experience. It's only going to take him a couple weeks to get productive, and when Java, or any other technology for that matter, becomes obsolete, he's just as easily going to be able to move on to the next phase of his career.
That guy with the certificate... he's going to be back right where he started.
1) IT requires people who can think very abstractly (anyone else "hear" the TCP and UDP packets on the wire but me?). If you think "SYN/ACK" when you hear people talking, you know what I mean.
2) Good IT people are ones who have the greatest ability to think out abstract concepts and focus on all of the details.
Thus: Good IT people have high intelligence.
My thesis:
People of high intelligence realize that the current cultural and philosophical system is designed aginst them. The greater your intellectual capacity, the greater potential you have to create wealth, and under the American system, the greater your "obligation" (in terms of taxes) to provide for those less able.
Thus, the better you are, the less you work for your own profit.
Nobody wants to work as a slave. I'm in semi-retirement, supplementing my coffee-and-capuccino-slinging job with the occasional networking or VBA programming gig.
Let the people who try to seize the products of our minds learn the error of their ways.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Heeellllooooo? Is anyone home?
"Property is theft, therefore theft must be property, right?"
you should be able to get more than 45k easy, i know about as many languages as you, but ive only worked for 3 weeks, and i make 50k, and im in the south.
There was recently a case where a police department refused to hire a guy who took their test and was over the maximum intelligence level for the position. And a court upheld it!
So the proper way is to give said employee plenty if interesting, pointful things to do (pointless makework is usually about as boring as sitting around doing nothing). And if you don't have anything good for them to do, and don't make it your responsibility as a manager to keep them from being bored, don't bitch and write them up for reading /. a lot or for doing hobby stuff like disassembling ColecoVision game ROMs on company time.
If you want Mensa-level or higher IQ employees to stay around, don't use the Mushroom Theory of Management on them. Don't Dilbert them, or they'll just farm out their resume for $10K more. And only when they're gone will you realize just how much they did in the times you weren't peeking your head into their cubicle to find them not looking busy.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
I can't imagine that people are leaving the field in great numbers. Something must have driven them to the technical field in the first place. And with the world so driven by technology, there's bound to be fewer and fewer non-technical jobs as time goes by.
And certainly it's a big mistake to churn people through college. We don't need less trained people entering the field, we need more trained people. This means focusing on real world solutions and not the toy problems that colleges seems to want to focus on. This is akin to adding more people to a late project, except on a different scale. If corporations have to spend more time training the newbies, then corporations will experience a negative effect due to their technical departments, not a positive one.
If corporations are going to pay me to learn, then why not go to college one or two years, get hired by a company and have them pay me to learn what I need to know? That sounds like a sweet deal to me.
--
At my previous job, there were days when I literally did nothing but read Slashdot all day. Many many of these days. Many.
Even now (at a job I largely enjoy) I keep a Slashdot windows open at all times--to peruse while code compiles, etc.
--
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
Its true. At one of the Job Posting sites, I remember seeing a poll for Job Satisfaction and 95 percentage were of the opinion that they were not happy with what they are doing. Its quite surprising. I feel that as long as you have a Good Architect and a Manager who listens to his team, the team would stay. I have been in situations where the company wasnt doing so good, but people stayed because of their manager. Loyalty is hence hard to find and come by in the IT job market.
If companies could hire managers who know the different between HTTP and FTP, between Kernel and Shell, could stand up for his team in Management meetings and take a beating for it, could explain in lucid detail to the management about schedule slippages and cover everyones ass and not just his then he would build a team which would stick through thick and thin for him. But from so far I have seen, this particular breed is dying fast. Everyone wants to cover their ass first.
Just providing Nerf gun battles and ping pong tables doesnt motivate people. People motivate people. Good diplomatic Managers tend to motivate people to excel in their work and make them stay. Making them stay back after six everyday and not reward them is begging them to leave. Most of the firms, even the big ones doesnt have a clue as to how to retain people. I would rather choose a firm which has Quake 3 deathmatches every alternate days or Fridays, where my Manager understands what I do and not judge me for my errors, where he first covers my ass and then his if i screw up,is the first one to comment or reward anyone who deserves it.
I havent found one, but being a sucker I am still looking.
Rapid Nirvana
You want to talk underappreciated? Try being an HTML coder who has to work between marketing, graphics and the true programmers. The programmers are worshipped cause they make stuff work, the marketing types are worshipped cause they bring in money, the artists are worshipped cause they make the brand look good, and there's no love left for me.
