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_
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.
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
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
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
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 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, I don't really know. The only thing I can think of is first that IT professionals tend to maybe be a bit more driven then your average worker, (maybe) so they tend to want to stay longer to do it right, and possibly also because if management treats you like dirt and acts as if they own your ass, maybe you feel that they do, and you're more likely to bend.
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.
Amen, brother.
(The managers in the back are screaming "But that would cut into corporate profits! That would cause the price of goods and services to rise! You don't really want that now do you?" but maybe we do)
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.
See the other response to my original post which I would give +40, Insightful if I had moderation access at the moment. You're right, it isn't like it has to be coded right now, but if your primary focus is on getting and keeping wealth, then it DOES have to be coded right now. So maybe it's not necessarily the rules and procedures that happen at work that need to change but the assumptions that go into the creation of those rules and procedures.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
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
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?
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.
...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...
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
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'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'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
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
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.
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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
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!
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!)
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The gift of death metal does not smile on the good looking.
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.
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Private Essayist
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.
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-- 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...
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
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
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.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
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.
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.
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!
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^))
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Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
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
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.
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...
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.
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 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
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.
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-- 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.
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.
Heeellllooooo? Is anyone home?
"Property is theft, therefore theft must be property, right?"
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.
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"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.
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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.
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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
One word:
balance
I think that too many ppl. tend to think that just cause we are programmers we should not study or care about other subjects. (as did I before 4 years of college) there is a lot to learn from in classics, history and even business courses (well some business courses at least).
Non-Deterministic Finite Automata
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
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.
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.
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.