I'm moving more into the world of true programming, but I'm considered a bastard child who does HTML, and any 'hyper-intelligent' trained monkey can code HTML. But ya know what? Only a good monkey can code it right.
It's for this reason I've considered changing to a whole other field, game development. I got a review coming up and we'll see the salary goes up or I go elsewhere.
I live life on the edge
I agree. Being an IT tech, I try to take pride in my work because for the most part I enjoy what I do except the management makes for a very unpleasent work environment. One of the things that I find to be most irritating is being told to do something to just 'get it working'. As we all know, fixing something to the point of 'getting it working' equates to a horribly done job that you will never be able to go back and do the proper way. Typically if you solve or fix a problem you get a somewhat good feeling that you've actually accomplished something worthwhile, but when you are forced to do a poor job at something, it has the opposite affect.
What is even worse is when you are told to do something in this way to just get it working but you know that you will have to return to this problem shortly in the future to correct it again and do it the proper way. Never a good thought to think that you are doing something in a stupid way and wasting all your time when you could simply do it right the first time and save many hours of work later on.
Management makes decisions (so I hear) so it MUST be their fault, right? Everything else is, why not that too?
Mr. Ska
The way I see it, in the long run a shortage will be good for IT workers. It creates higher demand, which allows us to ask for money and better benefits. Companies that treat their IT employees poorly (read Mattel Interactive) will tank. They don't understand that IT professionals won't put up with marketing wankers screwing up projects, but they'll learn the hard way. Bottom line, ask for more and put up with less. MBA's got their partying in when we were studying our asses off and now it's our turn. The geek shall inherit the earth brothers and sisters.
These are twofold: First, most of the my managers were former tech people themselves, and while I'm sure they were excellent ATM repair people or whatever it is that they did (one guy actually repaired cash registers) it doesn't qualify them for management. In some ways, being former tech people is a bad thing, because they're familiar enough with what you do and far removed enough from it that they can think that what all of their underlings do is easy. Second, the real decisions on IT policy at larger companies tend to be made by executives who don't know anything about technology (not their fault) and aren't interested in the opinions of their own tech workers (this IS their fault). As a result, policies which are unfocused, uninformed, based on marketing FUD, or completely made up are the norm, and the people in the know aren't invited into the decision-making process and are, indeed, afraid for their jobs should they rock the boat. Oh, and as far as those working conditions go: the refrigerator was dumped in my office a couple of weeks ago, and my phone was taken away yesterday. Despite the fact that most offices are completely dependant on their IT support staff, few recognize this fact. I don't know how we can get our managers to appreciate us other than by quitting and finding new ones - starting the whole cycle over again.
The same phenomenon happens to contractors in other fields. I was an administrative contractor (read: temp) for years. I used to get placed for jobs that asked for all sorts of computer skills and be set to making copies. The employers figure the more skills a person has, the better they must be overall.
I also used to be able to class jobs into three types...
From the sounds of the article, far too much of the industry is stuck in category three.
-- I'm not evil, I'm
I have been out of school now for 10 years and would love to change careers if I could find something that came close to having the same compensation. Now to my point.
Most "programmer" positions at the companies I have worked for having someone with a 4 year degree is a waste and leads to the person who gets the job getting bored and looking for the cash - "If I hate the job I might as well get paid alot to do it."
I did work at one company that did hire many great programmers from the local community college. They did a great job a writting code, better than many people with advanced degree. Where this company fell short is that it would then try to use these people in analyst positions where they had been great at pounding out code they didnt understand the larger business issues. Maybe the computer profession should become more like others where engineers do the brain work and techs do the grunt work. Example - power distribution engineer designs the power grid the lineman goes out and strings the wires. Both are happy to be doing what they are good at and you wouldnt want one doing the others job. Would you want a electrical engineer to wire house? Or a mechanical engineer to work on your car? This is what we often do in computer profession and it leads to frustrated people who cant wait to get out
Train people who dont want to go and get a four year degree to be coders and let people who see the bigger picture spend their time coming up with the ideas
All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence and then success is sure - Fortune Cookie from an long lunch
Programmers are definitely undervalued. I work in the largest investment banking firm in New York City ( posting anonymously for obvious reasons ).
The trading floor is composed of over 200 6x6 cubicles. Each is occupied by a programmer with 3-5 years in the firm! Over 60% of them are from India. On an average, they make 70K. That might seem a lot, but consider the facts -
1. This is NYC.
2. These people work from 8am to 10pm routinely!
3. Over 50% come in on weekends.
4. When there is a production problem, they can be paged at home and are expected to show up in 2 hours!! I have known several who were paged at midnight to fix some stupid bugs in Sybase procedures. Dunno why the management couldn't wait, say, a few hours until the Sun rises.
Alongside these cubicled bunch are rows upon rows upon rows of long tables with PCs. Each PC is manned by a (gasp!) consultant. Over 90% of these consultants are Indians on an H1 visa. They make about 50K on an average. Their plight is much worse. They do all the shitwork that the cubicled employees hand down, for a pittance. They have zero privacy and they can't talk on a phone without three rows of employees hearing every word of what they said.
The sad fact is, every critical system here, whether it be a front-end data-entry system, transaction system, database production issues, mainframe system, is manned by these poorly paid overworked programmers. Only they know the ins & outs of the mess around here.
On the periphery of the trade floor are offices. With a door. Each of these offices are held by project managers, VPs and others higher up in the totempole. On an average, they rake in 300,000$ every year base, plus atleast a 100,000 in bonus. A lot of privileges are doled out to them - company car, expense accounts, free lunches, you name it.
None of these shitheads can fix a single bug or operate a single system that handles their million dollar transactions, without significant help from "those cheap replaceable consultants" on the floor.
That's reality out here.
Should have stuck with just the morale improvement. Even for a CEO, claiming productivity improvement was pushing it a bit too far.
Unless of course, that gorgeous assistant started writing better code than the rest of you.
1. Age before your taken seriously 25 Most managers do not trust anyone under this age. No-one really started taking me seriously on anything till I hit that birthday. Problem is if you want the most bleeding edge people you gotta hire them young. Managers make the mistake of hiring non-forward looking people so they don't have to play catch up with the younger crowd. 2. Age before your made a manager 30 I don't know why it is this way but for some reason corp. officers don't want to put anyone under 30 in a management position. I never knew telling someone "Go do that" a.k.a management experience was something so hard. Sorta like a reversal on logons run. 3. Asskissers make managers. I've worked at a *lot* of places, i'm up to at least 14 companies by now. My fondest memory of a idiot manager was at madge networks, makers of token ring cards. My idiot manager came straight out and said, "I have no technical skills whatsoever but my background is in customer service" OMFG! What was Mr. Madge thinking by putting someone who used to be in charge of RMA's in charge of IT? Made no sense then or now! 4. Managers cannot have understanding of underlying technology. This is how the officers think. If you understand it, your better off in development, making money. If you know how to duck work, delay projects, blame others and have learned the sheng fu blank manager stare while lying your ass off technique, congrats! your a manager. 5. Never surround yourself with enemies. Most managers make a habit of hiring people from their alma mada err old school, or they'll give the job to someone who's related to them somehow, either through family, church or freinds. For a IT person its extremely difficult to deal with these persons because they're pretty much allowed to have free reign over the organazation. So yeah this is my pet peeves. I'm pretty sure a lot of you can relate. --Toq
You may want to try austinatwork.com and austinjobs.com.
I'm not sure what you mean by Austin-specific things. I personally have lived there for five years and I find new things all the time; what are you interested in? Feel free to E-mail.
The "IT shortage" is NOT for a lack of skills and it's not because younger people will work for less money.
The fact is, most tech jobs (sysadmin, programmer, web developper, etc.) are not 40hr/week jobs. They're demanding 60, 70, 80 hour per week jobs. And they're all "salaried" jobs, which means no extra pay for extra hours.
Now young people fresh out of college, and immigrant H1B visa workers have little else in their life to occupy them. They are single. They have no kids. Thus they are able to accept the abusive work hours employers expect them to put out.
But now something new has happened. The first BIG wave of IT industry workers are just now starting to reach their upper 30s and 40s. And that first wave of H1B workers are nearing the end of their 6 year temporary visas.
Tell me, what happens when a 70 hour/week employee gets married or has a kid?
Suddenly he or she has to cut back working hours to 50 or 40 hours per week as a responsibiliy to their family.
The employer sees this as MAJOR SLACKING OFF BY SOME OLD GRAYING BASTARD. So he's either FIRED. Or sees his salary cut 40% and is FORCED to quit because he can't support his family on a pay cut like that.
The employer then puts an ad out and discovers that lots more older IT workers are applying than years ago when he put that last ad out. These older workers suffer from the same problem... having a life.
So suddenly the employer screams that there is a "shortage of IT workers" and demands the government allow more H1B visa workers in so he can continue his abusive employment practises.
Well, IMO, it's time employers are FORCED to play fair and give up their extremely abusive practises. Naturally they won't want to as screwing people over is highly lucrative and profitable. Well, it is wrong to discriminate in your hiring practises againse people who are (1) married, or (2) have kids. So pardon me if I don't cry for your sorry assed IT shop and it's fuck-you hiring policies. I feel absolutely zero pity for you poor staff strapped IT shops who are only looking to screw people over.
Since I'm an underappreciated IT guy, I completely agree with where that story went. My boss worked not 65, but close to 80hrs a week. for 8 years. He's one of those 'wunderkind' who didn't get a degree, but instead just worked really hard and got far. He built our DB apps from scratch, with very little capitol to speak of. The company abused him so bad it was really sad. So the CIO/IS Manager guy from corporate left, and my boss got saddled with all of that crap. This lasted for less than a year. Finally he left, and not for more money, but for less stress. I myself am experiencing something the same. I've only been here for a year, though I see the lack of management.
A lot of this can be rectified, but some will always be a hassle. Users, here they're not educated enough at all when it comes to the computers they use. They think that the magic box will give them the answers they seek if they click the mouse in the right places. Nobody knows what the numbers they enter into the db mean to the guy down the hall, they don't care, they're being productive. The worst part is, if something goes wrong...it's IT's fault. This gets back to the lack of proper treatment and abuse of the IT department.
The more employers understand the 'culture', and the people, and what we're trying to do...the more likely they'll be amenable to us and be able to gauge our performance properly.
well, my $.02US
zerodvyd
>I sometimes feel it would be better if we had jobs in other professions and left coding as a hobby, just so we wouldn't have this kind of conflict.
thanks for reasuring my career choice, ME, with a minor in ComputerE
(wonder how many people will comment on my use of the acronyms)
Lots of times, they pass up excellent candidates because thay are afraid to consider if a person is trainable, and can be trained quickly. Flame me all you want, but no school teaches anything which can be applied evenly across any similar technology. The best candidates for the job are those who can adapt what they know to what's new and has been placed in front of them.
if (Book sense eq Common sense) {
print "Lousy hiring criteria!!!";
};
Here's a slightly off-topic, but comparable example:
All those schools pumping out 'certified' IT professionals by the droves on the "You paid - You made the grade" philosophy are also to blame.
Ask yourself, would you hire a newly certified person regardless of what they did before going to school, or would you hire someone who's been working with computers for a while and has provided good value as an employee of a previous company in that capacity without certification. Someone who has, through self teaching, dabbled in UNIX and is not intimidated by it, will be an ideal candidate for hire. They didn't go into school to earn a 'free ticket' into a job. They want to learn and expand their mind to be more useful. Those who are self taught are easily trainable.
Well, sometimes we programmers don't WANT to interact with anyone else. Particularly when a normal exchange with your boss goes like this:
ME: Hi, I'm going to be out today from 9 to 11 because I'm having a dishwasher installed in my house. I came in at 5 this morning, have no meetings, and will be back before lunch. If you need me urgently, my pager number is XXX-XXXX.
BOSS: (e-mail CC'd to the project manager and the Vice President) Your assignments were due last week. You will need to work all weekend to compensate for this. You are behind in all your work. I expect you to be a team player and step up to the plate. Everyone is depending on you for this most urgent blah blah blah blah blah.
ME: (also CC'd to the project manager and the Vice President) If my assignments were due last week, then you should have informed the team of your new schedule before today. See you at 11.
Turns out that he was caught in a lie - my assignments were NOT due the previous week. After I completed my project on time he also had to answer a lot of questions about why he mistakenly thought I was behind in my work. It's his job to know where the team is at all times.
True story.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
I used to work for IBM. They have a great policy of promotion of IT vs. Management. It's a little too government rating system for me, but they do have 300,000 employees, so you have to give them some concessions.
Essentially, it goes like this:
You are hired on as a certain "grade", i.e. Grade 9.
In the new system, you are payed a fixed amount based on your grade (i.e. $60,000-90,000 for grade 9)
You also have other "levels" within a grade. Now, it used to be that only management could get to above a certain grade, say grade 10. But in the new system, almost everyone can get to higher grades, based on their performance/reviews/etc.
In this way, you can stay a techie and still make decent money, say $130,000 at grade 12.
But to get the BIG bucks, you still have to sell stuff, or be a manager. that's where bonuses and quick promotion comes in. In ALL companies, that's really how you make money. You have to prove you are bringing in revenue for the company, besides your actual bill rate by being a consultant.
For me, the pay I was getting and the rate they were charging was too drastically different, so I went independent. But this would not be so true at a really high level. It's a pretty good system, for pay anyway.
Ves